Well, you have all night. Might as well be productive. You decide to see if you have any cool vampire abilities beyond sleeplessness and bloodlust (which frankly feel more like cons than pros). You spend a good ten minutes trying to turn yourself into mist. You maybe feel a bit lighter, maybe it's just your imagination? You try jumping and there's no noticeable effect.
You walk downstairs and find the barmaid still up, cleaning the bar. You ask her for a clove of garlic. It's weird, and she thinks you're weird, but she thinks you're weird anyway so she gives you one. You ask for a bowl of water and a stick of chalk and get those too. You pop back upstairs and chew on the garlic for a bit. Your breath is pretty awful now, but you don't seem to be reacting poorly to it. You check your reflection in the bowl of water - still there!
You sit down on your bed and try to focus on turning yourself into a wolf or a bat. A good half hour passes by with no effect, and you try just turning into an animal full stop. After another fifteen minutes you feel your eyes tickle, like the gel within them just wiggled about. You check your reflection again.
"Oh, wow."You have cat's eyes, bright blue and with a single slit down the middle, as opposed to your three-lobed yellow normal eyes. You take a look around the room; you are pretty sure your night vision has improved, although it was pretty good to start with. You check the rest of your body; no change. You spend about five minutes concentrating before they turn back. You try growing fangs as well, but that bears no fruit.
You shut your eyes and try focusing on the world around you, seeing if you can sense the presence of any people or animals. After about a minute of focus, you get definite results. You can hear three sets of heartbeats, two very slow, one quite fast. More than that, you can place their location. One slow beat in your chest, one in Omo's, and the fast in Nym's. You keep focusing for about ten minutes more and your awareness spreads out until you can feel each heartbeat in the tavern around you. You keep concentrating, and the range doesn't expand. You are about to give up when you feel another heartbeat enter your range, and your awareness of it spreads out to the full pulse of blood across its entire being; heart to head, to tail and four paws. It takes a minute to map the geography of the creature in your head, but you're pretty sure it's a cat. You try sending it mental commands, but the best you can do is make its heartbeat increase a little. You can't even manage that with the humans (and elf) in the tavern around you, nor what you think might be a dog's heartbeat (much quicker, and you know the landlord has a terrier) on the ground floor.
You stop focusing, and your awareness returns to yourself. You try focusing on Nym, and your awareness of her heartbeat pops into your mind. You try and get inside her head, read her dreams, make any sort of communication. Unfortunately, you don't really make any progress on this front. Again, all you can really feel is her heart.
You let your focus drop and exhale, holding your breath. After about fifteen minutes, you start to feel yourself blacking out, so you take another breath. Another fifteen minutes pass before you need to breathe again. So, not breathless, but you can apparently manage longer without it. You check your pulse with a finger against your throat, and it bears out what your heart-sense suggested; you have a pulse, but it is slow.
You pinch yourself. Yep, still hurts. Seems to be within normal pain limits too.
Time for your last test. You take the chalk and start drawing holy symbols - Zotho Wraithesteemed's skull mark, the Keeper's key sigil, the swirl of Ramstom, the circle and line through of Acik, the upward facing half-crescent struck through with a horizontal line of the Terror of Law -
AAAUGH!!!With an effort of will, you stop yourself from screaming outside your own head. The mark of Ulash Escortcurses blazes at you with a searing silver light, threatening to blind you and sear your skin. You dash the chalk symbol apart with your hand, and the light fades, but you are left with blisters across your fingers.
Well, crap.
You spend the rest of the night quietly, nursing your burns, until Nym wakes. It's a little before dawn, and she bothers Omo awake and everybody dresses. You head out of the tavern, instruments and belongings in hand. The night of testing and focus has left you thirstier than before, but not as bad as before you drank last night.
"Alright," says Nym.
"We're going to stop off at that chicken coop unless you think it's a terrible idea, but where from there? On to the next town, or should we, ah, stick to the villages and country for now?"Vitality: 8/8
Thirst: Very Thirsty
XP: 3/10
Inventory: Shabby clothes, wineskin w/ cheap wine, 3 silver pieces, 2 copper, boxwood harp, copper dagger, empty clay jug.
Skills: Competent Singer, Competent Harper, Adequate Poet, Adquate Dancer
Abilities
Hold Breath - You can hold your breath for fifteen minutes if you need to.
Cat's Eyes - With at least ten minutes of focus, you can change your eyes to those of a cat, gaining slightly improved night vision.
Sense Heartbeats - You can sense heartbeats, and the whole bodies of cats, if you focus for at least a minute. Your range maxes out around the size of a large building after ten minutes.
Author
Topic: You are a Vampire (Read 8620 times)