Aethersup, part 2
Previously: Part 1
How he despises this part.
The realization, the fear - some of his victims respond with rage and violence, lashing out at him, their mortal strength shattering against his own, inexhaustible and uncanny, until at last they beg for mercy. Some simply weep and beg straightaway, pleading for some shred of the mercy he can’t afford to show. These he hates the most - he has begun avoiding those he fears most likely to attempt to appeal to his humanity… because they so often succeed in doing so, in convincing him to draw less from them than he should, putting his own survival at risk!
He much prefers the anger, the violence - even the skepticism; those who refuse to believe he is precisely what he claims to be until the moment he begins draining their aether.
Guydelot Thildonnet, a lackluster recruit of the Gods’ Quiver and a novice bard, known for slacking off and failing to report for duty more often than not, struck him at first as the type to be skeptical - or perhaps, on an outside chance, angry. Whatever his reaction, though, Sanson Smyth had chosen the man for one simple reason: his absence was unlikely to raise questions, at least not at first. Those who might mark his disappearance would presume, like as not, that he was off hiding from duty - by the time his continued absence became noteworthy, it would nearly be time for Sanson to release him. There will be no search, no outrage or outcry for the man’s safety. This much Sanson has planned for.
What he had not planned on was the man mistaking him for a fellow victim.
They’d very nearly been having a conversation - albeit very one-sided, given Sanson’s bewilderment at the impossibility of the situation - before he’d revealed himself, and now that silence descends between them, Sanson finds he aches for that conversation once more. How long has it been since he last-
No. No! He cannot afford to see his victims as aught but what they are: sustenance, no more.
“Yes,” he says, at last, when he is certain he can trust his voice. “I am what you might know as a vampire. I will feed on you for only one moon,” he assures his captive; he has long since determined that one moon strikes the balance he requires: enough aether to sustain him without lethally draining his victims. He leaves them exhausted, ill, but strong enough yet to survive… and then he begins the search anew - allowing himself to grow weak again in the process. He will not allow himself to become a glutton where mortal lives are the price for sating his hunger. “Only one moon,” he repeats, “and then I will free you, to return to your life as you knew it.”
Guydelot takes a deep breath.
Processes this information.
And then, incredibly, shrugs.
“Seems fair,” he says at last, as though Sanson had suggested nothing more unusual than a favor between friends.
It cannot be so simple. “You understand that I will be… feeding on your aether, your very being,” Sanson says, uncertain, unaccustomed to such a… well, such a non-response, he supposes. “The process may be painful-”
“And in the meantime, I get to stay here, aye?” Guydelot rolls himself into the bed, stretching out to his full length, propped up against the pillows. The fool has the audacity to grin. “Free room and board for a moon, free meals - you’ll need to get my strength up, aye? - and no orders to follow, no commanders to ignore, and your lovely face for company! Hells, I’d give up more than my aether for that. Give me my harp, and I’ll call this paradise, and for cheap.”
This is a new response. Sanson struggles for a moment to make sense of it, shaking his head. He doesn’t understand, he tells himself, Or at the very least, he believes it all a jest.
“You never told me your name,” the bard says, yawning as he nestles himself into the pillows. “Seems to me it’s only polite that you introduce yourself before you go and make a meal of me. And it wouldn’t kill you to dust this room once in a while, eh? Even I keep my place cleaner than this.”
“I- are you scolding me-”
“I’m protesting my living quarters. There’s an ilm of dust on that desk, and no ink, either.”
“This is not a-”
“Might be as I’d like to compose a song or two while I’m here, eh? Without my harp, that’d mean writing something down, and I can’t do that without-”
“You,” Sanson says, pointing at the man, “are trying to annoy me into releasing you early, and it will not happen!”
