An urban fantasy and alternate history in two timelines.
In which Gaius Julius Caesar survives the Ides of March by being turned into a vampire, and decides between clinging to his old life and letting it go.
And yet the war-drum in your chest thunders on beyond your hero's farewell,
never to bow, never to kneel,
hunting, hawk-eyed, for the next worthy foe.
Now you rise as the dead man sleeps, sanctified by cleansing flame,
forged anew with your own last breath,
condemned to drink deep of lifeblood's gift.
And the thread of your fate lies unraveled in your hands.
Make your choice, warrior -
- will you heed your name's call to arms?
- - - - - - - -
In the early days of March in the year of the consulship of Caesar and Antony, Servilia's carefully curated network of informants catches wind of a terrible conspiracy from a loose-lipped senator.
Being Caesar's long-time lover, Servilia has no desire to see him dead, and considers her options, none of which offer much hope of foiling the plot in time. Only a few days remain until the senate meeting on the Ides, where the conspirators plan to strike him down.
Not only that, but her own son, Marcus Junius Brutus, is the figurehead they've chosen for their so-called tyrannicide. She could've seen it coming from the writings on the walls; Where is Brutus? Are you asleep, Brutus?
Servilia calls on greater powers, placing her hope in an old keepsake - a gleaming silver dagger that never seemed to stain or rust, never too far from a dusty scroll filled with archaic texts that speak of the power to defy both life and death, of a dark blessing nourished by a tribute of lifeblood.
That mystic blade is the one Brutus carries with him on the Ides, fulfilling his fabricated destiny as a killer of tyrants. At the feet of Pompey's statue, Caesar's life remains hanging by a thread as that double-edged blessing takes hold and irrevocably changes him.
He had made peace with the fate he had had no reason to doubt.
At the break of dawn on the twenty-first of March, Caesar awakens in a stranger's house with his wounds dressed and his entire body ablaze with pain.
He learns that 'he' had been buried by fire the night before in a grand spectacle. His household slaves had brought home a corpse that had most certainly been his. A medicus had examined it, finding only one wound to be fatal. Antony had displayed his blood-soaked toga for all to see. Flames had consumed his remains, and his soul had returned to the bosom of mother Venus.
And yet he is here, alive, and has a choice to make.
ways in which Anamnesis!vampire!Caesar allows for vicarious exploration of a Complicated™ relationship to (organized) religion, with some juicy source material context:
[] the sources on his historical self poke fun at this man being pontifex maximus for nearly a third of his five long decades on earth and being known for many things that don't include being particularly pious.
[] this is hard to read between the lines of because the Romans didn't care much what one's personal belief (or lack thereof) was as long as one performed all the rituals correctly, and even then, what we call atheism wasn't really A Thing among regular people; the gods were simply accepted as part of the natural world like we accept gravity and electromagnetism as part of the natural world. they viewed their matters of faith through a very transactional lens which is pretty weird to most of us - they were all about the pax deorum, the Roman people's covenant with the gods that must be upheld for them to continue to prosper and enjoy the gods' favor
for pure 'fuck it we self-indulgently ball' reasons as well as a potential future get-outta-plot-hole-free card if I happen to write myself into a corner again, I decided that in the mostly self-consistent Weird Magical Shit™ I write into this mirror of our world and history, one major principle is that myth can make reality
so Caesar, arguably alive but profoundly, irreversibly changed like the republic he had tried his absolute damnedest to reinvigorate in vain, gets to find out what it looks like for a living person to be elevated to divinity…
…eventually, because in the Anamnesis timeline, for the longest time he's just scratching the surface of the tip of the iceberg of the preternatural powers he's capable of developing - and that's also yummy character development fuel with him getting a second chance to show great responsibility with great power of a different kind.
the great tragedy is that he realizes pretty darn quick that walking away from his old life in the pinnacle of privilege and trying to start a new one as a literal nobody is Not Gonna Work, but the fear of the unknown and further disrupting public order in a way he doesn't quite trust himself to figure out how to manage is greater. it sounds very OOC for him who gives 'concept of fear does not compute' vibes, but…
which Caesar is truer to the one the sources try to capture?
the one who proves his willpower by walking away from his wife's quiet sobs begging him to come home, in tears himself, and is profoundly humbled in order to become an arguably better person through sheer experience and finds his place in an ever-changing world?
or the one who, deciding otherwise in a moment of 'weakness', gets to stay right in the center of his comfort zone for decades, has few more feasible ambitions than what he had already been doing, and by his presence, reinforces the very same adherence to tradition and great cultural stasis that had him born into an age of conflict stemming from a deeply conservative, hyper-competitive ruling class?
honoring his people's belief in him as a god, clumsily teaching himself how to listen to the minds around him and convince himself he's answering their prayers, both feels like the right thing to do and becomes a solid coping mechanism to busy himself with and repress a whole lot of things
he doesn't care much about the later official imperial cult and may personally even find it pathetic. using skepticism of the emperor's divine nature to cry wolf about treason? surely the mark of an insecure child wholly unfit for leadership
however, when Emperor Constantine decides to convert to Christianity allegedly because of some thing he saw in a dream, then Theodosius not only makes that the official state religion but outlaws worship of the old gods and closes their temples and forbids families to honor their ancestral household gods… Caesar, now much more inclined towards earnest belief himself, feels so deeply personally insulted that he almost contemplates marching straight into the palace himself and breaking a statuette of Venus over the emperor's skull. with this decree, that man has just killed nearly a thousand years' worth of tradition, oral history, legacy.
fine. he's gonna do it himself.
as a result, he really.
