Vampire Core: Reborn as the Hot Evil Vampire Lord, But I’m Socially Awkward

- [The Village] -

“Nightwatch! Together!” yells the man, a group of men collecting in the village square. “Reports?”

“Nothing,” notes one man, looking warily over his shoulder for a moment. “Perhaps this is unwise?” he asks, the others muttering. “If we stay inside our homes, the vampire can’t reach us.”

More murmurs as people look toward the many very inviting doors around them.

The roads and such have been crudely secured with stacked logs set up as walls and barriers throughout the village. Large bonfires burn all around them, keeping the darkness well at bay.

“Are you afraid?” asks a voice, and then men look at the young man, who most of them are at least twice as old as. The keen blue eyes of the priestess’ brother look at them. “Then go to your houses and wait to see if it really can enter your doors or not,” he says, glancing over each and every one of them. “I’ll stay out here alone and make sure it doesn’t get to you,” he explains, his hand resting on the hilt of an iron sword. “But who is to say that I alone am strong enough?” He looks at their scared faces as they clutch pitchforks and old ancestral weapons like his own sword, from their father’s fathers. “Maybe after it kills me, it will set your houses on fire and force you and your families out into the night that you have conceded to it.”

The men mutter amongst themselves, the one next to him sighing and shaking his head. “You have your mother’s sharp tongue, boy,” he remarks, clapping a hand down on his shoulder. “But she was also always right too; rest her soul.”

A few of the men laugh amongst themselves, reminiscing about the woman. She had a bit of a reputation in her time for being beyond serpentine in her social dealings, but she was nonetheless a favorite of all of the villagers because of her charm. She was a hard, mean woman who still always did the kind thing at the end of the day until, at one of those ends, she was just gone.

The reminiscing man looks around at the others. “This is our home, day or night. We shan’t be giving any of it up to some beast,” he explains, the others nodding as fresh resolution comes to them. “Our ancestors held this dirt, and so will we.”

“Good,” says the lead watchmen, now that the matter has been settled. “Then let’s…”

He falls silent mid-sentence, stopping with his mouth still partially agape, but his eyes drifting from side to side as his base animal senses detect something nearby and send a signal to his more active mind. It’s not something he can put into words; it’s just a sensation, a feeling — a dread.

It’s cut right through his thoughts.

Maybe it’s the way the air has changed its movements — maybe a deeply subtle shift in smell or perhaps a noise that is out of place with the collage of the night. No… that’s it.

It’s the noise.

It’s the lack of it.

The crickets, the night birds — they've fallen silent rather abruptly, and all that remains is an emptiness in the darkness beyond the village bonfires. A powerful magic is in the air, and the old, white hairs on the back of his neck stand on end as his body signals off an old, inherited alarm that it had ready and prepared ever since his birth but never struck until this night tonight.

The old church bell in the crooked village steeple sways back and forth in the wind, not far enough to ring by itself, but far enough that there is an unsettlingly distracting movement in the darkness above their heads as the other men follow his gaze that wanders across the shadows.

“It’s here…” he whispers, everyone reaching for their weapons as the coming of the evil creature is preceeded by its magical presence well felt in the shaking hearts of the living.

- [Vampire Lord Inkume] -

“Huh? What?” mutters Inkume to himself as he reads through some of his new abilities in his idle time on the way here. Glassy windows pop up left and right as he walks the last of the way to the village in his human form. “Why would I ever need this?” he mutters, confused.

[The Storm in the Night]

Toggle Ability

• While Active: Wherever you fly, the wind favors your direction, carrying with it an aura of death that ought to make the weak and the fallow retreat from your path.

He shakes his head, not getting it. Where’s all the super cool stuff? Like, sure, this all feels very ‘vampirey’, but doesn’t he get maybe a giant death beam or an awesome magical evil sword, or… something? Shadow magic? Necromancy? Anything?

He swipes over to another ability, confused. How is ‘Vampire Lord’ a rare and powerful class if it only has such weird skills?

- [The Village] -

The night watchmen man the portions of the wall, scanning the darkness as others throw more and more fuel on the bonfires that rise up greedily, hungrily toward the sky, the flames rising higher than many houses’ roofs and chimneys as entire old trees’ worth of deadwood are flung onto the burning heaps by desperate workers.

…And then the fire starts to suffocate.

The flames of the braziers, of their torches, of the hearths inside the many houses of the village — all of them at once just start to dwindle and fade away. The dry wood stops burning, and the embers that do exist already start to choke, despite men desperately blowing fresh breath onto them to sustain them.

One by one, the fires around the village go out — impossibly extinguished, as if the darkness of the night itself had smothered them out with its suffocating miasma.

The nightwatch panics, running around, trying to do anything to stop the darkness from coming.

But nothing they do works to keep even a single candle alight with more than a weak, dying glimmer at best.

- [Vampire Lord Inkume] -

[The Dead Domain]

Toggle Ability

• While Active: All flames and fires within a kilometer radius equivalent to {LEVEL/0.33} begin to extinguish and die out. The closer to you, the faster the process works.

“What is even the use case for this?!” asks Inkume to the universe, gesturing to the glass window with both of his hands as he reads it in disbelief. Here he thought he was the Vampire Lord, but apparently he’s also a volunteer firefighter. Who designed these abilities? These are all worthless!

