Written By Kona
It was pouring rain in the realm of Caelanthar. The sky was dark, and the light of the moon was blocked by a blanket of unusually heavy clouds. The citizens of the city stayed in their homes, huddled near their stoves and fireplaces, the silence of the streets disturbed only by the sound of rain and a lone pair of feet walking at a brisk pace. The man was wearing a heavy cloak; his steps confident and quick, though he occasionally stumbled. Beneath his cloak, he clutched his stomach, and blood gushed forth from an open wound. He gritted his teeth and kept walking through the empty town. In such weather, the city seemed almost abandoned, with only faint glows from nearby homes lighting up the starless night. Diverting his path, the man turned into an alleyway and disappeared through a nearby sewer entrance.
Wading through the ankle-deep water of the old sewer, the man quickly found a hidden door in the wall. He pushed on it with a click and stepped inside. The room he entered was filled with research materials, vials, flasks, distilleries, and parchment strewn across every surface; it was seemingly a laboratory. The air was stale and heavy, with noticeable amounts of dust floating like fireflies, illuminated by lanterns scattered around the area. The man, whose laboratory this seemingly was, walked toward an old medicine cabinet in the corner of the room. Stumbling, he caught himself on a large, thick oak table. Regaining his footing, the scientist reached the cabinet and began searching for something frantically, glass occasionally shattering across the ground. As soon as he started he stopped, taking out a small vial and pouring its contents into his mouth. Almost immediately, the blood from his side stopped flowing out of the open wound. Exhausted, he walked to a nearby chair and collapsed into it. The chair was old and dusty, like everything else, but it seemed to be in decent condition. Soon, the man felt his eyelids grow heavy as the pain subsided, and he fell asleep.
The scientist’s eyes opened as he was woken by a faint banging coming from the room next to him. He looked frustrated as he walked over to a door in the leftmost corner of the laboratory’s back wall. The door was wooden and reinforced with steel around the edges, and it had multiple locks and latches, all of which were secured. The man began unlocking the door as the banging grew louder, reverberating through the metal as if the material itself was screaming out. Finally managing to open the door, he stepped through it. The place the door led to seemed to be a narrow hallway; it was quite short and did not lead to any other door. At the end of the hallway, there was a wooden casket with another lock on it, and the banging seemed to be coming from within. The man walked over to the casket, opened the bulky lock, and recoiled.
As the lid of the casket fell to the floor, the source of the noise revealed itself. Within was a man, or so it seemed. He was humanoid, but his skin looked pale and cold, like that of a cadaver. He was wearing nothing except old and tattered trousers, whilst his hair was long and dirty, a sign that he had not washed himself in months. His teeth were sharp, with his shouting highlighting his front canines long like the fangs of a viper.
Then the scientist spoke: “Stop with the racket!” His tone was fierce and full of anger. The shackled man simply looked at the scientist with a gleam of hatred in his eyes. “What? Why are you looking at me like that? Don’t you see that I’m trying to help you?! For months, I have been risking my life getting the blood of different animals for you! Don’t you see how much it’s helped? You don’t need to eat because of the blood! You don’t need to sleep because of the blood!” The scientist was growing increasingly frustrated. “You, out of all my subjects, survived the injections. Why are you so ungrateful? Look! Look at what I’ve gone through to get the blood that makes you stronger!” Saying this, the scientist showed the shackled man his wound. “I was stabbed trying to get you blood!” Then the scientist calmed down, remembering something. “Speaking of…” He reached into his coat and retrieved a small vial of red liquid. Upon seeing the vial, the shackled man’s eyes grew wide, and he began struggling against his restraints.
“Please… No more…” The shackled man spoke, his voice broken and strained, barely above a whisper.
The scientist replied in a cold, calm voice, “Be silent and stay still; it’ll hurt less.” He then retrieved a large syringe and emptied the vial into it. “This is bat’s blood. I am interested to see its effects on you.” The scientist stuck the needle into the subject’s arm and pushed the plunger down.
After a few minutes, the subject began squirming and whimpering in pain as his immune system tried to reject the foreign blood. After a few more minutes, he started screaming, though his voice was coarse and spent. But unlike most people, whose bodies would eventually shut down, the shackled man didn’t die. After about 30 minutes of pain, the man began showing signs of mutation caused by the bat blood. His ears turned long and curved, much like those of the animal that had been slaughtered for the effect.
After a few more minutes, the subject lost consciousness. The scientist, jotting down a few final notes in a notepad he had taken from his jacket, soon placed the wooden lid on the casket and secured the shackles around it. As the scientist began walking toward the reinforced door, the subject suddenly woke up. Through a small crack in the lid, he watched as the scientist walked away. In his anger and hatred for the cruel scientist, the shackled man summoned a surge of superhuman strength, undoubtedly a result of the injections he had endured. He broke free from his restraints, bursting the lid of the casket open, with the chains falling to the ground in a sharp, metallic clatter. The enraged man lunged at his captor, but the scientist quickly ran to the reinforced door and shut it behind him.
Panicked, the scientist began securing all the latches and locks on the door. As he closed the last latch, he realized he no longer heard anything from the other side and thought that perhaps his captive had fainted again. However, footsteps could soon be heard moving away from the door. Confused, the scientist wondered what his subject might be doing. Silence fell, and the man relaxed. But suddenly, the footsteps resumed, faster and growing louder. Quickly, he leaped aside from in front of the door. Just as he got clear, the heavily reinforced door was blown off its hinges, sending a cloud of dust swirling throughout the room.
From within the dust cloud, his former captive emerged. Before the scientist could react, he felt a sharp pain in his neck, and then his vision faded to black. As the newly freed man bit into the scientist’s neck, he tasted blood, but this blood was different. When he tasted it, he felt a wave of relief, akin to the sensation of drinking water after being dehydrated for days. He drank more and more of the scientist’s blood until he could drink no more.
After drinking the scientist dry, the former captive felt rejuvenated, and his strength increased even more. He felt a clarity of mind that he had not experienced for so long, and he was glad. After a few moments of enjoying his freedom, the man ran out of the door into the laboratory, grabbing a distinctive red coat from a hanger and putting it on. As he gazed upon the scientific instruments and empty vials of the very blood that he had been tormented with, the man felt hatred. He spotted one of the lanterns illuminating the room and threw it against the ground. As the oil of the lamp ignited, it spread to the large oak table and engulfed it in flames.
The man, satisfied with the destruction of the laboratory, walked toward the exit, but the hidden door had no handle. Not panicking, he thought of what he could do while the flames of the growing fire crept closer. Then he understood, and he was amused by the simplicity of his solution. The man walked to the door and simply punched it, causing it to blow off its hinges.
Finding his way out of the sewers, he exhaled a sigh of relief as he felt the touch of water on his skin. It was pouring rain in the realm of Caelanthar as the first vampire emerged into the pitch-black night.