Aftermath

For what felt like an age, you weaved in and out of consciousness. You were never truly awake, not truly, instead you floated in a shallow pool of fatigue and exhaustion. A Ghost in your own shell.

From time to time, you would get flashes.

“Fuck - FUCK! Look at him! What do we do!?”

“Will you please just calm down, he’s not dead yet. I think his regeneration has kicked back in…”

“Regeneration!?” Another voice protested “There isn’t a part of him which hasn’t been broken, it could take him months to regenerate from this on his own!”

“Enough, Namina. Just… Just help me get him into the mansion. We’ll give him blood until we can figure out what else we can do. Just keep that fucking thing away from him until then”

“Pft, you really need to tell us twice!? I mean bloody hell, did you see what he did to Octavia while juiced up like that.”

“For god’s sake, Hughie, cut it out. It’s obvious that thing made him do it. Whatever that thing was… it wasn’t him. Now stop pissing around and help us get him up!”

It was all a blur, a meaningless series of moments conjoined in the most unnatural of ways. All the more confusing is what came when you were actually ****.

A vast sea of burning crimson lingered all around you.

Within was that spiral staircase, leading up to the dark presence at its precipice. There you sat, bound to sit on the stairway, unable to do anything but sit there and look down a great distance to the seabed. Haunting dark figures lingered there… You clan, Your Noxium.

You peered up at the swirling darkness above; your destination… and then back to the figures below desperately trying to find a silhouette with even the vague outline of piercings or wavy hair and a punk get up. But when you could not discern if Octavia’s shadow was there, you planted your head in your hands.

“God damn you, you idiot. You stupid fool.” You muttered, mortified, as the gentle bloody current swept on by.

“Way to beat yourself up there, boyo.”

Your eyes shot open, as you darted up to your feet. Sure enough, floating there was the inky black shadow, its glowing crimson eyes dipping into a wide scarlet smile.

You reached out snatching the figure whose endless cape of black hair whirled as it squirmed “Vlad!? Holy shit!” You spoke, almost misty eyed.

Vlad slipped out from your grasp like an octopus, reforming and floating on the banister of the stairway.

“Easy with the touchy feely there, masturbation is one thing but fondling your other self: whole new level of narcissism.”

“I-I thought you were gone, replaced by that… that Thing. What the hell happened to you!?” You said, grinning with joy.

Vlad’s shadowy brow raised high.

“What are you talking about? I’ve been here this whole-”

Vlad paused sniffing like a bloodhound on a scent. He quickly darted off into the Red Sea, zooming back and forth to peer around before zipping back to you.

“The hell is that, barely locked away down there!? How long have I been gone!?”

You were profoundly confused “What down where? It’s just us here like always… or, just me down here like alwa- shit! I don’t know, what - like, a day or two maybe?” You said, as Vlad rubbed his oily onyx temples.

His clawed featureless finger pointed down to the Sea Bed.

“Are you blind or just plain stupid. THAT thing down there!”

Looking over the banister of the stairway, you saw nothing but the vague black seabed. “Great so you come back, but you come back broken, just like everything else, fantastic… …”

With a blink, you saw what Vlad was talking about.

A way off, consuming easily ten square miles of the bloody horizon was a great unending void. No, that wasn’t what you’d call it, it was more like a vortex; a huge churning well of pure hungering blackness.

“What in the sweet baby Jesus is that!? That wasn’t there before!?”

“Yeah no shit Sherlock. It just so happens that I know exactly what that is, I just cannot fathom how you, moron that you are, blocked it so thoroughly out of your conscious mind that you didn’t even notice it.

That, Kid, is Frenzy, a metric shitload of Frenzy. How in the name of the blood god - and trust me it’s bad enough for me to drop that douchebag's name - did you get yourself in THAT DEEP!? There’s no coming back from Frenzy that advanced!!”

“I don’t know, I just… I thought I could… I’m not a proper vampire so I thought I could overcome it.”