“I’m doing nothing of the sort.” Guydelot’s eyebrows rise. “Touchy, aren’t you? If you don’t feel like giving me your name, seems like I’ll have to give you one, and believe you me, you won’t care for any names I might come up with-”
“Sanson,” he cuts in, unwilling to speculate as to what sort of names a bard might be able to concoct. It matters little. The man will be far less eager to talk once he realizes this is no cruel jest. “My name is Sanson.” Or it had been, in another life, he supposes; before a voidsent had taken up residence in his soul, feeding on his own aether and turning him into this…
Guydelot considers the name, as though weighing it. “Sanson.” And then: “Sanson Smyth. You were the first to disappear…” His words trail off.
“...Never to return,” Sanson concludes. “Yes.”
He’d woken here himself, chained to this very bed, shortly before the Calamity, by a very mortal mage who had found him alone in the depths of the Twelveswood - Sanson had never learned how that man had spirited him into the locked and barred secret halls of Amdapor. The whispers of the voidsent trapped within had guided him in, no doubt. Sanson recalls little of those awful days: he spent them drugged and terrified, while his captor drew blood, lit candles, traced summoning circles on the floor in Sanson’s blood and his own, chanting rites and vows Sanson cannot recall now… though he swears he hears them still in his nightmares.
Rites meant to summon forth a voidsent slave, and bind it in Sanson’s flesh.
Insofar as that, the ritual must be considered a complete success. What his captor hadn’t counted on, however, was the resulting creature’s incessant hunger for mortal aether, and having failed to provide a sacrifice for his new pet-
Sanson shutters the memory away, closing the door on it once more and locking it up tight. It matters not how he came to be, only that he is. His memories of his time as a mortal are sparse and hazy now; how much of his personality now belongs to the mortal boy plucked from his life and fed to the Void, and how much of it is instead the creature summoned from beyond? He does not know. He cannot know.
Whoever he was before, that man is dead now.
“And all this time you’ve been hiding here,” Guydelot muses, gazing at the canopy above his head. “Snatching people from the Shroud to keep up your strength.” He lets the thought hang in the air between them… and then, as though dismissing it entirely, he shrugs once more. “Right, then, Sanson it is. Well, Sanson, let’s get on with it, shall we?”
Taken aback once more by the man’s utter lack of… of concern, Sanson blinks. “Get on with…?”
“Are you gonna feast on my aether or not?”
Bizarrely, disconcertingly, he feels very nearly bashful. “I… most people desire a night to prepare themselves for-”
“Why? You don’t need me to do anything, right? Just lie back and let you do your thing?” The man tips his head in Sanson’s direction, grinning once again, as though the whole thing were an enormous lark and he is enjoying himself immensely. “Or is it like the stories, where you need my blood?” He reaches up, unbuttoning the first few buttons of his tunic, exposing his pale throat to the candlelight.
Despite himself, Sanson takes another step backward, startled. “I- you are not taking this seriously!” It’s true that blood is the most efficient source of aether, but he has not feasted on blood since- “I do not require your blood.”
“Aye, well, don’t say I didn’t offer.” Leaving his collar unbuttoned, he settles back against the pillows once more. “Between you, me, and the bedpost, you look bloody terrible, Sanson. How long’s it been since your last meal, eh?”
He doesn’t have the bloodflow necessary to blush. “That is none of your concern.”
“I’d say you’re about all I have to be concerned about right now, and you look like you’re on death’s doorstep. So?” He gestures to his body as though putting it on display, every towering ilm of it. “Look at all this aether I’m doing nothing with. You already said you’re planning to turn me loose at the end of the moon, so I know you aren’t planning to take all of it, aye? So go on, then. Tonight’s meal’s on me.”
Why is he hesitating? It flies in the face of his routine, his expectations, to have his victim simply… consent like this, to insist upon his feeding. Surely he ought to welcome it. In his weakened state, even slipping unseen in and out of Guydelot’s room with food earlier had been taxing, to say nothing of bringing Guydelot here, slipping past the defenses surrounding the city; another day or two of this and he may find himself unable to rise at all. But. But. He is not yet ravenous, not yet so hungry he cannot control the aetherlust; he had anticipated being unable to feed until tomorrow-
But he is hungry. Gods, is he hungry.
“Lie stil,” he orders, but his voice comes out strangled, rather than authoritative.
