Vae Victis - Chapter 31 (Patreon)

Adult

“Ugh,” I grimaced as I bit into the almost charred meat stuck on a stick. Luckily, I had gotten rid of most of the burnt part before biting down, but the meat was still tough. I tore it apart with my teeth and then pulled it apart in pieces and swallowed them quickly. “This is disgusting,” I muttered after swallowing.

Shadow laughed from his seat across from me. “Fascinating is what it is,” he said, then shook his head.

I looked in his direction and bared my fangs at him. Then I burped, and black smoke burst out of my mouth. “Oh God,” I groaned as if I was going to be sick. The taste was, as it always was for a vampire, bland. What was really bothering me was the sensation of ants crawling around my stomach, and the black smoke that left the taste of something rotten in my mouth. I wished that I didn’t know what Saia was doing inside of me right now, but sadly, I did.

“Do you know how much you are going to need?” Shadow asked.

“She said that—” I had to pause as another burp interrupted me, sending one more plume of black smoke out of my mouth. “—this should be enough.”

It’s been a day since I first woke up after our fight with the sikiri. And I had recovered enough to be able to hunt some of the birds that called the jungle home. My body still felt sore, but I was overall healed, though I still felt aching in my bones. The bones were the hardest to regenerate for a vampire, and sadly Saia’s [Repair] engram wasn’t enough to actually help heal bones. From the few short discussions I had in my soul space with Saia, her engram worked by helping the body mechanically. If I had a cut, Saia’s nanites, as I understood it, in my blood would try to push the wound close, but they couldn’t really heal it, not yet anyway. The body itself had to close the wound. Saia didn’t understand my physiology fully, and our synchronization rate was still too low. Though it was climbing rapidly, and was now close to 20%.

I paused as I felt a strange sensation in my stomach, as if something was moving inside. Before I could even react, I felt it rising through my chest and then in my throat. As I doubled over and retched, a blob of silver goo spilled out. It fell to the floor and wriggled, twisting and bubbling before forming into the shape of a dragon.

I blinked and shook my head trying to dispel the terrible taste out of my mouth to no avail.

“Hey, Saia,” I said, then narrowed my eyes. “You are smaller.”

“Feedback: This Unit’s biomass conversion rate of the matter available in this place is still low. With time and understanding that shall improve.”

“Right,” I said. “But you can grow more, right?”

Saia tilted her head. “Feedback: Affirmative, with the increase in the synchronization rate between us and the increase in your ability to provide power, this Unit is able to operate a larger drone form. There was no need to leave the biomass within you.”

I blinked, then nodded. That made sense, with every carving, as I got stronger, my body was able to provide more energy to Saia.

She then proceeded to “eat” the rest of the bird in front of me.

“Fascinating,” Shadow whispered as he watched grey goo writhing and consuming mass.

“Yeah, that’s a word,” I added. I did agree with him though, I just couldn’t shake the knowledge that Saia was inside of me, or that she had tried to do that to me when I first found her.

I reached for my flask and took a sip of blood that I had drained from the sikiri’s corpse. I’ve started to get a feel for the power of the blood I tasted. I could almost tell what Investment it was. The sikiri was definitely the strongest, but tasted close to what the reaper had. I wasn’t quite sure how the food chain worked when one accounted for Investment, though I hadn’t really observed anything that suggested that it differed greatly from a similar example on Earth.

Once Saia was finished, her size hadn’t increased that much. I would need to go hunting again to get her more biomass, as unfortunately she wasn’t large enough to turn into a weapon for me just yet, she had to grow for that.

I finished downing the rest of the blood in the gourd and wiped my mouth. The power of it made my tongue tingle, but I was starting to get accustomed to how the blood here tasted. What I couldn’t shake was the strange feeling I’ve had ever since I woke up. At first I’d thought that it was the side effect of my injuries, or the sikiri’s blood. But I was mostly healed now, and I still felt something. It was like a faint buzz that spread through all of my body. Like something inside of me was expanding. Though what frightened me the most was that I felt different. I just didn’t know how. My entire body seemed more sensitive. Like every inch of my skin could feel every twitch of muscle underneath. The best way to describe it might be over stimulation, like touching everything you see to try and understand what makes you tick. At first I thought that it was related to my trait, as the Beast Skills bonus did increase all of my physical senses, and I had noticed the difference, but this was something more. All this, I knew, must’ve something to do with the thirst, because drinking blood made it worse for a little while. It wasn’t really bad, it just made me feel strange in a way that I wasn’t accustomed to.

“You are certain that this blood can’t get me infected with the blight?” I asked Shadow for what was probably the tenth time.

