The rising sun tinted the snow orange and the sky purple. My father sat atop our wooden hut and I swept the entrance of snow with an old broom.

“Aidar, you’ve taken your first step into adulthood. No more than seven trials stand before you. When you complete these, the patriarch will tell you of our origin.” My father continued to look into the sky. “He will then decide if you are fit to become a priest of the order. Although I do not know the criteria required to be ordained by the vampiric fire, try to understand the world until then. It may help your qualification bid.”

Curious about the patriarch he so rarely spoke of I asked, “Where is the patriarch? Does he live in a city of vampires?”

My father cleared the snow accumulated on his naked body and jumped off the roof. “No, it isn’t a city, nor a village,” he said. "There has never been an agglomeration of vampires, and if one ever did exist, time has erased it.” He continued to stare into the horizon. “And on the subject of its location, I do not know its name. After all, it is simply called the temple of all vampires. The lands that surround it are controlled by men and they cannot help but rename the simplest of objects each century. I only know how to get there.”

“When do we leave?” I asked.

“Since we’ve eaten recently, we can depart anytime this week,” said my father. He stretched out his arms as the sun continued to creep up. The sky, now light blue tired both mine and my father’s eyes.

But with my last ounce of strength, I insisted, “Let’s leave tonight.” If I didn’t push the date up by an absurd amount, he’d wake up in ten days. Such was the nature of vampires. Or perhaps just my father. After all, the stories of vampires' laziness could be justifications for his bad habits.

“Tonight?” he said surprised. A bit of sobriety tinted his eyes. “We can leave in two days—”

“Please, I’m really curious about the patriarch.” I continued to act the part of a child.

My father tapped his chin a few times. “Very well. If you can wake me up, then we’ll leave tomorrow.”

#

I didn’t know how my consciousness entered the body of a vampire, nor how this new body would affect it. However, two things were certain. First, I had kept the tendencies, pace, and the disposition of my old self. Secondly, I wished I had been reborn in the twenty-first century instead of the ninth. I wished to see humanity progress further than where it had arrived in my time. I wished to see man push more boundaries and discover new fields of study. And although the idea of seeing man discover steel, gunpowder, and trains sounded great. They weren’t new to me. I craved all things new, from ideas to concepts. I wanted to see men achieve technologies akin to magic and ideologies which make our flawed democracies look like feudal monarchies. Yet, here I stood, drinking the blood of men fleeing steppe nomads, Vikings, oppressive rulers, and dried earth. With the sole promise being that I might see men build the first ironclad as I take my dying breath. It made my stomach churn and if not for the difficulties of finding food I would have puked.

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That’s why I wouldn’t waste my life away like other vampires. I would push for the development of humanity through the sciences.

Much like my father, I couldn’t care less for the kingdoms of men, for their cultures, or their customs. I did not wish to be king, wealthy, or famous. I simply wished for humanities best. And I had to see this wish of mine through. But for now, I would journey, for I did not even know where to find the minerals, manpower, or qualified individuals to achieve my goals, nor did I speak any languages apart from vampiric.

I transformed into a bat, flapped my wings, submerged my claws into the hut’s support beam, and fell asleep wrapped in the warm embrace of my leathery wings.

#

The next day, when the sun hid under the earth and the moon emerged out of the fields, I woke up. And although I had said that I would wake up after a day, I had no clue how much time had passed. However, my body felt like it had rested for a week. Well, time couldn’t be recovered and wondering about its loss would only make it drain faster.

As such, I unhinged my claws from the wooden beam above and landed on the floor in my human form. I headed towards my father’s side of the beam and pushed him back and forth with my index a couple hundred times until he finally woke up. He stretched out his wings as he so often did and screeched out a yawn. He let his small body fall without grace and transformed into a human right before hitting the floorboards. A loud thud resounded in the hut. He stretched out his arms, yawned once again which exposed his sharp canines which were a centimetre longer than that of humans.

“It’s time to go,” I said repeatedly.

His eyes fluttered open. “It hasn’t been a day,” he muttered.

“No, it has been more than that. This is the second time I wake you up. Do you not remember,” I lied.

“Has it? Well, let’s get going then… In four hours.” He turned back into a bat and wrapped his wings around his body.

I rolled him around on the floor for a bit and took him in my hands. “We’re leaving now.” I stepped towards the exit; however, I tripped on the newly broken wood. My chin hit the floor and dizziness struck me. However, I managed to get up and push open the door. A slight tingle washed over my bare body and after taking in a few deep breaths in hopes of filling my lungs with cold air I took my first step. The snow wrapped around my feet and without the numbing sensation of the cold I felt the snow melt and a thin film of water wrap my toes. When I took my second step, the heavy wooden door slammed shut and shook the whole structure. It took me a few minutes before I could take the third step as the wooden planks had grown roots into my feet. It seemed some of my human tendencies weren’t all that good.

“Father, at least tell me in which direction I must travel.”

The bat didn’t even bother opening its eyes and simply pointed straight forwards.

Unable to carry my father while flying I walked for four hours till my father’s wings shook. I set him down and he transformed back into a man; however, he didn’t bother getting up. As his back melded into the muddy snow he spoke, “The door of a vampire’s abode must always face towards the patriarch’s residence, for although we may venture to the other side of the world, on the coldest night we will return into its fold and birth a new world.”

“What would be this new world?” I asked.

“One where our old laws are no longer valid, where life sparkles brightly and burns strongly, and where the definition of a vampire is morphed till it's unrecognizable. After all it is a new world.”

I did not speak. My father transformed into a bat and set off. I followed behind him, however, the usual nostalgia attack I suffered during flights did not appear. Instead, my mind raced off far into the future and its possibilities.