does.
not.
like.
the Roman Catholic Church in particular.
despite being well aware that the majority of non-noble self-described Christians do love their neighbor and are kind people and coexist just fine with everyone else, the increasing religious isolation he feels as a lone pagan in an increasingly Christianized medieval Europe paradoxically only strengthens his conviction that he must singlehandedly preserve the pax deorum that he refuses to see this new God as a part of, even once the Roman people have unquestionably died out and the only living person he's doing this for is himself
coping mechanism, accidental foresight of preserving knowledge, self-assigned purpose, resentful personal spite. all these have melted together as part of this great secret of an ever more distant past he carries in his heart that has now beat a thousand and one hundred years and may just beat ever steady and strong for a thousand more.
he is Gaius Caesar who is long dead. he is divus Iulius who is long forgotten. he is pontifex maximus for all souls in Elysium. he is father and shepherd to himself, wandering, alone. he lights candles and offers sacrifice to Mother Venus to hear her tender whispers of fierce divine love.
cw: mentions of pregnancy and death in childbirth; discussion of chronic health issues and their relation to fertility
writing Aeternus!Caesar looking forward to meeting Cleopatra again after returning from his Parthian campaign after 7 years instead of 3 as he planned, but what would otherwise be just having a good time turns into serious talk because no one knows whether vampirism has any effect on the vampire's future children, or their ability to have them, for that matter, and even though he doesn't expect to father any more kids because he's 62 by then, Caesar is Concerned
spoiler: just as in mortals, female vampires eventually run out of ova [but would still be able to be a surrogate parent with a donor ovum if they were previously able to carry a baby] while male vampires retain their existing fertility at the time of turning, which might even improve if they had health issues that vampirism straightens out
tangent on Caesar's health in particular, relevant to that last bit:
the most plausible theory I've seen so far is Caesar's late-onset Mysterious Illness™️ not being the oft-cited epilepsy that we can put 70% of the blame on Shakespeare for, but rather a series of mini-strokes possibly caused by a hereditary cerebrovascular malformation, exacerbated by his equally active and stressful as fuck, good lord, go retire already lifestyle, posited to also be the cause of his father's very sudden death. the book[1] I've been gobbling up whatever google books allows me to preview every few days of makes a pretty good argument for this based on the sources and some more context
being a condition related to blood vessels, this would actually be a prime example of health issues that vampirism simply removes as part of its physical changes. said changes include, among others, extensive angiogenesis (growth of new blood vessels) so the body's total blood volume increases, and most major vessels growing even larger and stronger to accommodate that.
vampires also benefit a lot more from exercise because the usual positive feedback loops' effect on the cardiovascular system and muscle tissue are even more significant for their bodies whose metabolism basically runs on whole blood with the nutrients it carries being secondary rather than a mortal's which mainly runs on some form of sugars
but Caesar is unaware of how it works and will remain so for a long time. what he has observed is that whatever had plagued his body before his violent turning is gone without a trace after only a year
after two, his hair has steadily been getting lighter in color, but also... growing back? well, if the gods blessing him with a second chance at life includes that, he ain't complaining
after three (of which he's spent two on campaign and training as much as his soldiers) he's pretty sure he has never been in such excellent shape even as a youth. an agreement with Antony to have him push himself as well while Caesar regularly feeds on his blood seems to have helped too
after seven years, he still feels great, genuinely can't remember the last time he was any more ill than a mild little cold, very much likes what he sees in the mirror, and counts himself lucky that his armorer has the patience of a saint.
but it's time to go home to a wife who he's actually looking forward to seeing again and is still young enough to possibly have a child, as well as a certain queen of Egypt for whom he can say the same, and he's confronted with that again.
he recalls that Pompey was about the age he is now when his dear Julia would've borne his child; the son he had with Cleopatra is about to turn ten and is a boy of equal intelligence and resilience as his parents; men his age becoming fathers to healthy children is hardly unheard of; and Calpurnia complained in her letters that her seasonal illness had worsened again the next spring after he left.
so his presence seems to have a beneficial effect on the overall health of all around him whom he cares about, whether his wife, his lovers, his best officers, even the men of his cherished Tenth Legion. but surely there must be more of a catch than needing to sustain himself with blood? if he can still have children, would they be ordinary mortals in body, or be altered the same way he was? would a mortal woman be able to bear them safely, or at least at no more risk than pregnancy and birth carry on their own?
he's seen enough women he loved dearly losing their lives to this, and either Calpurnia or Cleopatra meeting the same fate would crush his heart as it did with his beloved Julia, his light.
a harsh winter has rolled in early that year, so there is quite some time left until sail can be set westward again. Caesar knows that the only way to find out for certain what he's now capable of is to simply try, but that doesn't mean he can't send a few letters and see if there is something to be gleaned from the few fellow 'Lamiae' he's met in the meantime.
[1] Galassi & Ashrafian (2017), Julius Caesar's Disease: A New Diagnosis
(fair warning: discussion of what could be considered body horror)
the pareidolon, the false corpse of a vampire left behind when turning saves their life, is only indistinguishable from a real body on a 1:1 macroscopic scale. if one were to undergo a detailed forensic autopsy, grave errors in its 'construction' would be found.
