Beyond The Veil Of Darkness

Chapter 0 – once upon a time, far far into the future but also in the past; how does that work? How does that even work? Excellent question. Strap in, because when civilizations with wildly different levels of development collide, things get complicated. Picture it like trying to explain quantum physics to a medieval knight who still thinks bathing is an annual event. Awkward, messy, and occasionally disastrous.

So anyway – once upon a time, perhaps a few times, depending on how you interpret causality and reality – somewhere quite far away, albeit still pretty close if you squint hard enough, a spaceship full of very smart scientists who were experimenting on immortality with bats, or was it cats? No matter, they experienced something they weren’t ready for.

A catastrophic failure. And by catastrophic, I do mean cat-astrophic. The kind of failure that makes the cats scream very loudly into the night as they get zapped by thousands of volts of electricity; that’s what happens when you let felines roam free on a spaceship, and they get inside control panels. One moment – all was well and they were advancing their civilization, the next – there was meowing, blaring sirens, flashing red lights. Let’s see just how much chaos can unfold from a single, interstellar ‘woops’.

The ship landed, well, rather – crashed, with a spectacular display of explosions, sparks, and fluttering of wings as the space-bats that were being experimented on, fled after the crash. What happened after could best be described as mayhem and nibbly chaos. The bats fled and hid all throughout the forests and caves, and decades later, a human was bitten, perhaps a few humans, a couple dozen eventually.

And the bites resulted not at all in what the scientists anticipated or had hoped for; granted the research wasn’t complete yet, it makes sense. These bitten humans acquired strength beyond their imagination, insatiable hunger that accompanied said strength, and powers beyond humans, such as the ability to see in the night, and track living beings like some apex predators.

Though, as always – such powers came at a cost. These lads were not the brightest, to begin with, I mean – who goes into the cave, sees a dog-sized bat, and thinks ‘I’ll try to tame it?’ But the virus that infected them caused even that level of intelligence to diminish.

“Say, Jenkins, why don’t our species go out into the sunlight?” asked Corwin.

“Hmm, mostly because…” but as Jenkins began to answer, he was regarded as somewhat of a sage, a wise man, or rather not quite a man. Others came to him for advice frequently. Jenkins watched his friend, Corwin step out of the shadows of the cave into the sunlight, with evident fear and concern on his face.

Corwin felt the warmth of the sun on his skin. His frozen in time heart, skipped a beat; unsurprisingly so – it had a tendency to skip every beat. But to his surprise, his heart then began to beat as the warmth of the sun caressed his skin.

“Whoa… Jenkins, this… this is warm.”

Jenkins, a cold-blooded vampire, as all vampires were, recoiled and shuddered, “ugh,” he began but then his jaw dropped open and his eyes shot wide open, like full moons in the night sky.

Corwin’s skin began to glow, sparkle even in the sunlight. He raised his arms into the air, praising the sun, embracing its warmth. Jenkins in the meantime stared at his friend with a mixture of fright, concern, and terror as his friend got set ablaze in a blink of an eye, incinerating and turning into a pile of ash within moments.

The pile of ash rested on a pair of crocs, a strange footwear that only the strangest of people wore.

“Uh..t-that’s why I reckon,” Jenkins sighed, watching as a gust of wind picked up more than half the ash and carried it off into the sun-rise.

“I’ll go take a nap now I think.”

As the day got chased away by the night, and the warm light of the sun, replaced by the silvery coldness of the moon, a young couple of vampires were scheming something evil.

“The princess looks so juicy,” said one of them.

“But Jenkins told us not to approach the castle,” his friend insisted.

“Who cares? He’s old school anyway! We ought to risk it for the biscuit!”

And so the young pair ventured off into the night, only the moon to guide their path, the moon, their instincts, a sequence of bad ideas, the story plot, the trail through the woods leading to the nearby castle, and their insatiable hunger for virgin blood.

“Succulent princess,” one of them murmured, wiping droop off the corner of his lips.

“Shh Theo! Focus!”

The two optimistic vampires made their way through the forest with the stealth and grace of stampeding cows. Twigs snapped beneath their boots, leaves crunched, as they failed to avoid every single thing that made noise. Owls hoo’d as they walked past, as if calling them ‘clumsy clowns’ in owlish, telling them to leave for they’re scaring their prey off.

“Be quiet Vance, you’ll wake the whole castle,” Theo hissed as he stepped on another pile of twigs.