He groans in frustration, rubbing his face as he keeps walking, selecting another one.

[Let Them Know]

Toggle Ability

• While Active: Every creature of the night within your territory begins to radiate its passive magical ambiance out through its eyes, giving them a haunting presence in the darkness that will serve to remind the living that they are always under your watch.

“…Really?” he asks nobody at all, rolling his eyes as he swipes the window away. “Wow. Great. Glow in the dark owls. Cool.”

This might be a waste of his time. Maybe just being able to turn into some animals and reconstructing his castle by drinking blood really is as good as it gets? That’s still not so bad, right? It’s more than he could do in his old life. But if this is the best he has to work with, then it’s no wonder the last Vampire Lord got his butt kicked. There’s no way he can afford to provoke humanity into a fight. He has to make this work diplomatically.

The Vampire Lord lifts his eyes. He’s here. The village is just ahead.

Now. All he needs is…

“Master! Master!” says an excited voice, coming right on time. Speak of the devil.

Inkume looks at the ghost, Snatch, who has made it right when he needed her. “Everything is ready!” she says, holding her hands together so tightly that they begin to melt into one clump, like the dripping wax of a candle collecting in a lump at its base.

“Perfect!” says Inkume, looking around at her empty hands. “Thank you. Where’s…?”

She shakes her head, closing her eyes, smugly satisfied. “In your treasury, waiting to be retrieved by you,” explains the ghost, her breathing becoming quicker again. She grabs the side of her own torso and stretches it out. It drapes down in a goo, looking like the fabric of his own cloak. “It was very hard, fitting all of that in there, but I did it for you, Master,” she explains, floating closer and closer toward him, fingers emerging from the blob that is her arms, wiggling and crawling like a spider’s legs as she inches his way.

Of course, his inventory.

He forgot about that in all of his panic. She must have put the pelts and the items and all of that into the treasury, which makes sense, right? That’s why the castle has one. The ghost is a little odd, but very diligent.

What a relief. He’s never had something like an assistant before, a secretary, or anything of the like. He supposes ‘minion’ would be the appropriate term in this context. So this is all new to him. “I’m glad I have you here to help me figure this out, Snatch,” says the Vampire Lord and the panting ghost is practically drooling as she, quite literally, melts while floating toward him into a puddle of dripping ooze that never manages to reach him before falling to the forest floor. “Let me know how I can thank you for this when we’re back at the castle,” he says, turning toward the village to prepare himself.

The ghost doesn’t respond, having devolved into a literal puddle down on the leaf-covered ground. She just bubbles, and with each pop comes a new wheezy, excited exhalation in a short, stumpy laugh as she thinks about whatever secret idea she thinks about.

Inkume slaps his face lightly, exhaling. This is it. He has to sell this spiel right. His awkwardness has lost him a lot of opportunities already, but this time, he came prepared. There’s no way this can possibly go wrong this time.

The Vampire Lord looks down at the book below his cloak and then takes his first steps toward the village.

He’s not sure why, but Snatch, having some random imagination, screams loudly to herself in the background.

- [The Village] -

One Minute Earlier

“Look!” shouts a man, the night watch muttering amongst themselves as all around the village orbs begin to shine in the darkness outside in the trees, below them, inside of them. Yellow eyes become visible within the shadows, scurrying in all directions.

“Monsters!” shouts an old hunter, everyone readying their weapons, their terrified eyes not able to scan the night fast enough to keep up with every pair of eyes around them. They’re everywhere. The shining eyes of magical beasts shoot through the darkness of the forest floor and its canopy, the air around the village swirling as if it were surrounded by a maddened swarm of fireflies.

— A single shrill scream fills the night from the forest.

It doesn’t sound like a human or an animal. Nobody can tell what it’s from, but they huddle together, watching the darkness stir.

And there, from the weave of the black night, comes forth a silhouette of what the eyes say is a man… but the soul knows it only as a thing clad in the skin of one. The dank, dead forest behind him stands in perfect reflection to the stranger’s shape — upright, although it ought not to be in the perfect death that he defies.

It’s dark now, with the many fires of the village having gone dead, leaving only the moonlight of a half-moon to shine back toward them all and reveal his unnaturally perfect features. It’s like looking at a fake human, at an idea of a man come to animation. He’s slender and elegant, dressed in the clothes of a foreign merchant from a far, far away place, and his hair — as black as the night around him — shimmers the same as his dew-laden cloak. He almost seems to glide from the darkness rather than walk through it.

The nightwatch holds their breath, their rattling weapons remaining anything but steady in their palms.

They scared the creature off once before last night, which gives them the confidence to stay here now on their defenses. But that doesn’t extinguish the voices in the back of their minds that tell them to run, because this time is different than last night. This time, it came to them, which means it is prepared, unlike when they ambushed it in the forest prior.

“DEMON!” shouts the leader of the nightwatch, holding his arm out to the side and stepping forward himself toward the edge of the wall. A row of archers readies their bows, aiming the deer-hunting arrows toward the silhouette in the darkness, but nobody can get a clear sight on the vampire as he almost seems to blend in with the witching hour ink all around him. “You are not welcome here! Be gone!” he yells, swiping out a dead torch. The last embers fly off like fairy-lights, only to drown in the ebony tide. The archers aim their bows in different directions, as eyes swirl around the chaoticly aglow midnight and others can’t place where the heart of the enemy is meant to be in his body.

