Chapter 60 59: Sleep



The night was fleeting and the sun was on its way up. As if in last, desperate struggle, the night sky shined its deepest, most beautiful shade of indigo, making the darkness pleasurable yet more.

Under such a sky, a lone bat fluttered past the buildings and the alleys on the outskirts of Soleda. Its wings failing it and its breath too rough for itself, the bat's flight lowered and lowered, and before it knew it, the bat crashed into a pile of boxes in an alley between buildings.

"Haah…. Haah…"

With each breath, a black haze spilled out of the bat's mouth.

The black haze lingered and tolled around it, and within moments, the length was the bat covered through.

Strength was distant, will, a luxury. 

The bat heard.

It heard voices of children crying in the night.

"Oh dear, what happened to my son~"

The parent waking up from their sleep.

"Are you hungry? Hungry?"

"Kraaaa!"

The bat screeched.

Its wings slowly started to turn into hands, hair grew on its head and a red dress formed around its body.

"Uwaaa! Uwaaa!"

The child's cries continued.

A mouthful of blood splashed out from the bats, no, the vampire's lips.

"Stop…"

Images flashed in its head as the vampire writhed in pain.

[We must live like humans]

The words of her lover.

[Mom! I am going to play with my friends!]

The shouts of her child.

In a distant village filled with humans. Where humans themselves didn't know what made a human.

In those flowery fields and fluttering farms.

[Isn't that family slightly weird?]

[I've never seen the missus step out in the sun]

The whispers.

[Mom… I… hurt my friends]

"Gyaaaah! Kaaaaa!" The woman screamed louder. She banged her head against the wall and shouted, but none could help her.

[Why are we different? What did we do, Mom?]

[Vampire! This man married a demon! A vampire!]

She could see it vividly.

The way those robed villagers pulled up their pikes and shovels, the way they tied her human husband and her darling son to the stakes.

[Burn in hell! Demons!]

[Burn! Burn! Burn!]

The way those villagers set them on fire.

Only she had run away, like a coward, she had left them behind, like a rat, she had fled the scene, like a human… she had ignored their pain.

Why?

Why had she not fought back?

Deep in the corners of her heart, the screams of her lover resounded.

[We must live like humans… don't drink any blood now]

Strength left the vampire as her legs stopped flailing and her heart stopped screaming.

From the entrance of the alleyway, a man neared.

"Excuse me?"

The voice of her lover was slowly fading away. Yes, what was the point of living anymore? Whether as a human, or a vampire, none of it held any significance.

"Mam, are you alright?"

But…

But if she was going to die…

"Mam? Can you stand up? I'll help you there."

Then she didn't want these bastards that stole away her child's cries to remain. She didn't want these humans, that took away her happiness without batting an eye, to remain.

"Mam?"

The vampire opened her mouth.

"Ah! Ah! W-what are you?"

Her fangs glistened as she licked her lips and pulled the stranger's neck to the side.

Yes.

The humans that killed her love, her child…

They had also killed her humanity.

And so,

"AAAAAH"

The vampire bit.

And so,

Under the watchful gaze of the rising sun.

The vampire drank. She drank and drank until she couldn't, and then she drank some more.

And so,

Far from where the crying child was soothed quietened down, far from where they fell back to sleep.

Slept, a mother, a lover, and a human too.

***

Elric woke up early.

"Blasphemous. Five more hours."

Oh, he went back to sleep.

***

Elric woke up. The sun was overhead and no one came around to disturb him. If perfection was unattainable then this was the closest that came to it.

He rolled around on the bed humming and tapping for his theme song, but the feeling of just waking up and stretching his muscles that he barely used was too distracting.

After rolling on the bed for a while, he finally rolled off the bed and stood up.

Instead of taking a step ahead, he looked back.

"Ummmm."

The bed was calling him again. It was the flower to his bee, the laser to his cat, like a black hole, it pulled him closer.

"Haaaaa!"

Elric struggled to walk away, but the bed's pulling power was way too high.

"As expected of a magical world."

He was also an idiot.

A long struggle that was too gruesome to describe played out and emerged victorious Elric. On all fours against the ground, the winner of the war muttered his soliloquy.

"The battle may be won, but this war is a lost cause. I may have resisted the bed, but how will I sleep?"

Words, words, Elric may speak, but says, he doesn't.

The young boy then got up from the ground and dusted his knees, as if all that drama was nothing but in his eyes too. He stretched his hands and then his waist before moving over to the window. Just how nice would it be to laze around all day and all night? 

As it stood, he couldn't exactly rest right now. 

Elric slowly walked over to the window in his room and pulled apart the drapes, revealing the outside world once again. A fresh, new morning with pigeons and magpies cooing and howling in the distant skies. The fresh scent of the flowing water from all canals just enhanced the experience of the morning.

His gaze lowered down to the ground. Limping across the alleyway, an old man in a white tunic dyed with crimson walked on one leg. His gait slow, his air stale, his clothes bloodied.

"HEY!" Elric screamed. "You ok, old man!?"

The man heard the voice and turned upward.

There, Elric saw…

Half of his face, eaten apart, the skull visible.

"Gahhhh!" The old man screamed.

"Guess not. Do you have to be so rude?"

The old man stretched his hands toward Elric and walked closer. 

So, he clearly, visibly, wasn't ok. But Elric didn't think that warranted such a reaction toward him! Rude much? And so, Elric did what he did best, and ignored the old man.

"Those are type of guys that need chocolate."