Light and noises barraged my senses once again as my eyes shuddered open. Roaring cheers of blood thirty mongrels inflamed with the azure glow so prevalent among vampires. A creeping smile started to form on my mouth. I wanted to laugh but that would be stupid. Slowly returning senses informed me of the lurking Sanguine that for Sol knew what reason had forced me to sit on both my knees.

I could hear his deep voice shouting towards the crowd, exciting them with words I didn’t bother to understand. My focus remained solely on his spear. I didn’t have my short sword anymore, nor did I have the luxury of a second chance. Still, anxiety and uncertainty were so far from me.

I felt awake. Everything around me emanated life in such a blinding hue the sun might not even rival it. Something was different. Like the first time, I awoke in those black halls. Both body and mind stayed the same.

Yet, there was no doubt in my mind anymore.

No distraction, no loss, no care, no feeling. Only cold, heartless clarity. Maybe that was why everything around me felt so alive. Because I was so distantly connected to it, so close to the seeping void.

I kept my eyelids closed and my body still like the surface of water, ready to ripple. The Sanguine was incensed, he was furious and he was afraid. He smelled of it. No, no sense could articulate how someone felt. No person should’ve been able to perceive that.

Yet again, I could. His emotion rippled towards me. All their emotions rippled towards me. The glory, the amusement, the manic enthusiasm. I felt it all smash against me, like tides against a hollow cliff.

What… is this?

Then it faded, seconds after it came, restoring my psyche to its previous state of utter tranquillity. Like the eye of a storm, calm in calamity; Order in chaos. Slight vibrations shimmered through the ground as Grisile picked up his spear. With my position, and the way he approached…

…the man intended to stake me.

Staking someone for a human was nothing more than a very cruel and inhuman death sentence. For a vampire though, it did something rather grim. To stake a vampire was to forcibly invoke the law of Fall upon them. It was supposedly looked down upon and reserved for criminals on most occasions due to the pure agony of slipping down a stake while your body burned to crimson cinders.

Grisile no doubt clocked that it would also make on helluva a show.

The glaives blade thrust towards my chest, the Sanguine never expecting any resistance from what was essentially a dead man. I opened my eyes and pivoted off my knee the moment he was too forward into the motion, twisting my torso to avoid the blade. I glimpsed his surprise. It was quick and would not last.

“You unruly shit. Why won’t you just die like the dog you are.” He screamed, preparing himself to brawl me. I had split the distance making it far too close for him to use his spear effectively.

My feet firmly planted on the ground burst with my quickly draining vitality, he raised his arms in defence, fully ready to beat me down with fists. His left right fist smashed into my face with a strength that made things crack. My hand instead lightly glazed over his but the moment it connected with skin scarlet flames exploded around it, engulfing almost all of my arm. The

Sanguine’s face wasn’t spared either. He stepped back wailing in agony, clutching the parts of his face that had gone ablaze like a wick.

Unlike him though with a push of my Arcana to invoke the Elemental Arcanes carved into my very blood, the flames could be dealt with. Water from the air atmosphere around me drowned the flames, turning it to hot steam that might’ve scolded me had a gust not immediately extended from my body blasting it out of the way.

Stumbling I kept my clarity, biting back the pain and still feeling that calm that radiated from every pore of my body.

There was something deeply wrong with me at that moment and I was apparently aware of it. Carving Arcanes into my blood, something that was far more important than even a heart or lungs to vampires was not a clever idea. The fact that I had in that moment trumped the necessity for a focal point had horrifying implications.

Only fools could think themselves the smartest in the room, or to have come across an idea first. There had to be a reason others didn’t do this, a consequence that made it better to just wait until they had learned how to chant properly. Something natural had been violated for the sake of power and for now, I had no time to care.

Fresh burns snaked up my left arm nearing my shoulder, causing another wave of pain and grimace every time I looked at them as I got a better footing. Grisile was worse off. Far worse. He patted down his burning face with a fervent rush but it did little to help. By the time he fully patted down the fire deep scathing burns were present on both his hands and face. The Sanguine had been forced to rip off his fine tunic just to put the flames out before they turned him into a living pyre.

His shaky gaze shifted from the ground to me with such visceral hatred and rage I could almost taste the blood from his bleeding lip, bit in absolute frustration. That didn’t phase me much. What did get to me was the stare from above, behind the thundering cheers and rampant banter at the turning tides. The eyes that stayed on me fixed like a hawk, trying to understand what I had just done and how I did it. It was a giant lapse in pressure from mere gazes that bothered me just a little.

But you can’t do anything, can you?

Until the match was over, they had to play by rules clad in history and ceremony. No one could interfere in the Rite for Blood.

“Arggh! Y-you fucking ingrate.” Grisile screamed in dismay, clutching his burns in pain.

Falling back had put me between him and his spear, making the Sanguines situation all the more worse. His demeanour that maintained a sense of calm had shattered, giving way to fear and uncertainty. Grisile wanted his spear but he was too anxious to come close to me. I felt like my relative calm in spite of the burns that wracked my own arm didn’t make him feel any better.

Blood dripped from my lip falling into the grooves of the arena that alight the red haze around us. In truth, I wasn’t much better off then I had been before. Standing was a struggle not to mention running or evading, plus I most likely only had enough excess Ichor to ignite a few more Arcanes in my blood. After that, I knew I would drop.