And then comes a simple voice from the darkness. “Ah,” it says, as if realizing something. “My apologies…” it pronounces, followed by a laugh as it lifts a hand.

— The night watchmen shout in surprise as in an instant every flame and every torch blast back into life, the suffocated fire returning immediately with the quaking roar of a dragon’s breath with such force that several of the flames begin to lick houses, workers desperately trying to control the sudden, overly fueled fires within their walls.

“This is more comfortable for you, or?” it asks from below the wall in a mocking tone, holding its hands out at its sides. Somehow, the light of the reestablished fires makes the vampire even harder to see clearly than before in total darkness. His features are almost blurred in contrast with the licking flames of the night watchman’s relit torch he’s holding out over the wall. “My mistake.”

“…What devilry is this?” asks a voice from the side, a shaking guard watching the flickering night in terror.

“I have come to settle the matter of last night,” says the vampire, the men readying themselves. “I have come to bargain with you,” it explains. “— My good people.”

“’Bargain’?” mutters one of them. “What could it possibly want from us?” he whispers to another man.

“Ah, I am glad you asked!” remarks the vampire, answering the whispered question they had thought it couldn’t hear from so far away. The men look at each other with their faces falling pale.

It steps forward a little more, and the men fidget, weapons and armor rattling.

“Come no closer!” warns the lead watchman. “This is your last warning!” he shouts, barely able to keep himself from stuttering.

And the vampire laughs, its hand covering its face as it looks their way from down below. “They say that in matters of the heart, one must be willing to push… conventional boundaries,” it replies. “You may find this strange, and please do not be alarmed, but I have come…” It pauses, watching them. “— for blood.”

The priestess’ brother yanks a bow out of a man’s hands, shoving him to the side and nocking the arrow back, aiming it straight to the beast’s throat. Before anyone can stop him, he lets the arrow loose, and it flies with a sharp whistle, careening through the night. “Stay away from my sister!” he shouts, the arrow flying true and striking the monster directly where its dead heart ought to be. The arrow cracks, plunging in a way through the black fabric, but then getting stuck within the cloak as if blocked by a terrible magic. “You won’t take her!”

The beast’s ruby eyes shoot toward the young bowman. “No, no. You misunderstand,” explains the vampire, looking down at his cloak and the arrow stuck in it. “I have not come to take, but to trade,” it notes. It doesn’t even acknowledge the arrow or the fact that the young boy just tried to kill it, as if it knew that they couldn’t ever harm it with something so trivial. It’s toying with them. It’s like a cat before a mouse’s burrow. holding the cloak out wide to the side, the men looking at each other nervously for a moment. “I hope Azalea is recovering well?” it asks, mockingly. The boy grits his teeth. “I was quite worried about her.”

“Bastard…” hisses her brother, the useless bow creaking beneath his fingers. “I’ll kill you for touching her!”

The vampire shakes his head. “You see,” says the vampire. “I find myself in a difficult situation here. I have need of what you have, which is some of your blood. Grim, yes, I understand,” it notes, almost jokingly in some sick, twisted sense of humor. “But in return, I have already done you a great favor. This forest is dangerous, but I can keep it controlled. I can keep you safe from the monsters and beasts within it.”

“A devil’s pact,” spits the lead night watchmen. “We will never consign with such a thing.” He points at the vampire. “This is our land, our forest. We do not need you to keep us safe from anything in it, save from your own wretchedness,” he bellows out.

The creature sighs. “Ah, I see,” says the vampire, before then laughing to itself with an unnerving confidence, its crimson eyes flashing their way. “Then allow me to change your mind,” it states and reaches into the unnaturally deep, black fabric of its cloak.

Its hand vanishes, as if plunging into a hole none of them could see.

- [Vampire Lord Inkume] -

They fucking shot him! What the Fuck-Shit-FUCK?!

Inkume is doing everything he can to keep the situation from escalating, his eyes nervously glancing down at the arrow stuck in his cloak, going through the fabric, and right into the bright red apple on the cover of Enfangled.

God bless that book.

That arrow was this close to skewering him. Can he be killed with arrows? Hell if he knows, but this sure isn’t going to be the way he wants to find out. He has to deescalate this mess now. They’re terrified. He gets it. Spooky vampire. Midnight. They’re simple fantasy world villagers. It all makes sense. But the onus is on him to put an end to this nonsense before it escalates any further.

Where the hell is Azalea? Didn’t she tell the villagers what really happened?

The Vampire Lord grabs a wolf’s pelt within his inventory and yanks it out with a single swoop.

What he does find odd though, in a strange second of a time-slowed moment within his peripheral vision, is how the rest of the wolf seems to come out with it.

— And it’s a lot of wolf.