Shadow shook his head. “It cannot, people regularly consume monster meat, whatever the blight really is, it leaves the body on death. And even if it did not, we have never seen it infect anyone through touch or any similar manner. The blight only infects if you allow your emotions to take hold of you, if you accept its madness.”

I grimaced, I had no choice but to trust him on that.

“Something is wrong?” He asked.

For a moment, I debated not saying anything, but then I told him everything about how I hadn’t been feeling the same since I woke up.

“I’m not saying that I feel wrong, it’s just a weird feeling, I’m sure that it’s nothing,” I said.

“Statement: This Unite has not detected any anomalies in the Host Source Weave signature.”

Shadow tilted his head, then turned to his chest and rummaged through it, pulling out a familiar object, the Reader.

“We should’ve checked to see if there are any changes,” Shadow said, offering the crystal to me. “Perhaps what you are feeling is a change in your attributes? I am not sure if that would account for everything you described, nor do I think that it is likely for you to have gained an increase after just one Investment tier, but we should check and make certain, yes?”

I hesitated for a moment, and then reached out and took the crystal in my hand. He placed the piece of paper over the top and it started to glow, writing out my Mask’s abilities.

There were no unexpected changes. My attributes were the same as they had been before, the only changes were my Investment and my new skills. Though, curiously, the reader didn’t show my second set of skills.

“Well,” Shadow started. “I guess that we can rule out attribute issues. Though, I do think that you have gotten stronger, just probably not enough to transition into the next tier.”

The sensation was fading away as the thirst did its thing and feasted on the blood.

“Query: This unit requests that item for assimilation.”

I blinked at her. “Saia!”

Shadow did the same, then glanced back at me. “That means she wants to eat it, right?”

I nodded. “We talked about this Saia. I’ll find you something to consume later.”

“Wait,” Shadow said after a moment. “Saia, you are supposed to be able to use Source Weave, yes?”

“Feedback: Correct. The change in the nature of it has made most of my engrams inoperable.”

Shadow narrowed his eyes, then glanced at the Reader still in my hands. “And at its core, the Reader is a Weave. Why do you want it?”

“Feedback: I detected the use of the Source when you activated the item. I want to attempt to replicate the engram that powers it.”

“Saia, you can’t just ask to destroy other people’s property,” I told her.

Shadow raised a hand, his eyes still on Saia. “I am very much interested in seeing if she could do it. The crystals you found in that rift were beyond her, but this is something far simpler. And the Reader is not really valuable, I can always get another once I return home.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it. It wasn’t my decision to make. I offered him the crystal back, and he took it and offered it to Saia.

The dragon looked at it for a moment, and then surged forward, turning into liquid form and swallowing the rock entirely. I watched in fascination as the goo released black smoke, assimilating the item.

“Well?” I asked once she had reformed back into a dragon.

Saia remained stationary for a few seconds, her blue eyes flashing. And then she moved, turning her head in my direction.

“Feedback: I believe that I was successful. I have been able to replicate the engram of the item, I am not yet certain how to activate it.”

I took a deep breath and realized that I was exhausted. I still had to heal. “Well, you figure it out, I’m going to go and sleep.”

Shadow leaned down next to Saia and I left the two of them to it. I walked over to a bedroll and laid down, I was asleep in moments.

* * *

“The vampire life cycle has three stages,” Professor Harkins said, pointing at the images of vampires on the holographic projector. I kept my attention firmly on him and the subject matter. Most of what I knew came from the stories around the hacienda and the villages nearby. And all of that came from either humans or wolves. Neither was really the source. The professor on the other hand was a vampire, and I was almost foaming at the mouth to learn more.

“The first, and the most feral is the Fledgling cycle. It is our birth cycle, and every vampire’s birth reflects the way it was brought into that life, namely blood and emotion. At this stage we are unable to control ourselves for the first seven months up to a year of our life, depending on who our sire was. During this cycle, a Fledgling is the charge of their sire. It is the sire’s responsibility to make sure that the Fledgling is well fed and kept away from humans. Because, as all you obviously know, a vampire endangering humans has severe consequences.”

I shivered. I knew that the vampires had the death sentence. I had grown up in a place filled with violence, it was not a stranger to me.

“After the Fledgling has acclimated to their new life, and had accomplished rudimentary control over themselves, they are allowed to prove that they were no longer a threat, then they are allowed to rejoin society in a controlled environment. Only around ten percent of all those turned ever make it out of this stage. Most never grow beyond the feral state they are born into, and of those who do, many lose control later in life and are executed by the Red Corps. It takes, on average, a hundred years for a vampire to grow out of the Fledgling stage and become an Adult,” the professor explained. I shivered, I couldn’t even imagine living for that amount of time while having an axe hanging over your head.

