Chapter Text
Waking up after six hundred years felt good. Scott was well rested, his hair looked better than ever and he was ready to return to his duties, which mostly consisted of looking handsome and scaring the townsfolk into giving him some of their livestock for dinner. A perfect life, if you asked him.
Except things changed. There was no more castle, no more his family and no more townsfolk. It was just him and the ruins he had been buried in. He didn’t even remember what the castle looked like back in the day! One was clear though, it was not going to be back to its glory anytime soon, which was the reason why he decided to go for a walk. He found out very quickly that most of the things surrounding the castle changed as well, the whole area abandoned and empty. It was so void of life- he would need to find a source of food elsewhere, and preferably soon. He probably had a few bottles of blood stored in what was left of the castle, but they wouldn’t be enough for more than a day or two, if he wanted full nutritious meals.
The bridge, once a part of the grand entrance, was falling apart slowly. The parts that still held together looked rather stable, but Scott decided that it wasn't worth risking, so instead, he turned into a bat and flew across it. It didn't escape him that he was no longer at his full strength, his abilities as a vampire dulled over the time he was asleep. He'd have to fix that as soon as he found a reliable source of food. Maybe there would be a forest nearby, so that he wouldn't have to move elsewhere…
There were ruins of a town. One that he didn't immediately recognise, though it's not like he had ventured outside his castle too much, especially not into town, and not in plain daylight. Besides, during his reign, there were no towns looking this– atrocious. If this is how the commoners lived after he went to sleep… He really did them a favour by ruling their towns!
What surprised him though, was the fact that there were people, despite the conditions that the place was in. They couldn't possibly live there, could they? They didn't look like they did.
Scott wasn't entirely sure why had he decided to interact with them, normally, he wouldn't have the need to randomly talk to commoners. It wasn't the fact that they all looked and talked poor, desperate times call for desperate measures, but more the fact that they seemed to disapprove of him acting like he was better than them. What a bunch of ungrateful human beings, thought he supposed that if he were one of them, he also wouldn't like it.
All in all, the humans were decent for commoners, although there were two of them of noble blood between them; there was only one person he couldn't stand: Avid. He was running around the town, yapping about vampires and whatnot about them. It seemed that the others ignored him for the most part, and his info wasn't entirely correct either, but he posed a great danger into the future. And just when he found so much fine food as well! Speaking of food, he really ought to get some. Maybe isolate one or two in the evening…?
Pyro used to be rich. He had everything he ever wanted! Except for family. Sure, he had both a mother and a father, but he'd rather just not have any at that point. They never felt like any of the families from the books he read. His father was always away for business, and his mother, while physically present, never really made time for him. This lack of attention made him do a lot of stupid things. Get into a fight here, steal something there, do basically the exact opposite of what he had been told to do. That worked for a while, but as he grew older, he started realising that it wasn’t going to get him anywhere. His initial plan to refuse to go to college wasn’t going to work anyways, so he might as well just pick something he liked. Which was exactly what he did. What he didn’t anticipate was the fact that choosing to study history and culture would be the last straw for his mother, who in a brink of emotional breakdown decided to disown him, and therefore have him removed from the will.
Despite not really being a family, getting at least some of the money was something that Pyro counted on. He didn’t concern himself with finding a job in his teenage years, and he wasn’t too worried about his future. His academics, despite all his acts of rebellion were looking great, and so as a last resort, he applied for scholarship and picked up a few jobs that kept him fed and clothed, with a roof over his head, even if said roof was just a sad little room he shared with another person. It was a very drastic change, but he got used to it. Almost four years, he had spent suffering through classes, and finally, it was almost time to graduate. The last thing he needed to get done was his thesis. If he was able to write it on time and receive a good grade, he would get a degree, which would unlock a new variety of possibilities of jobs he could get, some that were slightly more paying than washing dishes and sitting at a receptionists desk for hours on end, with a notebook in hand.
