Chapter Eight: Basement Vampire.

  Andrew stopped dead at the edge in Kain’s voice.

  “What’s wrong?” he demanded, turning back.

  “My… stats,” Kain said slowly, testing the word. “They suggest I am only twice as strong as a human. That is… absurd. There were secondary values beside them, values that aligned far more closely with my actual capabilities. They are gone. As are my classes. All but one.”

  “Wait,” Andrew said sharply. “All your classes?”

  “I had four,” Kain confirmed. “They disappeared one after the other.”

  Andrew’s stomach dropped. “That’s not possible. Classes don’t just vanish. They change you; fundamentally. You should feel that happening. Do you feel anything? And what were they?”

  Kain folded his hands together, fingers steepled in thought. “Nothing beyond this pervasive weakness. It reminds me… unpleasantly of childhood. As for the classes: Ilrigger. War-Mage. Binder. Dungeon-Lord.”

  “No fucking way,” Andrew breathed. “Four classes? Advanced and rare ones, too. And Dungeon-Lord; what the hell is that? It has to be part of the Lord series, and those are vanishingly rare.”

  “I find your fascination with these supposed sources of power curious,” Kain replied flatly. “I am far more concerned that my attributes are scarcely above those of a pure-blood toddler.”

  “…They’re what?” Andrew stared at him. “Twice a human is toddler-level for you? Wait back up. Toddler? I thought you—”

  His voice trailed off, the implications finally catching up.

  “You’re thinking of common vampires,” Kain said. “Pure-bloods are an entirely different case. We grow until we reach maturity, and then our aging ceases. Roughly a century give or take a decade to fully mature; physically, mentally, and emotionally. And yes, it would be considered deeply shameful if an infant pure-blood could not kill a human.”

  He spoke without bravado, as if stating a biological constant.

  “You have no concept of the amount of raw magic required to bend natural law so completely that an artificial lifecycle can be imposed. The process creates a fundamentally different creature. Vile-bloods are inefficient. The Gift gives them only what they require to function however, it does not make them what they could be. They are too developed to adapt properly. Their organs sit within them dead, vestigial. Pure-bloods, by contrast, are physiologically near-identical to humans, save for a handful of obvious distinctions. Our every organ serves a purpose.”

  Andrew exhaled slowly. “You know you’re… oddly racist toward vampires, right?”

  “I am not racist against vampires,” Kain replied flatly. “I simply acknowledge the shortcomings of the lesser. Do you not possess similar distinctions among your own kind? Something akin to the Argentum Order of Valatia?”

  Andrew frowned. “You’re gonna need to give me more context than that.”

  “Ah. Right.” Kain inclined his head. “The Argentum Order are monster-slayers. They seek out superior children; the strongest, fastest, most intelligent, most dominant, most strategically inclined. They are taken young. Trained for decades. Saturated with resources to maximize the potential of their Engram. They are bred.”

  Andrew stopped walking.

  “After centuries of this practice,” Kain continued, unperturbed, “the humans of the Order share little with baseline humanity. They are larger. Harder. More aggressive. Singular in devotion. Smarter, too. They think faster.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” Andrew snapped. “What kind of hellscape is your world? That’s straight-up Nazi Germany shit. No absolutely not. The last guy who tried that waged war on the entire planet and committed mass atrocities in the name of purity. Humanity came together to kill him and everyone who agreed with him.”

  Kain’s expression cooled. His voice dropped, sharp as glass against marble.

  “My home is a very dark place. You do what you must to survive. I am not the worst thing lurking in Valatia; far from it. Compared to some of what stalks that world, I am almost quaint.”

  He paused, just long enough for the implication to settle.

  “When such things exist,” he said quietly, “you are forced to make choices. Ones you would never justify without that threat looming over you.”

  Andrew swallowed. “Speaking of dark things… I need to ask. Do you feed on humans, Kain?”

  “Yes.” The answer came immediately. “I will begin starving by tomorrow at the latest even if I enter dormancy.”

  “And… that means?”

  “I will require blood,” Kain said evenly. “If I do not feed, my vampiric gifts will begin to erode. Prolonged starvation or excessive use of my abilities such as healing, phasing, or exertion will accelerate the process. I will enter the next stage: the Red Mist. My focus will degrade. Remaining near me will no longer be entirely safe. Regeneration will nearly cease.”

  Andrew didn’t interrupt.