The Sanguine was scared but he had time to wait, I was on the clock. Tempt him? No, I needed to provoke him. Like a cornered lion.

“Are you afraid?” I asked through a cracking voice, slipping between my normal tone and one I didn’t recognise.

Besides gritting his teeth to an audible degree, Grisile didn’t bite.

“Fear is a funny thing, you know. It can show you what you really are. A father afraid for his child might lift a mountain, a boy fearing for his love might stay convicted in the harshest of torment.”

The ground beneath him started to show spiderweb cracks.

“It is not what we fear that can define us, it’s what we do in that fear. Who would’ve thought a Sanguine trained his whole life is nothing but a stunned rabbit in front of his fear. I imagine your lady must be very disappointed.”

“I’ll cut your tongue out!!”

Hook, line and sinker.

Either the pain, the anxiety or the haze had taken the last of Grisile common sense. What once had been a man with the temperament of a duelist had deformed into an enraged barbarian. He took quick steps towards me, raising his first in one hand and his claw in the other.

Instinctively my posture lowered to the stride of a predator, ready to lunge the moment he was close enough. Hunger dripped from every fraction of me, slowly eating away everything.

A fist flew towards my face with no sense and only rage, claws not far behind. I took the blow to the shoulder, grappling Grisile on his centre mass as my father had once explained. If I could take him down here his balance would crumble with ease. Claws scraped across my flesh, slicing from my stomach to my ribs. They hurt and I let out a muffled groan but it was nowhere near the level of depth his glaive had cut across my chest.

“Get off me, dog!” He shouted swinging limbs up and down as we smashed into the arena floor.

The echoing clash to the ground stung my ears, loosening my grip for a moment as my tranquillity wavered. The taste of rot and metal in my mouth kept getting closer to lurching out but I held it in. For the moment, I couldn’t show any weakness.

When we hit the ground I shifted from his front to behind the Sanguine, locking him to the ground with all the strength I could muster. Muscles and bones screamed in opposition, tearing under his manic strain.

That didn't matter though, none of it did. The match was over the moment he let me get this close. The non burned hand I still had swung forward and gripped onto Grisiles face, making sure to claw into his eyes and skin. He grunted in agony making better progress breaking free now I only had one hand to hold him, even managing to stand again.

Little did it matter, the worst had yet to come. Even I didn’t know what to expect, understanding only that it would be an awful experience for both of us.

Beneath my skin, I guided my Ichor to seep into the crevice that made up an Arcane I had carved into my blood. The azure flush around us from small embers above started to tremble; the shadows snaking and moving like a hungry beast. Deep inky nothingness started to coalesce around my gripping hand, burned and expended by the surrounding light the moment it elapsed.

I swore I could hear the darkness itself screaming as it squired in retaliation, shifting and breaking apart the moment it formed. Anything it touched, including both my flesh and Grisile’s began to rot. Skin and flesh turned to rot and muck, eyes and teeth brittle in moments. Spreading like a rampant sickness from the contact point, I could feel what little energy I had left being sucked into a vat formed from the darkness. To watch the spiralling rot crawl up from my hand where the darkness began and fuse itself to me, popping out green veins and bringing intense nausea.

“Arrrghhh!” Grisile screamed through my hand which was losing grip quickly, the skin falling away and soon to be joined by bone.

He went from flailing to freaking out from seconds of exposure to darkness magic, staggering back left and right as strength left his legs. With my Ichor running dry and my consciousness beginning to waver again there was little I could do besides continue to summon the darkness and grip Grisile as tight as possible.

I watched from his back stomaching down the pain ripping through both my arms as he crashed from tile to tile, unable to keep himself upright against the unyielding darkness. Stumbling like a falling behemoth. The sweat we produced began to reek like fermented urine, the skin like a fish left out for months in the heat. Both my eyes stung from staying open far too long and my ears had long since fallen into nothing but a ringing symphony.

It was peculiar to feel so much that I divulged into numbness.

Eventually, like all things, with enough tug the damn gave way and Grisile the Sanguine unbeatable collapsed to his knees. Prey ready to be consumed. I felt no joy or catharsis, no relief or honour; only hunger.

Cold, uncaring hunger.

His body had gone limp, held up only by my fleeting last scraps of strength. Just from the neck alone, I could guess without seeing the ghastly state his face must have been in, taking the full brunt of darkness magic along with my rotting hand.

I knew the Blood Rite was meant to be a ritualistic fight to the death. We were meant to put each other down, by a blade or claws. Both Fangless and Fledglings weren’t even meant to be able to feed off their kind…

…and yet.

Looking at the Sanguine’s neck with protruding veins of a sickly green I felt my head instinctively lurch forward as four pointed fangs on both the top and bottom of my jaw began to extend from the gum. I knew it would taste feral. I understood it wasn’t what was permitted. But the craving that ran through me had only gotten stronger and it was only going to get stronger.

To feed was to consume.

To consume was to satiate.

AND TO SATIATE IS TO SURVIVE

The wind around me cracked as my head whipped back and then sunk down on the Sanguines neck, needle-like fangs piercing through his skin like an apple.