Vampire Nightlife

"Attempted?" Lukas sputtered for a moment. He glanced at the screen with a decisive glare and frowned. "Cut that out. We're in a time-sensitive mission here."

[Attempting To Learn New Blood Skill]

The screen didn't so much as change as opposed to continue showing him the same exact thing from earlier. Lukas let out a breath he had been holding, his shoulders sagging slightly—not to drop the bodies—but enough for him to relax.

Concentrate, Lukas. That was what he told himself.

The past didn't matter. The future would remain unsure.

But at the present, Lukas coaxed himself into breathing far more normally and allowed himself to imagine the way blood circulated around in one's body.

'Do Vampires and Humans have the same circulation system? We're not exactly undead as far as I'm concerned so it should be similar, if only a little stronger.'

Those thoughts of what a Vampire could be were temporarily thrown into the background.

Instead, Lukas mustered all of his will and energy into imagining blood and then bending it to his mind's desire.

The blood rushed into his ears and it pounded strongly in his chest.

[You Have Learned Blood Bending Skill!]

[Mastery Incomplete!]

"Hah. Shouldn't matter, as long as I can do this." Lukas opened his eyes and snapped his fingers.

Matthew's body leaned forward, his mind still unconscious since Lukas knocked him out. He swayed from side to side like some kind of plant in the wind, only controllable by Lukas' will alone.

"I suppose it's a lot easier when one is not awake." Lukas said.

Was it a winning thing?

Lukas didn't allow himself the luxury of smiling about it at any other moment. He couldn't bask in anything as he headed down a far more purified path and then laid all of the three men to the ground.

"If I had magic, then I could have set up wards, set up protection and everything—but they'll be fine." Lukas reassured himself, holding onto the crystal wand.

Was he prepared to meet Rhea now?

Hardly.

He was just in the beginnings of learning Blood Bending.

"Drusilla said I needed complete mastery earlier, so I had to run away, but now there's too much on the line to stop." Lukas said.

Without further ado, Lukas spun and went forwards back into the more dangerous forest. He threw the Purification Spell back and forth, almost tempted to learn the Wand Slinger skill.

"Who says that there's a limit to what type of Skills I can learn anyway? This VR thing never said anything, hasn't said anything and won't seem to say anything at all." Lukas pushed himself forward.

He reached out to the connection thread between him and Rhea, felt it churning and lively in his person.

She was close.

"I know we haven't actually gotten to talk much, but we're somehow thinking of the same exact thing aren't we?" Lukas grinned, although he knew it didn't quite reach his eyes if someone were to see it.

***

Iolathane Durand let out a pained howl.

Everywhere she tried to break free from the grasps of the trees' roots, it bound her harder and twisted around her even more painfully.

But she had to try.

Lest she be turned into something like them.

When Iolathane and the others were swarmed, she had passed out completely and then awoke after what seemed like an eternity bound to a tree alongside several others.

Each of the Vampires were around but all of them seemed to be in different stages of… transformation.

It was like a cocoon of a butterfly, or a moth was more apt.

The paper-like cocoon was gray and wrapped around tightly against others.

Vampires like Iolathane normally didn't deal or were aware of creatures and insects besides an outdoor setting.

The city of Nyx and others were inlaid with a special spell that cast them in an eternal darkness and not many creatures appreciated that kind of lifestyle.

"Come on, come on." Iolathane twisted and tried to break free. But she knew that it was a bit of a lost cause. Her vision started to cloud with black dots and the vision of the Dark Forest was starting to turn into something else.

The trees turned to flesh, an inner lining of smooth and strange muscle that had the most grotesque of stenches. A liquid pooled at her feet and rose, an inky black tar that tried to pull her under.

As if she was trapped in the stomach of a colossal being, or somewhere else.

The other Vampires who were completely trapped in the cocoons started to drop into the black tar, swallowed and consumed whole and all Iolathane could watch in horror.

Her heart was in her throat.

The others who seemed to be fighting and struggling like her writhed in their traps. The still exposed part of their bodies, they were all starting to get covered by strange runic symbols that made her eyes want to bleed red.

A sound echoed and invaded her mind.

Iolathane coughed something out, tasting blood and her own vomit.

Her chest wracked and heaved with the most awful of feelings.

But she couldn't give up.

She had to tap into her powers.

The innate skills of a Vampire that was hers by birth right.

"You're different from the others. You know that, they know that…" Iolathane squeezed her eyes shut and tried to ignore the whispers and slivers in her mind.

She was stronger and more powerful than the rest of the… Vampires in the city of Nyx.

Durand. Aurelius. Argenti… and even Carmilla.

While Iolathane was no House Leader, while she was not privy to the deepest and darkest secrets that they held among their private chambers and affairs, she knew.

A long-held secret that nobody was allowed to know but she knew from the very bones of her body.

And all she had to do was tap into it.

"Come on, come on!" Iolathane's eyes burned bright red as a light engulfed her. A shadow lurked at the closest tree.

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