  “After that,” Kain continued, “comes Blood Rage. My higher faculties will be suppressed. My body will abandon magic entirely and adapt for physical predation. At that point, I will hunt indiscriminately until I have consumed sufficient blood to revert.”

  “…Wow,” Andrew said quietly. “I’m not sure I would’ve told someone that if I were you.”

  “I will not withhold necessary information,” Kain replied. “You intend to help me. Teach me. Shelter me. I am no vile-blood; I understand honor and obligation. You have acted in good faith. So you’ll have mine.”

  “…So how long does all this take?”

  “If I were well fed,” Kain said, “I could endure up to two months without another drop. Under stress? A day or two. Some actions are… costly.”

  Andrew hesitated. “Do you… kill the people you feed on?”

  “Not without good reason. In truth, I rarely drink from living humans. In my homeland, blood is refined through alchemy and distilled into consumables of varying quality.”

  Andrew unconsciously quickened his pace.

  “You need not trouble yourself with my feeding habits,” Kain added. “I can procure sustenance with minimal harm. If your resistance is as rare as you claim, acquiring a few voluntary bites should not prove difficult.”

  “Uh… listen. I’d really rather you didn’t,” Andrew said after a beat. “Just let me work something out. I know things are different where you’re from, but… man, that shit’s wrong. Even if they don’t notice, even if they never remember; you can’t just take someone’s agency like that.”

  He glanced sideways at Kain as they walked.

  “I want to believe you’re a good guy in a mon… vampire’s body. So do me a favor. Give me a chance to solve this without you stripping people of their will.”

  Kain did not answer immediately.

  They walked in silence for some time, the forest thinning around them, the sound of their steps swallowed by dry needles and loose earth. When he finally spoke, his voice was measured.

  “I can agree to that,” Kain said. “For now. But I cannot wait indefinitely, Andrew. I will not risk what I might do to your hamlet in a blood-rage.”

  “Yeah,” Andrew said quietly. “That’s fine. I just want it to be a last resort. Not something you do because it’s convenient.”

  That, at least, earned no rebuttal.

  They continued on in silence. Andrew led them along the forest’s edge for nearly an hour, skirting the treeline until the trees thinned to scrub and fence posts began to appear. Eventually, they reached a tall wooden fence bordering the rear of a quiet residential street, its shadow bleeding back into the woods.

  Andrew stopped.

  “Alright,” he said. “Here’s the plan. I go around front, get my parents’ attention, get screamed at. Probably grounded for life. You jump the fence. There’s a hatch in the yard that leads underground old cellar access tied to the house. Go down there and stay quiet. I’ll join you as soon as I’m… freed.”

  Several parts of that plan gave Kain pause.

  Andrew, however, looked resigned grim in the way only someone already bracing for punishment could be. And far be it for Kain to interfere in matters between parent and child. Gods knew what the Lord of Mercury would have done to anyone who interrupted discipline.

  Andrew slipped away.

  Barely five minutes passed before Kain heard his cue; his enhanced senses picking up the quiet portion of the conversation just before the part the entire street would hear.

  “Oh, Andrew, sweetie, hey…wait, what the fuck—”

  “WHAT THE FUCK, ANDREW? DID YOU RUN AWAY DURING THE FIELD TRIP?”

  “They’re going to call the police, you little idiot! Do you have any idea how much shit you’re in?”

  “Ah ah… I don’t want to hear it!”

  “As if an orc attacked your group. The only thing that attacked you was a hangover by the looks of it, and what kind of reprobates were you drinking with.”

  They leapt to conclusions athletic enthusiasm making jumps in logic that would have Olympians embarrassed

  While the argument escalated, Kain moved.

  His body blurred, phase-shifting across the distance. He cleared the fence without a sound and slipped into the yard, landing in the darkness beside the cellar hatch. By the time it creaked shut behind him, he was already below silent, still, unseen.

  In the cellar’s cold dark, Kain raised a hand. Two fingers touched the space above his brow as he extended his senses upward.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  A memory surfaced unbidden; standing before a furious court, taking punishment meant for his sister, bearing consequence so she would not have to.

  He inclined his head slightly, as if Andrew could somehow hear him through stone and soil.

  “Thank you for the sacrifice, friend Andrew,” he murmured. “You are a better man than most.”

  Then Kain closed his eyes.

  He crossed his hands over his chest and went utterly still, finally afforded the time and safety to do what he had been yearning to attempt ever since his magic failed him in the sky since it tore free of his grasp and collapsed inward.

