Blinded by Silver, Risen from Ash

The Gaelic lord was not altogether harsh, despite her outburst painfully hammering his sensitive hearing, and causing him to cringe through a mild show of fangs. He knew there was a tumultuous wave of emotion crashing against her now, as the waters of the Ghost Sea would pummel the dark rocks upon which Castle Volkihar stood on a stormy day, as the origin of her vampiric nature was cast into the light for her to see. She was angry, quite possibly afraid. She had every right to be. Rowan was aware there was no sense in stoking the fire, yet he would not be silent as the death that became him.

“Do you truly suppose that, in your heart, you are certain the people you love will abandon you because of your nature? Are you doubtless the worth they see in you will deplete when the truth is fed to them?” 

“I have questions for you. You don’t have to answer them if you don’t want to, they’re kind of personal. But... How long have you lived as a vampire? Do you have anybody mortal close to you that knows, understands, and accepts you? Most importantly, do you have a good life even in this existence?”

The retelling of Sera’s family life struck Rowan with a pang of guilt. Like her mother, he too gave the frequent excuse that he had already eaten before the evening meal, to his daughter. All these secrets… he was doing to her what Sera’s mother had done. Yet, how could he draw that curtain aside? How could he even begin to go about explaining it?

It was a train of thought he saved for another time and place.

“It sounds to me as though the pieces of this puzzle are falling into place,” Rowan surmised. “Think about it, now. No place with which to burn a fire and keep warm in the living quarters of the home. Questionable dining habits. Changes in your mother’s face. Were it not for the other fragments of evidence, I would possibly exclude that last detail… but, considering what you have said, I do not think it is not something you can overlook.”

He extended her a temperate, advisory look.

“I’ll tell it plain and true as the thoughts running through my mind, lass. I believe your mother was a vampire. If you wish to unlock the answers to the questions you keep, you must first bring yourself to accept this.”

Sera stared blankly at the stars above. Typically, the random twinkling was soothing. Right now, it reflects her slowly growing internal rage. In one move, she threw her fist across the air above her face, throwing dirt across the sky, and jumped to her feet with a soft hiss at the inky black above.

“And if I accept this, what’s the next step? Knowing can’t change anything. What do I do with my fucking life from here on? I can’t tell anybody, I’ll get killed. So I get to watch my mortal mate and my mortal little sister die while I walk around, looking like this, for quite a damn long time. I get to live alone, lonely, and in hiding instead of having a family, friends, or anybody that knows anything about me, can help me, or I can even fucking talk to. Not that it’s that different from the day I left my family, but it was because I at least had my girlfriend to run to and my sister who loved me regardless. I can’t tell them now because I don’t really need them leaving me and sooner than they will when they die. So great, this is just a shit icing on the cake of my life. I thought it was going okay - balancing my confused existence with my social life. But what the fuck do I do now!?”

“I cannot speak for all vampires,” Rowan began to explain, “But… many of us are bound to the same bundle of habits. We prefer to sleep by day, and venture out to feed when the night is darkest. We dwell, naturally, in places steeped in the comfort of shadows. Sources of fire are given a wide and wary berth. Some undead do not eat a single bit of mortal food from the day they are changed to the day they meet their permanent end. I, for one, cannot.”

His hand rose in gesture to his face.

“Oftentimes, we appear far more “human” after we have fed. As the days go by, and our hunger increases, we slip back into our pallid state again. It is… easiest to discern us for what we are, when we are deprived of blood for a long period of time. We appear to be no more than starving corpses, ravening for our next opportunity to gorge ourselves on the living. It is… unsettling to see, to say the least.”

It was his hope that neither of Sera’s parents had fallen to that level of hunger-induced insanity, especially when she was a child… but it was a possibility he couldn’t omit. 

Thank the gods Kami didn’t get it.

“My parents’ bedroom didn’t have a fireplace, not did our family common room. For our own sake, my sister and I had one in our private rooms.” Sera took a shaky breath in and exhaled hard. “I don’t want to be giving myself memories, but I never understood the changes I would see in my mother’s face. I always assumed it was age, stress, fighting with my father, and fighting with me that would give her the odd wrinkles and lines that only tended to be there when she was in a particularly bad mood. I just assumed that was a ‘her’ thing. We ate family meals together, but my mother always cooked and I only ever saw her nibble on food. She called it a ‘proper’ thing when I was little. It was proper for a mother to cook all of the food and not eat herself so as to make sure her family had an ample supply of food during dinner. I just assumed she ate while she was in the kitchen by herself or after our meal.”

Rowan leaned away a bit as the woman’s face turned a roseate shade, allowing her more space.

“You say you did not know a great deal, in regard to your parents,” he pointed out. “Do you sincerely not think it possible for either of them to carry the affliction? Perhaps they did well to hide it from you, on the grounds of not wanting you to learn the truth.”

If only he had something to mask his physical nature – he knew there would come a day when his daughter would piece together what he was. Hopefully, that day would not arrive too soon.

“It is merely something to consider,” he said. “Your sister would not have necessarily had to inherit the same collection of traits, as you.”

Sera let go a huge sigh and hung her head in her hands, gently rubbing her temples to ease her slowly growing headache. Closing her eyes, she searched through her past for hidden signs of deception. 

Her heart grew heavier with each one she found.

“My parents always did their best to keep me away from the world. Books, other people and creatures, even my family history. Before I left, I didn’t know any of it. I still don’t know anything about my family and I haven’t found an opportunity to do much research into the world. Survive or don’t, right? Heh. Doesn’t leave much room for studying. What characteristics would be tell-tale and standout for a vampire?” She had an idea of which parent could have damned her, but she wanted more information before making any assumptions.

Navalli swung her leg off the branch, looking over the tree tops while her senses happily stretched out as far as they could go. The space she had to see and feel… nothing beat the feeling. It was so open, and she loved it.

