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“ Do you see that?"
A hand rests against his back, gloved and warm, holding him steadfast. Diluc’s childish hands are too young and clumsy to hold onto the Ragnvindr pride itself, so he’s holding something light and made of silver instead.
Diluc does see it.
She almost looks normal, but her skin is ghostly and nearly translucent, and her gold eyes and sharp teeth deem her something beyond mortal. She’s holding onto a child, a small young boy that she cradles into her chest. With clawed fingers, she nestles him closer to her breastbone, tucking him under a clean cotton shawl to keep the autumn chill away.
Diluc’s foot crunches along dead leaves by accident. She stops, turns, gold eyes wide and searching, like a deer alone in a meadow.
A few heartbeats pass, and she simply looks away, slowly traversing through the birch forest with a soft hum, heading towards her feeding den.
“It will eat him if we do not make haste.” Crepus tells him as they follow her slowly through the brush. “Always remember that there are lives at stake for what we do.”
“Yes, father.” He always says, gripping his sword a little tighter to strengthen his resolve.
It doesn’t take much time to follow her to the feeding den. It is a small, well-traveled trail. With most lairs, it is a dark, brutal scent—iron and ash in the air, the dark marks of evident struggle. Diluc’s blood is tainted just enough to be able to track monsters like these, enough to sense their hunger, their desperation, their victims.
But he will never forget how the scent here was clean, pure—like lemon and clean linen, freshly-laundered.
The feeding den is small, a makeshift fox burrow built upon and expanded by vampirish talons and clever outlines of rocks that have since been overgrown. It was well-used, but shallow in depth. Their target has to curl up onto her feet and slide herself in, settling the human child into the dark space.
Most feeding dens have yellowed bones and black stains. This one has wool furs and a lemon tree, a laundry basket filled with clean water, sun-dried clothes hanging on improvised branches.
Diluc watches from the side as the vampire procures a tangerine, to the child’s delight. she slices the skin of the orange with her fingernails until she can pluck pieces of fruit free. The boy extends his hand, and with a toothy but indulgent smile, the vampire gives him every part.
He offers her one. She smiles guiltily and shakes her head. He insists, mouth muted from the distance.
She reluctantly takes one piece, and eats the tangerine. Her face twists for barely a moment, but she hides her distaste for human meals well.
Vampires cannot consume these things. It is a torture to their bodies.
But she bears it, for him. And it strikes Diluc with a profound realization, waiting on his tongue.
“ Father— ”
But Crepus, like always, strongly pushes Diluc forward.
“Don’t be worried. I’m always here. I know you can do this. You’re ready.”
Diluc hesitates.
“Go on.” Crepus insists, voice tighter, almost colder. “We don’t have much time. It could eat him, Diluc.”
So, he goes.
A fourteen year old Diluc stands in front of the cave entrance, sword beared and ready, magic tingling between his fingers, feeling like fire in his blood.
And she always presses tight to the back of the cave wall, her blood-colored fingernails leaving indentations on the stone. The child weeps, and she guards him.
“ Come here, ” Crepus always calls to the child, but he never moves.
This very much human boy holds onto the vampire.
And Diluc realizes… this vampire is the definition of a mother.
“Father, we should just…”
“It’s a vampire.” Crepus cuts in. “We must kill it and rescue the child, Diluc.”
“But, father, she…”
“It will eat him.” Crepus swerves his large sword effortlessly. “I thought you were ready.”
“I am, father, but—”
“—evidently, you were not.”
The sword lunges forward, and in one fluid movement—several things occur.
The vampire pushes the child towards the nest of furs, away from her back. The vampire is impaled on the sword. It crunches against her ribcage, and she gasps, rotting and broken and—
“ Take care of yourself, ” she whispers with tear-heavy lashes to a little boy that screams.
Diluc is a full-grown hunter, and he is long past his first kill.
The monster before him gurgles .
