Necromancer, mad scientist, 2nd year student at the College of Aline, Doctor Lazarus firmly believes they will cement their place in the history books, revolutionize the scientific understanding of the arcane, and leave an irreversible mark on the biology of the planet.
The only thing that could distract them from this quest was Fate herself, who would send them on a scientific expedition unlike any they could have imagined.
Below the cut is a 1k story about their first week at college, that serves as a glimpse of backstory to establish this new, mysterious* character.
*the character is not mysterious to me. I am planning another post dedicated to their outfit design and why I made the decisions I did. And I will only have more to say about them as time goes on so keep an eye out if you think they're neat
First Days
Warnings: dead animals, references to dissection and gore
While Aline was still in the same province, Doctor Lazarus had anticipated it to be quite different from their stuffy upbringing. They had specifically chosen the College of Aline over Saint Zulfa, despite the opportunities provided by more renowned school, in the hopes of limiting their interactions with the upper class of Stellen Province.
They were not nervous. The great and powerful Doctor Lazarus did not feel fear, or pressure. Doctor Lazarus only felt power. Only pursued their own goals. The venerable and almighty Doctor Lazarus would make waves in the scientific world, would challenge authority should it step in their way, and would one day see their own name in one of the great tomes of arcane academia.
Lazarus arrived at the train station in Aline, and headed straight for the college. They already knew where it was, roughly. They had memorized maps in advance, and cobblestone streets and patchwork brick walkways were not too foreign.
As they crested a hill, and unfamiliar smell wafted through their mask. Stronger, even, than the lavender and mint that they kept stored in the beak. The smell was salty and wet, and they realized with a bit of suppressed relief that they must be smelling the ocean.
They stood their for a moment. Over the hill and snaking off on every side, the streets wound unfamiliar paths made of familiar materials. The cobblestone, the bricks, the glass, these were things they knew, but the arrangement of them was new. It was… unmemorised.
Unbidden, the child they had left at home came to mind. The child who collected frogs by the river, alone. The child who had learned to hide medical textbooks and dusty old historic volumes in increasingly clever places. The child who had stayed up all night to conduct experiments. The child who had longed to escape a life of banality and oppression. The child who could finally say: So that's what the ocean smells like.
They shook this child from their mind. They focused their sights ahead, up more hills and through winding streets, where they could just make out the spires of the College of Aline.
—
The first few days, Lazarus focussed on what needed to be set up for college life. They enrolled, rented a dormitory, went on a self-led tour of the campus, and unpacked their belongings.
When class started, they did what was expected of a student. They attended lectures, took vigorous notes, checked out several books at the library, and spent their evenings doing further research into the arcane arts.
The school didn't actually offer necromancy as a path, so they were taking credits towards Evocation, instead. But the curriculum didn't matter. All that mattered to them was maintaining access to the school's resources for their own research. Unimpeded and uninterrupted.
The first Saturday after classes had begun, Lazarus was in their dorm, sketching the inside of a dissected cat, when they found their mind wandering back to the smell of the ocean. They thought about the creatures that allegedly lived there. They had read that the waters of Aline contained semi-aquatic reptiles.
They checked their pocket-watch. It was only just afternoon. Surely the beaches would be crowded with people. They stared at the cat on their desk and contemplated. Would the beaches be more crowded as evening drew in? Was the Aline social crowd more active during day or night? Would waiting til night time potentially rob them of the true ability to explore?
They should get back to their drawing, focus on their studies, but for once in their life, they couldn't. Being in a cramped, makeshift laboratory was too familiar. They were supposed to be starting over. They needed a clear head.
—
The beach was not too crowded. Signs were posted by the front gate, warning of the crocodiles and alligators that “infested” the water. College kids and young adults littered the area in small groups. The smell of the salt air was strangely enticing.
Lazarus walked straight for the water's edge. They had brought a sketchpad and pencil, stored in a belt bag below their feathered cape, as well as some specimen jars, in case they got lucky.
