Chapter Text
The blood loss was preventing you from any useful comprehension of the situation. The crisp, white snow around you was soaking into a deep, terrifying red, and the slash on your thigh throbbed in otherworldly pain. You had been crying out for minutes until your voice went hoarse and all you could manage was panting and a few short, desperate whimpers. All feeling in your limbs was quickly fading, so in a final and desperate attempt, you began to army crawl through the snow. Your forearms, already bruised and throbbing, burned against the searing freeze of the pearlescent snow, clotting around you and making each frantic haul a challenge to overcome in itself. You could feel the icy air burning through your lungs, freezing over your insides and leaving you teetering on a balance between slow, steady breaths to ease the pain, and sharp hyperventilating gasps to get the slow, cooling blood in your veins pumping so you could get somewhere.
Using what little strength you had to nudge up your chin to the looming branches of the ancient, creaking trees, your feeble hope sank deeper into her stomach, as if to hide in the dwindling warmth there. It was hard to comprehend how broad and unyielding the reach of these trees were, even when stripped of their bountiful leaves in the barren winter. There were various knots scattered across the spiderweb of brush that spun together. The peeling bark curled into a long, tangled pattern; a kaleidoscope of murky browns and dull grays that suddenly felt so similar to the churning in your stomach. Suddenly, the mandala of branching felt more like an oppressing, stifling roof above your head, and the burning in your throat and lungs only increased with your shortness of breath.
It is no use to drag myself to safety, you thought briefly as your head swam with fear. Rather than your life flashing before your eyes, everything closed in. Your vision shifted to your mind's eye, and within were exclusively questions that felt impossible to answer with such immobilizing pain coursing throughout your body. Is this a chivalrous way to die? There must be someone to bless, or apologize to, right? Is there a God to save me? Will He be merciful at the hand of a doubtful, desperate woman?
Suddenly, your face felt unbearably numb as it sank into the snow, and your shoulders trembled with the task of keeping yourself propped in a plank. They slid outward, enveloping you in the unfeeling, sterile embrace of the very snow draining the life from your body and soul. I am dying. You felt the tightness of a sob well in your chest, yet you hadn’t the strength to cry. Instead, you let the wave of dread pass through you with compliance. It only managed to further press your flattening soul to the freeze of the carpeted forest floor. This is how I will die.
The Count rose smoothly from his ordained throne, muscles tight and stubborn from his uninterrupted brooding and solitude. The throne personified wasted potential; such gorgeous woodwork and fine fabric should aid to the comfort of noble, active kings. Kings that hold their reign with pride, and take on responsibility for their ruling in a valorant manner.
Instead, it is a deathbed of such a ruler's ambition. Living through every hill and valley for centuries gave one a feel of how the world worked that was eerily uncomfortable. It’s beauty and ambiguity peeled away to reveal the rotten corruption lying in secrecy beneath. The solace of solitude could only be used for coping for so long; eventually, it turned on its heel to become part of the dilemma itself. The nights blurred together in a long stretch of repetition. Tomes were read, reread, and reread once again. Halls were paced. His occasional visits out to the nearby town were the only social interaction he ever knew.
Even still, the open night air always seemed to bid him well. The atmosphere of the castle had become uncomfortably sedentary, with dust piled by the pound atop shelves and tucked into nooks he couldn’t care to breathe new life into. Not that he had any, anyways.
Silent footfalls echoed through ancient architecture and stagnant furniture. There weren’t able to be heard, but felt with an anxious certainty. A large, worn sheepskin cojac was swept from the hall tree, slipping over the Count’s broad shoulders. With a firm push of the grand oak doors, a piercing keen of the rusted hinges alerted the outside forest of his presence. By the time they slowed to a shut with a dramatic thud, he had already made his way past the courtyard and into the dense forest surrounding his nearly humorously lavish living arrangements. The castle was fit for an entire army, and the architecture was a wonder of it’s time when first built centuries ago. It had kept up well with the years, but the looming environment around it seemed to weigh heavier with morbidity each year.
The Count’s mind lingered behind as his heavy footsteps kept his large frame gliding forward with grace that contrasted with his size eerily. He thought back to his active life when his heart had still beat strong and prideful in his heart. What had he come to now? Was this all to be completed throughout the rest of his centuries; to sit and rot in his monstrous qualities until they overtook him? It was a frequent worry of his, that one day he would lose his humanity completely, and would become nothing but a vessel for blood-thirst. Just because his heart no longer pumped did not mean he didn’t have one. However, at this point, he was beginning to grow skeptical of that himself. He felt as if blood, that sickeningly shameful yet addictive elixir of life, was the sole factor that towed his will to live. He could smell it still, the lingering warmth and metallic tang that kept his senses in alert.
…no. It was stronger now, the further he walked. This was freshly spilt blood, too distinct to be a phantom of his imagination.
He followed his nose without thought, the complexities swirling in his head temporarily forgotten as he tracked the scent. He was surprised how strong the scent was growing as he grew closer— was it a fresh carcass? A deer, maybe, with an unfortunate encounter with a few of the wolves that stalked the forest near his castle? They may still be near the scene. But the inconvenience would be that his potential meal was merely a deer rather than any danger from the wolves. He could usher them away with a snap of his fingers if need be.
Finally, he was close enough to lock his eyes to the blot of rich maroon that looked almost insulting against the pure, glowing snow surrounding it. He stalked closer still. In the center of the stain was a heap of shredded fabric, splatters of blood and the concerning pallor of skin that indicated possible hypothermia.
Dracula was unsure as to if the thing— he assumed it was human— was alive. If it were, their breathing was too shallow to indicate anything but extremely poor condition. He silently stalked closer until the toe of his boot was tangent with the outer ring of the freezing puddle of blood. It looked to be a young woman. His dark eyes scanned over the body, fixating on the source of the bloodshed: a large gash at the back of it’s thigh. It was a rather nasty cut, and to such a degree that he could not decipher how it had come about. No broken bones, it seemed, but that didn’t give much comfort when he had deciphered that from being able to see a sliver of her femur. He regarded the wound for a moment until sifting his gaze back to it’s face, checking for any sign of life. When he assumed there was none, he lifted his right foot to gingerly nudge at the body’s middle.
The Count watched as it used what little strength it had left to desperately heave in the last of it’s breath and produce a whimper so quiet and pathetic it was nearly lost with the light breeze. She was still kicking.
He watched her for several seconds, thoughts slowly churning in the back of his mind as he examined the woman in front of him. This was the closest he had ever seen someone to death’s door. He assumed one more nudge would be enough to force her last breath from her freezing lungs.
Because of this, he was careful of his claws as his fingers tucked under the snow to cradle both her head and the backs of her knees. She was lifted effortlessly— the strength of twenty men was quite useful when needed. Dracula focused on keeping her head from lolling too much as his long, graceful strides picked up once more, heading towards his castle.
She would have been a waste to eat anyways. Pity spoiled his meals.