But it was okay, most people never got the chance to experience something this beautiful their entire lives, so I was thankful for the opportunity. My journey so far has been uneventful, Soren and I have been moving at a steady pace, neither rushed or frantic, just taking in the sights that were around. Transylvania was pretty much a post apocalyptic wasteland, trees were dead, plants were dead and the only animals alive were predators who preyed on each other to survive.
At this eventually they'll all be extinct and nothing more than history in the memories of many others. But the predators were not the only things we met on the way, though they were quite scarce, I met a few nomadic demonic vampires. Their attitude was just as drab and grey as the land they had chosen to wander, very unwelcoming and turned to violence at the first sign of weirdness or difference.
At this point I was filled with so much pity for them that I couldn't even bring myself to get angry. Because somehow you had to imagine how painful and difficult a life they all must have had to be so untrusting and completely incapable of handling all their problems like civilized people. At the first sign of danger, their fist was the answer and solution to what ever problem might show up in front of them. I would have preferred to avoid them, but the map I was following was like that of an RPG game but not quite the same.
I had the map of Transylvania from thousands of years ago, definitely the lay of the land would have drastically changed by now, and nothing would be recognizable. The program Malek had created to complete the original map and improve it was based on this fact, he estimated the geographical change of over 600 hundred thousand years, it was mostly guess work, but with every lay of land I cover, a special radar that Malek had built would canvass my surroundings, making a detailed rendition of the an area ten kilometers around me. And as long as I kept moving, the are moved too, and the map became more updated and detailed.
But the map was no radar, and even if I had superior senses and could notice things from miles upon miles away, I felt it was rather unnecessary to be hiding from the demonic vampires that much. If worst comes to worse I could always just run away.
I don't know, it's just that after the city, I've been feeling a little despondent and reluctant about violence. I don't know why, but the only thing I can do right now is put all the blame on my draconic sides. Mood swings were part of being a dragon, scientifically speaking, their bodies are so huge, so the amount of hormones produced would be colossal. Only difference is, the production of such hormones never stop, it's always active all year round, for the entirety of their lives.
Said hormones are the reasons Dragons are able to quickly react to a whole host of problems at the drop of heart, like constantly being pumped full of adrenaline. But I digress, weirder things have happened to me before anyway. If was the evening of our rather long journey, and Soren and I had just went past an abandoned town. We could have stayed in the town for the night, but it already had it's own pair of squatters, and to make matters worse there were actually fighting for the right to stay there.
Which was why Soren and I continued onwards, until a forest showed up in front of us. Given how dead Transylvania seems to be, you would expect a forest of trees to be filled with dried wood with gnarled branches and roots, a rather ugly sight for the eyes. But the trees here were healthy, their pitch black leaves with red veins fluttered under the caress of a soft breeze. The body of the trees were grey and little bit brittle once you looked at them a little bit closer, but they were still rather robust looking and very much alive. The trees themselves were quite tall, with most being over 60 meters in height, with most of their branches being interlocked with each other and collectively spread out across the entire forest.
Soren and I camped just outside the forest, we could have kept on going in, and maybe find some proper shelter or something of the sort, however I wanted to sleep under the watch of the night sky, I wanted to look at the moon and contemplate the fact that some part of my wife, some part of Asha was stuck up there, a prisoner to the greed of many.
Maybe once everything had settled down a bit, Asha and I would go up there, we can go look for her goddess counterpart. Or if I had to get technical, her original form or body. But the Asha I'm married to, is not any less real than the bloody goddess on that moon. She's had my children, been my wife and loved me even when I couldn't love myself. So I wouldn't worry too much about her sense of existence, at least I don't think it's my place to do so. We'll all cross that bridge when we get there, and we'll do it as a family.
Contrary to his golden metallic body, Soren was actually quite soft to lean on. To be honest I have no idea how that works, but I was thankful for the very soft pillow beneath my head. I laid back on him and looked up at the stars, they were so many and some of them even had different colors all together. Due to how clustered they all were, there was no constellations to be noticed, no pattern or anything of the sort. Just a night sky packed densely with a billion stars, and many of them were world's that had life.