The sound of the ocean was different, too. It was almost musical, the waves rolling and gently crashing, the cries of birds, the gently swaying trees. Of course, the effect was ruined by the distant, irregular chattering of people. They made a mental note to come here at night, some time.
“That's a lot of black for the beach, friend!” a stranger's shrill greeting crashed what little reverie they had found.
Lazarus turned to look at the intruder. It was a young man, human, tan, wearing short trousers and some sort of sleeveless undershirt. It was the most skin Lazarus had ever seen exposed, and some part of them twisted in revulsion.
Seeming to sense the awkwardness, but failing to recognize the cause, the young man continued, “You're gonna get heatstroke dressed like that.”
“I'm quite comfortable, thank you,” Lazarus said curtly.
“That's a cool mask by the way.”
Lazarus wondered if it would be easier to ignore the man or to tell him off.
“Don't see a lot of those, these days. Plague doctor, right? I hope there's no plague here!” the man laughed at his own observation. “I've never seen you here before, at least not dressed like that. You knew to Aline? Let me guess - college student.”
“Can I help you, sir?” Lazarus asked.
The man did not immediately respond. Lazarus spotted a little creature moving in the sand a few feet off.
“I, uh, was just trying to make conversation,” the man muttered, but Lazarus was already walking away, towards the movement he saw. “Catch you later, then!” he called out, pointlessly.
The creature was a small crustacean. Some sort of crab. Lazarus had seen them in his books, but watching the thing move was entirely novel. They followed it for a while, until it started to veer towards the waterline, at which point Lazarus struck out a deft hand and grabbed the creature by its sides.
They observed it like that for a moment, rotating its body and watching as the little legs and claws flailed helplessly. They checked the underside, pulling the tail from the carapace to check for eggs. When no eggs were found, they pulled a specimen jar from their bag, and set the creature inside of it. They looked around to see if anyone was watching, but even the annoying tan man was busy irritating another group of people a fair way off. They closed the jar and stuffed it in their bag.
They looked up at the sound of an unfamiliar bird's cry. It was a seagull, they recognized. No way to catch that without drawing unwanted attention. They looked out at the sea one last time, before taking their prize and heading back for their dorm.
@mortuembynight tagged me to do post part of a wip. I'm not currently working on any drawings or fics, so here's a lil somethin from the untitled ghost story:
“What the Hell is going on?” di Gallo demanded, rounding on Eddie.
“I don’t fuckin’ know, man!” Eddie stomped his foot like a petulant child. “You’re the detective, you figure it out.”
“I’m not a detective,” di Gallo muttered, as he returned to examining the windows. He looked closely with the flashlight, felt around the edges for anything that might be blocking the track. The windows appeared to be newer than the surrounding walls and floors, though not very recent. Maybe a mid-century addition.
After much fiddling, one eye trained on Preston the entire time, he finally gave up and used his baton to smash in the glass.
On the outside of the window, wooden bars were bolted into place. He tried pushing those out, hitting them with the baton, but they refused to budge. Something akin to panic started to bubble in his throat. He couldn’t understand. How could someone have done this without being heard?
“Is this some kind of sick joke?”
“I wish it was.”
Di Gallo turned to Eddie again, but Eddie’s expression was shifting. Not to guilt or mischief, as Bob had expected, but to some twisted combination of fear and excitement.
Di Gallo turned wordlessly to the other window and smashed it, but the result was the same. Beyond the bars, the last drops of sunlight disappeared into a moonless night.
“Fuck this, and fuck you.”
“Hey!”
“C’mon, we’re going out the front.” He roughly grabbed Eddie’s cuffed arm and shoved him towards the door.
“Easy, tiger!” Eddie teased, and di Gallo cursed himself for finding comfort in the familiar joviality.
They made their way towards what di Gallo assumed would be the front of the house, wandering into a large dining area with a fireplace off to one side. A strange feeling washed over him as they stepped through the threshold of this particular room. A sense of wrongness, or inconsistency. He paused to consider the room, and figured out the source of the feeling: the fireplace was situated in the wall where the facade of the house should be, and he had seen no chimney on that side of the house from the outside.
