WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 419

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Elder, Ain, Yeiling, and Human - 6

Nights feel short because they are empty. For a human lying awake in that darkness, chasing hollow sleep, and for a vampire sitting idle with nothing to fill the hours, night passes in a blink.

But pour something into a dark, quiet night and it swallows an astonishing amount. Like tipping water into a jar with no bottom, you find yourself wondering: has the night always stretched this long?

The long night had passed. The lord of the Castle of the Full Moon. The Shadow Queen. Tyrkanzyaka, Progenitor of all vampires, lay dazed and motionless, turning the previous night over in her mind. Nearly a thousand years had passed since she became a vampire, and she had lived through more nights than she could count, yet none had left a mark like last night.

'It was for treatment. That was all it was, a method chosen to bring sensation back to my body. I know that. And yet....'

No matter how many times she repeated it, Tyrkanzyaka's heart kept fluttering on its own. She found the trembling unsettling, and at the same time found herself enjoying it.

'...But was it truly, entirely, for the sake of treatment?'

The more she thought about it, the more her face flushed.

Once she would have stopped the moment she wanted to stop. Now she begged it to please, please stop, and it ignored her and went on anyway. She could seize it by force with bloodcraft, but that would only make it burst. Tyrkanzyaka gave up trying to manage her feelings and buried her face in the pillow.

'There is simply no way! We spent the whole night kissing. Kissing while sitting in the chair, lying across the desk, wrapped up in each other's arms. And then, the tongue, the tongue, the tongue. Inside, inside my...'

"..........!!!"

Thwump, thwump. Tyrkanzyaka pounded the bed again and again. Each blow sent the mattress bursting apart, feathers shooting in every direction. A stately old bed of genuine historical value was being reduced to rubble, but Tyrkanzyaka was too busy replaying the night to notice.

'I was so flustered, and too embarrassed to ask... but Hyu, surely he...'

Quite a bit of time had already slipped past, and she was still rolling around in the ruins of the bed. As long as she had this one scrap of happy memory, and the heart thumping away because of it, she thought she could go days without boredom.

That said, she couldn't very well spend several days rolling around like this. He had promised to come again tonight. Last night it was her mouth, but tonight, somewhere else...

"..........!!!"

Thwump, thwump. The bed now looked like a bird shot full of arrows. Tyrkanzyaka went on rolling in the feathers spilling out of it....

Then something odd brushed her lips.

A feather. A dry feather was tickling the inside of her mouth in a dull, scratchy way. She didn't even realize at first what was strange about it; she stopped, trying to work out what this unfamiliar sensation was.

After nearly half an hour of turning the feeling over carefully, she understood.

'It tickles.'

Her mouth tickled on the inside.

Not once since becoming a vampire had she felt anything like this. But after last night, after his tongue had moved through every corner, traced every surface, the inside of her mouth had found its feeling again.

"I can... taste now."

She would be able to taste things. Whether she could actually digest them was another matter, but at the very least, Tyrkanzyaka's tongue had earned the right to enjoy good food. She touched the corner of her mouth and sat with the meaning of that for a while.

Any new ability had to be put to use immediately. Tyrkanzyaka lifted her head and called for her handmaiden.

"Katalina."

"Progenitor. You called?"

The handmaiden waiting outside the door answered. Tyrkanzyaka rose and gave her orders.

"I'm going to see Cabilah. Have things ready."

"At once, my lady."

Cabilah was the finest cook Tyrkanzyaka knew. She was also the Elder Tyrkanzyaka could be most at ease with. Unlike the others, Cabilah had become a vampire as a child, and Tyrkanzyaka had taken her in and raised her almost herself.

All this time, Cabilah had put her talent entirely to use feeding humans. Today, at last, she would have the chance to cook for the Progenitor she held so dear.

***

Fog-filtered sunlight. Wide grassland blurred to near-nothing by the mist. A damp wind off the sea.

Even on a decent day that only comes around once every few months, the fog finds a way to make it mediocre. Exhausted, I let out a long yawn mid-stride.

"Haaahm."

I'd stopped walking to yawn, and Lungken paused and looked at me.

"A yawn? You tired?"

"Yes. Slept badly last night, unfamiliar bed."

Slept badly might be a stretch. I'd spent the night with Tyr, revived her senses, and then caught the briefest nap before heading out. Tired is accurate enough.

Kissing had been the right call. Tyr was so thoroughly aware of it the whole time that her sensory response was excellent, and I genuinely enjoyed myself too. If I'd tried to revive her senses by holding her tongue some other way, it would have taken over a week.

"Humans are such particular creatures! You need to sleep every few hours, which is strange enough on its own, but if you can't even manage that properly, you're exhausted! How do you live like that?"

Lungken had no idea what was actually going on, and he laughed his big open laugh. I wondered what his face would do if I told him I was tired because I'd spent the whole night kissing his Progenitor.

Hmm. Knowing Lungken, he might actually accept that without much trouble. Not that I had any intention of finding out.

"From our side, vampires who sleep for months at a time are the strange ones."