DNA and fingerprints are scrambled or entirely missing.
tissue is impossibly homogenous viewed under a microscope rather than being made of individual cells.
bones are too long or too short or misshapen in ways that couldn't possibly have gone unnoticed in vivo.
blood vessels may end abruptly and begin nowhere.
muscles may be unconnected to anything; organs may lack their defining features like completely solid bones or a chamberless heart.
the stomach and guts are empty, the reproductive organs lack ova or sperm, the brain displays no sign of ever having been active.
there is no trace of gut bacteria, hormones, nutrients, even microbes.
left in a sterile environment, this humanoid construct would not necrotize and decay for lack of bacteria, only succumbing to temperature, dryness and gravity and eventually falling apart into grey dust as if it had been a sculpture of homogenous pulverized carbon all along.
the pareidolon very obviously is not a human body that could've developed naturally, or if it did, it would not be a viable one. it lacks the history of the vampire's true body that began as a bundle of their parents' intertwined DNA in a dividing ovum; it has no past, being only the physical impression of a zero-dimensional instant in time that marked irreversible change, tangible but no closer to a living being than a statue.
so one day, the Seekers get a phone call from a coroner who put an ongoing autopsy on hold because there was absolutely no way that cadaver could've previously been a living adult. at that point, there hasn't been much research into pareidola considering the prohibitive ethical issues of any possible experimentation with vampiric turning as well as observing it 'in the wild' as it was happening being virtually impossible because so many things have to line up.
but the only supernatural phenomenon that has ever been linked to reports of such anatomical aberrations in deceased adults is vampirism, so soon a small team pays that coroner a visit: two field agents and the leading researcher on vampire biology, Dr. Deirdre Sullivan, with 'Mr. Kadingir' in tow because there may very well be things he's seen before but wouldn't have thought were related to her research, and in any case, he could use his psionic ability to find out whether that dead body in question had once been a living person with thoughts and emotions and memories that their body would retain an imprint of...
the great tragedy is that no single person is responsible for all that, and neither is it all his own fault.
some part of that vicious cycle of feeling forced to wipe the slate clean every few decades, abandoning whatever family he might've had and anyone who didn't already know his secrets while clinging desperately to memories and possessions, is self-inflicted…
...but considering that no single vampire he's ever met has survived becoming known, could anyone really blame him for choosing safety in the shadows over the light that has burned so many to ash?
dragged out of its reeking hole into the limelight of brightly lit offices and sterile mint and white, the shadow remains quiet; cowering, even, its excuses and fallacies and irrational emotion held just out of reach.
and still it bites back when no one is there to see it.
the last time he had left the house was a late afternoon trip to the beach with the horse and the busy neighbor's dog. by all accounts, it was lovely; the dog had a blast running ahead and back while he slowly left his bare-soled footprints in the damp sand, the warm breeze making his second favorite orange tunic flutter, gulls crowing from a nearby port. no one else had been there. maybe that had been it.
he had sat down where the waves could caress his skin, uncaring of water and sand, and made no effort to fight the shadow rising again while the sun shone through his closed eyelids. the dog had come to sit in his lap and laid its head against his chest with concerned eyes and soft-tongued attempts at comfort.
the shadow has thoroughly mauled him yet again, buried in bedding with the barest response to messages and no other sign of habitation but the cats having food and water and clean litter, though they too are more preoccupied with never leaving their human's side.
the glittering windchime arpeggio of the doorbell rings. imperceptible to most visitors, the eyes of the guardian wolf at the door gleam as he blearily peers through their crystal structure, and musters a mighty will he's amazed hasn't yet been beaten out of him to greet one of four people he'd be willing to see right now. and out of those, only three are alive.
Dr. Sullivan, his dear friend whom he doesn't have to explain anything to, barely waits for the door to shut before pulling him into her arms and restoring some semblance of a composed human being. her hands are still so warm and gentle and she has brought comfort and a small furry gift so soppily endearing that it puts a smile back on his face, a big-eyed, stumpy-legged stuffed wolf.
the cats take in its unfamiliar scents as he chooses a pitch-black monstrosity spat out by the coffee machine over a glass-bottled ruby daze, and his friend just about orders him to go take as biting-cold a shower as his sulking id deems necessary. by the time he comes out feeling worlds better, the cats are batting their new toy around, his laundry basket is full to the brim, his bed is made and the midday sun is pouring in.
the shadow shrieks and retreats, its bite taking some time yet to heal again, but this proves again that it can always be driven out.
thought of silly things for vampire!Caesar to put in his fictional!twitter bio which he switches up every couple of weeks simply because he can; accidentally slipped back into character study mode
2124 years of experience and still figuring out the meaning of life
Kids these days don't enlist for the legions at 17 and perish in honorable service or earn their way to retiring at 35 anymore smh
Left my heart on the senate floor. yeah it's a huge mess. there's even blood on my archnemesis's statue. sorry
brutus honey is that a knife in your hand or are you just burdened with too much guilt to see me
Certified lousy poet
Classically trained dangerous demagogue
The guy Napoleon tells you not to worry about
Walking legal precedent in 79 jurisdictions
Was happily aging like fine wine and got turned into pure ethanol, can't have shit in Rome
Archaeologists hate this one trick
Missed the boat across the Styx
Professional last of his kind
Still haunted by embarrassing fanfiction I wrote at age 14
Wanted in 0 countries because I legally don't exist
Applying for citizenship of the present
"wanted in 0 countries because I legally don't exist" is funny af
it goes hand in hand with 'legal precedent in many jurisdictions' because him coming out to the public leads to new legislation to account for vampires' agelessness, and he sits down with the Italian government in particular to first tell them the truth about his current legal identity being essentially fraudulent and that he wants to keep it.