Guydelot makes a show of getting comfortable while the vampire approaches the bed - Sanson is wary, in case this is all simply a ploy to get him within range to attempt an attack, but the bard remains docile. Only his racing pulse - which Sanson, with his heightened predator’s senses, can hear as easily as a ringing bell - and his too-steady gaze betray his fear, imperfectly masked by his casual bravado. Still, despite that fear, he makes no effort to recant his offer, nor does he flinch away when Sanson sits on the edge of the bed and reaches for him.
“You said this’d hurt,” Guydelot says, a touch unsteadily, as Sanson rests his fingertips on the man’s face. He hasn’t yet learned to draw aether without skin-to-skin contact - not without blood, at any rate.
He makes himself meet the man’s eyes: his bravery - or foolishness - deserves that much, surely. “It may. It hurts some more than others. I know not why.” He hesitates. “I could… put you to sleep, if you would like?” He has power enough remaining for that, surely. It is something he often must do for more difficult victims, to spare himself the necessity of wrestling them into submission.
But Guydelot shakes his head - gently, not dislodging Sanson’s hands. “Reckon I ought to be awake and present for this.” He closes his eyes, though. Clears his throat. “Right. Go on.”
He’s careful - Guydelot’s compliance allows him to draw slowly, a measured trickle of aether, like a small wound. It gives him the opportunity to study the peculiar man, this singular victim: he never takes the time to consider the people he claims, never more than weighing how likely their disappearances will slip past the notice of Gridania as a whole… but here he sits, with Guydelot so very placid in his hands, and he may allow his own thoughts to wander past the need for aether. It’s dangerous, of course, and foolish. If he allows himself to become distracted, he may draw too much, push Guydelot past that fatal line-
But part of him is mortal still.
And Guydelot is handsome, with his sharp jaw and slim nose, and his dark eyelashes curling upon his cheekbones. His shirt remains unbuttoned: Sanson can see his pulse beating in his throat, and his collarbones exposed to the cool night air. His skin is warm under Sanson’s touch, and he does not pull aether so quickly as to feel the skin cool sharply; no, it remains warm. His breathing is steady - Sanson feels each exhale ghost over his hand. Most of his victims are still hyperventilating by this stage, whimpering prayers to unhearing gods. If Guydelot prays, he does so in the privacy of his own thoughts.
Warmth begins to fill his veins. He watches as his own hands become less skeletal, more substantial. Sensation returns as his nerves reignite, rejoicing in the return of aether. The beginnings of stubble on Guydelot’s cheeks prickle at Sanson’s fingertips, and the sensation is strangely enticing; he must fight the urge to cup the elezen man’s face between his hands completely, the better to feel it.
He swallows the impulse down, mortified - ‘tis no true desire which fuels the urge, of course! No, he simply hasn’t been this close to someone who has… if not welcomed his touch, at the very least invited it, enough to lie quiescent but aware while he takes what he must.
There is a strange, unfamiliar intimacy in it.
Sanson withdraws, sooner than perhaps he should - he could yet take a good deal more from Guydelot, and should, on a first feed… but he can’t. He can’t. Already he feels he goes too far - and not in the amount of aether he’s drawing.
The man’s eyelids flutter, opening to reveal slightly-hazy blue eyes. No pain. No fear. “All… all done?”
“For now, yes.” Though he doesn’t usually ask, he hears himself say, “Are you well?”
Guydelot smiles. Guydelot smiles, and Sanson’s heart aches in his chest for the first time in years. “Didn’t hurt at all,” the bard replies, lifting a hand to cup Sanson’s cheek. He could have pulled away in time to avoid the man’s weak, aether-drained touch, Sanson knows. So why didn’t he? And why doesn’t he pull away now?
“Look at you,” Guydelot murmurs, drowsily slurring. “Really needed that…”
The hand drops heavily to the sheets, Guydelot’s head falls back agains the pillows, and the man sinks like a stone into the depths of sleep. Sanson lingers beside him a moment longer, watching. Marveling.
What a strange moon this is going to be!
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