#is one of my favorite versions of Esial

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Esial: Part 9 - Glass Shatters

Masterlist

Part 8

I accidentally put this on the wrong account at first. I am so mad. Something something glass houses Me standing at the whump counter: Yeah I'd like uhhhhh extra crispy Esial?

Content: Vampire whumpee, descriptions of burns, blood lust and blood lust guilt, accidental self injury to the lips

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Anastasia let Esial eat in silence as she drank her own cup of blood. Esial had been a bit worried that the blood wouldn't satisfy him. He felt like something changed in him when he nearly drained Joanna. 

He'd never had human blood before, but it was so much richer and it filled up parts of him he didn't even know he had. He'd felt stronger, almost. Warm and thrilling. 

As he lifted the cup to his mouth, he realized the blood was a mixture of animal blood and human blood. He drank it down quickly, licking at the blood that dripped down until he felt satisfied enough to leave the small remainder be. 

He put the cup down, licking his lips. The animal blood didn't taste familiar, but it had certainly been good. 

"How many days have you been here, Esial?" Anastasia asked, finishing her own cup. 

Esial frowned. "One, I think."

"Mm, I will give you tour."

Esial nodded and she stood up. He followed, putting his cup on the counter where she put hers. She picked up his cup and slotted it inside of her own cup. "The cooks like them stacked."

Esial nodded, mouthing the word 'stacked' to himself. 

Anastasia turned, waiting. Esial realized she was waiting for him to catch up so they could walk side by side, rather than following her, and he did so, a little distracted in doing so, especially when they got into the halls where there were other people.

Walking alongside someone when you hadn't done so since you were a child was more of a task than one would expect. It was difficult matching her pace and keeping from bumping into others.  

Anastasia seemed to notice and reached out, hooking his arm with hers to make it easier. Esial relaxed a little. 

"Who was the Anastasia that you are not?" he asked, tucking his crocodile farther up his side. 

"Mm, she was a princess born in the same year as me," she said, waving her hand dismissively. 

"Princess?"

"Yes. Like daughter of Pharaoh, though we called them Tsars, in my country."

"This is not your country?"

She gave him a faintly amused look. "It is now, droog, though it has not always been."

Esial nodded as they entered one of the glass hallways. He jumped when he felt warmth on his skin, but he was not burned by the sun. He relaxed and looked out at the people walking along pathways. 

"What is this place?"

"Dalton Rehab Center," Anastasia replied. "Before stasis, I never thought there should be such place. Or that vampires would not have to hide. Time washes away mountains eventually, it seems."

And that was a lot to unpack. Esial didn't even know which question to ask next, but Anastasia was already speaking again. 

"From the story I was told, there was vampire who had been in stasis for good long while. When he was found he was sold through the black market until he escaped, only to find there was nowhere for him to go. Apparently, he went mad and killed a bunch of people and they built this place to house vampires just out of stasis to get them on their feet again and keep them from murderous rampages."

Esial nodded along, though there were a lot of words he didn’t understand. Still, he got the gist of them and he was content with that. 

Silence fell between them again as they passed into a new building, this one full of doors marked with strange symbols like the ones on the door of the room he had slept in, though this wasn’t the same building. 

A phrase Anastasia had used came back to him. ‘Time washes away mountains.’ Did it? She’d said it with such certainty, like it was common knowledge. Was 5000 years really enough time to wash away a mountain? But where would the bits of mountain go? Would it just flatten, the land around it rising to meet it until it was a plain? 

And if time could do that to mountains, what would it do to forests? To rivers and lakes and buildings? Well, he already knew that just a decade was enough to bury a village.

He was so deep in thought, he didn’t notice the rambunctious vampires and humans playing together just outside the glass hallway he and Anastasia were passing through. He didn’t notice as they threw a ball back and forth between them, the humans using bats while the vampire used their bare hands. He didn’t notice the ball go flying, though he very much did notice when the glass above shattered, raining down on him, and making him look up before he was burning. 