The college he went to offered to finance a school-related trip for the top five students, which he so happened to be, as he couldn't really afford to lose his scholarship. It was a great opportunity, and it’d definitely help with the thesis. Besides, he could count it as a… vacation of a sort let's say. As his topic, he had chosen Oakhurst and the legends surrounding it, and so to Oakhurst he went. Maybe if he did really well, he could get himself back on the will? Worst case scenario, he'd have a degree and would have to keep living on his own. Neither was bad, if you asked him.
Oakhurst was supposed to be empty and in ruins, or so he heard, so it surprised him when that turned out to not be the case. There were multiple people from all over the country there, and apparently, neither of them really knew each other. Interesting. Could that be something to potentially include in his thesis? The curiosity of tourists regarding the place? Although some of them weren’t tourists as much as random passerbys or descendants of the families that used to live there. For whatever reason, they all seemed to be content with just settling down in the ruins for the time being, and since he had two weeks of time, he decided to join them. Besides, it’ll definitely be more comfortable than sleeping under a celt somewhere, all by himself.
The farmer, Cleo, had taken it upon themselves to provide food for the entire town, which he was eternally grateful for as he living off of ration bars wasn't too pleasant, especially knowing that he wouldn’t have anything too different once he came back home, if he could even call it that.
That evening, Scott went to sleep in a house that wasn’t his, on an empty stomach. It had been a long time since he didn’t get to eat for a full day, it’s not that he couldn’t take it, but more so that he never had a reason to. He was one of the highest ranking amongst the goldsmiths themselves, after all. Clearly though, the time he had spent asleep had been too long for the people to recognise him anymore. He’d have to teach them how to treat their elders with respect, but for a little while, he could afford to keep a low profile. Destroying the community from the inside felt like the perfect way to fear him once again.
He missed the times when he didn’t have to interact with peasants, and perhaps soon, he’d get those times back. Although, killing his food… There weren’t exactly many people in Oakhurst as of then, so they would definitely notice if one or two of them mysteriously disappeared. He thought that perhaps if he let them do their own thing, they would start fighting for the land or something on a similar note, but it looked as though they were intent on rebuilding it as a community, which complicated his plans slightly.
Turning someone though, that wasn’t out of question, at least not yet. It had been a while since he had a fledgeling, he was very careful with whom to turned, not wanting to risk any unpleasant consequences, but there was no time like the pleasant, and given those people’s knowledge on vampires, he could always finish them of, would the situation call for it. He’d get the delicious blood all the same, and an underling, really, that was killing two birds with one stone if he thought about it for long enough. Tomorrow. He thought. Tomorrow, he’d get someone to go with him into the forest and turn them. He could try to feast on some animals in the meantime,despite not liking having to lower his standards any more than was absolutely necessary.
So far, so good. Pyro thought to himself. He gathered a lot of things to write his thesis about, and he was starting to settle down in the town just fine. The people were nice, even if some of them were slightly crazy. Avid, for example, wouldn’t stop talking about vampires and telling everyone to eat garlic. Vampire or not, who in their right mind would eat an entire clove of garlic?! Or Shelby. She wasn’t dead set on telling everyone about the creatures lurking the forests, but she did mention bigfoot and some other stuff, which in his opinion was just ridiculous. Then there was Ren, whom he could barely understand, due to his cursed tongue or whatever he said…
Everyone was gathering resources, and some of the braver people went further beyond the town walls, exploring the land in a hope of finding a similar beacon to the ones in the town. As it was getting later in the evening, Scott and Owen, the former a nobleman with his nose far too high up and the latter a depressed lumberjack that looked like he was either going to kill himself or everyone else, decided to go outside the walls as well. Pyro had just talked to the two of them and to Shelby about a book that she found in one of the landmarks that was apparently near Oakhurst and Owen decided to check it out, Scott offering to come with. Since Pyro didn’t have anything to do, he decided to join the two. It was a pretty spontaneous decision, but he had done a lot of those in his life, so it was nothing new.