“I’d rather have you ask questions than walk around clueless. Besides, should you try to ask another vampire these questions, they might very well try to eat you.”

Sera really wanted to ask why Navalli wasn’t like other vampires like she said, but had a weird gut feeling that she shouldn’t push the topic right now.

Anyways, she was getting some answers, and her selfish side was too ecstatic to divert. It had always been a fault of hers.

 “I’ve had this nagging thought over the years as I’ve watched my mate grow up and age. She knows nothing of my... extracurricular activities. It hurts me inside to think that I might, maybe, have the power to keep her with me and keep her from dying. However, I can’t hurt her and I can’t subject her to something that could possibly be a terrible life. I don’t know entirely know why I’m telling you this, maybe just to justify why I asked the question in the first place. When I really think about it, I don’t even know if I’m going to live forever. I just hopefully wish that sometimes, things can stay really good. Gods know that isn’t what will happen though. I learned that a long time ago. I made a life for myself, and I won’t ask anybody to shape their life to a plan that I might like. It’s good to know that it could be a possibility though, just in case. Just to be careful.”

Sera sighed and lounged in her perch. A soft chuckle bubbled from her chest as she remembered the other comment her vampire companion had made.

The vampire lord took his chin in hand, thinking good and hard as he thumbed his ginger stubble. “I do not know what could have happened,” he admitted, eyes distant as he focused them toward the ground. “But there must have been another’s hand at play, mustn’t there? It makes no sense to me, otherwise.”

An idea sprung to life in his thoughts, blooming quickly.

Those were the only words that could explain how Sera felt when she heard the vampire lord say “genetic”. 

Her cheeks flushed dark red and her eyebrows seemed to glue themselves together as she stumbled for words.

“Genetic? As in I got this from my parents? I never saw any suggestion of that from either of them. Would it just be from one? It must be, or else I would have been born a full vampire, right? I had a very odd childhood, my parents weren’t exactly... kind or present. I never knew much about them, but vampire? That’s... that’s entirely new to me. Nothing has ever showed in my sister, she’s never had any thoughts or tendencies of this nature.”

Slowly, pieces of Sera’s traumatic past came together to make the notion less insane. Could it be possible? It was an answer she could get if her parents happened to still be alive and she could find them. The seed of thought, suspicion, and doubt had now been placed in her mind. 

Weird how safe, comfortable, and at peace she felt as high up as she was.

“Hunting,” the vampire confirmed as she pulled herself up to a comfortable place to sit while she waited for Sera to catch up. She wanted to be close to the mer in case something happened. “I’ve been running on animals for the last week, it was time for mortal blood.”

Even as she spoke, it didn’t slip her mind how frightening yet exhilarating her current altitude was.

If nothing else, she’d get a few free drinks and an hour or so of companionship out of the younger woman once she was done fighting her way through fur-clad, kilt wearing terrorists. However, before her thoughts to wander too much farther into her downtime in The Reach an Altmer dropped from the tree she was walking under.

She stopped in her tracks, one of her hands immediately going to the hilt of her sword and gripping it tightly. Even if the womer wasn’t attacking, randomly dropping out of trees wasn’t something Uthgerd was going to just take without putting her guard up. She was going to be prepared for the worst.

“Very well. May I inquire as to your intentions in this neck of the woods? It’s not often such a battle-ready creature walks this path without malice.”

She didn’t know what she was hoping to hear, but something in her needed to be convinced that she wasn’t going to cause problems with her family that resided not far away. However, if she did mean harm, Sera also needed to figure out a way to find out if she could get away with killing her without anybody noticing...

Enough, Sera.

“I am woefully sorry to tell you this, lass, but your story does not even make the slightest amount of sense to me,” Rowan answered, his tone bearing quite a hefty edge of frustration. “Usually, when a person is born to any manner of vampirism, it is done so by the will and power of a second vampire… a sire. And yet, you were all alone, with nothing but the sheer catalyst of hunger to spur the change. There was no influence of an older one to set that change in motion.” 

He set his jaw firmly in place, grinding his teeth as he tried to piece together the mystery that was Serafine’s condition. He couldn’t walk away from this; if it was true that there had been no other hand at play in the workings of her metamorphosis, it could mean there was a chance that however the magic she’d told him about came into existence through hunger, it could find a way to manifest in other mortals, as well.

Couldn’t it?

He growled quietly. “I do not understand how that could be. The children of Molag Bal – whether willful and obedient, or rebellious and full of spite – are all given their immortality, their thirst for the flowing lifeblood of the living, through the actions of another immortal. In all my one-hundred-and-thirty-seven years of life, you are the first exception to the rule that I have ever seen.”

A flash of sudden realization passed over his eyes.

Right when she thought she was starting to understand...

If the number is not good or apropriate for our charecter I’ll roll again.

1. My charecter will hug yours.

2.My charecter will invite yours to dance.

3. My charecter will text yours in the morning.

4. My charecter will text yours in the evening.

5. My charecter will kiss your cheek.

6. My charecter will kiss a scratch/cut/bump on your body.

7. My charecter will be caught wearing something of yours.

8. My charecter will cook something for you.

9. My character will be caught getting dressed.

10. My character will be caught getting undressed.

11. My character will watch a movie with yours.

12. My character will learn with yours.

13. My character will fight with yours.

14. My character will train with your’s.

15. My character will tell you something he/she thinks about yours.

16. My character will be caught singing.

16. My cahracter will inviting yours to lunch.

17. My cahracter will invite yours to diner.

18. My character will wake yours up in the morning.

19. My character will be caught thinking outloud about yours.

She was nowhere near as strong as Navalli, nor did she have any idea how she hadn’t before thought to hunt with the height advantage.