Something rotten bubbles up in its throat, blood so dark and thick it drips like tar from split-open lips. It grasps desperately, with too-long nails at the bony, sharp ridges of Diluc’s blade, but even something so holy could not offer her forgiveness—only retribution. The unnatural glow of her eyes fades, and she sinks forward, boneless, onto the impaled silhouette of Ragnvindr pride.
It’s not a she, he reminds himself.
It’s just a monster. There is no soul.
It’s a monster with black hair and red-blood fingernails, with gold eyes that turn milky and then empty, with a husk of a body that carries no soul. It feeds on the living to survive, desperate and always hungry.
It didn’t matter that she seemed familiar. It didn’t matter that she could’ve had a life before this, like a vampire who was a human’s mother, like a werewolf that was a guardian to the trees. It was simply a husk , deformed and rotten on Diluc’s blade.
So he tugs, then tugs again, wrenching his heavy claymore free from her ribs with indifference—the skin of her fingers and her cheekbones have begun to wither off, like dust in the wind. And still, he tames himself to feel nothing, simply thinks, from ashes to ashes.
There’s nothing left of what took place, only a dark stain where her body had crumpled.
Feel nothing , he tells himself, always. Only a monster .
But somehow it was familiar, that same deer-eyed look she gave him as she broke open.
The look of someone who wanted to live a better life.
When they meet, it is always by moonlight.
It was moonrise, even when they had first met, filtering in through the cabin window as the floorboards creaked and the wooden walls whined. The wind made the window pane softly hit against the exterior again and again.
It had been his hunt for the past week. A blood-sucking pack of carnivores that cannibalized an entire family inside this ragged cabin. It was no longer a home, but another den—bones littered across the floor, scattered teeth like decoration.
A tall, young man brushes past the broken mirror on the floor. The chipped silvering and interwoven cracks of glass do not reflect perfectly—but even so, Diluc could still see his own visage.
He could not see the stranger in the reflection at all.
Diluc’s own tainted blood lingers with the crackling of a telltale fire, and he knows—he clenches his fingers around the hilt of his claymore, Decarbarian, the relic of his ancestors that was made from the bones and heart of a dead, tyrant evil generations ago.
The stranger simply smiles, golden eyes lingering across the dead, black-lipped bodies of three vampires, rapidly turning to dust at Diluc’s feet.
“It seems you got to them before I did.”
Diluc says nothing, only stares.
The individual is elegant—androgynous, with both masculine and feminine elements. But he was like no vampire Diluc has ever seen.
He had golden hair and the distinctive, golden eyes. Like all vampires, his fingernails were long—but his were painted over black, concealing the usual pink to red pigment of most vampire talons. There’s rouge pressed into his cheekbones, as if to hide his ashen complexion, and pigment around his eyes to make him look doe-like and alive.
Most vampires wear rags or robes.
This stranger wore the clothes of a noble hunter like Diluc—different only in that they are colored in black, with a cape lined in gold, the underside velvet and the topside dark leather.
And this man tilts his head at Diluc, as if inviting a response. He raises an eyebrow, his earring swings, and the ornament glows like a blood moon.
“Who are you?” Diluc gravels out.
“It doesn’t matter.” He answers airily.
Diluc huffs through his teeth, wrenching his sword up until it was ready at his side. “Why are you here?”
The stranger’s eyes flit down towards Decabrian .
“What brings any monster like me?” It is said with mockery, but it comes out bitter and tragic, icy on the tongue. “I’ve come to feed.”
Diluc expects the stranger to do something—to fight, to run, to hunt.
The stranger simply stares at the vampire ashes one last time, then walks away.
And Diluc, reserving his strength, lets him go.
There are not many vampire hunters left.
It is a tasking thing, to become one.
Diluc remembers when he’s a fumbling child, dressed in white ceremonial clothes, embroidered with gold and red.
White for purity , his mother says.
Gold for justice , his father says.
And no one tells him the last part, until the eyes of a dozen other hunters watch as he stands in front of his father. It was the Ragnvindr honor to offer the hunter’s goblet.
