It started a long time ago, in a cave...

Sakurapu
Oct 25, 2015
2 min read

“Mottknight!”

The single word echoed in the depths of the Baltic vault known only as the Onyx Crypt.

“Mottknight! Again you disgrace your family name and the immortal realm!”

The youth kneeling before Sir Normander decided he’d played the remorseful student long enough. He rose to his feet, keeping his elder’s stare. It was a toxic stare, one that had brought many a young and brash vampire to trembling. Not him.

Normander was old, even by vampire standards, and the flicker of amber torchlight didn’t help his features. He sat on the throne of bones that had been shellacked by enamel so many times that the contours of skulls blended together, making any individual skull indiscernible. It was a relic, belonging to another, more traditionally vampiric time, but a throne even so.

“How many times must you come here after failure?” Normander demanded of the youth. His black cloak was wrapped bat-like around him, giving him the appearance of a bat sitting down, right-side-up.

“I don’t consider embracing my heritage—your heritage,” the youth dared to add, “—a failure.” He grinned, a charming grin by most standards in the Human world where he’d used it to get close to a slender, pale neck; several necks, in fact. “And since when is acting on tradition such a crime? When did we decide to neuter our heritage?”

Normander leaned forward, leering at the youth until the smaller figure lost some of his grin and began to tremble slightly. Normander’s own grin was a frightful skull-tight smile that showed every tooth in his lean face, his well-developed fangs glinting in the dancing torchlight. “That decision was made centuries ago by minds far brighter than yours, boy. In seven hundred years of being hunted, slain, hiding, and begging for a drip of blood-morsel, wiser Ravens of the clans have decided what is best for all of the vampire realm.”

The youth stood straighter, feeling the eyes at the back of his head—those who sat in judgment of him—silently screaming his doom. He clutched his ebony cloak, hiding his now dwindling trembling as he tried to bolster his nerves. He gave Normander’s pointy smile a weak grin. He shrugged, chuckling. “It was just a little bite, on a little neck.”

Normander dropped his smile, a grim look crossing his austerely thin face. “She was just a little nun. You’ve sufficiently undone centuries of work, Young Mottnight . . . fools like you are born and make us prey again!” Normander boomed. “Always smartasses like you take privileges during their final exam and break our trust with the Human world!”