“Says you, besides, not my fault these bushes are assaulting me like some vampire hunters,” Vance growled back as he pulled his cape free from a thorny bush with a loud riiiiipp.

“Wait,” Vance whispered hushly as the two pressed themselves against the castle’s wall.

“Why are we doing this again?”

Theo wiped drool from the corner of his lips, and swallowed audibly, “because the princess is quite peachy… succulent, delicious looking! She’s such a snack, and I heard she’s a virgin too. Pure blooded.”

Vance nodded eagerly, “Mmhm, let’s go.”

In the dead of night – the castle’s interiors were eerily silent, except for the faint crackle of a distance fireplace. They were vampires – apex predators, capable of seeing in the dark, the humans – weren’t. Down the hall from them, a faint flicker of torch light could be seen. Theo knocked over a suit of armor as he leaned against it, pretending to be something he was not – a professional assassin.

“Who’s there?” a deep voice rumbled from the darkness.

“Cheese it!” Vance yelped, grasping Theo by the arm and dragging him into a nearby room where they slammed the door shut behind them- were it not for their frozen in time hearts, their hearts would be pounding right about now.

And just as their hearts were frozen, so were their bodies now, as the 2 vampires realized that they were in the same room with their prey. The princess lay helplessly on her bed, illuminated as if by a spotlight, by the moon beaming through the window. There she lay, like a perfect prize, upon the silky sheets.

“Jackpot!” Vance whispered, baring his fangs and licking them excitedly. They glistened like two perfect daggers in the silvery moon’s light, he took an excited step forth, and then was forced two steps backwards as Theo grabbed his arm and yanked him back.

“Wait! What if it’s a trap!?”

Vance signed, rolling his eyes, “It’s NOT a trap, Theo, it’s a princess… Unless she is a trap…”

Theo shuddered, nodding nervously, “Yeah, we don’t know that… she could be booby-trapped, with garlic! Or… maybe it’s a guard dressed as a princess.”

Vance swallowed anxiously, glancing around for clues, “Ugh, uhhh, she looks unarmed,” he began but then the door burst open, beyond it stood a very angry looking guard with a glinting sword in his hand.

“INTRUDERS!”

Vance glanced at Theo, Theo glanced back, and in unison they screamed, dashed forth, and leapt out the window like action movie stars, but instead of the forest, they landed in the castle’s courtyard. As they scrambled up to their feet, to their surprise, the first rays of dawn began to break over the horizon.

“Oh shit! Back back back!”

Theo called out, grasping Vance and pulling him back by the arm, back inside the castle.

Where they proceeded to hide the day away, “What now!?”

“How should I know!?” Theo sighed.

“Well, sure am glad we came here to savor the virgin princess’s blood… mister ‘mememe let’s eat the princess mememe I want some virgin’,” Vance complained as they hid in the kitchen’s storage room.

Somewhere not far away, two other vampires were out and about searching for their new victim in a nearby town. What’s a town you might ask? A town is a city without a cathedral, a perfect place for vampires – less holy men and holy water to worry about.

“Gregor! Look at this!” Luke called out, tapping his finger on a poster for a grand theatre – ‘Hiring actors! The biggest nerd club in town! Join and live out your dream role’.

“Ooohh,” Gregor nodded, “there will definitely be virgins there.”

Luke nodded excitedly, “Yes! Yes! Virgin blood, undefended virgins for us to sink our fangs into at any time we so desire!? And we can even do it live on stage, and pretend it to be a part of play!”

Gregor nodded enthusiastically, excited and already picturing it all in his head, a perfect stage, a perfect crime.

‘Next play – the great siege war! Realistic props, dozens of actors on stage,’ the ad read.

“Oh, chaos of battle, plenty of food!” Gregor affirmed.

“Yes,” Luke nodded, his hand tracing the poster as his mind drifted into a day dream of them running rampart on the stage, biting all the virgins and savoring their blood. Next to the hiring poster, was another one ‘Enlist today, the great war awaits! We’ll reclaim our freedom.’.

There was a mild commotion, the sun was already rising and the streets were being painted warm orange hues. A group of guards rushed past Luke and Gregor in pursuit of a robber, knocking Gregor off his feet and pushing Luke out of the way.

“Sunrise, we must hide,” Gregor whispered, getting back up, “hurry!”

