The Night

Chapter VI: 15 Step

The Night

Chapter VI: 15 Step

---

????

The first thing Sora remembered after meeting Dracula were the voices, whispering like the wind but soft as the sounds of a lute. They comforted him, though his pain was still terrible. His vision swam, he blinked back and forth out of scenery. The detail in everything was agonizing, and yet giant pieces are still somehow fully missing from his memory. Every facet in every crack of the room, the dust hanging in the air, particles in the sunshine pouring in from the window... he saw fractals, spiraling forth from every plane of existence. Space and time, once faraway concepts, were suddenly apparent to him on a molecular level. It was mind-destroyingly complex yet bafflingly simple all the same. His eyes were black holes of information, devouring every speck of light. His body convulsed and he wasn't sure when he would start or stop screaming.

Then he remembered Dracula looking down on him, and for some reason it comforted him when the man spoke.

"Hush now, do not scream." He would say, and Sora would stop screaming.

"Sleep, lamb of mine." He would whisper, and Sora would sleep.

The voices would come and fill him with knowledge of what he'd become. They confirmed his worst fear: vampirism. He was now of the living dead and cursed to roam the planet indefinitely. He'd been taken by the creature that all of his fellow Transylvanians feared.

"Please kill me," He begged, "Please let me die!"

"Isn't this what you wanted, Sora?"

"Not this way. Let me die. Let me DIE!"

But on went the pain, Dracula's soothing, and the horror.

Yet over time the torture subsided, and a sense of relief began to envelop him. The more he learned of his fate the more he'd come to accept it. First he rejected blood, but then found himself guiltily loving the taste. He was told his power is that of suggestion: bending a person's will to his own benefit, which would make gathering information and taking blood easy. His perfect memory would serve him well in the recording of history, just as it had served his kind before him. To be this way was to be powerful, to live life eternal was a blessed gift. His childhood dreams had come to fruition, and damnation was actually salvation.

Then, all at once, it was over: All it took was a blink and was standing at a beach, wearing his family heirloom, and holding a ticket. For a long time, almost a hundred years in fact, this was actually the first thing he remembered after being entombed: standing is if trapped in a fog, clutching a ticket in one hand while touching his crown necklace with the other, whispers of who he was buried in his mind.

"Ser? Are ye okay?"

He looked over to see an old man, clearly a deckhand, carrying a small box of freight.

"You comen un board, lad?"

He knew the answer was yes, though he wasn't certain why.

"Excuse me, friend. Where are we?" Sora inquired.

The man eyed him warily, "Hit yer head, boy? This be the port of Varna. Do ye 'ave a map, son?"

Without hesitation Sora reached into his coat pocket and unveiled a well-handled map; a route across Gaia was traced in bold ink across its surface. His eyes fixed on the edge of Varna, which was circled. His gaze absently followed the protruding line that cut downward through the Black Sea as if it were already memorized. From the smoke of his mind, a plan began to emerge.