Inkume’s hand slips free as the world shakes. A paw the size of an oak crushes the wet night soil, pressing down into a crater as a mass the size of a hill lurches and wrenches itself out impossibly from his cloak as it decompresses like a vacuum-packed doll now cut free from its packaging. Bones the size of wagons crack and teeth the shape of cave crystals snarl and snap. Broken, manged claws rip the world. Then comes the next paw, and the next until all four are out and Inkume finds himself standing there, in confused shock, as wolves of a more normal size — that is, still terrifyingly large — leap out of his open cloak one after the other. Their eyes glow alight in the night, shimmering with a haunting anger as they bolt and then instinctively start circling the village in a wild pace as they run laps around the defenses. The giant wolf lifts its head, howling in a manner that he could only best describe as rageful; the sky itself seems to shake. But then Inkume realizes its just the distortion of air from the contrasting heat of the beast’s core breath.

Not sure if he’s delirious or not at this point, Inkume takes a step back and then looks over his shoulder back toward the forest.

What is this?

Snatch is floating there. Feeling him looking, she looks around herself, fidgeting nervously before giving him an unconfident thumbs-up.

The village’s church bell rings aloud, flaming arrows firing into the night as people scream, going into an even louder state of alarm than they were before. The ring of the bell carries across the land.

This is so bad. What the hell are these wolves? What did he do?! “Snatch!” yells Inkume, grabbing the ghost. “What did I do?!” he asks.

She pants, looking around as if the answer to a trick question were hidden nearby, before looking at him. “Master is so smart!” exclaims the ghost. “The wolves hate masters, all masters,” she pants sweatily. “But they respect cunning… yes… yes… cunning.” She starts doing her breathless laugh, looking at his hand holding her collar and then starts wrapping her arms around it. “So cunning. Such a clever master. Tricking the wolves into doing his work.”

He has to get in there and do something! He can’t just let these animals run wild here. This is the exact opposite of what he wanted.

Snatch looks past Inkume and over his shoulder. Her face drops. “Up.”

“…What?” he asks, rubbing his face with both hands in exasperation.

“— SNATCH!” yells the ghost, a panic over her face as she grabs the Vampire Lord and instantly demanifests.

Effect: [Snatched]

You have been snatched.

A second later, she reappears up in the air together with him just above where they were a moment ago, down below. Inkume looks down, suspended by white tendrils of ectoplasm, just as the jaws of a massive wolf snap shut where he was just standing. The impact of the jaws crashing shut sends out a shockwave in all directions. Drool and froth fly with it. Inkume looks in surprise back at the ghost that had, well, literally snatched him from the jaws of defeat and then back down at the monster of a giant wolf.

He can’t take this anymore. What is with this world? Why does this keep happening to him?

“You…” growls a deep, resounding voice from below, the giant wolf shaking itself off as arrows bounce off of its fur that is so thick and matted that they simply get stuck in it together with all the rest of the splinters collected by history. “I’ll eat you alive! Come down here and fight me, coward!” It leaps off of its hindquarters, jumping far higher than any wall of the village, but not high enough to reach them with its gnashing teeth.

Inkume gulps and then leans back. “Snatch. What is that?” asks the Vampire Lord.

“The matriarch. Nobody knows her name in our language anymore,” explains the ghost. “She’s ancient. All the wolves of the forest fear and follow her — all the beasts.”

“So… she works for me?” he asks nervously, despite the evidence to the contrary. “Right?”

“Oh, no, Master. She hates vampires. The old master was very cruel to her,” replies Snatch. “So I did not understand your plan for me to bring her here. But Master knows best, yes!” she says, nodding. “He said to bring the wolves, so Snatch brought Master the wolves!” says the feverish ghost, starting to pant again.

Flaming arrows fly through the night, shining like fresh comets. People are screaming. He has to get them to stop. But even his presence isn’t scaring the wolves away now in their terror frenzy.

“Come down here!” screams the matriarch from down below, before bashing its head and side against the wall of the village in rage. The wall topples over, logs flying in all directions as the nightwatch screams and runs.

Inkume closes his eyes for a moment, trying to remember a chapter of the book. He has to end this before somebody dies.

What would Matthew-Cray-Anthony do?

He gets an idea.

“Snatch. Listen very carefully,” starts the Vampire Lord, looking at the sweaty ghost.

‘Enfangled: Chapter 19’

Outside, the world is on fire as the vampire CLAN and werewolf PACK fight each other. But inside of this old forgotten storage unit, full of boxes and dead dreams, are just the two of them.

"You're not my prisoner; you're my guest," explains the man, looking at her with a cold, steely look.

The black-haired woman glares. "This is PACK territory," says Janina-Jerimiah-Biteson. "Fight me!" she screams, throwing out a fist.

He barely has to turn to catch it, but he doesn't counter. Instead, he just holds her bundle of fingers and stares deeply into her eyes. "He hurt you a lot, didn't he?" he asks her, and the question cuts her more than any sword or knife could ever dare to hope. "- That man from your past."

She looks away, her hair whipping like thunder. "You don't know what you're talking about."

He steps forward toward her, a single hand on the side of her shoulder, neck, and face at the same time. "Look..." She closes her eyes. "LOOK!" he commands, turning her toward the barred window outside. People are fighting, dying. Memories of her childhood back at the circus replay before her eyes. A clown's nose honks in the backdrop as she sees images of herself transformed into her wolf form, being forced to pretend to be a particularly cleverly trained dog for a crowd by her cruel captor.

