Of all the things I have really grown to hate over the past couple of days, I currently had two favorites. One was Dog and the other one was the number 28. Remember earlier when I was attacked after walking out of my cave?

“The Watchers are an old family of elves that dedicated themselves to ending your tyranny the moment you unsealed the cave. Their whole life dedicated to killing you the moment you came outside.”

“So, what you are trying to say is that these elves who unlike any other instance of elves I encountered only lives a very short time and that for the past 500 years a single family has been dedicated to watching my front door to jump me 30 years at a time?”

“That’s the gist.”

“Why didn’t you tell me I was covered in blood?”

“Didn’t seem like a big deal since you were always covered in blood before. Also, you just vaporized an elven warrior during a hissy fit, I wasn’t about to trigger you.”

The look I shot him was enough to wipe the smug grin off his smooshed face and get him back to the shivering coward we all know and love. The frustration evident on my face over the ridiculous situation. The barn we were hiding in was empty except for the hay strewn around. I tried to wipe some of the blood off with the hay, but that proved to somehow make it worse.

“Y-y-you could try the cleaning spell Master.”

I looked up from my mess to make eye contact with Ron who was busy licking his eyes and managing to look terrified while doing it.

“Cleaning spell?”

“Master, in your grimoire. P-p-page 28.”

I grab the old tome out of my magic pocket and flip through the pages covered in strange doodles and various notes, scripts and recipes. To his credit, Vampir was obnoxiously arrogant and vain, but he kept good notes on literally everything. Page 28 was no different and was particularly full of various things. Right in the top corner in weird block chain letters was what I was looking for, Derbegun. Suspiciously similar to “dirt be gone”, the spell was easy to use also as apparently all of them were.

“Derbegun”

What appeared to be iridescent water in a bubble appeared above me. It slowly collected all of the blood on my body with a slight whirl pool effect, and I was just thinking how awesome the spell was when the magic actually started. The bubble turned pitch black before it fell on top of me. Everything was dark for a moment as it scourged my body and clothes from head to toe. The magic cleaned body and soul before dissolving into the ground below me leaving me dry and sparkly.

“Moving forward Dog if you see anything that seems out of place or too common place even, let me know. Hopefully we can avoid these kinds of problems in the future.”

“Yes, Master.”

Dog was covering his snout attempting to stifle his laughter. His mirth evident at the awkward situation. I threw a rock next to him eliciting a stream of fear and the end to his chuckles. A gauntleted hand roughly grabbed my shoulder in an attempt to spin me around. Unfortunately, it was just an attempt and the howl of pain and anger after caused me to turn.

Somehow this guy had attempted to grab me so firmly that when I didn’t turn, he somehow broke his wrist! Heads were poking out of every door, turn stile and window in the town and for the second time I was in the center of what could only be described as a bad situation.

How does this keep happening!

The man currently howling was dancing and holding his wrist very dramatically. It looked bizarre from my perspective to see this man half in plate armor and the other half in leather with a huge scar down one side of his face acting like a petulant child.

“You attacked me! Guards arrest this, this, this monster!”

“Who are you calling a monster? You grabbed me!”

“Shut it monster, you don’t belong here.”

This guy some kind of racist?! Speciesist?! Not sure how it works with vampires…

A crowd had started gathering around us. The confused murmurs rose as people tried to understand what was happening. I’m sure we were a funny group. The prancing injured guy, a trio of confused looking guard lackeys and a demonic dog just kind of stared at each other. I broke the silence before some angry mob started up from the “rabble rabble”, type whispers.

“This is a misunderstanding. This man grabbed me out of nowhere and hurt himself. I will gladly fix him up and we can be on our way. We mean no ill will.”

“You hear that, he wants to use magic on the Guard Captain!”

“He’s gonna kill him!”

"You do realize that isn't what I said right? Like everyone could..."

I got cut off as the not so hushed whispers started. The mood turned sour fast.

"That vampire sure looks dangerous."

"We haven't seen one in these parts for a long time."

"He hurt the guard captain, that damn monster."

Great, not only was this a backwoods type of town apparently, but the guard captain, of all people, had been hurt in his one-way struggle. People were turning angry fast, so I reached into my recently acquired powers for the answer. The Mesmer. I felt my tongue grow heavy and it had the sensation of silk or satin in my mouth as I spoke.

“Calm down now everyone there is no need to get all worked up. Let’s just sit and talk this out.”