“An Adult Vampire is a vampire that is in full control of all of their faculties. They are not driven to fits of emotion and they have a firm grasp on their thirst. They are stronger, faster, more capable in every way than a Fledgling. And lastly we have the Elder Vampires. The oldest and wisest of my kind. Who we will not cover in this class,” the professor smiled at the collective cry of dismay from my classmates. I smiled, knowing that while vampires do share a lot, they keep just as much hidden.

“Excuse me, professor,” one of my classmates raised his hand. I glanced and saw a young man with a neatly trimmed beard and a cross hanging from around his neck. “What about the fourth stage? The Ancient Vampires?”

The professor tilted his head and then chuckled, his eyes flashing with ruby color in the dim light of the classroom. “There is no fourth stage in the vampire life cycle, young man. Some stories, are just that, stories. You are far too old to still believe in fairy tales, especially if you want to pass my class.”

The rest of my classmates chuckled at that, and the man put his hand down, turning his head to the book on his table.

I turned my head back to Professor Harkins, and saw him keep his eyes on the student who asked the question for a few seconds more, his gaze filled with intent. Then his expression cleared up and he smiled, continuing the lesson.

I woke up, the dream still fresh in my mind. Or rather, the memory. It was one of my early days in America, when I had been so eager to learn about anything and everything. Back then, vampires fascinated me, and I hadn’t even had an idea that I would one day become one of them.

I took a deep breath, then sat up, remembering what the Professor Harkins taught us. He taught Introduction into Vampirism, a basic subject that had lasted for only one semester. I frowned, thinking that I had to be remembering it wrong. He had said that the Fledgling Vampires remained sheltered for months up to a year. That... That hadn’t been what had happened with me. I hadn’t spent anything near that time under guard.

“You are awake,” Shadow said from nearby, interrupting my thoughts.

“Yes,” I said, shaking my head from the sleepiness and standing up. “Did I miss anything?”

“Feedback: I have succeeded in activating the [Mask Reader] engram.”

“Really?” I asked as I took a seat on the rock next to Shadow.

“Feedback: Affirmative, I can already read yours.”

“You don’t need the paper?”

As a response, Saia’s eyes flashed, and then I yelped and jumped back, sliding off my seat and falling to the ground.

“Marianna?” Shadow called, and I calmed myself.

My hand moved in front of my eyes, trying to grasp something that wasn’t there.

“Statement: I have projected it directly through your optical nerve.”

I nodded as I looked at the words floating in my vision. “You can, uh, do that?”

“Feedback: Of course, I am attached to your nervous system.”

“Right,” I said. “Maybe give me a bit of a heads up next time.”

I shook my head and pulled myself back to my seat, then I focused on the text in front of me.

Marianna Rojas

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Mask of the Blood Invoker (Physical, Weave, Esoteric):

1st Investment; No Carving

Ornament of the Revelator (Weave, Esoteric)

No Investment; 3rd Carving

Ornament of the Student (Physical, Weave, Esoteric)

No Investment; 7th Carving

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Attributes:

Physical: C

Weave: F

Esoteric: C

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Skills:

Profile 1:

[Mist Step]

[Lesser Strength]

[Debilitating Wave]

(Beast Bonus Active)

Profile 2:

[Sonic Screech]

[Lesser Impale]

[Quick Claw]

(Beast Bonus Active)

[Swap Profile]

[One Truth Verified]

[A Lesson Remembered]

[Practical Learning]

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“Statement: I have taken the liberty of adding the missing information, since I am already aware of which skills you have slotted in.”

“Thanks,” I whispered. Sometimes, I forgot just how scary the entire concept of Saia was. I shook my head and looked over at Shadow. “Did she read yours?”

Shadow chuckled, then glanced at Saia.

“Feedback: I was unable to accomplish that task.”

I frowned. “Why?”

“I expected that,” Shadow answered. “I have protections in place against such things. Even if I didn’t, the Reader works based on the Investment of its user. It cannot read someone who is much more powerful than the one that uses it. Saia probably shares your power, which means that she can’t read mine.”

I nodded, that made some sense at least.

“You can see it in your eyes?” Shadow said, leaning forward to look at me closer.

I blinked. “Uh, yeah,” I answered. “Saia is projecting the text in my vision, it looks like it is floating around a hands length away.”

“Fascinating,” Shadow said, then, he blinked. “Oh, I never noticed the way your vampire eyes were shaped, or that green in them.”