The joke that Shelby made about Scott being a vampire didn’t escape him, he wasn’t sure whether she was being serious or whether it was really just a joke, but he laughed anyway. The way towards what he assumed was going to be a ruin didn’t take too long, it was way closer than he had expected it to be, maybe a kilometer or two. It was a good thing as that meant that the way back wasn’t going to take forever. He didn’t question the location too much as he had never been there before, and seeing as the two stopped, he assumed that they reached their final destination. They had to get over the body of water that was surrounding a small island with a single tower-like structure in the middle, but thanks to some rocks that were sticking out of the river, that wasn’t too hard.
Pyro was lost in his own thoughts leaning on the cold stone wall near the beacon, only being brought back to reality by Owen talking to him.
“Can you back up a little bit?”
“Yeah, sure.” Pyro wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t question it. He stepped down back onto the ground level and turned to look at the red moon that lit up the sky. It looked magnificent. When he turned back to look at the two, he found out that they were in the middle of a conversation. They were talking hurriedly, as if they didn’t want him to hear. Did they know each other? They didn’t look like it back in the town. Did he fail to notice something?
“Well, this complicates things.” He heard Owen say monotonously.
“Yeah.” Scott seemed to agree.
“What’s up?” Pyro made his way back near the beacon where he previously stood.
“N- nothing!” Scott’s voice wasn’t convincing at all, though it seemed like he made it sound like that on purpose.
“I just really don’t like sharing, really.”
Now Pyro was starting to get slightly worried. He had no clue what was going on. His guts clenched together making his stomach hurt, but he decided to ignore it. Everything was fine! It’s not like there were monsters out there or anything! …Although the darkness surrounding them and the dead forest nearby…
“Yeah… Well, I was here first sooo-” a smirk appeared on Scotts face.
“I think I was here first, actually.” Owen countered.
“Hmm, I don’t know. I’ve been here for a long time.”
“Errm, two hundred years.” Owen chuckled.
“Errm, that’s baby talk.” The smirk didn’t leave Scott's face for even a second. Just what were the two of them on about? Pyro started considering backing up.
“What?! How can that be baby talk?”
“I’ve been here for like. Six hundred years.” Scott replied, no hesitation. Was that an inside joke, or…?
“Six hun- Oh my god.” Owen scoffed.
“Hey, what’s u- what’s going on up there?” Pyro asked nervousůy, taking another step back.
“He’s- he’s been around here longer, I suppose.” Owen explained to no-one in particular, and if the words were directed to Pyro, well, he didn’t understand what he meant by them. “I think he’s got the claim.”
“Yeah, I got first dibs.” Scott agreed.
“On the beacon…?” Pyro was beyond confused now. But he didn’t like the way that the two of them were looking at him.
“Nooo.” Scott prolonged the word, tilting his head slightly to the side.
“You aren’t going to make this difficult, are you?” OWen looked him dead in the eyes, and man, were they scary with the moon reflecting in the deep brown of his irises.
“First dibs on you, silly.” Pyro could swear that he saw Scott's eyes light up for a second there. He really, really didn’t like that he had no clue what was going on,
“What do you mean? What are you talking about?” His voice was panicky and he started backing up subconsciously, Avid’s words playing in his head. No. That couldn’t be right! He refused to believe it.
“Can I take a- just a bit?” Owen scooped closer to him, reaching for his arm, which he immediately jerked away on instinct.
“What are you doing?!” Pyro held his arm close to his chest, taking a few more steps back. He turned his head to see how far away from the water he was.
“Why won’t you just hold still?!” Owen crossed his arms, the look on his face telling Pyro everything he needed to know. He had to run. Now. Quickly, he glanced at Scott, who was grinning from ear to ear, confidently getting closer to closer. Not wasting any more time, Pyro turned around and ran. His heart was beating fast inside his chest, almost like it wanted to carve its way out of his body. There were no thoughts in Pyro’s head, he just had to run.
“I- I have to go!” He shouted for the two behind as if that would help somehow, running as fact as he could. He made his way across the rocks, praying to all and any gods above that he wouldn’t slip and fall into the river. Reaching the other side, he didn’t slow down, calling upon the times when he had to get away from the guards.