“Where are we going?” Eddie asked.
“The front door,” Bob muttered, only half focussed on Eddie now, scanning the walls with his flashlight. Their best bet was through this room, down the hall that ran perpendicular to the fireplace. Maybe they hadn’t reached the actual front of the house yet.
This second hallway was even more barren than the first. Only one door appeared on the right side, where the front of the house should be, and it led to a linen closet. Di Gallo slammed the door shut, throwing clouds of dust and dead insects into the air.
Eddie started to laugh, apparently unbothered by whatever had spooked him so badly before. “Oh, you are so lost, huh?”
“Shut up, Preston,” di Gallo bit back. “I don’t assume you’d lead the way out, if you knew it.”
“I don’t,” Eddie admitted with a shrug. “If I did, though, I would lead the way out. Believe it or not, this place scares the bejeezus out of me. I know!” He chuckled. “Eddie Preston, scared of a haunted house. My fans would have a field day. But really, I don’t want a repeat of whatever the fuck I saw downstairs.”
“What, exactly, did you see?” Bob asked for the second time. He nudged Eddie to keep walking.
“I didn’t see it, so much as felt it,” Eddie explained, oblivious to how hard di Gallo was rolling his eyes. “All I saw was a blur, but it damn near knocked the wind out of me when he shoved me into that bookcase. Creepy thing about that, too, you ever heard of Sebastian Castillon? He lived here in the nineteen seventies, until he was crushed to death by a bookcase. Just think, I almost met the same fate!”
“Wish you had,” di Gallo grumbled, though he knew he didn’t mean it. The last thing he wanted was to lug a corpse out of a breaking and entering case.
“You wound me,” Eddie said flatly. “Whatever happened down there, I bet my camera will have some good footage on it.”
“Yeah, I’ll come back for it. Tomorrow. During the day.”
Eddie sighed. “I hope you mean that,” he said softly. “That thing is my whole life.”
“That’s pathetic.”
“Hey!” This time he almost sounded genuinely offended.
A clattering sound echoed off somewhere to the left, and they both gave an involuntary start.
“That your Hezekiah?” di Gallo grumbled.
“I sure hope not.” Eddie’s voice was quiet, and his frame had gone stiff, but his eye glinted with excitement. Di Gallo didn’t like that glint. “Should we go investigate?”
---
the only people I've left read my drafts for this so far are two of my siblings. I've been working on it properly since like 2022?? I'm hoping to publish it when it's done. I kind of want to work on it today now that I've been looking at it haha. I tag @queenofthedamnnile , assuming you have any wips that arent already published ;p aaaaaaand @mythrilsantoku
ok but also imagine griffin does give up/get bored and just leaves lazarus with those other assholes. ok are you imagining it
give me a bet between the other bloodsiblings about who can get into lazarus' pants first. It starts as a joke but they do start getting competitive. Morgan has to be the arbiter by default as she's the only one whos not involved (Tony finds this unfair, Morgan will obviously be biased towards Dahlia), and Morgan rules that Dominate and blood bonds count as cheating - yes even though they did not work for Griffin.
Morgan, being the only one who's treating Lazarus like a person, actually ends up being the first one they sleep with. And she tells them about the bet. Then Tony and Savant get diablerized - Dahlia is spared for Morgan's sake
ok but also imagine griffin does give up/get bored and just leaves lazarus with those other assholes. ok are you imagining it
give me a bet between the other bloodsiblings about who can get into lazarus' pants first. It starts as a joke but they do start getting competitive. Morgan has to be the arbiter by default as she's the only one whos not involved (Tony finds this unfair, Morgan will obviously be biased towards Dahlia), and Morgan rules that Dominate and blood bonds count as cheating - yes even though they did not work for Griffin.
