Chapter Text
His legs were broken, torn with ligaments ripped from the gashes that ran up and down his legs, blood pooling freely onto the chilled cobbled ground underneath him. He was losing far too much blood to last for much longer.
He couldn’t quite recall when the horrors had started, and perhaps it would be more accurate to say they had always happened, one after another. The poison fed to him that caused him to vomit blood, the assassination attempts that would leave him gutted, his so-called siblings and parents working to have him erased from their line.
Leaving him to the wolves.
The brand- that he would swear on his name still smelled of melted burned flesh- caused constant pain. One half of the brand pressed into his skin, held there as his jaw locked, nerves being lit on fire before it was flipped and the other half was pressed in. To keep it symmetrical they had said, Wouldn’t want to defile the symbol of Lumensis.
And the effects of the brand: clammy hands, shivers, blood pooling around him when he woke up- the wound never fully closing- the scars that burned so hot it felt cold to his nerves.
The weakness was pathetic; he knew it was. He could see the disgusted looks from the people that surrounded him, who looked down on him. Yet it all felt distant to him, as if he were watching these things happen to him every day. One episode after another, one attempt at his life after another- he had the scars to show for it- and yet he was no closer to survival than he was the day before. Even as he lay here down at the bottom of the well, bleeding out, he was in no less or more danger than he was this morning when he ate a meal that could have been poisoned. No more danger than when they took him to that lightless room made of cold stone. They had handcuffed him to the wall and broken him into pieces- if that hadn’t appeared, he would be dead in that room. If that hadn’t come from his form as he sat and watched it murder his torturers, its form blending into the shadows that surrounded them all in that room.
The bird that had gouged out their eyes and shoved its mist-like beak into their entrails. A raven of the night. Terrifying and otherworldly as it evoked horror in the survivors.
Now he was dead at the bottom of a dried-out hole, thrown in by ones that now feared what lurked in their own shadows.
“Well, well, well,” a voice called, the amusement that laced it feeling far too out of place in the moment. The only thing he could see from the bottom of this well was two glowing eyes watching him carefully from above. Did they think they were being funny? “What’s a little Brutus doing down here?”
“What’s a vamp doing up there?” He didn’t care much about the creature leaning over the walls of the well to watch him, nor his own life that lay at the bottom. Pissing off a vampire wouldn’t change much for who he was down here, bleeding out on the damp moldy stone.
“How crass,” the vampire scoffed, eyes flashing as they tilted their head, lamplight eyes twisting in the darkness. “When I smelled the blood and saw the shadows gathered here, I thought there would be something more interesting down here. But it’s just some mortal child.”
Why wouldn’t they just put him out of his misery? Why must his own death be laughed at? Why did they choose to linger?
“And from the smell of it, you’re royalty.” Their red eyes disappeared and reappeared closer, close enough that Ludger could see the outline of their body. “Despite that, you’ve been abandoned here alone… Well, I think I understand.” They kneeled down as they spoke, the edges of their dress brushing across his arm as they tilted their head once more, eyes and teeth flashing. What did they understand? “You don’t show any hostility like they do, and you don’t show any fear towards me either.” Their lamplight eyes lit up the stone around the two of them. It sounded like they were speaking to themselves now; not like he could care much for their words with his vision fuzzing around the edges, similar to the shadows that had killed the assassins.
“Very well, I will raise you myself brat.” The vampire stood once more, observing his leg- hanging by literal threads- the fragmented bones pushing out of the flesh, broken and shattered near his knee.
“...Why? What do you want from me?” Did they wish to use him as a meal? He wouldn’t be much of one considering nearly all of his blood was on the ground, and he got a distinct feeling that this vampire wouldn’t bother with blood that’s already spilt.
The vampire laughed at his plight. “Despite your youth, you have a sharp mind. Don’t worry; I won’t ask you to compensate me for the cost of raising you.”
“Why can’t you just kill me?” Why couldn’t he just leave this world already? Why couldn’t he be done with all of this? Wipe his hands of it all? He had been targeted since he came out of his mother’s womb and hadn’t had a day since, where he hadn’t been covered in blood.
“You’re a pitiful creature. Why would I waste energy or magic to kill you?”
Indeed, he was a pitiful creature; his eyelids were already starting to drop as he forced himself to understand what they were saying—to understand why. The ground made him shiver; lack of blood making him so cold.
The vampire kneeled down over him and was speaking- saying something- and he thanked the stars for letting him die before he could find out what the vampire had in store for him.
If only he were so lucky.
The vampire used their foot to shove at his broken leg- now splayed in an odd direction. “Tell me boy, if you could get power to kill those Brutus dogs who did this to you, would you take it?”
Yes.
It hurt.
He was used to pain being a sharp stinging thing, but this was like needles breaking through skin- sewing pins digging into muscles and nerves- shoved through veins.
Two sharp fangs pressing against skin as they greedily claimed that which was not theirs to take.
His brain was too muddled and fogged to understand what was happening to him- information seeming to come in slower, processed by his mind in shorter intervals. His thoughts becoming hazy and disjointed as if he were drifting in and out of his own mind. As if he had no control over the last thing that was his own to claim.
It hurt
The fangs pulled away from the junction of his neck and shoulder; things floated a bit in his mind until something blessedly cool touched his lips- and their voice commanded him to drink. Thank the stars- he needed water .
He was so thirsty, his throat scratched dry- and allowed them to tip his head back as they fed him what was in goblet.
Not water. Warm, thick, and it tasted metal.
He gagged, reaching up feebly- and pushing at hand holding hair- but firmer than bony arms would suggest.
Red encased vision like thick smoke curling over eyes—with only two glowing eyes visible- but didn’t matter because pain ripping through his body—as if someone had taken several burning talons, and dug them into nerve endings- twisting them- and pulling. It was going to make him fall unconscious before the voice that belonged to those eyes were able to say anything.
He tried to speak- to say something—anything- to get pain to stop- but all came out was a thick wet feeling running down chin- the wet gurgling noise went unheard past ringing ears, as he choked on warm blood sliding down throat.
It was more violent than anything else he had gone through in life.
He just wanted it to end.