in the 1980s he hired a lawyer and forger who works with vampires to create new identities or cleanly alter their records so they don't catch unnecessary attention (specifically being suspected of the very fraud they'd have to commit to avoid it, y'see the irony there) for being legally known to be 120+ years old or something like that, and by 1992 that was done and 'Remus Kadingir' was a 46-year-old Italian citizen
when the veil is lifted in the late 2020s, what the public sees in the end are the fruits of a lot of talking to lawyers and governments, making the Seekers properly get their ducks in a row for publication, seeing yet more scientists and doctors to peer-review the evidence and be peer-reviewed as living evidence…
it's an utterly daunting task everyone would take one look at and immediately blow off as impossible. too complex, too much work for even a dedicated team of professionals, and then the public would be too unpredictable in their reaction [cough misinformation apocalypse in very recent memory cough] and trying to steer that in a useful direction would be a herculean effort
where others see a pipe dream at best, Caesar sees a challenge to sink his teeth into and make use of his skills and all the knowledge he's accumulated. he didn't really plan this in advance, but he's publicly upfront about his central role in making this all happen, and when he reveals his own big secret a little later, that's the thing that crushes any last shred of doubt over his identity. he's already done the impossible many times as a mortal and has just done it again.
all so he can go to sleep knowing he won't have to continue pretending to be someone who only exists on paper, and gets to laugh about it with a public who knew him already but wasn't aware he'd been here all along.
so yeah, it's funny in hindsight the way y2k is, pretty much. an immense amount of work went into making sure it wasn't gonna be a problem
knowing that she has nothing to fear from him, the cautious lioness understands the glory of the hawk's bloodied talons.
Selene has taught herself to focus well when drawing on her power to get just one thing done: stop the fight, get out of danger. she doesn't enjoy it; the few times she has had to defend herself this way, more people had been harmed than whoever needed to leave her the hell alone.
when practicing, she isn't sure what to even look for or what to work towards. she wishes she could give this up in exchange for… well, she doesn't know what she might want in its place. maybe to simply lay it down so she could never hurt an innocent bystander again even at the cost of her own safety.
this is the one thing in which she doesn't understand Caesar yet, and his offer to explore this with her still stands.
Selene has gotten past the extrasensory overwhelm making her skin crawl when she watches him summon his own power, but there's always something primally intimidating to his iron grip on what still makes her feel like a small animal scrambling for higher ground amidst a roaring flood.
no single word across the many languages he knows can describe what it feels like for him, and even memories only scratch the surface. blurred outlines coming together in clarity. an alignment of disjointed waves creating an unstoppable force of resonance. the same crackling power he felt when thousands of eyes were on him, when the ebb and flow of motion through the ranks of his legions broke the dam of their enemies' wall of shields and thundering hooves carried him with his rising tide.
whenever he then opens his eyes to his dear friend who still feels like a daughter to him, he sees the brave, curious girl again who had once looked at him with equal fear and determination.
her insides glaze over with ice when he tells her-
I AM IN CONTROL.
even her time-matured body could never withstand the coercive grip of his will's hands; her tempered presence could do nothing but yield to the deafening command of his mind's voice.
and Selene feels safe, knowing that it's only human to be overcome with terror as she beholds this being whose mother once loved him in a far deeper past than hers, forged in an age of crisis that neither began nor ended with him, the only one who stood strong against the emptiness that suffocated all the other ancients there could be.
knowing that she has nothing to fear from him, the cautious lioness understands the glory of the hawk's bloodied talons. he is beautiful with how fiercely he is alive, vicious once and always, perhaps divine, proud both of his scars and strength and of the warmth under the great span of his wings, wherever he may rest to conquer another day.
I AM IN CONTROL
whirling light dissipates as the legions stand down at the beckoning of a hand. blinding red fades, smothered, to pale, weathered skin and dark eyes as clear and alert as ever. as the heart returns to its mindful steady march, Selene bravely basks in the echo of its thunder, inspired to take its offered hand and let it lead her to her own victory.
behold my headcanon for Caesar's wounds, aka many brain power-on hours condensed into reference for myself so I can pull this up instead of randomly sprinkling little squiggles across the poor wretch's chest and back whenever I draw him shirtless
abundant rambles under cut
I spent way too much time looking at the sacred texts sources again to find which biographer (Suetonius, Iulius, 82) mentions a physician performing an 'official autopsy' (how invasively? I recall reading that it's one of the earliest explicit mentions of autopsies in Rome) and only one of these wounds being determined to be fatal with no further description, so considering the approximate state of medical knowledge in Rome ~230 years before Galen's lifetime, wound #11 should be blatantly severely life-threatening even with limited knowledge of where the organs are in the human body. the total number of 23 wounds is consistent through Suetonius and Plutarch (Caesar, 66.14) but contradicted by Nicolaus of Damascus (Life of Augustus, 26) who claims 35
though I couldn't find much on whether a physician (possibly selected for already being hired by someone as wealthy and choosy as Caesar, thus being more extensively educated? there's no further mention of the physician's identity beyond his name being Antistius) would likely know the location of the heart precisely enough to find out if there had been injury to it, the pericardium or the aorta without invasive dissection, which would've been highly regulated by law and under heavy scrutiny with this decedent (thank you, Caitlin the mortician), so he might as well have gone 'oh yep that's the one that did him in' based solely on where the externally visible wound was
this strange, haunted image first comes to him in meditation that had turned more self-reflective than the intent had been when he sat down for it. perhaps that conversation with several bright minds from the Seekers' faculty of history had done more than provoke thought and let slip loose something long repressed that he wasn't already painfully aware of. in discussing what his survival might mean for public scholarship, one of them had offhandedly drawn a comparison to the mythical phoenix, then remarked that it may as well be literal. perhaps that was it.