"You've become just like him."

"No... GET OUT OF MY HEAD!" she yells, shoving him away. Her fist cracks into his gut. But he doesn't budge and just stands there, staring into her eyes as a drop of blood runs out from the side of his mouth.

The man reaches over and pulls the lid off of a box in the storage unit.

It's full of circus equipment, party hats, and clown shoes. "...Are you going to let him take what's left of you too, after all of these years?" he asks. Her eyes and heart quiver with terror and hatred, but also love that she can't deny. "Or are you finally going to let him die?"

No.

She can't feel this way about him.

It is forbidden.

She crosses her arms, turning her back to him, and then stares up at the half-moon, hovering over the world. As a girl, she always wondered where the other half of it went every time it was missing. It seems silly now, but...

“I can see it in your eyes, you know,” he says, knowing her deepest, most intimate thoughts. “— It’s gone from the world now, but it’s still shining in there, in you.”

“…What?” she asks.

He solemnly lifts his gaze, his hand resting on her shoulder but also her elbow. He has very big hands. He looks toward the sky, toward the half of an obscured orb of light above the raging war outside. “— The missing half of the moon,” explains the vampire, looking back at her.

- [The Village] -

Wolves are circling the village; the men are firing arrows, but they're too fast. A young wolf, having separated from the pack and snuck in through a wall, snarls at the priestess’ brother, lashing out as blood leaks down its side. The boy holds the old iron sword steady, looking at the animal.

Cvet’s own boot shifts. The wolf lunges, thinking he’s going to run.

Instead he drops down, plunging the sword up as hard and high as he can with both hands, holding it firm as the beast twice the size and weight of him cuts itself. It falls down behind him, rolling into some empty crates that fall down over it.

While it's dazed, he quickly looks at the church. It’s still safe. Then he turns his gaze to the sky, where the enemy is.

The vampire flies there, using an infernal devil’s magic to stay aloft as it speaks to the creature in its service down below it — the ancient wolf of legend. Nobody here has ever seen it before and lived, but there are stories of a great beast that had lived in the deep forest. It was said to be so large and powerful that even God himself would not go near the forest for fear of it.

What is this monster to summon such a forgotten powerful animal into its service? Heaven help them all make it to sunrise.

— But if God isn’t coming, then he’ll do it himself.

Cvet grips his sword, running to the ramparts.

- [Vampire Lord Inkume] -

Inkume drifts down, floating lower toward the giant wolf that really does seem rather angry. He supposes he doesn’t blame it. Kidnapping can be quite aggravating. He hovers there in the shape of a man, staring into a giant predator’s eyes.

“Vampire,” it starts. “Your kind is better off dead. All that you bring to this world is suffering,” growls the giant. “Why have you brought me and my kin here as prisoners?” it demands, froth and dribble running down the sides of its scarred maw.

And the Vampire Lord extends out his hands to his side. “You’re not prisoners,” he says. “You’re my guests,” replies the man calmly.

“Guests?!” It lashes out at him. Snatch floats them out of the way just in time. The two of them hover next to the wolf's other eye as the trees below them break over and fall down from the weight of the giant's paws, crushing them to the dirt. “This is my forest.”

Inkume shakes his head. “No,” he replies plainly. The wolf bites. They warp out of the way, to the other side of her face. “Listen to me.” He holds a hand over his heart.

— The wolf’s eyes bulge with rage. It lunges again. They move out of the way.

“FIGHT ME!” it snarls.

But Inkume walks, his hands behind his back, as if standing on glass platforms as the ghost below him stretches out her substance from spot to spot, making little walkways of white ectoplasm that one can’t really see from below. It makes him look like he’s flying as a man and not as a bat. He needs the dignified appearance for this one. His face is held down as if in deep contemplation, indifferent to the madness happening around them.

Keeping his calm nonetheless, he reaches the designated end of his dramatic pacing route and turns his head to look at the eye of the giant monster that he’s standing right next to. Its breath washes over him as he stands to the front side of its snout and reaches out, placing a hand on it.

“He hurt you a lot, didn’t he?” asks Inkume. “— That man from your past.”

Its expression changes, shaking in a fractured second. “I know who you used to be, how you used to be,” says the vampire, walking on down the length of the long snout, his hand running over the fur there as he steps straight toward its massive, giant eye that stares at him as he comes closer. “I have not brought you here to fight you,” explains the Vampire Lord, shaking his head. His other hand lifts up, resting over his heart. “I’ve brought you here to show you something. Look!” he commands, pointing back at the burning village. The wolf growls at him. “LOOK!” he reasserts, raising his voice but not yelling.

The leviathan wolf turns to look, its eyes watching the destruction behind it. “It’s just like what happened to you, isn’t it?” asks Inkume. “To your people?”

The giant wolf watches, slowly shaking its head. “No.”

“The man who hurt you?” he asks. “He’s not dead at all.” The beast’s eyes go wide, as the Vampire Lord rests a hand on its fur. “He’s still right here inside of you, where you let him in to stay.”