Luke nodded, “aye!” without glancing, he grasped the bottom part of the poster and pulled at it, tearing the time and location off to take with him.

“The fields outside the Newbern town, at sunset,” the location read. And so they showed up that night to the theatrics.

“New recruits!?”

Called out a man in armor, chowing down a beef-jerky.

“Yes! Here to ‘fight in a war, sir’,” Gregor saluted, half laughing.

“Great, over there in the tent, grab your equipment, and gather up in 15!”

They entered the tent where rows of dented helmets, rusty swords, and old, weathered armor awaited them.

“This smells like.. blood,” Gregor noted.

“Realism!” Luke reaffirmed him, grabbing a set of chainmail and a helmet, throwing his equipment on.

Gregor bared his fangs, sniffing the air, a hint of nervousness in his voice, “Smells, dodgy.”

“We’ll be FINE! It’s just theatrics, oh I can’t wait to savor all that blood.”

“Alright men!” an aged man on horseback shouted, “at DAWN WE MARCH FOR OUR FREEDOM! FOR OUR LIVES! The lord WILL FALL!”

Gregor froze in place like a statute, illuminated by the silvery moon’s light, his rusted armor glinting barely.

“D…dawn!? That’s, sunlight! Oh no… no no! We must get out of here!” he insisted. Luke swallowed nervously, “B-but the theatrics poster said on stage… I thought we’d be inside!”

Gregor glanced around – hundreds of men on either side of them, and most importantly – no virgins in sight. They were all aged men, mostly older men – farmers. Sweaty, and bearded, definitely not succulent virgins they were hoping to see here.

“How do we leave!?” he insisted.

“I don’t know… but we can’t just walk out now…” Luke shrugged.

The dawn broke sooner than expected, the air stank of sweat and blood – well, at least there was that; plenty of blood to go around. Shadows of the castle’s walls and the forest’s surrounding it stretched far in the blood-red sun as it slowly crept up over the horizon. The catapults fired, men shouted and screamed, and the deafening noise of steel clashing against steel sought chaos on the battlefield as the farmers of the town laid siege to their lord’s castle.

Luke peeked over the edge, gulping as he watched the castle’s guards clashing with the rebels. Blood spilled in liters, arrows whizzed over head.

“Whoa, realism on a whole different level,” he uttered. Gregor grabbed him by the collar, yanking him back into the shadows, behind their cover.

“This isn’t theatre Luke! These aren’t props! THIS IS NOT A STAGE YOU MORON! THIS! IS! WAR!”

Luke gasped, glanced over Gregor at the battlefield again, then gasped again, “Wait! Maybe it’s just IMMERVISE EXPERIENCE! Live action role play!? What was it, Oh yes full contact LARP!”

Gregor sighed, “Full contact my undead-.

“ he began, then suddenly ducked, dodging a flaming arrow that missed them by a few centimeters.-.

“Yeah, great realistic experience, can’t wait to get realistically killed!”

Luke smiled nervously, “Easy easy, we just need to stay out of the way until this scene… erhm,” but before he could finish, a catapult next to them exploded into a deadly rain of shrapnel as enemy catapult hit it.

“Shit! RUN!” Gregor grabbed a shield and a sword, dashing off, following the shadows that stretched from the castle’s walls., “Find shelter from the sun!” he urged.

The 2 vampires, with strength beyond what a mere human could so much as imagine, with relative ease made their way through the bloody battlefield, dodging easily the arrows fired at them, and slaying all that stood in their way. Once beyond the gates, the pair snuck inside the buildings, skulking through the dimly lit corridors as the chaos of battle became muffled by the doors they shut behind them.

Every now and then Luke would freeze mid-step, “I heard something!” he insisted.

“Stop panicking,” Gregor mumbled, “we are, quite literally, the scariest things inside this castle currently.”

“Not outside though,” Luke insisted, glancing out into the sunlight.

“Shush!”

Gregor hissed. Moments later the 2, armored vampires snuck around the empty castle’s hallways.

“Scariest you say!?” Luke queried.

“Correct,” Gregor growled again.

“S-say that to whatever is breathing BEHIND US!” Luke suddenly glanced over his shoulder for the hundredth time no less. Gregor rolled his eyes, turning the corner only to find himself face-to-face with a fanged beast, a monstrosity, an apex predator, the death that lurked in the shadows of the night, another vampire, two in fact.

