Prickly thorns, tender roses

Refuge

He looked outside the wide arching window, where heavy rain fell upon the world on a cold afternoon. This was the fourth day in a row when the even thrumming persisted against the silent walls of the castle. But then, at least my tomb is dry inside, he thought wryly. The door to the chamber opened with a dust trodden creaking to allow its master passage.

He paced through one of many endless hallways of the ancient structure with his elegant gait, one hand reaching behind his neck. Long fingers halfheartedly glided through fair, unbound hair. He descended the wide set of stairs, lost in thoughts of all and nothing, his bright golden eyes dimmed as he recalled meandering streams of forgotten times.

As ever, his gaze strayed to the wide painting adorning the wall to his right, depicting two figures. Blue eyes filled with purpose and kindness stared back at him; lately it seemed they were alive. He watched the other figure immortalized on canvas. Menacing but contained, it was yet one of the rare, if not sole existing representation of his father void of his renowned merciless and sullen might. He appeared...

Almost human. He lowered his eyes in a frown.

"Adrian! Adrian stop your fleeing this instant!" her voice still rang through the corridors of his mind, accompanied by her light scent of lavender and rosemary.

Caring arms wound around him. "I know you are loath to attend when the sun is so bright outside, but your lessons are not to be trifled with," the fair-haired woman told the vision of her bright son, whose childlike face puckered in exasperated annoyance.

The images faded to nothing before him, leaving him in the solitary company of his half-human heart and its weak, endless beating.

His mother had always trusted them more than was perhaps wise. Now, after having barely survived an attempt to his own life at their hands, he was beginning to understand the determination of his father, if only an iota. He would never, and could never accept the unfathomable way in which his infamous father Vlad Dracula Ţepeş had chosen to dull his pain. Attempting to wipe humanity off the face of the earth as his last death cry had been a frightening goal even to his generals - and an achievable one at that, which made it all the more necessary to be thwarted.

Necessary. It was necessary.

How interesting that you feel the need to keep telling yourself that, an antagonizing thought hit him with the force of a physical blow. It spanned from a different corner of his mind, one come alive only after the harrowing event of a past not far removed. He drowned in the silence of the vast hall, where sparsely lit torches shadowed broken furniture and the echoes of a great and lavish legacy; memory returned him to the recent past. When he thought he'd found a compress to the aching void left behind by the departure of the Speaker and the Hunter. When he thought he was nurturing the flicker of humanity that drove a part of himself. But he'd mistaken betrayal for sincere interest and companionship, and with it came proof that humanity was burdened with it.

Their corpses may have rotted away by now, he was not sure. He had not gone outside ever since. Not for work, not for gathering or tending gardens or even delving into the rich knowledge of the Belmont vault he guarded, close to the castle of the father he felled. Not for feeding like the vampire kin of his father would. But lately, he found the endless struggle for power within leaning more towards his vampiric side rather than the soft, carefully crafted steadfastness inherited from his human mother.

The downpour continued outside. The sound of his steps his only company, the tall figure changed his direction in the great and empty abode, seeking the library. Loneliness had ever been his mate, but now with the disillusion of recent events, where he had been forced to end two beings he'd cared for, well, it seemed seclusion would be his forever tenant. And he had cared for them, and would have imparted with the humans all his knowledge in time. They came knocking at his door in search of a master, after all. He had done his part, though perhaps failing to account for the impatience defining human race as a whole. And failing to recognize its ruthless desperation owed to the brief flames which were human lives. Yes, he had stalled. And yes, he'd grown accustomed to their presence. Mistakes to learn from.

Forced by circumstance, he ended their lives. The wound was still there, yet raw and seeping. And even as he speared their bodies through and hung them before his gates, he considered retrieving them afterwards for proper burial.

But then he had not.

Let them stand guard to my secrets, as was their wont. Let the others see. Fear was what they knew best, and what drove them. And it will drive them away from here. Was not living death endured better in solitude?

He walked instead of using his lightning fast shifts in space, his form weakened from the intentional renouncing of sustenance. Even blood would do, though he denounced the taste of it to the heavens.

Having descended the stairs and into the grand entry hall, just as he was about to take a left towards the library, there was a desperate and insistent rapping at the great doors of the castle. His movements turned stealthy in the blink of an eye, and the following second found him at the other end of the hall. The strikes had ceased and instead, the tall doors slowly opened. He rescinded locking them at all since setting the bodies of the young warriors Taka and Sumi outside. And truth be told... did he even need or want protection? His thought was severed by the immediate assail on his senses; the incensed and fearful scent of warm, human blood.

Who on earth would dare go past the horrors at the gate to enter here?

~~

She ran. She ran as fast as her feet took her, through wood and fen, stumbling over gnarled limbs and underbrush protruding from the forest bed. Branches and tree boughs scraped her cheeks. Leaves caught in her pitch black hair as the woman stumbled in her flight, wary of the trampling hooves drawing nigh, gaining on her. It had been unwise to linger, most unwise indeed. But now here she was, losing ground the closer she heard the desperate whinnying of horses.

"Get back here you damned slut!" one was calling with ire in his bloodshot eyes, a heavily bearded man in robes of black and gold.

The woman was on her last remaining strength, and she faltered, near falling to her knees. And her eyes were deceiving her, as ahead materialized the walls and gates of an abode. No... that was no mirage or a fancy of the mind. The gates did exist! The great doors were indeed physical, and closer with each beat of time. She lunged forward with renewed hope, the primal will to survive taking precedence and fueling her desperate flee with a burst of strength. Soon the trees were sparser, and she reached a clearing of sorts, bolting straight towards the heavy metallic doors.

Were those—

Her heart dropped to her feet as the escapee gaped, wide eyed, at the two bodies impaled before the entrance to the castle. The woman turned to look behind her, where the riders pursuing her so fervently had skidded to a halt at the edge of the clearing. Their eyes were set on the same hanging, rotting corpses, the wide archways and tall towers of the ominously silent building. Their faces then focused on her, and hatred shone bright and dark through their eyes. They hurled insults and threats as far as the wind took them, but seemed to dare go no further.

The young woman wavered, and straightening her back, pulled the tattered cloak about her shoulders. She walked closer on hesitating steps, the faint scent of decay assailing her senses.

She looked back to the riders. They were still observing her, determined, waiting to see what she would do. If she fled back to the forest, she was theirs. The woman narrowed her eyes at them before looking back to the silent entrance.

The only way, Ravenna. Squaring her shoulders and steeling the shivering of her wearied and buckling feet, she rushed straight to the castle doors, striking at them until her fists hurt. When no answer came, she looked back to her pursuers, only to see them slowly approaching from the other side of the clearing.

Desperation taking hold, the woman groaned and with one last shred of an attempt she halfheartedly beat at the doors. "Please!" she cried.

Nothing.

Just as all hope failed her, there was a sharp noise of metal sliding upon metal from the inside, and a ghastly wail; the doors opened.