A Jaded Life

Maybe the plan to dispose of repaired Shattered should also include Shattered we turned into Vampires. Trying to ascertain the mental state of the newly created Vampire proved to be an exercise in frustration and gave me an ever-growing headache. Part of the problem was that the thing had the memories of their human progenitor but also the memories of their existence as a Shattered, with instincts that matched neither, turning them into a wildly unpredictable and incredibly annoying being. One moment, they were bitching and moaning as if the world owed them money, the next moment they became driven by a homicidal rage only to fall into a deep depression, crying that they were a monster. Only to start demanding that we helped them, or screaming that we turned them into a monster before falling back into the bitching and moaning. Over and over again, an endless cycle of noise.

Granted, they weren’t really wrong about the part where they labelled themself a monster. Maybe it was due to the broken state of their soul, maybe it was for some other reason but whatever the cause, the Vampric transformation had left them in a wretched state. Sure, Lia wasn’t the poster child for good looks from a human’s perspective but her predatory grace, symmetrical body features and primal strength gave her a savage, intimidating beauty. The newly created Vampire lacked most of those features. Yes, their body was roughly symmetrical but the jagged teeth in their maw took away any sort of beauty their face could project, while the claws and the mottled, grey skin took away even more, especially once the dry, leathery texture became apparent.

“What are your plans for our… guest?” I asked Lia, as the endless noise was in a fairly quiet part of its cycle.

“We could try and see if Luna and you have some cure for vampirism. We can turn Souls into that draining, vampiric state you described, but can we do the opposite?” Lia mused, sounding genuinely curious.

“Maybe,” I started tapping my lips, starting to consider what might be necessary to accomplish this, “Are you thinking of trying to become human once more?” I had to ask, curious what prompted the idea.

“Never,” she shook her head, grinning in a way that showed off her wicked canines, “I’m happy to be the first of my kind, especially as, in hindsight, I don’t really like who I used to be. Why would I want to return to being a useless chit, obsessed with all sorts of inane entertainment when I could remain as I am now? To say nothing of the simple fact that Chantalle wouldn’t have lasted a day after the Change, I doubt she would last any longer now, after the monsters out there had time to grow stronger,” she paused, shaking her head once more, “No, I much prefer to remain a monster and alive than return to being a human and end up dead.”

“Monsters to the end,” I nodded, ruffling her hair affectionately, as I knew there were people out there who’d consider me a monster, too. Not that my actions didn’t earn me the appellation, especially if one took the things I had done on Mundus into account. Not that I did, as those actions had been taken with the understanding that Mundus was nothing but a fictional world, in which nothing I did had any lasting consequences. No matter what one did in a game, the game itself, and thus the characters inhabiting it, wouldn’t be fundamentally damaged outside of the game’s parameters. Unless something went fundamentally wrong, or, as the case with Mundus, the world hadn’t been fictional in the first place.

After agreeing with Lia on the next experiment for our Shattered Vampire, I joined Luna and together we started to discuss ways to make Lia’s idea a reality. While we had only limited knowledge of Souls, we were starting to understand more and more, though a part of me was wondering about the vampiric Soul. Was it truly a Soul, there were multiple, fundamental differences that made me wonder. And if not, would we have to bring back a Soul from the next great adventure, as one novel described it, something I wouldn’t consider possible with our current abilities? It would need a whole lot more, both knowledge and power, to have a chance of returning a Soul from the afterlife, as that was something even the Grandmother couldn’t accomplish. Or maybe it wasn’t a question of ability but price, I vaguely remembered the Grandmother telling me that the existence of Neyto was partially based on compromise and that even she wasn’t willing to annoy the Gods more than necessary.

Regardless, it was something I wanted to try, especially if it turned out that the Vampiric Souls weren’t actually Souls but something else, some strange reflection of a Soul which couldn’t be returned to its original state. If that were the case, trying to return a Vampire to its original state would be a good, first step on the path of trying to revive Sigmir, my ultimate goal.

Together, Luna and I formed an idea how to go about our attempt to return a Vampiric Soul to its original state. Part of it was based on the original transformation into a Vampire, during which the host was essentially brought to a near-dead state before the transforming agent, in this case, the Blood of a Vampire, was introduced, giving them a path to an alternate state of existence. The reversal of that would require us to bring a Vampire into a near-dead state, before introducing a transforming agent to give them yet another path to continue their existence. The transforming agent, in this case, had to be something that was far from the magically infused Blood we used for the original transformation and here, Luna had an idea.

She had been experimenting with ways to infuse materials with a combination of the Divine Power she gained from Lady Hecate and the Life Magic she had inherited from the Grandmother. The original idea was that it would hopefully give her access to a potent healing agent and, following some old lore about the healing tears of a phoenix, she decided to try infusing the power into her own tears. Apparently, Lady Hecate was quite amused at the idea and helped Luna out during a few of their dream lessons, though Luna hadn’t been able to perfect the process just yet, making it fairly inefficient, especially as the amount of power ending up in the tears fluctuated wildly. It sounded better than her original instant-cancer ‘healing’ magic, but not by much.

Still, if we managed to turn a Vampire back into their human state, giving them cancer would only mean that we didn’t have to worry about the human’s future, as they simply didn’t have one. We would have to find a way to perfect these healing tears for future attempts but for this proof of concept, it sounded like a workable solution.

Given that our test subject was still trapped in the endless cycle of noise, I decided to give us some peace and quiet by knocking them out. This way, we could hear each other think while we performed the experiment, as especially the first part was largely based on vague ideas.

Namely, how can we bring a Vampire into a death-like state while having their body remain in a state that would allow them to accept the different path we were planning to offer? It needed to be something that could be fixed with relative ease, but at the same time, it couldn’t be fully physical. So, the idea was that I would use Death Magic to push the body beyond its ability to cope, essentially flooding the draining effect caused by the Vampiric Soul with the necrotic power. Hopefully, that would force the Soul to shut down and, in turn, give us the opportunity to twist the vampiric parts back into human parts.

Not that doing so would solve all our problems, the body would remain monstrous, even if we managed to bring the human Soul back, but this could be a valuable, first step. Or it could be utter failure and we would decorate yet another room with an explosion of blood and meat, there was no way to find out, but to try.

The first step of the experiment, flooding the Vampire with Death Magic, worked out fairly well. Sure, using Death Magic remained a painful experience for me, but watching how the Soul started to take the necrotic power in, swelling up as it drained into the darkly glowing orb, was truly fascinating. There was some interplay between these forces but I wasn’t really able to understand what was going on.

The swelling up continued until the dark mass suddenly collapsed in on itself and stopped draining. At that exact moment, Luna let the prepared tears, shining with the silvery light of the moon, and Lady Hecate’s power, drop into the Vampire’s mouth, infusing its body with the Divine Energy of Lady Hecate and Astral Power filled with Life Magic.

According to our ideas, this should allow them a different path forward, just as the vampiric transformation did. Sadly, our ideas weren’t matched by reality and the body crumbled to dist within moments.

Our experiment had, quite obviously, failed.