"Every single day, just the few hours between sunrise and sunset, wake, sleep, wake, sleep? What a bother! Sleep is habit. Cut it down!"

"It's not a habit, it's biology. You can't just cut it down. Do you not remember being human?"

"That was ages ago. I've forgotten!"

"Bold of you to be proud of that."

I grumbled and pulled my thoughts back to the matter at hand.

"So, Lungken, you oversee the grasslands and the shepherds and the livestock farms?"

"Of course! The tedious day-to-day is handled entirely by my lot! I only get involved when I feel like chasing off wolves or tigers!"

"Tigers too?"

"Hmph. They don't come down often, but the young ones fresh into adulthood don't know any better and try their luck. I can't quite trust my subordinates to deal with them, but taking a whole mob of humans up into the mountains means a few getting mauled along the way. Better for me to just go sort it out myself."

An ain could probably hold its own against a tiger. But tracking one through the mountains would be foolish no matter how strong you were, so the Elder handled it personally. An idiotic Elder doing something idiotic and making it work, fine, that's consistent.

Lungken was headlong and powerful. He wasn't particularly gifted in bloodcraft, but his nose for blood was sharper than anyone's, and his ability to sense beasts put every other Elder to shame. There had to be something of the beast in his blood that made it possible. Overseeing open grasslands and livestock farms, where animals had to be tracked and managed across wide distances, suited him perfectly.

Which meant each Elder had a slightly different domain, and slightly different people in their care.

"Lady Cabilah and her ain look after the humans along the coast. The way I understand it, each Elder tends to have their own group they mainly oversee. That's right, isn't it?"

"Their temperaments are clearly different, yes!"

"Then what about the Elder who died, Lord Luscinia? What kind of humans did he mainly deal with?"

Lungken answered without a moment's hesitation.

"The sick!"

"The sick? Ill people?"

"That's right! That bat used to tinker with bodies all day long! Vampires could handle it, but humans died all over the place. Any human he went looking for had already gone under some other Elder's care! The only ones who came to him were the dying, those desperate enough to let him do as he liked with them! You might not survive, but if it worked, you'd keep your life!"

So the healthy stayed away, while the broken showed up with nothing left to lose. The most ruthless Elder drew the most desperate people, a peculiar outcome. That explained why the Healer Sage had emerged from under Luscinia's hand.

"That helps a lot, thanks."

"Glad to hear it, consort!"

"Genuinely useful. So Luscinia's territory had desperate, sick people in it, most of whom probably had their bodies altered. Plenty of reason to hold a grudge against the Elder. I can understand why suspicion falls on Lir for having become a yeling."

"I don't know who killed him, but I want to fight them! Has to be someone serious!"

Lungken declared it with relish, then suddenly clicked his tongue and fixed his eyes on me.

"Speaking of which, fight me!"

"No. I'm weak."

"When exactly are you going to get stronger?"

"Being strong or weak isn't really something you can just decide, but give it time. Once I awaken, I'll be strong enough to bring about the end of the world."

I was telling the truth, and Lungken's response was thoroughly unimpressed.

"Big talk. Types like that usually amount to nothing."

"People who amount to nothing are usually the ones doing the big talking."

"Ha! Fair enough! All bark and no bite, is that it!"

He nodded to himself, satisfied with his own conclusion. I left him to it and fell into my own thoughts.

I hadn't expected much, and sure enough, Lungken knew nothing. Whatever I might get from him, I could have matched by grabbing any random passerby and reading their thoughts.

I'd combed through his memories with mind reading, and Lungken hadn't killed Luscinia. He hadn't even taken much interest in Luscinia while he was alive. Even after the death, he'd treated it as just one of those things.

Hmm. So who was it? No matter how many times I sifted through what I could read, the culprit didn't come up. An Elder dying, and it was an accident? A slip? That doesn't hold up. Even ten years ago, vampires don't drop dead of old age....

Ah. Then what about this: what if the culprit is an Elder who was around ten years ago, but isn't anymore?

I was turning that possibility over when Lungken stirred and got to his feet.

"Heading back? I'll take you! Come on!"

"Hm? What brought on the generosity?"

"The Progenitor's consort deserves at least that much! What face could I show the Progenitor if you turned up injured!"

What kind of thing exactly was the Progenitor's consort, that it had taught a boar beastkin something like consideration? I was getting ready to accept the gesture with gratitude when Lungken turned and stared out at something in the distance, sniffing the air. The tusks that marked him as a boar beastkin twitched uneasily.

"Besides, there's a rotten smell in the air. Nothing dangerous for the consort, but being careful never hurts. Humans die so easily."

"You can't smell things."

"Ha! Blood, I can smell better than anyone! And more than that, this particular thrill, the one that rolls in before the bloodwind blows, that too! Something is coming! I can feel it!"

I read his thoughts and found no specific memories. His excitement was purely animal instinct. He blew out a hard breath through his nose and looked up at some fixed point in the sky.

"Bats are flying. Watch yourself, King of Humanity. A thrall who has lost their maker tends to run wild."

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