his mirror image greets him with eyes burning with a rage that feels all but alien to him, facial lines formed by a lifetime's worth of charming smiles contorted into abject anguish.
still you insist, the image snarls,
-you did this-
-you left me to die-
-you sacrificed yourself at the altar-
still you remain with your home in ruin and your name condemned to be a dead man's. it mustn't have been enough to be blessed with the greatest honors by the people you so loved. there must be something else you seek that I hadn't already earned.
he knows by now what drags these ungrateful words forth from where they'd been festering, steeped in the noose of grief that still closes around his throat when mortals look at his images with innocuous, wistful awe. these trusted ones already know what he wishes the mere sight would already beat others over the head with, and yet the reverence rings true in their minds and, in his, pitifully misses its mark. shouldn't it be enough to have the body and memories of that man? where is the pride, the restless will to do the impossible?
here, the personified gaping rift hisses, more venomous than the serpent that had doomed Egypt to subservience. I am right here, always, no matter how deep the bog of self-pity you insist on wallowing in. we are one every time you whisper to Mother Venus, every time a mortal's head melts over a simple truth, every time you step into this new temple that you sanctified for yourself. and yet you insist on pretending you never knew me.
you know denying me only leaves you miserable. bury the hundred men you could never be, not the only one you are.
Sullivan looked through the coroner's documents, inspecting photos, lab results and printouts of multiple types of imaging. Another folder from his colleagues, all the ongoing investigation had produced so far, lay open on a table with a few pages removed - those detailing the deceased's identification which could by now be considered confirmed despite the evidence being inconclusive, and their known history.
Kadingir had been holding on to those pages since they had left the sterile autopsy room for the coroner's office. He had barely said a word for a long time, and when Sullivan next threw him a glance, his eyes were still intently fixed on the most recent known photo of the deceased next to one of the mysterious body's face.
"Did you find anything?" she asked quietly, still unsure to what extent being spoken to would disrupt his psionic focus.
He finally blinked and audibly exhaled, shifting from the posture he must've been holding for a good twenty minutes. Holding up the decedent's last photo, he met her eyes. "That cadaver may have this person's face and build, but I'm certain this is not their body."
Across the room, the coroner's brows dropped in a deep frown. "Explain."
Kadingir fully faced the coroner. "People's bodies, and by extension their remains, retain impressions of their memories and emotions for a surprisingly long time after their verifiable brain death. They radiate them like lingering heat to anyone who can perceive them - that is, psychics like myself, which is why Dr. Sullivan asked me to accompany her." He paused.
"I could find no such thing in this cadaver. You already discovered that this is not a deceased human being, and I believe I can confirm that."
"Then what on earth is it?" the coroner asked, jaw clenched. "Something like a shapeshifter who happened to die in human form?"
Kadingir only smirked. "I've seen more outlandish things in two thousand years, and what you would call a shapeshifter was not one of them. No, I believe this may be something that once happened to me, too. Let me illustrate..."
While the coroner only grew more confused, Kadingir commandeered the whiteboard on one wall by first drawing a straight, horizontal line with a black felt pen.
"Consider a vampire's existence as this timeline, and their turning as a moment of irreversible change which grants them a variety of powers to survive what a mortal never could. Their body is no longer subject to its own physiology, but also to their mind. Meaning that if a vampire with sufficient willpower doesn't want to die, they simply won't."
He added a short vertical line to divide it.
"However, if their turning takes place close enough in time to what would've killed their mortal self, or even is one and the same..."
With a red pen, he drew a second, much shorter horizontal line branching off from the first. The coroner's expression lit up. "They split in two?"
"In a manner of speaking. A copy - something we refer to as a pareidolon, a false corpse - is created. The moment the otherwise foreign vampiric power becomes their own, any threat to the newly turned vampire's life is... violently rejected. Now, take this with a substantial grain of salt, but my theory is that the pareidolon may be a manifestation of the vampire's own grief for their mortal self, making it tangible as something for them - or their loved ones - to find closure with, hence it only being their spitting image on the surface while the rest of the body may as well be drawing anatomy from memory."
The coroner nodded slowly. "I see. Something to say goodbye to, because all this doesn't sound too different from death to me as far as those left behind are concerned."
"Rather confusingly, though, there have been at least two known cases of this still happening while anyone who would otherwise mourn the vampire's death was fully aware of their turning... so there certainly is more to be discovered there, as there is with our case here." Kadingir placed the pens back where they had been, stepping back from the whiteboard.
"I believe this unusual cadaver of yours is a pareidolon left behind by a vampire who was turned where the body was found and had a life-threatening injury or medical condition that led to its manifestation."
The coroner threw a glance at Sullivan, who nodded. "I don't see anything obviously to the contrary. You know, Occam's razor."
"I'm going to have a chat with the chief investigator on this case. Without their cooperation, there won't be much we can do, at least not by the book."
Dr. Evans carefully placed two piping-hot cups of coffee on the desk before taking a seat herself next to her colleague. No one had asked them to stay up this late looking through the latest slew of raw data from the Herculaneum project, but prying 'Mr. Kadingir' away from finds like this was physically impossible.
Calling him by that name had felt strange ever since he had entrusted her with the mother of all secrets, but very much necessary until the time was right for him to reveal it on his own terms. Beyond piles of photos and yet-unpublished papers, they had a single cryptic letter that he was absolutely sure he'd written with his own hands - arguably not much, but it was better than trusting a certain number of scars on his chest and a striking resemblance to three different marble busts, not to mention taking his word for... everything. He was going to need more than a scrap of written evidence to convince the public.