My voice hit the people in a wave. It started at those closest to me and spread out like a pebble thrown into a still pond. People began moving in a great hurry completely silently and as restrained as possible. Some people seemed to have some kind of conflict then their eyes rolled into the back of their heads and they collapsed.

I called those the fighters. They couldn't lose but they weren't capable of winning either.

The others hurried to either grab a chair or just sat in a neat circle next to chairs like story time in a preschool. One little girl standing in the crowd had her arms crossed and was glaring daggers at me. She took in the whole scene and began walking towards me. The doll in her hand tucked into her arm, its bunny head and button eyes poked out in support of the little girl. All of the adults watched enraptured as she approached.

“You ain’t my daddy!”

Her rebellion was not expected. I was in shocked silence as this little girl walked up and kicked me in my shin. I didn’t think it was possible to feel pain, but somehow this child of no more than five had landed a critical hit! Shit was super effective too! Tears welled in my eyes as the child walked away with a smug grin on her face and into the nearby building.

With literally every eye on me, I certainly did not want to be defeated by a child, but It did give me an opportunity to showcase some power and some goodwill. I pulled out my notebook and began flipping through the pages to find a cure spell of some kind. It was annoying that of all the memories that were fuzzy, almost the entirety of the contents of the journal were a mystery. Dog knew a lot about the book though. Lentils and granny hearts doesn’t seem useful…

“Try seventy-four.”

I looked down at Ron who was marching back and forth in front of the attent crowd like a cartoon drill sergeant. His chest puffed out proudly as he hopped up onto his hind legs and began shadowboxing towards the people.

I didn’t even have to look this one up. As soon as Ron said the page number I remembered the spell I was looking for. It would fix the piercing death in my shin and the captain’s wrist. The problem now was the name of this particular spell.

“Hemiowgun”

I’m not even going to ask how these spells were made. Glowing stars began materializing and twinkling down causing a series of “ooohs” and “ahhhs” from the surrounding onlookers. The stars found any injuries nearby and moved to and began repairing it.

Some of the women in the crowd began mumbling about “that handsome vampire”, which caused an instant grimace to form on the face of the guard captain. The guards watching their captain noticed him grimace when the stars got close and misinterpreted the situation completely.

“He is attacking the captain with the stars! Watch out!”

The ensuing chaos as everyone bolted like roaches when the light comes on was later dubbed as “The Star Massacre”, but I’ll get into that later. In the meanwhile, I had to get the hell out of here and regroup back in my cave.

I grabbed Dog by the collar and turned to leave when I locked eyes with the guard captain, he was moving his wrist pain free with a horrible grin on his face as he mouthed the words, “Thanks for doing my job for me.”

I narrowed my eyes in disgust at him before beating a trail back to the mountain. Being able to move this fast was nauseating if you looked down, but it was damn convenient.

My first foray into the public since I reincarnated was a complete disaster, but I had definitely learned two new spells and discovered that as a vampire, everyone hates me and I am absolutely no closer to finding a cure for this curse.

That night we returned and discussed our failures. I laid back in my coffin while the dog perched awkwardly in his drawer. I am not sure how it became his bed, but looking at the lack of options in the cave, it only made sense.

Ron was also a chatty kathy. I listen to him ramble for a bit and slowly drifted off before he said something relevant.

“There is a town near the Sea of Leaves along the Road to Betrapall that sells the best beef bones.”

“What is the Sea of Leaves?”

“The home of the Dark Elves of course but they don't have beef bones.”

"Would you shut up about the beef bones?"

I hadn't meant to say in a particularly frightening way. That wasn't how Ron took it. He peed himself a little and started shivering in his drawer making an even worse sound than his prattling on about beef bones. I felt bad for him.

"We can get you a beef bone next we go to that town."

The drawer stopped rattling and began what I could only imagine was "shivering with excitement". I peeked through a crack in my coffin lid and seen him with his eyes shut tight grinning from ear to ear.

So, it turns out I wound up in a world with magic, vampires, Elves and now Dark Elves. How many more people can I really piss off?

Don’t answer that…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Name: Vampir Darknaciel

Age: 3015

Race: Vampire (Human)

Hair: Black

Eyes: Red (Glow)

Current Value: 240 million Gold Coins

Magic Pocket: Pretty much one of everything

Powers: Voice Mesmer, Animal Transmutation, Strength of 1000 men, Speed = PDQ, Immunity, Kinesis(Psycho), Derbegun, Hemiowgun

Weaknesses: The Sun, Holy Water, Dog