I frowned. “What?” My eyes were brown.

“The way that your pupil is cracked?” Shadow added.

I froze. “That’s not possible,” I whispered. “Do you have a mirror? I need to see.”

Shadow’s ear twitched, and he raised a hand, then grimaced as I felt a faint imprint on the world, on the Way, around him. A moment later mist shaped like a person appeared in front of me, then quickly turned into me.

An illusion, a mirror copy of myself stared at me, and I saw my state. I wore Shadow’s clothes, covering most of me, but my neck and hands were free. My nails were dark, caked blood stuff under them that I had long since forgotten about. My skin was dark, perhaps a shade darker from being in the sun again. My hair was wild, unkempt and spreading around my head like a mane. But I had little attention for those details, instead my gaze found my eyes.

My eyes were transfixed on my own reflection in the mirror image. They were still brown, mostly. But there was a change, a big, significant change that left me breathless with wonder and curiosity, and fear. The border of my pupil was cracked, like shattered glass, and from the black nothingness in the center of my pupil, emerald green was leaking through. At first it was just a tiny trickle, barely visible to the naked eye. It weaved through the cracks and into my iris, just a tiny bit, sending a small web of lines through my eyes. It was so faint that I could barely see it. But it was there, unmistakably.

“Marianna?” Shadow asked.

I turned my eyes to look at him. It took me a moment to find the words. “That should be impossible.”

My eyes now marked me as an Adult Vampire, and that should be impossible. I wasn’t even a decade old, it took Fledglings at least a hundred years to turn Adult, it was impossible.

Shadow tilted his head inquisitively, and I explained. I told him everything about how the Vampire stages worked, and what the change in my eyes signified.

Once I was done, I asked him a question.

“Could my Mask, the Investment, somehow had accelerated it?”

Shadow shook his head immediately. “No,” he answered. “The Great Spell does not interfere with the natural flow of life. Investment enhances what is already there, it does not work such changes. Not at your tier of Investment at least.”

I narrowed my eyes at the last sentence, there was more there to unpack, but I trusted his opinion. I frowned, and thought about it more, remembering my dream, and the thought that I had when I woke up.

“It took me less time to leave the feral state than it was supposed to,” I said, mostly to myself. Then more memories came back to me. The day when I was hanged, the fight with the wolf and the vampire, an Adult Vampire, one that I had matched in power. I... never had the chance to properly think about that. Everything that I knew told me that that was supposed to be impossible. Yet, I had done it. The blood one drank and their sire was supposed to play a role in the development of the vampire, which left only one explanation for it. My sire, Akatsuki Jin. The Cartel’s Master hadn’t turned me himself, he had asked my sire to do it. I had never really wondered why. The stories about vampires being in thrall to their sire, unable to disobey were just that, stories. So in practice, it didn’t really matter who turned a vampire. The differences were supposed to be minute. And yet... Here I was, with eyes of an Adult Vampire.

Now, the strange sensations I had since I woke up, since I fought the sikiri and drank its blood, made a lot more sense to me. I... wasn’t feeling as deeply as before. And the thirst didn’t howl at me whenever I smelled blood. Experimentally, I picked up one of the gourds that I had filled with blood from the bird I hunted for Saia and opened it up.

I took a sniff and felt not a stir from the thirst. Part of it could be that I was sated, but, it had always at least rumbled whenever it could sense blood.

I turned to Shadow and told him my suspicion. It wasn’t like he would have answers, but felt the need to say it to someone I trusted. To work through it all myself.

“So you think that your... sire? Is the one responsible?”

“I’m not sure,” I answered. “I don’t know much about him. Only that he is older than the Master of the Cartel. He’s a very private individual.”

“Well, there is nothing that you can do about it other than accept. The world is as it is, and we have a lot more pressing things to worry about. We are still days away from the coast.”

I took a deep breath and then sighed. He was right, I pushed all those thoughts away.

Then something flashed inside my mind.

Ornament of the Revelator; No Investment; 4th Carving

I blinked, then told Shadow about what happened.

“Well, I guess that we know now what gives you Investment for that Ornament. Revealing things that the other party has no knowledge about.”

“That seems about right,” I said, at least it felt right to me.

“Of course, there is still a lot of nuance there, not all knowledge is weighed equally,” Shadow added.

I would figure it out eventually, I had no doubt about it.

The day was getting late, so we packed up our camp and prepared to set out. We still had days of trekking through the dangerous jungle in front of us. And I fully intended on living long enough to return to Earth. The world had ended, but I still wanted to find answers.