Taking his invitation to assist with the ongoing work on the Herculaneum papyri, Evans hadn't expected to find anything he might be particularly interested in. The telltale smirk that greeted her now, though, told her he was about to surprise her yet again.
"Don't tell me there's another breadcrumb about you in there? You know, if I had a nickel every time..."
"No, unfortunately not, but I did spot something rather familiar."
"Another Cicero?"
"Not yet."
Images of texts upon texts yet to be transcribed fluttered across the monitor and landed on what was clearly legible as Greek written by a professional scribe. Kadingir's eyes were on Evans as hers were on the muddy-edged letters, and she turned back to him with raised brows.
"Oedipus? I thought... wait."
The gears turned in her head, and Kadingir's grin only widened. "Not just any of those. Someone rescued a copy of my Oedipus from Octavian's machinations, and that must've ended up in this collection. Of all my otherwise-lost works to preserve... though I suppose someone wanted it exactly because Octavian wanted it forgotten."
Evans barely contained her laughter to repressed giggling, unwilling to wake up the neighbors over a teenage boy's clumsy poetry about that myth of all things. "Or they wanted to make fun of your style being crap as a kid compared to later?" she jokingly suggested, and the confidently unbothered shrug she received in response no matter how far she took poking fun at this man was a breath of fresh air as always.
"Of course it was terrible. Had I ever gotten to read whatever Cicero wrote as a boy, I would have endlessly teased him about it too." He raised an eyebrow in that way of his that signaled scathing deadpan mockery. "Catullus would've turned purple with envy over a kid, let alone me, composing something more charged with foolish hormones and secondhand embarassment than anything he did as an adult."
Already preparing to apologize to the neighbors in the morning, Kadingir was content to make Evans laugh about himself and Cicero and Catullus all night. The papyri and his crummy Oedipus could wait; unlike mortals, a precious handful of whom were his friends, he had all the time in the world.
sure, the legendary ego and its ambition are still there - or is it, completely removed from the social and political context that had nurtured and enticed it? does Caesar care about holding power and fame, or does he care about holding power and fame among the Roman people?
with his people long gone, is there anything or anyone left for him to care about even remotely as deeply as the martial glories he pursued with such fervor?
these things that those who came after him see as so central to who he was... isn't it only human to feel as if, in their eyes, his identity is meaningless, empty, unworthy without them, as if the legend has vastly overshadowed the man?
when the image of the grand conqueror falls away, left behind is a warrior without a cause to fight for, a leader without a state to serve, a priest without gods to honor, condemned to endure, alone, while the indifferent, irreversible passage of time blessed all he knew and loved with the natural mercy of ending.
in the wake of his rebirth, isn't it only human for an orphan boy to wish so fiercely for a new family?
Scenario: Using his potent psychic abilities, Caesar helps a young man in resisting being turned against his will by another vampire's bite.
He settles into meditation with a hand on the patient's shoulder, reaching out to the shaken mind running out of corners to retreat into and assuring this young man that he wouldn't have to go through this alone. Only jagged, stark emotions like glass shards come back, their edges too sharp now to form anything resembling words; he knows exactly how to continue.
Frightened to the bones, the patient feels as if he could breathe again when a fatherly warmth envelopes him and soothes the most primal of his fear.
With further assurances that this presence would do its damnedest to help, he tentatively feels ready to stop the indescribable corruption that had been tearing through all of him for far too long already.
As if taking him by the hand and leading him into a new and unfamiliar place, the presence opens further to him. Now there is something almost as horrific as the callous and uncaring hunger he had caught a glimpse at the moment the ravenous vampire's teeth had pierced his skin - force, boundless, focused, tightly controlled force that he only had to tell where to strike.
Force that had never cracked under pressure, never given in to another.
The fight is long and exhausting, fraught with tears and weak whispers of I don't want this, please, make it stop, I want to go back.
The corruption bites and scratches in a frenzy, hungry and never satisfied until it consumes him whole, but there is always the presence at the patient's side lending him its unending strength against the wild beast.
His tears won't stop, but he gasps, I won't let you.
I'm not yours to control.
The presence burns, relentless and powerful, as he cries out, "I'm not afraid of you!"
You will not make me yours.
You will not.
Finally, the patient's vital signs stabilize, the imprint of his attacker torn out at the root and their will shattered through brute force. Was he in any state to articulate such a thing, he could've only described it as having taken part in a miracle.
The presence remains with him just a little longer, enveloping him in warmth again like a loving father's embrace. Rest, child, soft whispers reach him. You have shown such courage. Be gentle with yourself.
author's abundant ramblings under the cut. please heed the content warning.
TW: (discussion of) mind control
like feeding, turning is the least unpleasant when done entirely consensually. when the mortal is unwilling, though, it's a matter of their willpower + immediate medical care and counseling in a tug-of-war against the will and overall power of the vampire who attempted to turn them.
one day a team of Seeker agents bring in a young guy in pretty rough shape - minor injuries that are easy to treat, but the agents confirmed that he was bitten by an unidentified vampire and shows all the signs of the turning process having begun, and mentally he's effectively in a shutdown state.
being on the 'vampire urgent care' team's speed-dial for several reasons, 'Mr. Kadingir' comes in to help. he's assisted in many other cases, supporting another vampire helper who has healing abilities or approaching a terrified fledgling who would've otherwise been dangerous. here, this poor dude who doesn't want to be turned needs a bit of a hand in fighting off something he can't even comprehend.