You had never seen Vlad angry before, but the absolute fury which swelled in him now was something to behold. His shadowy aura grew so large that it bathed the stairway in blackness, his flaming red eyes blazed like two suns in supernova as he growled:

“YOU. ARE. A PROPER VAMPIRE. YOU INGRATE!! YOU ARE THE MOST VAMPIRC VAMPIRE OF ALL TIME, YOU ARE ME, I AM THE FUCKING VAMPIRE KING WHAT PART OF THAT DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND!?”

You slammed your fist on the black banister so hard that it cracked “How am I supposed to respond to that, every time I wake up, I forget about these dreams. I have fought tooth and nail to stay human, to get away from all of this… this freakish shit. Fine, I get it, I am not completely normal but that doesn’t mean that I have to suffer existing like this! There has to be some kind of order, some level of control?” You roared back.

Vlad’s colossal form popped like a balloon, rapidly shrinking as he whizzed around in all directions. When he was back to his normal size, he charged at you, wrapping his incorporeal hand around your neck.

“Now you listen to me, you dullard, and listen well. You were born a mortal, yes. But you were born of ****, on the day that you popped out of your mother and came into this world, **** had already wrapped you in its shawl - you were barely living, if not for your father and your grandfather’s sacrifices, you wouldn’t have lived to see your first morrow.

Think about that, you were never meant to even live, this is true of all mortal beings. Our existence alone is a one in a billion chance, mine, yours, all of humanities and even the Undead. We are creatures, all of us, bound to chaos, we exist because of chaos - Not Order.

All of humanity drinks the blood of every object, animate or inanimate, that it can get its grubby little hands on and you - the best hope from protecting this world from an eldritch Blood God, get squeamish because your required sustenance is humans?

Listen to yourself, Chip, You’re fucking nuts. WAKE. THE FUCK. UP!"

Your left flickered open slightly… you were completely without sensation, unable to move, think or even really see. You were utterly undone.

“Oh my god, Charlie. Charlie, are you awake, can you hear me?” That voice, you knew it… Belle.

“He’s awake? Quick go get, Cosma, now!” That was Cleo, you couldn’t mistake that snappy tone anywhere.

You tried to sit up, but the muscles in your back screamed and you failed.

“Don’t get up, my love. Shh-shh it’s okay, it’s going to be alright.” Belle comforted you sweetly, caressing your bandaged cheek with her cold fingers.

“Charlie, I’m… So happy you’re awake. We weren’t sure that you’d ever come back.” Cleo spoke, you felt her weight lean against the bed.

Gritting your loose teeth, you managed to just about pivot your head to look at her. Your vision was a spinning kaleidoscopic dance of red and brown. “H… How… long?”

“A couple of hours now. After the Knight and the Inquisitor left, everyone just ran off. Not that I can blame them, those two were terrifying.” Belle said shakily.

You huffed, saturated with intense pain “Oct… Octavia?”

“Octavia… Charlie, it’ll take her sometime to recover but Cosma and Carrie were doctors way back, they think that we can piece her back together. We have been attending her day and night, we will make sure she pulls through.” Cleo sounded slightly shaken.

With all of your might, you pushed through the pain, lifting up your left arm. A strong hand quickly stopped you “Master, d-”

Your one good eye oozed with severity and Isabelle, frowning slowly let you go.

You flexed phantom fingers… you could feel them, you swore you could but, all you could see was a heavily bandaged nub where your hand once was… before, Morrigan could tear it off.

A crimson tear fell down your eyelid “I… I didn’t mean… to-”

“I know, Charlie, we all know.” Cleo wiped your eye, and gave you a small reassuring smile. Yet you couldn’t help but sense the small inkling of fear in her voice.

“D-Diana? Vicky?”

The both of them paused for a long while. “You really need to get some rest, Master. Whatever that horrible sword did, it brought back your regeneration, but you suffered a lot of damage. It will take time to recover.”

You couldn’t be bedridden, not after all that. You needed to be up, you needed to be ready or you were all screwed. Balneux said it himself, it would be a festival of Bloodshed.

That’s when the idea came. You’d been avoiding it for some time, but… exceptional violations call for exceptional measures. “B-Bonnie… Bonnie. I… need… Bring me… Bonnie.”

“Bonnie? Bonnie who? Master? Charlie, can you hear me, Bonnie who?” Belle asked.

But you had already slipped away once again, back to your dreams, back into sleep