Chapter Text
Darkness.
The air tasted of dust, and there was an overpowering scent of musk from centuries of lifelessness. The surroundings felt oppressive, like there was no oxygen in the crushing environment. Everything was static. Everything was dead.
This is what Scott Goldsmith woke up to.
He was surrounded by darkness. As he began to rise, he hit his head on the solid stone.
Ow. By the spirits, that hurt!
He lay back down and shook his head. He needed to get his bearings.
Think, Goldsmith! What was the last thing he could remember?
It was like grasping at sand that kept slipping through his claws. However, the past slowly came back to him.
He was dealing with one of the villagers' loans; someone wanted to erect a new field for livestock on his land. That was when his castle was stormed.
A mob of people with silver weapons charged into his home, killing anyone in sight, human or vampire. The attacking crowd consisted of knights, townsfolk, and a team of holy priests. Some of the few villagers who were unhappy with his rule had made the idiotic decision to contact the church.
The Roman Empire, if it can even be called that, had lost all his respect and appreciation. At the beginning of Scott's life, the Roman Empire was deep into the Crisis of the Third Century. However, even when in the midst of several civil wars, the empire was a military superpower and home to some of the greatest thinkers in history. How they had fallen, now responsible for the persecution of knowledge and the restriction of faith.
Spirits, Scott hated the Church. Especially after what they did to them.
The Catholics have been unaware of his activities in Āc-hyrst for centuries, and for good reason. Can’t the daft townsfolk reason that they’d be under worse rule if Scott were gone? Scott may be strict, and sure, he may lose his temper occasionally, but what lord doesn't? He knows he can't be seen as a monster to the majority of Āc-hyrst; otherwise, they would have revolted long ago. He pays his servants well and rewards those who have remained loyal.
He makes sure to raise money for all farms and food reserves, because if the town dies, his food source does as well. If the English Catholics took his place, they would take everything from the people. The villagers then would be stuck with another tyrant, only this time one they do not have the power to revolt against.
That's why revolting against Scott was one of the most foolish decisions he had ever had the misfortune to bear witness to. If they're still alive, Scott would slaughter them all for their betrayal. It would be justice.
He could have easily flown away in the chaos, and perhaps he should have. But he had lived in the castle for centuries, hells, he was there when it was built. He has crafted the Goldsmith legacy with his bare hands, and by the gods, he was going to defend it till his undead body burned.
But the attackers were smart. They charged the castle when the sun was at its apex, threw holy water on anything that moved, then picked them off one by one.
At the time of the attack, only the Scott, the servants, and three other Goldsmith vampires were living in Āc-hyrst. Most of the Goldsmith family lived elsewhere, often to pursue their own desires, but most visited him often. If he went a decade without seeing one of his brood, they were probably dead.
Katherine, the Head of Staff, was the first to fall. She was human, gentle and loving. Despite her perceived weakness, she was one of the strongest humans Scott had ever met. She was tending to the blood roses that grew outside the entrance hall when a crossbow bolt hit her mercilessly in the gut. It was after this act of violence that the rest of the fighting began.
Hearing screams, Scott ran to the gates while the rest of the workers fled, but it was too late. He could smell the blood spilling from Katherine's body, and he could only hear silence when he knew there should have been a steady heartbeat.
After his powers were stolen and he was chained under the sun, his memory began to falter. He remembers the clerics started chanting, and he can barely recall the sounds of the battle that continued after he was subdued. The last thing he can remember is wishing that the rest of his Coven and servants had managed to escape.
Which leads him to now, trapped in an infinite darkness.
They sealed him.
They attacked his home, and they sealed him.
He started breathing heavily, hyperventilating with rage. The last cries of his people and family screamed in his ears. With each shout, his anger grew. With a furious roar, he broke through his stone confinement, rubble landing on the floor.
How dare they?
If any of them are still alive, he will rip out their spines from their mouth and piece their hearts with their own tailbone.
As Scott angrily crawled out of his tomb, he took in his surroundings. The wrongness of them.
First, as his sight swept across the room, he realised that his vision was much weaker than normal. He could still see in the dark, but certainly not as much as he should have. He could barely see to the end of the crypt.
He looked down and was a bit surprised to see his attire. He was wearing the same clothes as at the time of the attack. They appeared as pristine as ever. Bloody magic.
Second, his surroundings were bizarre. Almost immediately, he recognised that he was in the old family crypts beneath the castle. Whenever a coven member died, there was never a body, but they still created a tomb for them. Their belongings and personal possessions would be buried, the memory of their life forever preserved.
Rarely, a human was buried in the Goldsmith Crypt. Only those who had served him faithfully or were of great importance to Scott would be buried. They would get the same level of ceremony as any Goldsmith and were granted the highest honour. Scott remembers the last human who was buried in those halls, a young girl no older than a year. The most important of them all.
This was a sacred place. As he walked through the crypt, however, he dragged his hand across the old stone walls. A thick layer of dust decorated the entirety of the structure. The place appeared abandoned. Roots grew through the hallway's ceiling, curling around arches and crumbling walkways. Scott could hear a colony of bats fluttering about high in the vaults above. Nature appeared to have been attempting to take the structure back. What had happened here?
Before he was sealed, this place was hardly ventured into. But it was still taken care of. Now it was left for the rats. He decided he had had enough of this guesswork. He needed to leave these blasted catacombs.
If the deterioration of the crypt was anything to go by, years had passed since the attack. He needed to investigate further if any plan for what to do next was to be made.
He turned on his heel, and with a swish of his coat, he transformed into a flurry of bats and flew out of the crypt. When he arrived at the top of the entrance, he transformed back.
He stood in silence as what he saw froze him still. Then, the shock of the situation slammed into him.
The castle. It was gone.
The only structure left of the building that served as his place of residence for hundreds of years was crumbling foundations taken over by ivy. There were only rotting planks left of what had been mahogany floors; the rest of the ground was wet grass.
It appeared to be early morning, the rising sun blocked by a gloomy sky. Scott stalked across the castle ruins, mind racing.
How long had he been asleep?
As he explored around the tragedy that used to be his domicile, he spotted a sapling amidst the spruce giants. He remembers having to have some saplings planted, as mishaps with villagers’ torches happened every decade or so. Wait a minute..
He jumped up, then grimaced, hands bracing against his stomach as hunger pained him. As the burning sensation filled his whole body, he silently fell to his knees in quiet agony. His body was finally starting to wake up, and so was his appetite. However long it's been, his vessel clearly had not been sustained. As he noticed his hunger for the first time, the pain only grew. He was starving. He felt weak.
Before he could do anything, he needed to feed.
As if his prayers had been answered,
He sprang to his feet and ran to the back end of the island. The sapling reminded him of the last tree he had planted on the property. A young spruce he had ordered to be planted exactly fourteen years before he was sealed.
At the edge of the island near the rocky beach, there was the largest tree Scott had ever seen. As he beheld its beauty, he almost felt bad for what he would do.
He stepped to brace himself, then hit the tree with all his might. A huge crack split the tree, but it did not fall.
Are you kidding him? In his prime, the tree would have fallen without any effort. Curse those damn clerics!
It's fine. He just needs to use a stronger part of his body. He lined himself up with the tree, then performed a perfect sidekick to the base of the crack. With a groan, the tree began to topple, then crashed to the ground. A massive stump was left over.
Finally, a use for his stupid arithmomania. Vampirison came with few weaknesses, but the strangest one was the impulsive counting. Scott hated math, but was forced by his nature to count everything, salt, grain, even bricks of his castle.
Scott sat down with his legs crossed and began to count the rings.