The Blood God and His Fledgling
The permanent stain upon the earth called himself The Blood God, but he had collected many names in the thousands of years he’d haunted humanity. He supposed these days he would be considered an elder vampire, though in truth ‘these days’ spanned centuries, and as of late he had rather lost track of it all. He’d been called a monster, a demon, a nightmare. In the ancient days when he’d still cared, he had forced the humans to call him a god. And before then, when he had still been human…
The last time that name had ever been spoken, it was in a hero’s dying screams. The Blood God’s humanity died with him.
The Blood God was left in his place. A menacing brute, more predator than man, his tusks long stained with the blood he drank. But where once mortals feared his presence prowling in the night, now he was nothing more than the fading memory of a nightmare. The mankind he’d haunted had lost even the whispers of stories about him, an old myth, forgotten myth, a dusty artifact abandoned and to lay where it was discarded. But The Blood God preferred to be undisturbed, anyway.
At most The Blood God moved only to feed, and even then it was delayed as long as possible until the maddening blood thirst at last overwhelmed the listless immortality it sustained. It irked him to have to move at all, that the instincts to survive plagued him still. How inconvenient he must persist, but persist he did for an immortal is good for nothing else. The Blood God fed upon the strain of wolves he’d personally domesticated, less for any concern of mortal life, and more so of convenience and a simmering misanthropic temperament born of apathy.
He didn’t concern himself much with humanity, withdrawn from a world speeding past at incomprehensible speed. Below the window he always sat at, the city grew ravenously, architecture transforming with incomprehensible materials, the world unfamiliar and lonely. But the humans rushing past were all the same, swarming ants. The faces he’d seen over the centuries had become little more than an indistinguishable blur, repetitious, dull. The predator’s eyes lazily traced the movement of his prey, but they held no interest, truly. It was only the instincts of a wretched beast, building pressure in the back of his skull telling him it had been too long since he last fed. But perhaps he could postpone another fortnight.
And then in the midst of the miasma of humanity, a beacon. A flash of familiar gold working through the crowd. Vampires healed too quickly for it to matter, but The Blood God still hadn’t lost the impulse to prod at a throbbing wound despite knowing it would still hurt. And so he carefully watched the young human with hair like a gleaming summer harvest, anticipating the second he turned and grief speared through The Blood God once more. Perhaps he could have spared The Blood God by passing out of view, but he lingered at a strange bench. Back to the window, swinging his legs a little as he waited. A type of cruelty, in its own right, to deny The Blood God a swift blow. But he was already waiting till the cessation of eternity with no relief. This throb of his long dead heart made little difference.
As if likewise impatient, the boy’s head twisted, searching. A glance at something small in his hands, a bouncing leg, and he rose. Looking around, and The Blood God braced as he turned into view. But the expected pain never came.
Because this time, it really was Theseus.
The same dancing cobalt eyes and cheekbones and jawline and eyebrows and nose and him, it was him, it was his friend.
With a rattling, choking gasp, The Blood God remembered how to breathe again. It hollowed him out like a gale, almost scorchingly invasive. His chest heaved with it, then stilled, the repetitive instinct long, long dead. His claws twitched, then pressed to his maw in wonder. Thousands of years had passed since those lips drew their last breath. The Blood God had been so worried over it at first, how he could just forget to breathe. Theseus had just teased him over it, subtly assuring him it didn’t matter. And the hero had been right, of course. So wearisome a habit, frequent and mundane, too fast to keep up with for an ancient immortal.
Mortal. Startling, The Blood God lurched to his feet, hooves splintering the floorboards. He needed to act now, before the mortal slipped through his claws. A life so fleeting- no, he could blink and Theseus would be gone again. Cobwebs lacing him to the chair snapped, dust billowing from the dragging of his wings as The Blood God lunged for the window.
The mortal was fully facing him now, talking to seemingly thin air with a familiar exacerbated ribbing that ached to not be directed to him. The vampire pressed to the shaded glass, enraptured with the vision before him. He soaked up every last detail, basking in the mortal’s image. There wasn’t a single doubt in his mind. That was Theseus. His friend. The other half of his soul.
A fractured soul could not endure eternity, not alone. And now, he didn't have to be alone. This time, The Blood God wasn’t going to accept no for an answer.