  His consciousness slipped from his body, trickling away from flesh and bone, and then it fell.

  Deep down into his spectre-scape.

  Between the core that housed his psi and the center of his being stretched a single, fragile path. It twisted erratically, thinning in places until it fractured altogether, creating gaps he would need to leap or risk falling into the depthless void of his own fragmentation. A thin fog clung to the ground, the last remnant of what had once been a mist-shrouded plane.

  As Kain walked, the holes behind him slowly filled. His presence reinforced the pathway, his magic shoring up the failing connection simply by traversing it; by acknowledging it still existed.

  I am back at the beginning, he realized.

  Nearly a century of careful development, reduced to nothing in moments.

  The smog thickened as he moved deeper. His clawed feet vanished beneath it, yet the massive, glowing violet eye of his psi core never seemed to draw closer. But Kain knew better than to trust appearances where psionics were concerned.

  He released his sight allowing the sense to slip away like sand between his fingers.

  The world went black.

  Phantom sensation surged through him, the path no longer something he saw but something he felt. It flexed beneath his awareness, the breaks and fractures revealing themselves as tight, scar-like resistance. He wove his intent through them carefully, navigating by instinct rather than vision.

  At last, the road ended.

  His eyes opened within the soul-scape, and he stood before the manifestation of his psi core. It pulsed weakly, constrained. A tightness spread through his inner world; his entire energy system stretched thin, vulnerable.

  The cost of forcing his aura inward to anchor a connection to an affinity.

  He might have considered himself fortunate that his spirit itself remained intact. Drawing such dense energy through unprepared pathways should have crippled his mana system outright.

  But there was nothing fortunate about this.

  He was still a cripple merely of a different kind.

  The invisible tether linking spirit to spectre, spectre and spectre to flesh snapped taut.

  Kain was wrenched backward.

  He was pulled from the core, dragged along the fragile path, flung back into the blood-meadow.

  His eyes flew open.

  A loud, incessant buzzing assaulted his senses.

  Kain grimaced, irritation flaring as he searched for the source. His gaze settled on a small silver box nearby, vibrating violently as it screamed in a shrill, chittering tongue that sounded as if it hailed from the infernal plane itself.

  He stared at it.

  “…What fresh hell is this?”

  He had prodded it.

  Poked it. Slapped it, and threatened it with eternal soul violation and the forced consumption of its kin.

  The hateful little object remained unmoved.

  It did not acknowledge him. Not once.

  So Kain attempted the same in return, pointedly ignoring it, unwilling to risk damaging something precious.

  He told himself that was the reason.

  An hour passed. He reminded himself that he was a guest here, bound by trust.

  Five hours passed. He began bargaining with himself. One wretched soul could be replaced, surely.

  Another couple of hours crawled by.

  Kain stood over the shrieking little monster, arms drawn back, shoulders tight, fists clenched high. Power coiled through him, restrained only by the need to gloat and perform as a noble should.

  “You have brought this upon yourself, little one,” he snarled. “I gave you time. I offered mercy. You have chosen the path of ruin.”

  Wind rushed around his descending fists.

  And they froze mid-arc.

  A door creaked open behind him.

  “What the fuck are you doing to the alarm?”

  Kain turned, nearly hissing. “It has been screaming for nine hours. I reasoned. I threatened. It left me no choice. I will replace your servant.”

  “No!” Andrew half-yelled, then caught himself, dropping to a whisper as memory of his parents snapped into place. His arm shot out as if he could physically bridge the distance between the stairs and Kain.

  Too late.

  SMASH.

  Pale hands obliterated the plastic demon. Its technological innards burst outward, painting the walls in shards and wires and glittering microplastics.

  “Die,” Kain hissed.

  Andrew’s arm fell.

  He sighed, descending the rest of the stairs with the air of someone remembering mid-stride that he actually did not care about an old alarm clock.

  “C’mon, man. You could’ve just pressed the button.”

  “Why did it not ask me to press the button instead of screaming?” Kain demanded. “I spent the better part of an hour attempting to extract information from its evil voice.”

  Andrew stopped.

  Stupefaction washed over him. He’d seen the expression on others before… Now he understood it intimately.

  “It… can’t,” he said, more question than statement. “It’s just a machine. It makes noise at a set time to alert you until you press the button. It’s not alive. It’s not… trying to piss you off.”

