Chapter Text
The sun began to set on the land of Oakhurst.
The fires on the town wall had all either fizzled out or been extinguished, leaving the ruins in a darkened heap. Few monsters dared to approach, as if even they could feel the vampires’ essence still lingering. And inside their houses, the humans prepared for war.
Many of the castle’s residents, meanwhile, retired to their chambers. A heavy sense of mourning hung in the air. The coven was unsettled and scrambling for control. Shelby especially felt as though something had been ripped from her, as her fledgeling was now…
Well. It didn’t matter.
The crypt was silent. Everything there had gone silent.
It was this silence, felt even from miles away, that drove one particularly powerful vampire up a mountain, holding merely a headstone—taken from the castle—and a withered rose.
There was nothing to bury. Avid’s body would have disintegrated the minute the stake stabbed his heart. It was just the way it worked.
This was just the way things were.
Scott decided to make the grave regardless. He wasn’t entirely sure why. Everything felt odd. Many, he was sure, would have described it as “numbness”, but everything was numb as a vampire. You had no breath, no pain, no heartbeat. The only real proof that any of them still had a heart was the fact that they could be killed because of it.
No, this feeling was more like…a static. The world blurred around the edges. He hardly noticed when he’d made it to the mountain’s peak.
Scott wasn’t sad at Avid’s death. He wouldn’t care about anyone’s death…maybe.
He was just…
Static-y.
He poked a finger on the rose’s thorns experimentally, but of course felt nothing. No blood fell from the puncture, and the wound itself was healed in an instant.
With a quiet sigh—one that, to anyone else, would have sounded like his typical exasperated sigh, but was actually something very different—Scott planted the flower. His claws pulled at the dirt with more gentleness than they usually held. The flower stood defiantly before the makeshift headstone, blackened petals and all.
Scott realized he should say something. That’s what people usually did at funerals, he thought. He’d caused quite a few, but never attended one.
“Y’know…” Scott began, voice low and…somber? No, surely not. “I spent the longest time at the start here…wanting you dead.” He was uncomfortably aware that these would likely be the last words he’d say to Avid, dead or otherwise. He didn’t plan on returning to his grave, not without someone’s head on a spike.
Still, he remained eerily still as he spoke.
“More than anything, I wanted you not to be a vampire anymore. I wanted you gone.”
Wings started to blow in from the east, billowing Scott’s cloak behind him and shaking the petals of the flower.
“Yet, somehow…against all odds…here I am. Building you a grave.” Scott offered a soft, fang-less smile. “I guess maybe you can teach an old vampire new things.”
While the setting sun provided quite the dramatic light onto Avid’s grave, any light in Scott’s eyes had been snuffed out. And yet, his smile grew only wider.
“I’ll make sure to kill them for you.”
And with that, he turned on his heel, and began his trek down the mountain.
I think it’s time I had some real fun.