“N…no…” stutters the giant wolf, its haunted eyes staring from one scene of massacre to the next, horrified silhouettes dancing within its black pupils as the memories of its own humans — killed by the last Vampire Lord — replay in its mind. It takes a step back, shaking its head once, the metal in its teeth rattling. “Get out of my head!”

“You’ve become him,” says Inkume, crossing his arms. The wolf shakes itself out and then lunges, rabid rage in its eyes.

“Stop!” he commands, its open jaws already around him on both sides as he doesn’t stir a muscle, standing exactly where he is in the air. “— And think.” He lifts his eyes, staring down the throat of the beast. “Are you going to let him take what’s left of you now too, after all of these years? Or are you going to finally let him die?” The wolf freezes and then slowly closes its jaws again as it pulls away from Inkume.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about…” says the deep voice of the wolf. “You weren’t there!”

The two of them stare at each other. Its eyes are unsure, but his are calm and confident.

Inkume shakes his head, staring at the beast. “I can see it in your eyes, you know,” replies the Vampire Lord, staring into its eyes. “— It’s gone from the world now, but it’s still shining in there, in you.”

“…What?”

He solemnly lifts his gaze, the titanic, very confused wolf following his eyes toward the sky above them as his hand rests on the side of its slobbering snout. He looks toward the night, toward the half of an obscured orb of light above them. “— The missing half of the moon,” explains the vampire quietly, gazing back into her pained eyes.

The wolf matriarch pulls away and then shakes its head in distraught confusion, stepping back further and then finally lifting herself up toward the half-moon that hangs in the night, howling deeply and longly.

The howl resounds around the night, everything coming to a stop as the great siren calls across the world. The wolves stop, the fighting stops, everything stops and looks and listens to a confused, agonized sound.

With their tails tucking down between their legs, the younger wolves all run away back into the forest, jumping over broken walls and carriages with ease as they escape.

The wolf matriarch snarls at Inkume, a hundred-year-old skull falling out from between its front teeth as the giant creature lumbers back away toward the trees. “If you ever waste my time with another lecture, then I’ll bite your head off of your shoulders,” threatens the wolf.

Inkume laughs and then shrugs. “I suppose I will let you,” he explains, shaking his still attached head and then looking at the drooling, slobbering, mud, and gunk-matted monster made up out of the nightmares of screaming feral children. To say it has fleas isn’t even possible. It doesn’t just have them. It is them. Even if he’s undead, he can tell the smell of its old, mangy fur is going to linger in his nostrils for days. The Vampire Lord holds his hand over half of his face, looking at the large wolf. “I won’t ever try to constrain something so beautifully wild and free.”

Something snaps in its eyes, and the gargantuan wolf recoils and runs away, somehow vanishing into the trees of the forest despite its incredible size.

And apart from some screaming and crying from the village, the night goes silent.

Thank fuck.

He doesn’t know how he pulled that one off, but he did it. He bullshitted his way out of it and saved the village.

“My leg!” screams a man from down below. The vampire winces.

— Most of the village.

Something tugs on his cape. Inkume turns around and looks. “Am… am I…” pants the dribbling ghost, leaking like sludge again for some reason. She points at herself. “Am I beautiful… beautiful too? Master?” she asks, her eyes going wide.

He opens his mouth to reply.

But then, over the horizon, something crests. It is something very bright.

The sun.

He’s been outside too long! They have to get back to the castle!

A sharp scream fills the air as Snatch cries out in surprise, but not at the sun. Inkume’s body lurches. The Vampire Lord looks down at the blade of the old iron sword thrust through the back of his chest, jutting out past his ribs.

[Undead Immunity]

Passive Ability

• You cannot be killed by any metal other than silver.

A boy who had jumped off the crumbling walls hangs on the other end, holding onto the hilt with both hands, his boots dangling in the air. It’s the boy who came after him for Azalea yesterday, “DIE! Release my sister, monster!” he screams.

The sun rises.

The Vampire Lord lifts his cloak up over his face, coming up with the sudden idea to store himself in his own treasury.

[Vampire Lord (You) {01}] and [Ghost (Snatch){01} ] have been added to the castle’s treasury!

It works. A second later, he finds himself lying on the dusty floor of a familiar old castle.

— For some reason, there’s wolf hair and urine all over the walls.

There’s no place like home. “Thank you… Matthew-Cray-Anthony,” sighs Inkume, his head resting down on the oddly sour-smelling stones.

- [Azalea] -

One Minute Earlier

What in the world is going on out there?!

It sounds like hell. People are screaming, and there are all sorts of unusual sounds.

Azalea stands on her toes, trying to climb up onto the ledge of the church's back room’s high window. She doesn’t manage until she drags her night table over.

The elf priestess looks out through the old ornamental stained glass, trying to see anything. There! …Is that…?

It is! It’s him — the man who saved her in the forest — Inkume. She can see him suspended there in the air by some powerful magic with his arms crossed, his back turned to the village wall as he stares out into the forest. His cape and black hair are flowing behind him in the wind.

Oh no! Why did he come here again? It’s too dangerous!

Her brother is crazy, and nobody is listening to her about what really happened. They’re going to kill him if they get the chance. Is that what all this ruckus was? Oh God. What has she done?