  “But the countdown,” Kain insisted. “It kept ticking upward. It was clearly mocking me.”

  Andrew slapped a hand against the porcelain mask. The sound rang sharp and inorganic.

  “That’s a time display, Kain. It shows the current time.” His voice went flat. “Alright. We’re starting your lessons early before you murder any more of my innocent ‘servants.’ The school called my parents. I got suspended.”

  A beat.

  “Which ironically got me ungrounded.”

  Kain’s gaze drifted to the scattered remains of the alarm clock.

  You did not deserve what I did to you, little one.

  He tilted his head at Andrew. “I do not understand the punishment. By your account, you acted beyond the call of duty; diverted a hostile entity and safeguarded your guardian simultaneously.”

  “Yeah,” Andrew said dryly. “That’s the problem. I went beyond the call. Students are meant to go to the gathering zone. They’re not meant to sneak off back home.”

  “They punish necessary heroism?” Kain asked, voice cooling. “Would they rather see their charges butchered?”

  Andrew scoffed, the sound hollow. “Sometimes I ask myself that exact question.”

  The masked boy before him was difficult to read; no visible expression, muted posture but his anger bled through regardless. His shoulders remained tight, his breathing just a shade heavier than before.

  “But hey,” Andrew said, exhaling, “let’s focus on our more immediate problems. Like you not smashing streetlights for flashing at you.”

  He’d spent most of the night sleepless, turning the problem of Kain over and over in his head. By morning he’d reached an uncomfortable conclusion: it wasn’t feasible to teach him everything. Not properly. Not in any reasonable timeframe.

  So instead, Andrew pivoted.

  He focused on concepts.

  How machines worked. That they weren’t alive. That anything that didn’t look organic wasn’t alive, wasn’t inhabited by trapped spirits or bound souls, but was instead the result of layered systems and deliberate design. He explained roads they’re grid systems and building philosophy how people used them, what kinds of things Kain would see out in the world and what behaviors would get him noticed in the worst possible ways.

  He stressed security.

  Cameras. How they captured images constantly. How those images could be viewed from far away; or long after the moment had passed. How most places were, in some way, always watching.

  Kain hated that part.

  It triggered a long, impassioned tangent about how invasive and unnatural such a practice was, which spiraled neatly into how, in Valatia, anyone attempting to implement such a system on a wide scale would be “put to the rope for a drop and sudden stop.”

  Andrew thought about the Founding Fathers for a long moment.

  Then decided not to explain taxes.

  The basic lecture he’d planned stretched on far longer than intended. Questions branched into anecdotes. Anecdotes turned into jokes; some of them, disturbingly enough, from the vampire himself. Andrew found that Kain had an instinct for pacing; he seemed to know exactly when to shut up and when to veer just far enough off-topic to drag Andrew’s attention back when it started to drift.

  Eventually, Andrew cleared his throat.

  “So… Kain. Mind if I ask you something personal?”

  “I usually prefer women,” Kain replied smoothly, “but I am flattered, Andrew. Truly. You are a very pretty young man.”

  Andrew’s neck flushed hot beneath the mask. “Oh fuck you. God, I regret my mom teaching me manners. No. I meant your stats. And traits. If you don’t mind.”

  The vampire smirked. “I don’t. Is this information typically guarded?”

  “Eh. Depends on the person,” Andrew said. “But yeah, usually you don’t share that stuff unless you trust someone. Or know them well.”

  “You are harboring me at great personal risk,” Kain replied easily. “I believe you have more than earned my trust.”

  He recited his stats without ceremony.

  Andrew listened, nodding right up until Kain mentioned his level.

  “…Zero,” Andrew repeated flatly. “You’re level zero. I can’t believe a zero has stats like that. Wait what about the smaller numbers you said were there before?” He’d asked again hurriedly.

  “They were in the fifties and sixties,” Kain said, utterly without shame, clearly enjoying the momentary awe.

  Andrew just stared at him. It was obvious Kain didn’t understand why that mattered.

  “Right,” Andrew said slowly. “Okay. I guess I never explained why you should care. When we kill things; or use our abilities the system logs it as experience. You get enough of that, your level goes up. Levels give you attribute points, new powers, traits, sometimes other stuff.”

  He paused, making sure Kain was following.

  “Most people get one point per level until level five. After that, it’s five points a level. A standard level zero has about a hundred raw points spread across their ten attributes.”

  He looked back up at the vampire.

  “Hold. Do you not mean ninety across nine?”