The vampire stared Gregor in the eyes, baring his fangs in a ‘I will murder you,’ manner. Theo stared at Vance who was frozen in the scary posture, pretending to be a terrifying vampire, then at Gregor who was staring the open-mouth vampire in the mouth, his own mouth open out of awe. But Luke, being the natural diplomat, stepped forth with a playful grin, “Aha! How do you do, fellow creatures of the night! What a delight meeting the scariest creatures in this castle!”

Theo stared at Luke, then at Vance, “See? I told you we’re not the scariest creatures here, those guys look pretty damn scary in that blood-stained and rusted armor.”

Same time Luke poked Gregor on the shoulder and whispered a similar thing, “See? I told you there are other scary things in this castle, I mean look at his fangs, pretty damn terrifying…”

“Who the hell are you?” Theo asked, curiously examining the armored intruders. Vance closed his mouth at last, licked his lips, sighed sadly that it wasn’t a cute princess, and then gasped.

“Wait! You guys are not with the Crusaders, are you!?”

Luke scoffed, US!? We? With the sweaty, blood-thirsty mortal monsters of the day!? Pfft… absolutely NOT!”

Theo popped an eyebrow, “Then, why are you wearing their armor!?”

Gregor glanced down at himself, realizing that they were in fact still wearing the ill-fitted armor of the crusaders, old, dented, cannon-fodder armor.

“Uh, method acting… gets us closer to our, prey.”

“That’s it!” Luke echoed Gregor, pondering what method acting actually meant.

Gregor nodded, “Yeah, we uh, thought we were joining a play, but it turned out to be quite, erhm, real… and here we are now, hiding in this castle we, invaded, apparently.”

Vance glanced at Theo, then back at the duo, “Oh you guys are total idiots…” Vance shot back with zero hesitation.

Theo nodded, crossing his arms and leaning against a suit of armor in an effort to act cool. The suit of armor, to no one’s surprise, fell over in a loud clatter, startling rats in the cellars, “Ahem, so, what’s your plan now!?”

Gregor glanced at the toppled and now scattered suit of armor, “Uhm, you guys live here? Care to help us escape?”

Theo grinned, his fangs glistening ever so slightly, “Oh no, no no! We’re also stuck here, can’t help you there BUDDY!”

Luke sighed, “Man, this is the worst, where are the virgins?”

Vance gasped, “Oh there is one, in this castle, a princess, she.

“ but before he could finish, Gregor interrupted him.

“Not now! First – we escape, then we deal with the princess.”

A long time ago, long before the vampire groups separated, they lived together under a shared name.

“Suckers of the night,” due to the name disagreements and discrepancies of whom they should hunt, the vampire tribe broke up into smaller tribes.

Back then they lived in a cave just beyond a city where they hunted. The locals feared the united vampire tribe, and would bring offerings to their caves. Sometimes a cow, a few chickens, occasionally a virgin, but one day the locals brought a child, an infant.

The tribe long debates whether to consume the child, raise it and then consume it, or just to raise it. Part of the tribe broke off because of this disagreement, as a few vampires desire to savor the infant’s blood, but the eldest and the wisest of them, Jenkins namely, insisted on raising the child to show the world that vampires don’t just suck, they can be quite good too.

Though, expectedly when raised by a tribe of superhuman creatures with beyond-human abilities, the human had to adapt, and adapt he did. He trained with an intensity to break lesser beings, his every movement was honed for survival in the hostile environment in which he grew up, for he was raised in an environment where a seemingly harmless interaction had the potential to end in a fatal disaster for him.

While not a vampire by nature; he was never turned by the space-bats, but he was quite possibly the most cunning and well-trained human to walk the earth for his very survival depended on it. His life was a daily risk where he had to outthink and outmaneuver anything and everything he could, as a simple high-five could well rip his arm off.

For the rest of the vampires of his tribe a high five was a greeting, for him it was a test of his reflexes and survivability. One wrong move and he would lose his arm, two wrong moves and he’d lose his life. His name was Korr! Korr the sunwalker as the vampires called him. Korr trained day and night to survive a life surrounded by blood-thirsty monsters of the night, which isn’t too different to humans – except humans vastly prefer the day.

Theo, Vance, Gregor and Luke sat in the castle’s tower, casually snacking on a maid they captured along the way, glancing out the window at the battlefield below them, wondering how they were going to escape.