One leg after the other, arms by his sides moving back and forth, but it was too late. So very late. He felt a pair of arms wrap around him, hugging him from behind, bringing an uncomfortable sensation with them. Pyro didn’t have time to scream before sharp fangs pierced through his skin accompanied by a sickly, warm breath. One of his arms was lifted up against his will, but he no longer had the energy to fight. He could only watch as the two presumably vampires feasted on him., before losing consciousness altogether.
A young human blood was just what Scott needed. It was so warm! So delicious! What a shame he couldn’t take it all, couldn’t drink until there was nothing left. He caught Pyro’s unconscious body before it could fall to the floor. Noticing the two streams of blood running down his neck, he wasted no time before licking them. Were it not for Owen in front of him, he might have just finished him off. He was never one to waste food.
“What do we do with him?” Owen asked, keeping his distance from where Scott was holding his prey.
“Why, we wait for him to wake up of course!” Scott laughed as he sat Pyro down onto the cold dirty ground beneath.
“So you’ve been around for six hundred years, huh?” OWen asked cautiously.
“Oh, no, not at all! I have been asleep for six hundred years. As for being around? The years tend to get blurry the longer you live. I believe maybe fifteen, sixteen hundred years?” Scott explained as he bent down to place his cold palm on top of Pyro’s forehead. Just as expected, he was running a fever.
“He’d be out of it for a few minutes, and he won’t have a good time for a while, but he should be able to make it back to the village just fine.” Scott stood back up and began roaming the forest, trying to see if he could find something more to eat.
Pyro sat up with a loud gasp. His head was spinning and he was cold. There was a sharp pain on his neck and wrist. Upon realising this, the events from before he blacked out came rushing to him, making him sick to his stomach. He could still see Scott’s dangerous eyes in front of him and the evil smirk on his face… He felt a tingling sensation around his torso , causing him to shiver as if that would help wash the feeling away. Instinctively, he wrapped his arms around himself, but it was no use. The sensation of two cold arms wrapping around him preserved. It made Pyro want to vomit. And Owen too… He must have been the one to take his arm.
“Look who has decided to wake up!” Scott’s voice pierced through the silence of the chilly night. Pyro flinched at it, but he turned his head to look at the blue haired vampire, who was bent in his waist, supporting himself by placing his arms on his knees. He looked terrifying, despite his wide smile. Were it not for the circumstances, he might have been fooled by it, right then though, it disgusted him. Not moving from his position on the floor, Pyro carefully turned his head over to face Owen, who was standing further away, keeping his distance like he always seemed to be, before he tried to– well…
An uncomfortable growl came from his stomach. It was not quite hunger. The other two seemed to notice.
“That’s normal. You gotta sleep it off.” Scott laughed, his fangs showing. They made Pyro shiver. Only barely was he able to resist the urge to put one of his hands over the bite mark that was making its presence known with a sharp pain. When Pyro didn’t respond for a long time, Scott took it as his cue to continue.
“Come on, get up, we gotta get back to the village before Avid blames me for another murder!” Scott laughed, but Pyro didn’t think it was funny. He should have trusted Avid. What was the chance that he’d venture to the woods with two vampires?! And the fact that he didn’t even realise before it was too late… Were there others like them? Did Owen and Scott bit anyone else? Pyro didn’t want to think about it, the realisation hitting him all at once. He wasn’t dead. He had been bitten by a vampire. In all the books he ever read that mentioned vampires… That always meant only one thing; they turned him. They made him one of their own. Not in his wildest dreams would Pyro ever think about something similar happening. Carefully he lifted his left hand, the one that didn’t have the bite mark, to his mouth, tracing his teeth.
“They’re retractable!” Scott clearly noticed Pyro’s not very subtle gesture. The latter turned to look at him once more. How could he be so calm and cheery? How could he act like he didn’t just do what he did? “You should probably keep them extended for some time, we wouldn’t want them underdeveloping.”
The eldest of the three began walking back towards Oakhurst. Pyro hesitated before following him, which was clearly the wrong thing to do, as Scott stopped and turned to look at him.
“You’ll go in front of me, I want to keep an eye on you.” His tone was so casual, yet it still shivers down Pyro’s spine. Obediently, he did as he was told. Who knows what would happen, were he to disobey.