Eventually my mission would take me to the stars, I would soar amongst those great big gas giants, fighting evil and defending the universe, even if it doesn't want me to. I couldn't help but chuckle to myself when I realized just how far I've come. I was no longer that simple church boy that had to deal with the abuse of a father with a broken heart. No longer that lawyer who was so sure of himself and his hard facts that he would even put an innocent man in jail; because all evidence were against said man.
And I was no longer the same helpless vampire I was when I woke up within the solitary confinement area of the dancing caves of Noxis Nyx. No longer innocent or naïve or weak. In a way, I think my life really began when I first woke up in that cell, confused, blank, and hungry, very, very hungry. But everything that's happened since then has been a journey of growth and achievements. And it has always come with a terrible price attached to it, but regardless I've kept moving forward, because this was the only thing I really knew how to do now.
I sighed and then turned over, nesting my head closer to Soren as I crapped my hands around his huge frame. There was a warmth from him that I didn't expect, and even more weird was the heartbeat that followed it. But it was really soothing to listen to, so right now all I did was close my eyes, and fall blissfully asleep, under the watch and cover of the most beautiful night sky I've ever seen.
I was forced awake by some weird clicks, the sound was really eerie and really close, and when I opened my eyes, I realized that the bright night sky above me had disappeared, instead what I was seeing was the segmented underside, of a giant insect that looked like a cross between a scorpion and locust. And just as I noticed it, the stinger on it's tail flashed with a metallic glint and struck down towards my face, fast.
*Whoosh!* *Clang!*
I rolled away and the stinger went striking against Soren's body. There was a shower of sparks, a grating sound as the Scorpust? Dragged it's stinger across Soren's body. That attack was enough to wake Soren up as he roared in indignation and anger, blasting the Scorpust away with the sound wave from his roar.
I was about to canvass the area for more threats, but the sound of something slicing towards me forced me to call out my shield as I protected my left side.
*Bang!*
Whatever it was, if was strong enough to actually deform my shield and pushed me a few steps backwards. I looked up to see a giant crab, with the face of a man, and the genitalia of a human male graciously hanging underneath it's round body. The very sight of this thing gave me pause, and not because it was powerful, but because of how ridiculous it looked. The crab man had on crab claw, and the other was a human arm. It was as if someone had combined a normal man, with a giant crab, which in turn gave birth to this monstrosity.
I spread my senses around, trying to get a feel for the area, but then I noticed that there were parts in my awareness that was just blank. I could feel the freaking environment, the air, the earth even the very creepy looking forest twenty meters away from me. However within that awareness, some places were blank. To put it simply, the senses of a vampire or someone as awesome as myself, let me see the world in a manner akin to a painting or a video. And then all of a sudden there's a black splotch on said painting, or a blur within the video. I can't see through it, or even sense it at all. I can only feel the environment itself, and in doing so notice that there's a little part of it I can't feel, even though I know it's supposed to be there.
These things, whatever the hell they were, they had the ability to completely erase their presence. That was how they were able to sneak up on me, even with their huge lumbering forms. It's almost as if nature did not recognize them as a part of her, like a virus in the system that she's attempting to delete, but even though they can't be seen, they're still there.
I dodged another swipe from the crab claws, and then I threw my shield at crab man's neck, separating his head from his grotesque body. The crab man; now headless swayed a bit, and his overly generous package swayed along with it, moving from left to right like a pendulum, before the entire body crashed to the ground. But it wasn't over as my senses screamed danger and I had to duck down, narrowly escaping having my head snapped up by a dinosaur, a honest to freaking Jurassic park dinosaur.
Just one small problem about this dinosaur though, because not only was it big, wide, have really strong muscles from what I can see, and really shape teeth too…..the bloody killer was bright neon pink, and it had a tail like that of a rabbit. One big fluffy ball of fur. This was an honest to God T-rex, and it was pink and had a man's of fluffy fur from the crown of it's head all the way to it's round fluffy bunny tail.
I took a step back until my back was against Soren, keeping an eye on our surroundings as more and more blanks showed up in my awareness. More monsters that were a cross between two or more species began to show up, literally appearing out of nowhere as they stared at us with murder in their eyes.
"Hey master what the fuck is going on?"
"Soren I think we're in some perverts wet dream."
"What?"