Morgan, being the only one who's treating Lazarus like a person, actually ends up being the first one they sleep with. And she tells them about the bet. Then Tony and Savant get diablerized - Dahlia is spared for Morgan's sake
Lowk obsessed with the version of Lazarus cooked up by @mortuembynight for his unwholesomeocweek writings.
A Lazarus who never runs away from home and Becomes Lazarus, but rather is pulled from their old life without any choice and Given the identity of Lazarus.
This version would be less independent, less defiant, and more repressed. This Lazarus, ironically, does not put their genitals into the severed head of Ane Vangelese (I know they do in the second fic, but they frankly Wouldnt Do That so shortly after their Becoming), this Lazarus is not able to build up their own life and world at all, and is at the whims of the vampires.
Also, putting Lazarus into a household that has multiple people who can use Dominate is just. Uggggghhhhh. This is really Not an improvement over their previous life at all. They WILL be killing people, possibly their own coterie mates. If bloodbonding wasnt such a powerful magic, Griffin's ass would be diablerized *immediately*.
AT THE SAME TIME i do also wanna see a version that goes a little differently. Love mortuem to death (genuinely we are legally married in real life) but that story did feel like it was rushing to set up a sex scene.
I would LOVE to see Griffin take his sweet time actually grooming and manipulating a self-made Lazarus. Normal Lazarus is just fucking cocky, but does crave validation and who better than a handsome older man to give it???? If you take your time, you could definitely get them Embraced without having to use Dominate or any sort of force.
They still would not want to have sex with him, but if theyre blood-bonded Griffin could probably get them turned on with some surgery or murder or some shit and slowly build the association of Griffin = My Penis Hard
This whole process would take months, or even years, and you'd probably have to sell some lie like "you gotta keep drinking your sire's blood to inherit his strength", but can you imagine??? The slowburn of it - maybe Griffin even gets irritated with how difficult it is to consensually BED this person. Maybe he gets bored and gives up and leaves and Lazarus has to go through bloodbond withdrawal. Or maybe after the first few attempts he still ends up using Dominate and Lazarus doesnt know how to feel during or after.
Lowk obsessed with the version of Lazarus cooked up by @mortuembynight for his unwholesomeocweek writings.
A Lazarus who never runs away from home and Becomes Lazarus, but rather is pulled from their old life without any choice and Given the identity of Lazarus.
This version would be less independent, less defiant, and more repressed. This Lazarus, ironically, does not put their genitals into the severed head of Ane Vangelese (I know they do in the second fic, but they frankly Wouldnt Do That so shortly after their Becoming), this Lazarus is not able to build up their own life and world at all, and is at the whims of the vampires.
Also, putting Lazarus into a household that has multiple people who can use Dominate is just. Uggggghhhhh. This is really Not an improvement over their previous life at all. They WILL be killing people, possibly their own coterie mates. If bloodbonding wasnt such a powerful magic, Griffin's ass would be diablerized *immediately*.
AT THE SAME TIME i do also wanna see a version that goes a little differently. Love mortuem to death (genuinely we are legally married in real life) but that story did feel like it was rushing to set up a sex scene.
I would LOVE to see Griffin take his sweet time actually grooming and manipulating a self-made Lazarus. Normal Lazarus is just fucking cocky, but does crave validation and who better than a handsome older man to give it???? If you take your time, you could definitely get them Embraced without having to use Dominate or any sort of force.
They still would not want to have sex with him, but if theyre blood-bonded Griffin could probably get them turned on with some surgery or murder or some shit and slowly build the association of Griffin = My Penis Hard
This whole process would take months, or even years, and you'd probably have to sell some lie like "you gotta keep drinking your sire's blood to inherit his strength", but can you imagine??? The slowburn of it - maybe Griffin even gets irritated with how difficult it is to consensually BED this person. Maybe he gets bored and gives up and leaves and Lazarus has to go through bloodbond withdrawal. Or maybe after the first few attempts he still ends up using Dominate and Lazarus doesnt know how to feel during or after.