Caesar's greatest power of mind (thanks for the banger, Cicero*), aka what would make him incredibly dangerous if he had a single genuinely malicious bone in his body and/or didn't simply have no desire anymore to basically take over the world, is the other side of the same coin as the charm and charisma he already had as a mortal. y'know how D&D describes the charisma stat as overall force of personality, not just being likeable? yeah, that.
*vis ingeni; speech held on January 1, 43 BC, trans. Shackleton Bailey, Phil. 5.49
now wielding psychic abilities as a vampire, and being abundantly experienced with them by virtue of his sheer age (even if he could only relatively recently begin exploring and training in a controlled environment with proper support), merely reading someone's mind is almost an afterthought when they have his undivided attention. actively reaching into their stream of consciousness to plant an idea, spark some emotion or cast a veil of forgetfulness over some knowledge feels as simple as redirecting the flow of water from a faucet.
there's gently nudging someone in the direction you want their thoughts and decisions to go, just enough exertion of influence so they're none the wiser. a little less subtly, there's combining it with a few choice words; an outside observer would very well notice the 'actually, nevermind, you were right all along' kind of flick of a switch. the wills of mortals tend to be far easier to bend if they think it's their own idea than to more openly press and coerce them.
and then there's the BRUTE FUCKING FORCE this man could muster from nothing but his own mind. with corresponding effort, this can't even be called breaking someone's will anymore to make them compliant - he can utterly crush it, forcing them to do and say things, or going even further, to shut down like smothering a flame and leaving that unfortunate soul in a catatonic or nearly vegetative state.
of course the mere idea is horrifying. a person with psychic abilities of their own might be able to muster some resistance, but there's really not much anyone can do against Caesar's tremendous willpower focused to a pinpoint like this.
realizing this, the Seekers are glad that their most interesting study subject is effectively too chill to pose a danger to anyone who hasn't already passed up many chances to not draw his ire.
The hoofbeats, marks of swiftness, were as constant as the drums honoring Mars, softened by lingering snow.
How poetic that this clear January night seemed to muster every effort to dissuade Caesar from a decision already made. The cold would creep into his very bones no matter how many layers he wrapped himself in.
They had to be far past the bridge already. In the eyes of the warmongers calling themselves honored fathers, what was one more step further across this boundary?
We were brothers, and you let his venom seep into your heart.
What was one more day's march of the Thirteenth, one more city opening their gates without a single drop of blood shed, one more call for reason that he could so vividly picture Cato tearing to shreds for all to see?
Would he run out of papyri before they might listen, or would they run out of doubtful voices to silence?
Pompey had not wanted a war until he did. His replies reeked of the stubborn and scathing vitriol straight from Cato's frothing mouth, repeated in the scribe's neat hand that left no room for even a shred of uncertainty. He had made his intentions abundantly clear.
That had never stopped Caesar. He had already swayed men to renounce their own convictions short of god-sworn oaths; this was no different, some part of him argued. He only had to bring Pompey to his senses once, and then perhaps he would heed the call to honor Caesar's dignitas and his own.
All eyes were on him once again.
Those of his soldiers, once boys whom he had made into hardened warriors, burned with fierce loyalty. Those of citizens catching a glimpse lit up with excitement, admiration, pride, to bask in which in triumph he had undeniably earned himself the right to.
Outside of personal, visceral hate, there was no good reason to deny him that, or to dismiss the concessions that had already been made. There was no good reason to rob their people of a hero to inspire their minds and their hearts.
Is this his doing, or yours? Has he made you hateful, or were you already so envious?
But if it would take one to destroy one - if Pompey truly wanted to prove that the old dog might still bite, whether he was only whipped into this war-frenzy by Cato or whether there had always been resentment -
- no, he had to know better. There was no good reason to shun reconciliation. There was no good reason to go to war over a citizen exercising his sacred rights.
Still too damned cold, the last suitable piece of fabric Caesar had reached for in his restlessness had been his cloak, a striking scarlet in daylight and nearly black under the pale moon. It might be another decade before he would lay this down for the last time to be displayed in his home or offered to mother Venus in the grand temple. Until he did, he had no choice but to honor the duty it stood for.
And for now, in spite of Gnaeus Pompey calling to arms, it was the duty of Gaius Caesar to write another letter.
As young Octavian calls himself Augustus, ambition sweetens the idea of great Caesar rising from the dead to rule an eternal Rome as a living god.
At the same time it feels like a blasphemous temptation of fate, and not worth the sheer scale of such an upheaval so soon after the irrevocable transformation of the republic. People are changing, and without their rulers changing with them, they would shoot the eagle out of the sky soon enough. Brutus had made that point abundantly clear.
Perhaps they would've wanted him to take the diadem. Perhaps they would've torn him to shreds for it. He is grateful he would never know, and bravely faces the uncertainty that awaits him as a nameless plebeian as the night sky bears a new star.
Between knife and altar, time becomes a looming shadow.
The conqueror's voice of reason beats his ambition over the head with hindsight. Divus Iulius and his star grace the Forum, principes waver under the burden of the power they had lusted for, and the borders push further once more.
A wandering priest dies on the cross. Rome burns and rises from the ashes. A tyrant is struck down by his own guard. Intrigue, safely observed from afar, entertains.
Between martyrs and mad emperors, time becomes a repressed memory.
Rome embraces a singular God, and he reminisces on the deposed pantheon, keeping symbols of mother Venus in the guise of Maria Virgo. Her face blurs together with that of Aurelia and her hands reach into his dreams to cradle his head and whisper softly of home, of comfort, of a life sealed in the past and denied the mercy of ending.
His lover bears a child, and he weeps over the name the boy would never know to be his father's.