He screamed, dropping his crocodile as his flesh burned and melted. He could feel the phantom sensation of chains digging into his flesh, creatures with sharp teeth biting into his legs. He screamed, searching his person for the amulet that his father had made him. The one his father enchanted to protect him from the sun when he was bitten and fed and turned, but it wasn’t there. All there was to find was burning, and melting, and pain so violent it tore at his soul and gouged at his eyes and his sanity. 

Then he wasn’t burning. Esial gasped, laying on the floor, shuddering and trying to flinch from the sun he could feel on his burned arms, though it wasn’t burning him anymore. Someone was on top of him, yelling in another language, rage clear in her voice. 

Esial twisted on badly burned and bubbled flesh, trying to see through the haze that had taken his vision. Anastasia wasn’t as badly burned as he was, but her skin was red and blistered. She was shouting at the people through the glass, who all looked horrified. 

Someone in the same clothing as Callum and Laura, one of the scrubs, came running, kneeling beside Esial. They were human and, through the lingering pain in his burns, Esial could feel the hunger just as powerfully when he smelled her blood, the itching in his mouth to sink his fangs into her arm and heal himself through her blood. 

He tried to open his mouth to bite as she put a hand on his shoulder, but they had been sealed together, melted and burned. He whimpered at the pain that lanced through his lips, down to his chin and up through his cheeks.“It’s okay. Try not to move,” she said, bending to look at his eyes. 

“It’s going to be alright,” she said seriously. “Anastasia. Could you help me carry him?”

Anasasia looked like she very much would rather go out and murder the people who broke the glass, but she nodded anyway. “Bring the crocodile. It is his.”

The woman nodded and went to pick Keta up from the patch of unfiltered sunlight as Anastasia picked Esial up. 

“You burned very badly, droog,” she said. “You really are old vampire.”

Esial closed his eyes against the haze, tears picking ways down his face as his burns were jostled. He wailed through closed lips as he was put down a little too roughly on a plush table.

“Prostite, Esial. I did not mean to hurt you,” Anastasia said quickly, cupping the top of his head gently with her hand. 

The human woman was back and she had something small and shiny in her hand. She quickly sank it into his arm and he flinched, though he couldn’t feel it through the pain of his burns. Anastasia put the crocodile toy against his side and he tried to grab at it with fingers that had sealed together when he put his arms up to protect his eyes. 

The pain started to fade, the effect radiating from where the woman had stabbed him with the small tool. 

“He’s just going to need to heal,” she said. “When did he last eat?”

“We were coming from the cafeteria,” Anastasia replied. 

“Okay. When his mouth is formed back up a bit, there’s some blood in the cupboard over there. Can you sit with him? I’m not technically supposed to be in the same room as an injured vampire for safety reasons.”

Anastasia nodded and stroked a hand through Esial’s hair as the human left. Esial twitched, unsure if he liked the sensation or not. 

There was a dark look in Anastasia’s eyes as she got a chair to sit down next to him, like she was still planning out the ways she was going to murder those people who broke the glass. 

Esial was honestly touched. She didn’t seem mad at all about her burns and they were mostly healed already, but her anger seemed to burn brighter in her eyes when she looked at him. 

Esial closed his eyes again, feeling relaxed and a little sleepy as the pain faded to a dull ache. 

He had wanted to bite the woman who had come to help him. If his lips hadn’t been melted shut he would have bitten her and he would have tried to drink her dry. He knew what it was like to bite a human now, to drink their blood, and it was a powerful urge now. The exhilaration of feeling someone’s life force ebb out onto his teeth was forefront in his mind, remembering how Joanna had struggled, how she screamed, how she shook and grew pale and collapsed. 

But on top of it was a feeling of revulsion. He would have bitten that woman and she was there to help him. It made him sick to his stomach. He’d never felt like that before. Before he’d had human blood. Was he cursed now? How was he supposed to control himself in the future?

Anastasia’s hand ran through his hair again and he leaned into it this time, letting it comfort him. Esial would figure this out. This was his body and he would learn to control himself. He had to. 

Esial startled as the door slammed open, lifting his head to see a shaggy haired man standing in the doorway. He was tall, and his shoulders were probably twice the width of Esial’s. 