Azalea hits the window with her fists, calling out to try and get his attention as the first rays of morning sunlight come to peek back into the glass at her. He has to get out of here before -

She can’t finish that thought before her eyes see a familiar silhouette running up a crooked, half-fallen wall and leaping through the air. Inkume lurches, her younger brother having plunged the sword straight through the stranger from behind. The priestess screams. The sun rises.

The black-cloaked man vanishes in an instant, pulling his cloak around himself and disappearing as if he had never been. Her brother falls to the ground by himself, rolling through the landing, the old iron sword falling down next to him.

That idiot brother of hers, what has he done?!

That kind of wound would be fatal for any man or monster. She has to go help the stranger; this is all her fault, and she can’t just let someone who saved her in trouble! The people of the village can say whatever they want, but she knows what she saw. As a priestess, it’s her duty to help the innocent. She swore an oath to God.

Azalea looks around the room for a minute, hastily packing what she can into a small bag. Then she grabs an old chair, hammers it against the window until it breaks, and then uses her bedsheets to cover the glass and climb out. She drops down to the wet grass below and runs toward the trees, scrambling over a broken fortification. She has to hurry to the old castle — that’s where he’ll be.

The priestess vanishes into the forest.

- [Vampire Lord Inkume] -

“Oh, yeah. I’m perfectly fine,” replies Inkume to the ghost’s desperate wailing, sitting upright. He grabs Snatch, who has latched onto him like a goopy parasite and is making a series of wheezing, frightened, terrified grunts, and removes her from himself. He tries to shove her away with one hand as he unbuttons his cloak, then his coat, then his tie — which also has buttons — and unbuttons his dress shirt before revealing his undershirt — it has no buttons as that would be uncomfortable.

The Vampire Lord pulls it to the side and looks down at himself. His eyes go wide as he rises up to his feet, looking at his gut. The sword wound is completely gone. It’s regrowing before his eyes; the last of the pale skin is sealing itself shut in real time.

[Didn’t Even Hurt]

Passive Ability

• Wounds inflicted with implements and methods that are of no relevance to your gestalt will heal themselves immediately, and at no additional blood cost to you.

But more than that…

Snatch’s terrified wheezing turns into a wheezing gasping for air again as she resumes trying to touch him.

— He’s jacked, capital ‘J’, as in Jack climbed up the beanstalk and got shredded from the workout.

“I’m never going to wear a shirt again,” mutters Inkume, looking down at his extremely defined and toned core. He pokes his chest with a finger. Rock hard.

“Yes… yes! Very good,” wheezes the ghost that he can’t push away anymore, because she’s just dripped over and around his forearm and has started feeling him up too.

“…Actually. Maybe it’s better if I do,” mutters Inkume, shaking his arm out to get her off, and then rebuttons his ten layers of clothing — all of which are perfectly clean and mended. Snatch’s sharkish teeth puddle together into a leaking frown.

[Regal Authority]

Passive Ability

• Your garb is always in perfect condition and fits perfectly. Stains will remove themselves, threads will mend like healing flesh, and wrinkles never form in anything you wear.

He sighs. Another useless ability.

“Master, forgive Snatch,” says the puddle. “But I don’t understand your plan. Why did I bring the wolf if you were just going to send her back into the forest?” The drifting eyes floating around the puddle look at him. “I thought you were going to make them eat the village,” she explains. “You said you wanted wolves.”

Inkume opens his eyes and looks at the slowly reconstituting ghost. “Well, that’s because…”

He stops, thinking for a second as he looks at the expectant creature. Obviously, there was a severe miscommunication here, and he’d consider getting angry at her, but he’s just too nice. Besides, maybe it’s his own fault for not speaking clearly. She did say she’d bring him wolves, not their pelts.

He needs some good bullshit. He'd be honest and tell her that he fucked this one up, but she's looking at him so brightly and in such awe that he can't stomach breaking that expression of hers apart.

“— Because I am the master of all the beasts of the night!” explains the Vampire Lord, a hand placed dramatically over the side of his face. “And that includes those wolves. But because of the past, the relationship of our factions is strained.” Inkume walks past the reformed ghost, who rises up and picks up his dropped cloak at its ends. She shakes it in the air, billowing it behind him as if it were still attached to the Vampire Lord as he wanders over to an old painting of some woman on the wall of the treasury. “I intend to fix that and have them willingly bow their heads to me — their sole lord and ruler,” explains The Vampire Lord, casting out a hand and turning around toward her.

The ghost ducks under his swinging arm, stretching herself in half so that one half can keep holding the cloak, while the other half looks impressed and nods. Ectoplasm drips around her.

“For this, I need the ancient wolf. This was a perfect test for her to prove her strength, for me to see if she was useful, but also for me to break her old defiance,” he explains, making it up right there on the spot. “Her poor temperament does not serve my grand design.”

Snatch claps excitedly with one hand, as the other one is still holding his cloak. “Master is so clever!” He holds a hand on his chin, nodding with a content expression. “He tested the wolf just like he tested Snatch!” Inkume nods again, pretending that he is confirming her assessment. He has no idea what she’s talking about. “So when the ritual begins, the wolves can protect the forest! When the humans came for the old master, the wolves let them through because he was… was…” she trails off, looking around the treasure room, but never finishes her sentence.

