[Blood Diary Entry]
How long has it been exactly?
How long have I wandered these lands of eternal twilight?
Questions I have asked myself more times than I care to count, and each time I arrive at the same conclusion—they are meaningless. I simply am. I exist. And that is enough for me.
But that begs the question—why exactly am I in this melancholic and philosophical mood?
Well, I guess it comes with what my existence entails… People like to paint vampires as these brooding and somber beings.
I, too, once had such notions. A biological researcher—searching for what at the time I called the code of life—with a penchant for stories of the impossible. Stories of soaring dragons, of humans doing such wonderous feats that they can barely be called humans anymore, of bloodsuckers moving as fast as the wind and wielding might that would scare even the gods.
And I ended up getting dragged into one of those stories.
Meeting my untimely demise, only to awaken in another world.
A typical story, with a typical start.
Until I realized where I stood—what I had become, and what my future would be.
It wasn't bleak. Nor was it despairing. Far from it. I had been reborn as the absolute apex of biological evolution.
A Higher Vampire.
And not just a simple one, neither, but one of two Primogenitors, the very start of the entire species. Two beings engineered by the world itself, with what little spark of sentience this rock possessed.
It orchestrated our birth, inducing the strongest creatures on the planet into wanton slaughter, and from the blood and the energy of the ley lines—or as I liked to call them, the veins and arteries of the planet—it created two beings made to embody absolute perfection.
My brother and I.
As for why two males? Doesn't this make species proliferation impossible?
The answer is yes.
It does.
And that is precisely why we were born.
Our existence was already approaching the boundaries of what shouldn't be possible. The energy required to create two beings of the same gender was already quite absurd, if we were of different ones… I shudder at the thought.
And there we stood. Two beings emerging from a sea of blood.
Our story began there.
From there, we grew up together. We laughed together. We fought beasts and beings that my previous human mind couldn't even begin to grasp. We defended our home together.
The planet we named Veythra.
A haven tailor-made for our kind. Or in this case, a species made to perfectly match their planet.
Like that, a little more than two billion years passed by. It was monotonous up to a point, but our minds were geared towards enduring the flowing rivers of time.
And everything changed.
As Higher Vampires, we could develop the ordinary abilities of our species. Lightning-fast regeneration, reflexes, and speed. Strength to move mountains. The ability to turn translucent or turn into mist altogether. That and so much more.
But we also could develop abilities geared specifically to us. Tailor-made, you could say.
Mine followed my individualistic nature and ever-hungrier mind. I could bind memories to blood, mine and the ones from beings I consumed. My brother's though…
His came from loneliness…
He could split his body into multiple copies; these followed a certain hive-mind principle, as in they were all him, and they all maintained his might.
But I knew he was capable of so much more.
And how right I was…
He only bided his time. Growing in strength and energy. Until he could fulfill his deepest desire.
A legacy.
And thus, he split his existence—his soul, all that he was—into six different beings. Newborn Higher Vampires. Three pairs, to embody his most prominent characteristics.
They split into three different tribes, as they called them.
The Gharasham. They embodied my brother's nobility, his honor, and moral code. Veritable aristocrats in the making.
The Ammurun. They embodied ruthlessness and the way of the warrior in general.
The Tdet. They were researchers and scholars in spirit. Embodying the spirit of curiosity.
They felt like kin, yet they were absolutely alien at the same time. I couldn't relate to them, not entirely at least…
And as such, I kept interactions to a minimum.
They thrived. They multiplied.
And thus, the Higher Vampire society was born. No longer made of only two beings, but of hundreds of them.
Very few times my isolation was disturbed.
By Gharasham upstarts that wanted to rope me into political games, so that I could flip the board and revolutionize their society. Needless to say, I never did. Their little games were amusing to watch, but a headache to be thrown into. And I tend to avoid headaches.
Then there were the Ammurun youngsters. By the flowing blood, how I hate these barbarians. Time and again, a few would come to me and challenge me to combat. At first, I entertained them, but they grew bolder, and it was no longer a chore but a goddamn disturbance. And I started butchering or destroying some would-be challengers. It got to the point where it was against the law for an Ammurun tribe member to approach me for anything but official reasons.