“Anastasia!” the man said in an accent of his own, though it wasn’t as thick as Anastasia’s and it wasn’t the same. He was wearing a shirt, but instead of pants he was wearing something that looked like the child of a pair of pants and a robe with intricate lined patterns crossing each other. “There yeh are, lass! I heard yeh were burned.”

Anastasia shrugged him off. “I am fine, Ciaran. Esial took it much worse.”

Ciaran looked Esial over, wincing. “Ach, that’s not good. You alright there, lad?”

Esial shrugged and Anastasia chuckled. “Not lad. He is older than both of us combined.”

“Is he now?”

“Da. He was around for the first Pharohs.”

Ciaran whistled, impressed as Esial worked his lips loose, the corners pulling free first as he got his elbows under him to slide up. 

“It’s good to meet yeh,” Ciaran said, giving Esial a firm nod. 

Esial felt skin tear as he pulled his lips free, though it didn’t hurt. “And you,” he replied as Ciaran winced at the sight. 

Anastasia reached out and caught the drips of blood dribbling off his chin in her hand before they could land in his clothes. “Careful!”

Ciaran turned and pulled a white sheet of something off of a roll and handed it over to Esial. It felt like a mixture of forms and fabric, but didn’t seem to be either of them. He pressed it to his face, wiping up the blood. 

“What is this?” he asked, muffled a little as he pressed it to his lips. 

“Paper towel,” Anastasia replied. 

“I thought towels were made of cloth?”

“Hence the modifier ‘paper.’” Ciaran said, amused. 

Esial was getting annoyed with how people just used more new words to describe things he didn’t know. 

“What is modifier? And Paper?”

“Ah, modifier is somethin’ that changes the meanin’ or state of somethin’ else. In this case changin’ the meanin’ of ‘towel,’” Ciaran said rather slowly, as though making sure he was explaining it right. “And this is paper.”

He picked up a form from the counter and Esial frowned.

“No. That is a form.”

“Well, forms can be on paper, but this material is paper.”

Esial groaned, leaning his head back into the wall behind him. 

“It is okay, droog,” Anastasia said, standing up and putting a hand on his shoulder. “Learning new language is hard.”

She stepped over to a counter where she turned a knob and water gushed out to clean his blood from her hand. There were a lot of water summoners around. He wondered where all the water was coming from. 

“So, I suppose we’re keepin’ him then?” Ciaran asked. 

Anastasia nodded. “Da. He is friend now.”

“Right… what’s up with the alligator?”

“Alligator?” Esial asked.

“Your Crocodile.”

“Oh. I used to have crocodiles I looked after. I told Joseph and he got me this one and Jesep as a gift.”

“Yeh looked after crocodiles? In Pharoh times? What else did yeh do?” Ciaran asked, intrigued.

“Killed hippos.”

Ciaran looked over at Anastasia, excited and she nodded. “Impressive.”

Esial just shrugged. 

Anastasia finished with the water and opened the blood cabinet, pulling out a bag and poking some sort of long hollow thing in. It looked a bit like the hollow reeds Esial sometimes cut down around his edge of the river to help make crocodile nests. 

“There. Suck the blood through that.”

Esial frowned and wrapped his lips around it, but figured it out and drank the whole bag very quickly when he tasted it was human blood, even if it was a bit stale. 

“I plan to stay here till he is ready to leave,” Anastasia told Ciaran. 

Ciaran nodded. “Alright. I have te get back te class. I left in the middle when I heard somethin’ happened.”

“Then don’t waste time. Go!”

Ciaran laughed and turned, leaving just as quickly as he came to appease Anastasia.

Part 10

Esial: @whumpsday @honeycollectswhump @writereleaserepeat @tragedyinblue @hyrules-sleepiest-knight @why-not-ask-me-a-better-question

From Dust to Ashes: @whumpsday @writereleaserepeat @currentlyinthespiral @pigeonwhumps

#whump #esial #vampire whumpee #vampire burns #burn whump #blood #blood lust #blood guilt #accidental self injury #frustrated esial #is one of my favorite versions of Esial #I love him