Pyro woke up fairly quickly, making Scott's job a lot easier. It was in his best interest to get back to the town as soon as possible, with both his companions well and alive. Funny to think that, since all three of them were undead, though it’s not like the others would notice that, unless Pyro decided to try something funny. He’d have to warn him not to tell anyone, he didn’t want to be found out just yet. It’d be easier if he could regain his strength first. His new fledgeling was going to be sick for a few days, but they could blame it on a regular fever, it had similar symptoms after all, and if the doctor could confirm it, it’d make hiding for now even easier.
Scott really hoped that he’d be able to get a little more food off of the little nightly trip, but at least he found out about another vampire in Oakhurst. He wondered if there were more. If only he had all of his abilities, he would have been able to smell a vampire from miles away, but having woken up from a slumber as long as he had, it’d take some time and tons of food to get back. Sadly, he’d mostly have to rely on animal blood for the time being, but as long as it meant returning to his initial glory, he was willing to take it.
They were nearing Oakhurst fairly quickly, the walls already visible between the trees. Pyro was still in front of him, leading the way, going slower than usual, while Owen kept his distance. Scott deemed them to be close enough to the town to have a one last quick chat with Pyro before parting ways. He picked up his pace and with two swift steps, he was close enough to the fledgling to be able to grab his shoulder, causing him to turn around.
The hand on his shoulder was the same one that gripped his side as two cold arms wrapped around him. It took all of Pyro’s selfcontrol to not wince at the touch, but a slight flinch was inevitable. With fear, he turned around quickly, meeting Scott’s glowing eyes.
“Just to make things clear, don’t go around telling everyone, we want to keep a low profile. Good night!” Right. Good night… At least it meant that he could finally be by himself, at least for the rest of the night. His body was heating up, almost like he had a fever, and his legs were weak. He wasn’t sure how long he’d be able to walk before inevitably collapsing.
The three vampires each went their separate ways after reaching the Oakhurst walls. Only then did he realise that Scott’s roommate was Shelby. Was she going to be okay? Should he warn her? Scott's words replayed loudly in his head. No, he couldn’t do that. But was he just supposed to watch as she got turned in front of his eyes? Was he even supposed to want to protect her, if he was a vampire too, no matter how much he might not have liked it? Pyro reached the door to his house. He opened it with a slight struggle and quickly slipped inside. He saw a truffle curled up at the corner of his small pen. Oh truffle. He assumed that Apo would be upstairs. That’s where they made a small bedroom. Carefully, Pyro climbed the ladder step by step, trying hard to not let go of the bar on accident. In his current state, he was certain the chances of that happening were much higher than zero.
Just as expected, Apo was already fast asleep on one of the beds. Only then did Pyre realise how tired he was. It must have been a combination of the fever and the fact that it was so very early in the evening. As quietly as he could, he made his way to the other bed, laying down and covering himself with the thin blanket they were able to retrieve from the ruins. He turned to his side, facing away from Apo. He couldn’t bear to look at his roommate for the time being, staring at the wall was way easier.
Only when he was one hundred percent sure that no one could see him, he let a warm tear slip from his eye, then another, and another. Soon enough, he was full on crying, trying to muffle his sobs by stuffing his mouth with a blanket. He couldn’t have Apo wake up on him, not when he didn’t know himself, what was going on.
Cold hands wrapped him from behind, preventing him from moving anywhere. He wanted to steam, but one of the hands was quickly placed over his mouth.
“Don’t tell them. Don’t tell anyone.” He heard a demonic voice say. He didn’t recognise it.
He was shaking with fear, gasping for air. The trees around him turned red, dripping with blood. The floor beneath them was uneven, too painted in red, iron liquid. The smell was so strong it made his stomach turn. Instinctively, he bent over to throw up, only to be stopped by the two arms still holding him. He swallowed down whatever has made its way up, burning his throat with an unpleasant taste. He started hyperventilating, started kicking his legs and waving his arms, but it was no use whatever was holding him didn’t seem to want to let go. Eventually, Pyro grew tired and gave up, letting his surroundings fade as he dove deep into nothingness.