In that time, the western wall of the castle fell, but not to the rebel’s army, and not to the Crusaders. The wall fell to a single man, a sabotage of the weakened structure. Through the rubble stepped a single man: Korr the sunwalker.

Despite the fact that he just demolished the castle’s wall, the guards were too busy engaged in a war at the main gates to notice, and so Korr walked freely into the castle. He snuck down the empty corridors, picked up traced left behind by Theo and Vance, the not-so-sneaky vampires that sneaked into the castle in the dead of night.

It wasn’t difficult for Korr to track his brethren, especially those 2. The remnants of capes in the forest left upon the thorny bushes, and the broken twigs every step of the way, made it easy for him to track them to the castle. One might think there surely not many traces one could leave in a castle on stone, floors and walls, but that’s where one would be wrong. For starters, an obvious hint were the scattered armor suits that Theo left in his wake like a walking disaster.

Then there were the obviously dropped torches, the soot marks from their finger, the muddy steps, and last but not least the very obvious trail of blood as they dragged the innocent maid to the tower. The door swung open and through it Korr leapt. Theo jumped up, his sharp nose instantly picked up a familiar scent and he instinctively went for a high five, one with enough force to take a man’s arm clean off.

Korr stepped back, dodging the monster’s swing that almost took his head off as he wasn’t prepared for it, then stepping into the motion he caught the hand mid flight as its speed slowed, with a loud clap.

“Brother Theo! Brothers Vance and Gregor, and… oh, Luke is also here. How did you all end up here!?”

Gregor cleared his throat, “Ahem… so I was out with Luke scouting the city nearby for some fresh prey, tribe must eat you know!? So we scouted this one child, and she was running down the alley while we were in pursuit and then Luke noticed a theatre posted and had this briiight idea of becoming actors. Up and coming career, well paid, plenty of virgins to savor because everybody knows only virgins join the theatre groups. Anyways… so we joined the theatre, but it turned out to be the crusade, and uhm, we ended up besieging this castle. Something of the sorts.”

Korr blinked a couple of times, then a few more times, glanced at Luke, glanced out the window at the raging war, tried to figure out how one in an attempt to become a theatre actor, ends up in a middle of a war, then decided it was best not to ask any questions as the answers would only further confuse him. Then he glanced at Theo, who jumped up, ready to tell his tale – but Korr just raised his hand.

“No, shh, I already know what happened to you 2, I followed your tracks.”

Theo sat back down, disappointment obvious on his face, “So, you’ve come to rescue us!?”

Korr glanced around, the sighed, “Well, somebody has to save my stupid brethren from their demise! Forest offers plenty of shade, I’ll lead you out under the veil of the…” he glanced at the curtains, “the curtains, you guys hide under it and we’ll walk right out.”

And so there they were. A ragtag bunch of idiots, hiding under a curtain, in the middle of a castle that was under siege. They had no real plan other than avoiding getting caught in the middle of the battle and dying to the sunlight.

Korr, the ever-resourceful and cunning human among them was the only one to come up with a plan that was better than eat the princess.

Under the veil of fluttering curtain, that Korr noted smelled vaguely of desperation, akin to the stench of a princess locked in a tower, awaiting her prince to rescue her, for decades, they made for their escape. Korr lead the way for his brethren with a prideful smile, happy to have been useful to his tribe at last. All that training finally paid off.

As they exited the castle’s narrow hallways, which weren’t narrow, but as it turns out when you put 4 vampires under a curtain and try to have them walk in a straight line, the not-so-narrow hallways begin to feel rather narrow and claustrophobic. Theo gasped the fresh air the moment they stepped out, but Korr hushed him, “Shh! Or are you DYING to be found out!? Why are the dead even breathing anyways!?”

He pondered, grabbing the edge of the curtain to pull them in the right direction.

They walked in awkward silence, tiptoeing past the raging battle, the corpses that littered the castle’s yard, and the piles of rubble that decorated the once fine and smooth road. At long last, after what felt like lifetimes of perpetual anxiety and stress, and muffled breathing with occasional complains as they stepped on each other’s boots, the group made their way out into the forest.

They were excited to take a sigh of relief.

Albeit their dreams were shattered, they had neither enjoyed a fulfilling meal of the virgin princess, nor the fulfilling career of becoming renowned actors. They have however survived a night of hunt and the castle’s siege, and managed to escape unscathed, well, except for their egos.