Chapter Text
The sky was overcast when Clown rolled into town, good.
Ment less burning, so it was easier to hide.
“We’re about fifteen minutes away from vitae sir.” The guard driving the carriage announced.
Vitae… the last stop on his little trip across the country until he was back home.
Clown sighed looking over the countryside, it was so much easier to travel a couple hundred years ago… back before vampires started turning any person who looked at them funny and started getting them caught.
Now people had all these anti vampire precautions.
Infuriating.
To think, Clown decided to take a fly over to Transylvania just for fun thinking it’d be a short three month visit.
Of course he chose the month humans perfected crossbows, after that flying as a bat across that large of an area was practically a death wish.
Now he had to go through this frankly ridiculous system trying to find out Vampires just to try and get back to his castle. Oh, it was probably hopelessly wrecked after so long.
He’d be stuck in this pathetically small town for six months, the last ‘check’ that he wasn’t a vampire.
Obviously, the other checks didn’t work particularly well. Neither would this one.
This stop wasn’t even on the original plan for his travel, but nooooo you can’t send a peasant from the most vampire ridden kingdom in the world straight to another giant kingdom during Ortus vampyrorum!
Honestly- what were these three years of checking even for?
Ortus vampyrorum was a special time of year that lasted seven months every ten years when the moon would turn red, gifting vampires incredible strength. Though, the moon was only visibly red for six of those months. Probably why Clown was only being quarantined for that long.
Humans were so dumb.
Though, Clown wasn’t feeling much of a power boost- probably because he’d been starving himself of any blood whatsoever for the past four years. Three when he was in transit, and a year before that so he could pass the initial tests.
Clown was currently at the power of an average vampire, which wasn’t particularly good considering his true power level.
Oh well.
At least the sun burning wouldn’t be to obvious. To think, some people actually believed vampires turned to ash with just brief contact with the sun! It was hilarious, at most the sun would case a horribly painful sunburn on a vampires skin, it would happen in a matter of seconds, but it was still not beyond what humans could reasonably get.
But that was only at full strength, currently Clown doubted his burns would even be visible.
As long as he stayed appropriately covered up he’d be fine.
Suddenly vitae came into view, it had large wooden walls surrounding a small town, the top of the walls spikes were carved into it, designed to pierce vampires.
There was one body hanging from a particularly large one. Probably some fledgling getting far too confident with the blood moon. Unfortunate.
With all Clowns complaining, he didn’t mind small towns. They were quiet and quaint, lovely to take a stroll in, easy to get to know people.
It was just incredibly difficult to get a proper meal, you could usually get away with it once. Maybe twice if you were particularly skilled… but the townsfolk would usually notice something wrong very quickly.
Good thing Clown wasn’t expecting to get a meal here.
The first thing he noticed about the town was that it had a weirdly advanced gate, it was rare for bustling cities to have this advanced of a gate yet this small town had one? Maybe Clown was simply out of touch with the times.
That was a constant issue for vampires.
Clown slowly stepped out of the carriage and looked around, the roads and sidewalks seemed to be well maintained, and there was plenty of planting around the place, he could smell some bread baking in the distance.
This wouldn’t be a horrible six months.
There didn’t seem to be a lot of people around, that was normal for the entrance to the town. Mostly just guards, however there was one person around who wasn’t in any kind of uniform.
He was crouched down in front of a stream that flowed through the the town. Clown couldn’t really tell what he was doing.
“Branzy! Get out of the river!!” One of the guards called.
“Huh- why? I’m not bugging you.” The man- presumably Branzy replied barely looking up at the guard.
“You shouldn’t be in the river, it’s freezing! You’ll catch hypothermia.” The guard walked up to the man.
“I’ll make such sacrifices for the name of science! Look at my water wheel- I’m going to prove these things can generate electricity.” The man smiled.
Oh- electricity. That odd new invention everyone seemed to be raving about. The entire thing seemed ridiculous to Clown, but it also seemed like one of those inventions that would catch on.
“What do you care about electricity? Your the steam guy.” The guard replied looking at what Clown assumed was a miniature water wheel, though he couldn’t see it.
“I’m the weird inventions guy Rek! Now if you’re not going to be helpful leave me alone.”
“Well, another reason you shouldn’t be in the river is because we have a new visitor. So I was hoping not to make the entire town look weird.” The guard- Rek, replied.
That’s when the mysterious man finally looked over at Clown, who was currently leaning on his carriage as his stuff was unloaded.
He gave a small wave.
“Oh- hi!” Branzy called standing up and brushing himself off from the mud.
He walked over to Clown and introduced himself.
“Hi, I’m Branzy Craft, the local engineer and weirdo. The rest of the town is not as weird as I am, pleasure to meet you!” Branzy shook Clowns hand.
Interesting fellow… Branzy was clearly a young adult, but he had white grayish hair. His hands seemed gruff and well worked but Branzy didn’t seem to have a lot of muscle on him. He also had weirdly purple looking blue eyes-
Peculiar.
“Pierce Acrobat, but everyone calls me Clown.”
Branzy tilted his head in an odd way studying Clown.
“Clown? Why?”
“Because I work as a clown.” Clown replied. If he needed to make money, that’s usually how he did it.
Branzy studied Clown for a second time.
“You seem to normal to be a clown.” Branzy said bluntly. Out of the corner of his eye Clown saw Rek facepalm.
“Oh I assure you I’m not.” Clown smiled, he was careful not to reveal his fangs.
Branzy shrugged looking glancing over at Clowns stuff.
“Oh- you have a lot of stuff, do you want a trolley to help move it? I’ll go get a trolley!” Branzy said before skipping off.
Peculiar, very peculiar.