Chapter Text
“There is a vampire lord… Mathias. He used to be a friend of mine, prior to becoming a… creature of the night. After his beloved Elisabetha’s passing,” Leon pauses, taking a shallow breath to gather his thoughts. “He… changed. Isolated, distant. He tricked another vampire, Walter, into kidnapping my fiance. There’s more to the story, but in the end, my fiance’s soul transmuted into a whip, I killed Walter, and Mathias… fled. It is my mission to find Mathias and put an end to his reign.” His hands flit back to his side, searching for his beloved, only to return to their original position, arms resting on his thighs. It was unnerving to tell someone this. He hadn’t told anyone about his goals aside from Rinaldo, and there was little enjoyment about saying any of it again.
Arikado took a sip of his tea, the water having cooled off to room temperature long ago. He seemed deep in thought, and Leon didn’t feel like disturbing the creature. Leon felt antsy, and his hand would twitch every now and then, wishing to search his side again for his Sara, a reassurance he was not afforded. At length, the fiend spoke again, his measured voice hard to read.
“This… Mathias. What did he look like?” Leon bit his lip. How far was this ‘Japan’ away from home that the vampire didn’t know of Mathias. He was a well known military leader, and prior to Elisabetha’s death, well-liked too. Stranger still was that a vampire didn’t know of him. Word traveled slow, but not this slow, it’d been a good 3 years now since Mathias chose to become a wretch.
“To be honest… somewhat like you. Wavy black hair… same gray eyes… he was pale even before he turned. I haven’t seen him in a few years, but that's how I remember him. We were close, prior. His betrayal stings more than I can ever express,” Leon leaned back a little bit, studying Arikado, seeing if any of this rang a bell. He seemed… shocked? Perplexed, and certainly uncomfortable with the comparison. His face was hard to read, and Leon had a feeling he was only getting part of the story. It seemed at least something had registered with the vampire.
“I see. The name you said was Mathias, yes?” Arikado asked. Leon nodded his confirmation. “It seems I have some research to do. This may take me a while, but rest assured we will figure this out, and get you back home.” With that, Arikado stood up and with a flourish grabbed a long coat with baggy sleeves, putting it on. “Stay here, please. I need to speak with some people. Make yourself at home.”
With that, Arikado moved and opened the door, shutting it behind him with little fanfare. Leon was alone in a vampire’s home. Among the list of things he had expected when he had gone to sleep the night before, none of this was on it. A few creatures of the night if he was unlucky, but certainly not waking up in a vampire’s abode.
Unsure what to do with himself, Leon got up and began to examine his surroundings with intrigue. Not for the first time, he noted that the vampire had left in broad daylight, and that windows left wide open. Leon approached one, and looked out at the view. It was nothing like he had seen before. He was high up, and buildings around him seemed to be at a similar height, if not taller. There were… things moving about on the ground, and they reminded Leon of bugs. People were walking around, but their clothing was unfamiliar. The walking paths themselves were a gray color that made Leon’s skin itch, and he turned back around to continue looking through the fiend’s living quarters. The place made his skin crawl too, but he couldn’t tell if it had to do with the man living within it or the unusual objects all along the place.
There was a black box with a nonsensical design sitting upon a small table, with holes that Leon assumed were for a key. It didn’t do anything when Leon reached out to it, so he assumed that at the very least it wasn’t enchanted. He couldn’t see any hinge for the thing to open, and after a few minutes rotating the box in his hand set it down to investigate other objects.
Wandering into the area where Arikado had made the ‘tea,’ he was confronted with multiple objects that he did not understand. Doors were in the small space, all varying sizes, likely used for storing…something. Leon couldn’t see how the vampire could find even more stuff to cram into the already cluttered space. They were all made of some black material, including one which felt like cold metal when he reached out to touch it. There was some metal pottery sitting on top of one filled with the ‘tea’ Leon had earlier, judging by the smell.
Seeing various knobs on one of the doors, Leon reached out and turned one and panicked as a ticking sound started, followed by a small flame appearing. He turned the knob back to where it was, watching with growing fascination as the flame diminished and disappeared. The other knobs seemed to do the same thing, and he sat back and thought about how powerful the vampire must be to enchant a hearth that could change the size of its flame. It sent a chill up his spine, and Leon turned and walked out of the area.aced with a hallway leading back to the vampire’s bedroom, and decided he had looked around enough. Paranoid as he was, there was nothing he could do as of now. He turned on his heel back to the sofa. Sitting back down where he had prior, Leon put his elbows on his knees and covered his face with his hands. He missed Sara. He missed her laugh, and even though he knew he couldn’t get it back, at least with the whip by his side he could pretend.
Nothing about this place made sense. Arikado’s dialect was unfamiliar, his entire home was unfamiliar, none of the normal objects were like he was used to, and he was in a place that sounded made up. The thought of it all made him exhausted, and so Leon laid down on the sofa. It was dangerous and definitely stupid to sleep in a vampire’s domain, but he found himself so exhausted that he couldn’t care. Another of the many spells the man could cast, he thought as he fell asleep.