  “Uh, no,” Andrew said. “Strength, Agility, Dexterity, Vitality, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Spirit, Perception, and Charisma.”

  “I do not possess Spirit,” Kain replied mildly. “Nor Charisma. I do, however, have Glamour.”

  Andrew blinked. “An advanced stat and a missing stat… huh. I wonder if that actually balances out.”

  He waved the thought away. “Whatever. My point is, you’ve got a hundred and eighty-four points as a level zero. Every ten points a stat becomes more efficient. Which means you’re operating at roughly… what, level thirty? Ish?”

  He paused.

  “That’s a lot.”

  Then his head tilted, hand rising to the side of his porcelain mask as realization struck.

  “Wait.”

  He grabbed the collar of the robe Kain had appropriated and tugged it open, exposing the pale lattice of muscle along his ribs and chest.

  “You can’t look like this with stats like that.”

  “Come now,” Kain said dryly. “I have heard better attempts at seduction.”

  “I’m serious,” Andrew snapped. “Stats aren’t just borrowed power. They express physically. Even a starving awakened with high Strength still looks strong; gaunt, sure, but dense. The musculature doesn’t just vanish. It shouldn’t—”

  “I believe the answer is rather obvious,” Kain interrupted, waving the concern away. “I am not from here. This system has never shaped me, never reinforced me. Everything it displays is merely my baseline.”

  He flexed his hand, pinching the pale skin between his fingers and pulling it taut. Andrew winced. Kain didn’t even flinch.

  “My kind do not derive strength from flesh. The aura that animates us is the source of our speed and force. The body is merely a vessel.”

  He released the skin.

  “’Tis but dead flesh.”

  Andrew exhaled. “Disturbing visual aids aside… yeah. That actually tracks. You’re catching on faster than I expected.”

  He straightened. “Alright. Let’s talk about the other horse in the room.”

  “That would be unsanitary,” Kain said promptly. “I do not recommend inviting a stallion indoors.”

  “What—” Andrew sighed. “It’s an expression. Never mind. Your class.”

  He paced once, collecting his thoughts.

  “Most people awaken with beginner classes. Super basic. They evolve at level five based on how you use them or certain influences. Sometimes people start with advanced classes, though. Rare, but it happens. Like me.”

  He glanced at Kain. “And like you. I don’t know what a Dungeon Lord does, exactly but.” He paused taking deep breath clearly preparing to launch into an epic monologue. And Kain chose to wait a moment.

  “The Lord series is kind of infamous. Nobody knows how you get one, but they’re always powerful, always stacked with traits, and always trouble.”

  Kain raised a hand, polite but firm. “I know what a Dungeon Lord is.”

  Andrew stopped.

  “And unless Valatians have been secretly residing on this world,” Kain continued, “I find it unlikely you have ever encountered one. I do not know why it manifests as a class here; but it is not truly one.”

  He folded his hands behind his back. “It is a position. Granted by the Valatian gods. Along with the Dark Mantle, which permits dominion over dungeons and their magic.”

  He frowned slightly. “The details are… limited. Dungeon nobility are secretive. Paranoid. They share almost nothing; not even with their own kind. I cannot tell you how dungeons are made. I am not certain they tell anyone.”

  Andrew stared at him. “So you’re a Dungeon Lord… who doesn’t know how being a Dungeon Lord works.”

  “You were camping in that forest longer than I held the mantle,” Kain replied flatly.

  “…Okay, fair.”

  Andrew rubbed the back of his neck. “You mentioned some of this earlier, but I still don’t get it. What does that god—” he made air quotes, “get out of this? He drops you here, no instructions, no support, and no obvious objective.”

  “That is precisely what unsettles me,” Kain said quietly. “Even I cannot see how my presence here advances his aims. Eidruhn serves no one; least of all humanity. Yet somehow, I am meant to erode your foothold.”

  Andrew frowned. “You ever consider he’s just fucking with you?”

  Kain looked at him.

  “Seriously,” Andrew continued. “That’s like… classic Earth god behavior. They meddle, push mortals into situations they don’t fully explain, then watch them struggle into fulfilling the prophecy anyway. Half the time the gods don’t even have a real plan they just get so far under someone’s skin that the person does the work for them.”

  Kain tapped his claws against the wooden doorframe, each soft rap denting the paint.

  Then something new appeared in his vision.

  A notification.

  [Hunger has progressed. Stage: Blood-Haze.]