“Precisely,” remarks Inkume with grand, regal confidence, as if she were just catching on to his long-established plan that he had been preparing since day one. “Your old master was a fool.” Snatch spasms together immediately, dropping his cloak and looking around herself in terror as she squishes her body flat against the wall. But nothing happens in response to Inkume’s proclamation. Her breathing slows down as she calms herself. “He clearly did not see the value in his most useful assets,” finishes the Vampire Lord.

The room is quiet.

Inkume opens his eyes again, looking at the ghost. She clasps his cloak back together and then reforms into one coherent, wheezing, out of breath shape that leers at him from an ever closing distance.

He’s just realized something. He’s stuck in here with her now. His coffin isn’t reachable because he’d have to go through the sunlit corridors.

“Did I do good?” she asks.

“Of course,” praises the Vampire Lord. “You are one of those most useful people.”

She grabs her face, her cheeks giving way and folding down under her fingers as she drifts closer. “Can I…” she gasps. “Can I…” she breathes harder, looking around for a moment as she tries to finish her request. “Can I touch you again?” she asks, pointing at his chest.

He places his hands together, pointing his fingers at her. “Maybe we should get to know each other first?” replies the Vampire Lord dryly.

The ghost screams immediately, falling apart into a puddle of ooze that splashes to the floor and begins to crawl around in a dozen different directions with small tendrils. A mouth swirls around in it, the round, wobbling eyes drifting in and out of it as she lets out an agonized wail.

“I suppose just once more can’t hurt, though,” says Inkume, pulling open his shirt and looking at his new six-pack.

The puddle on the ground laughs nervously, bubbling as it wheezes.

“Oh. Wait,” he says, remembering an ability he saw before and activating it. A damp, ghostly white finger pokes his stomach.

[Summon Sarcophagus]

Active Ability

• Activate this ability to call your sarcophagus to your current location, allowing you to rest wherever you might need to.

The castle rumbles, stone walls collapsing and doors breaking open as something thunders through the labyrinth of hallways and chambers. Inkume barely has time to jump back out of the way as the door to the treasury bursts wide open off of its hinges. Wood and debris fly in in all directions, together with a cloud of dust that lingers in the sunlight streaming in through the opening.

His coffin has arrived.

The massive, stone sarcophagus that he sleeps in has found its way to him, crawling on a set of sharp, stone legs like a spider. Its lid opens up wide, and it lowers itself down facing him.

“How convenient…” says Inkume, perplexed by having one ability of some potentially situational usefulness at least. He climbs inside from the inside corner of the treasury room, and he closes the coffin’s lid firmly shut behind him. It seals with a resounding, heavy thud. And he can feel the sarcophagus get back up and start to march back down the many corridors toward his inner chamber.

The Vampire Lord closes his eyes.

It’s quiet.

Something touches him.

“Snatch,” starts Inkume dryly, not opening his eyes again. “Why are you inside my coffin too?”

“I don’t ever want to be away from you, Master,” explains the drooling ghost, sealed inside the coffin with him. Her three-fingered hands are twitching as they hover over him.

“We met two days ago,” replies the Vampire Lord curtly, lifting his palm as best as he can in the tight space and pressing it against her forehead, gently shoving her back. With nowhere to go, she squishes flat against the inside of the coffin’s lid. His hand smushes her boneless face down, and she sticks to it like a stain. The ghost’s large, googly eyes continue to stare at him, her sharp teeth and wide smile simply made even bigger than before.

This is his own fault. He went too hard into Matthew-Cray-Anthony mode. He’s mind-broken the attention-starved ghost, and now she’s become clingy and strangely sweaty.

The ghost’s wide, obsessive eyes stare. “My life has changed forever. I’ll never go back.”

“Back where?” he asks.

“Back anywhere you aren’t, Master. I’ll be with you forever,” she says, her eyes going wide. Inkume sighs, deciding to need to deal with this tomorrow. For now, he needs rest. “Forever…” whispers the ghost again into his ear. “— You’d give me a clean jar, right?” she asks.

He doesn’t know what she’s talking about anymore. “Uh, sure. Of course. Good night,” replies Inkume, shaking his head and feeling himself grow very tired. He closes his eyes and leans back, trying to fade away until the next night to come. The coffin stops moving, settling into its resting position back down below in the chamber.

And everything goes quiet again.

Except for the heavy breathing.

“…You’re going to just stick there and stare at me all day, aren’t you?” he asks. But he doesn’t get a chance to hear an answer from her because his senses start to fade into darkness. A window appears nearby, but he doesn't have a chance to read it before everything goes black.

The last thing he hears is heavy breathing in his ear.

[Beauty Rest]

Passive Ability

• You are a beautiful creature and need to maintain a rigid sleep schedule in order to achieve your standards. During the sun’s hours, you are not allowed to be awake. In this time, you will be forced to sleep and to restore your precious energy. Forced rest cannot be deactivated and will only be ignored in the case of hunger-induced ferality.

! [Warning] !

STARVATION

You have not fed on enough blood to sustain both yourself and your dungeon. You must feed in full tomorrow night, or risk losing yourself to an animal rage from which you might never recover.

Assets of your castle will begin demanifesting in order to conserve your power.