Chapter Text
I had been perhaps four hours outside of Blumenthal that day, though the 'day' had long since closed. That was very shortly after I'd given up on the town; I'd been sent to the Empire to investigate rumors that could have been a beacon, but I hadn't found anything of the sort -- which meant that either the rumors had been just that, or the Cerberus Assembly had already closed in on it. Blumenthal had been dreary regardless; the people there hadn't known much of racial sensitivity, and I'd been called crick more times in the span of two weeks than I had been in my entire life prior. Oddly, the worst times had been when they weren't even saying it out of anger or hatred. I had been cutting through the forest on my way to the next point of interest when I began to feel distinctly like I was being watched.
It had been the time of day when the shadows began to play tricks on the eye, even those of a drow -- the gentle hues of dusk blended with the low angle of the moon and made the forest seem somehow even more frightening, especially since in those days, I wasn't in the slightest used to trees. Four hours of walking with a lack of a proper trail had me irritable to begin with, and I had no interest in entertaining the illogical panic of the oldest parts of my brain; the feeling of being hunted wasn't one I was a stranger to, but being that I was a drow in a forest, I'd long since assumed that it was just common spiders making my hair stand on end. They were everywhere out there; I'd even walked into a web once or twice by that point, which lent even further to my foul mood.
Despite all of that, though, I still stopped when the anxiety dialed itself up to eleven and I was struck by the disquieting sensation that my eyes were noticing something that my brain was failing to process. The feeling is difficult to describe, though I am sure all have felt it before; the feeling of having your eyes catch on an otherwise innocuous bit of vegetation only to realize a heartbeat later that there is a snake or coyote trying very hard to not be noticed. In this case, however, it was not a snake or a coyote -- it was a bear.
I did not know much about bears. I knew that with some, you were meant to hold still, or play dead, or make yourself larger -- in the moment, I hadn't the slightest idea which kind this bear was. Instead of picking one and praying, I opted for a fourth option -- try to back away slowly. Its lips had pulled back from its teeth as it let out a growl fearsome enough that I could feel it in my teeth -- and before it could charge at me and surely tear me to bits, something else dropped out of the trees. In the moment, I felt rather like I had just met an angel, or perhaps a mundane fool.
The shape was vaguely humanoid, and facing away from me. What caught my attention before anything else was the fire-red hair draped down his back and held in a tie; even in that split-second moment where the world stood still, I'd been able to take note of the fact that it looked like it hadn't been properly washed in quite some time. Then, the world erupted into motion again.
He lunged at the bear like a feral animal, a shrill sound ripping out of his chest that made my blood run cold. The bear seemed equally put-off by the sound -- its ears had pinned back, and then it lunged past him to run. He'd tried to grab it as it went by, and I watched in mute horror as his nails dragged through the bear's pelt and left gouges like knife wounds when it passed by me and continued to flee as quickly as the forest would allow.
After the bear was handled, I truly saw him. He was paler than I'd thought possible, and no longer human. His shoulders were held in a tight line and hunched up by his ears, as if it took him great effort not to lunge for me. Even from several paces away, I could see his eyes clearly -- they were the color of fresh blood like that which slicked his nails. They held a horrible hollowness to them that I had only ever seen in starving, rabid animals, and when he bared his teeth at me, I was struck by the visceral knowledge that his mouth had too many of them. They were sharp, just like he was, and it was the full-body shudder he gave which jerked me out of my thoughts.
I had been in shock, then, which is why my mouth stumbled its way into saying, "What?"
His eyes had sharpened, then, like daggers or ice -- like he was now looking at me rather than through me, dead in my eyes. I'd never felt more unsafe in my life. He bared his teeth as if to frighten me off, and then roared out a command. "RUN!" he'd demanded, and I realized as he gave another shudder that he was using all of his strength to not attack me.
I did not need to be asked twice. Certainly, there was fear in turning my back to a predator, but I knew that my chances became better the more distance there was between us. I don't remember even now how long I ran for; nor did he follow me to find out. I just ran, and ran, and ran -- until I couldn't run any further, and then I kept going anyway, until my knees gave out and I collapsed. Few races were as resilient as humans, but in a pinch, most of them could put in work. I tranced right where I'd collapsed, and kept it shallow though the night -- paranoid, terrified that the monster would return. I'd never met a vampire before; as best I knew before that, they were all simply the gaunt-faced creatures of children's tales and adventurers, and a very good reason not to go out into unfamiliar places at night.
It wasn't until a bit later that I began to question why the monster had been there; why it had saved me. It. It. He? I found that I was not sure, then -- he had saved me, but for him to have dropped down from the trees, did that not mean he had to have been hunting me? Why did he let me leave, if that were the case? Why did he save me? (The answer to the last question, I'd decided, was that the bear would not have been interested in sharing his kill.) All of these questions and more were the questions with which I was left when I finally emerged from the forest and continued dazedly onward, unable to even begin to fathom the answers.
I had always been a curious man. A scholar, intelligent and starved for information -- starved for research. That was what I was telling myself now, as I stood at the mouth of the forest about a week afterward. I was armed with camping supplies, a book about vampires, a small bottle of holy water, and my spellbook at the ready. I certainly could not be sane, not as I walked back into the woods I knew damn well to be the territory of a vampire (which I had by now come to understand was similar to walking into a druid's forest when you were not welcome there), but were researchers ever sane? Certainly none I had ever met were. I set my jaw, took a deep breath, and checked the time. Then, noting with a touch of hysteria that all I had to lose was my life, I took the first step.