Between the turmoil of temples in flames and that of being human, time becomes a cruel joke.
At the turn of another century, a stained old ring glints sadly at him from a curiosity peddler's market stall, the faded image of Venus Victrix staring back at him and setting memories aflame.
The merchant loudly praises God for the fortune he's just made, turning heads away from the hooded old man leaving in haste with greatly lightened pockets and renewed resolve to help the city drive out its thieves.
Between falling giants and the winds of change, time becomes a dragon's hoard.
Employment as a scribe for the church pays well even if he feels terribly out of place as a hidden heathen. It feels strangely comforting to copy works he had read first editions of and to suggest more elegant translations, and of course he wouldn't miss out on copying his own work, proud of it being carried on, though it still hurts no less to see it treated the same as faded papyri that had already been ancient by his time.
If only they would leave Brother Casimir to his scrolls and spare him the barely-veiled suspicion, he might resent Constantine a little less.
Between beloved quill and feigned prayers, time becomes a mournful library.
The north is unforgiving, but beyond the tales of bloodthirsty raiders are echoes of who he had once written of as worthy foes, their gods now holding different names, their descendants' great sagas speaking of valor unclouded by ambition. Kjárr the Curious lets every song burn itself into his memory, and a king pays handsomely to have them recited day upon day, too captivated by the wise old bard to evade a stray arrow.
Between petty revenge and lost legends, time becomes a comedy.
The Renaissance is aptly named, he finds. The imitations of the art so familiar to him seem clumsy at first, but perhaps Neoclassical, future past, has its own charm.
The idea of revealing himself first crosses his mind then. These painters and writers and sculptors are already head over heels for their romanticized idea of Greece and Rome; if they had a living relic shatter their illusion only to rebuild it in the true glory he could've brought it to -
- no, no. The church's fear of losing control is too great. Copernicus, Galilei, silenced for questioning divine doctrine. Flirting with dead gods and angels and demons in art, belittled as mere art, fiction, flights of fancy.
They are not ready, and he lights a candle at Venus' altar for the great scholars who will never drink from the fountain of knowledge walking among them.
Between bare statues and a secret weighing ever heavier, time becomes a burden.
A star-spangled banner is raised, railroads streak triumphant across land, Edison's spark lights up cities, the world begins to speak of nations and independence and citizenship and the chess pieces are toppled once more. We the people, sacred words in ink on parchment after they had once been an oath on his own lips, senatus populusque, primus inter pares.
He signs with J. M. Carter Jr., another name he hopes will be forgotten, and sends the servant to drop off the ballot. Alone, he caresses Portrait of a patrician matron's hair and chooses to believe in this new endeavor.
Between the march of technology and the ouroboros of hubris, time becomes a lesson learned.
An archduke is dead, and a number of soldiers follow that no mortal could yet comprehend. The war to end all wars, people had said a thousand years ago, and now again on an exponentially greater scale. Perhaps the Greeks were right about hubris.
Another tyrant becomes obsessed with Rome again, a bronze statue is erected, and the man it depicts has half a mind to tear it down in rage. Or to write a letter and place it in the figure's hand, or to go right ahead and sue the bastard for... something. Or a well-placed nightmare sent from afar, perhaps, the great ones he worships condemning him.
Or, as the indomitable voice of reason says, he should stay away, if only to wait until they are ready to learn.
Between a legacy abused and costly justice served, time becomes a weapon.
Decades are a blur, and humanity no less quarrelsome than they had always been, though the sparks of kindness are all the more visible. Scientists walking in the dark on things beyond the mundane band together to find... they don't know yet what they're looking for, but they joke about running into a guy who knows a guy who might be more than a proverbial vampire, or one of themselves might turn into a giant wolf one full moon, or a real saint might cause some miracle, or another Lazarus might come back from the dead.
It's amusing at first, then promising, then impressive as they go from bored university students to a fringe but growing research group and, within a few more years, the Seekers have facilities, equipment, databases, employees, volunteers, informants, test subjects, associates, esteemed fellows...
Between yet another new status quo and frivolous pursuits begrudgingly tolerated, time becomes an opportunity.
His new life begins with a letter.
Then staring into camera lenses, making phone calls, compiling bibliographies, visiting a hundred archives. An assistant is handed thirty images of marble busts and many more old photos, snapshots decades apart of the same man who had never looked a day older, and asked to make sure their colleague isn't 'seeing things'.
The rumor mill is merrily churning about an ancient vampire having been discovered. The oldest they'd worked with was only three hundred! And now this one is older than steam, older than gunpowder, older than the church - if it was true and they hadn't just been hibernating for centuries, what sheer wondrous volume of knowledge could they share?
Everyone who heard about it is giddily awaiting the new associate's arrival, but of course, none of them know what an ancient vampire could or should look like.
The receptionist sends a charming middle-aged gentleman in a nice suit to a young assistant absolutely shaking in her boots, who accompanies him to the security office, from where he's sent to the restricted area surrounded by four burly guards with silver bullets in their belts, standing motionless while the small crowd awaiting him all have eyes big as dinner plates.
The Seekers' dean of history almost visibly has three words stuck in their throat. A name that had become an heirloom, then a title, then a synonym for the end of an era, and unbeknownst to all but a few, the name of a man whose heart still beat strong and whose hands had never been idle, first in defiance, then with hope.
Please, 'Mr. Kadingir' will do, he tells the group, and thirty people release the breath they'd been holding, willingly enchanted by the same smooth words and hint of a smile that had bent emperors and kings to its will.
Let's start at the beginning, shall we?
Between curiosity and remembrance, time had become a treasure.