And lastly the Tdets. This was the clan I had the easiest time conversing with and having amicable relations with. We just had a certain synergy. They were always curious and hungry for the knowledge I possessed, but they were never obnoxious or rude about it. Of my brother's spawns, these were the ones I most liked.
This was the history of Sol'Vahr, as the other tribes liked to call me.
The tribe of a single member. Yet greater and stronger than all of the others combined.
And now here I stand.
At the top of my abode.
A palace of crystals, almost transparent. Here I lived for hundreds of millions of years. Here I read books that caught my interest. Here I slumbered. Here I researched.
My eyes drifted from the delicate and intricate architecture that I have come to appreciate so dearly, and into the vast wilderness that stretched beyond my window.
A breathtaking scenario.
A sky of a purplish hue, littered with perpetual Aurora Borealis, stuck in an eternal state of twilight.
Forests of bioluminescent flora and fauna. Adapted to this beautiful planet.
Delicate and so very precious.
In moments like these, I can sort of understand why elves from mythology and culture were so fiercely protective of nature.
But I can't afford the luxury to be lost in this idyllic scenery.
I have work to do.
And as such, my eyes drifted back to my table.
The results from two different experiments were displayed.
The first detailed the makings of a ritual. A ritual that could possibly create new Higher Vampires, or at least convert beings into our species.
My brother's demise lit a spark that refused to extinguish itself. The desire for a legacy of my own. To be surrounded by my kind.
I could have just mingled with my brother's spawn?
Yes, I could have.
But I don't want to.
And that was more than enough reason for me.
Though that could very well be wishful thinking, as after all this time, I still had no results to show for my effort. The framework is all there, but there is something missing. And I searched every corner of the planet, believe me.
I sighed and put the paper down.
I turned towards the other experiment report.
This time, I flashed a toothy grin. A smile filled with razor-sharp fangs. The smile of a predator.
If one is familiar with the stories of the Higher Vampires, they should recognize that these beings were dragged from their home. Tossed into a whole new planet by a celestial phenomenon called 'The Convergence of the Stars'.
And I will be damned if I'm going to just accept being dragged into a world of hopelessness and of such a dreary nature.
And here is where this experiment comes in.
Wards composed of the blood magic unique to my species. Casted atop each other, again and again. Each covering different aspects of what the Convergence could use to drag me away. Temporal anomalies. Spatial rifts. The works.
Now I can stay in my home. Not to be dragged away by the whims of fate and its machinations.
Maybe I could even witness the birth of new sentient beings on my planet. It could very well be the missing component of my rituals.
As soon as I finished my musings, the sky trembled, the air shuddered, and the ground shook.
My smile died, my eyes narrowed, and my blood flowed in cold rage.
It arrived.
The Convergence was upon Veythra.
Just as I finished my countermeasures…
The timing seemed convenient.
Almost planned.
But it mattered little.
I turned towards my other window, where in the distance I could see the city built by the other vampires. I watched people vanish into thin air, one after the other.
My abode flared to life.
The translucent crystals shone red. Veins of pure blood magic stood against the disaster.
Soon enough, I felt the systematic enchantments draw from my energy reserves as theirs just wasn't cutting it anymore.
The walls cracked with the sheer power, both mine and from the 'calamity'. Bit by bit, the wards were failing. But their purpose was almost done at this point.
The world stopped shaking, and the sky ceased its trembling.
I released a breath filled with relief and the glee of victory.
I almost wanted to shout and taunt the universe to try again in a million years.
My joy was short-lived.
The catastrophe came back in full force, filled with venomous, vengeful indignation. Multiple times stronger and more intense, and this time it was focused solely on me…
I didn't even have the time to mount any sort of desperate resistance.
And just like that, I was gone. Dragged against my will to a foreign world. And I couldn't even know if I was going to end up in the same world the other vampires ended up in.