Diluc sees his reflection in the cup—the liquid is colored like merlot, but it is thicker than any wine Diluc has seen.
Red for vampire’s blood .
His hands tremble, but when the time comes, he drinks it all.
It was no more than perhaps a spoonful.
And it does him under.
Most do not survive the taint , his grandfather had told him once, while he still lived. One day, you’ll drink it, and we’ll see your true strength then. If you survive, you will learn our magic .
His throat constricts, he coughs and sputters—his lungs, his lungs, his lungs — they burn . They ache. When have they felt so tight? His own body was turning against him, pulling him down. He hears something hissing in his ear, he feels his heartbeat rattling over and over in his chest. Miles and miles away, he can sense darkness, bloodshed—they pierce through his skin and into his spirit like thorns.
He grasps onto the floor—he never realized that he had fallen to the ground until he sees his boyish hands feverishly grabbing at bare soil. It stains the white linen of his shirt, messy and muddy and—
He closes his eyes, overcome with the feeling of something burning , of something screeching .
And somewhere, in the darkness behind his eyelids, he sees a fiery bird flying right towards him.
When he came to, his father had never looked so proud.
But now his father was dead, as were most hunters. The few remaining were scattered to the wind, lost to tragedy after tragedy.
In time, Diluc imagines he will be the only one left.
Diluc has been hunting a vampire for three days.
She’s been terrorizing a nearby village—at first, it was unnoticeable. Only picking off livestock, and the farmers assumed it was wolves. But then, one night, someone saw her face: bent over with part of a goat in her mouth, and within moments she had killed three farmhands, and injured one—the survivor posted the bounty, groveling at Diluc’s feet for his aid.
She was crafty, meticulous—she left raven feet and goat horns hanging from the trees like ornaments and trophies, but then would disappear right when he felt like he almost found her trail.
When he arrives to the heart of the forest, he finally finds her.
Except someone has already killed her.
“It’s you.” Diluc exhales, magic leashing to his fist at once as his fingers wrap around the hilt of his sword.
“It’s me.” The golden-haired vampire answers, glancing down towards the corpse at his feet.
He kicks her body towards Diluc. “Consider it a gift, from one friend to another.”
He stares down at her blood-matted hair and milky, dead eyes. She has already begun to wither, her skin peeling away like ancient wallpaper. It is enough to make him glance towards the golden vampire, to observe the silver sword slung against his hip.
“Why did you kill her?”
The golden vampire smiles, tilts his head to the side like he did when they first met. that earring still swings, catching moonlight from the autumn evening, until the ornament glitters like a red star.
“Why did you hunt her?” he counters. “Is it not because she has attacked those humans and tortured their sources of milk and meat?”
Diluc opens his mouth—but thorns travel up his spine, and he pauses.
He steers his gaze instinctively to the east, feels something calling him, dark and rotten and bloody .
“You sense it, too.” The vampire breathes out.
Diluc glances at him. Their expression is awed and serious.
“Let’s go, then.” The vampire says, pulling out his sword. “It seems we have some neighbors to take care of.”
“I don’t even know your name.” He frowns. “I’m Diluc.”
The vampire pauses, glancing at him over their shoulder. “My name is Aether.”
It is not so much a suggestion, but rather a rule: do not trust the undead.
His grandfather had told him this, so had his father, and even his own mother—he is sure if he had asked any other hunter, even outside of his family, they would have said the same.
Training was long and extensive, a never-ending cycle of swordsmanship, scars, books, and fear.
“ I have a new book for you, ” Adelinde tells him, when he’s still young and bright-eyed and painfully naive.
It was as red as a blood moon, the pages reflecting bronze, but scratched-up and aged. There used to be an inscription across the cover of the book, but now he can only feel vague indentations that he cannot decipher into human word.
It was not part of his studies, not really. It was not even truly informative.
But it was a fairytale, a legend:
The vampires were once angels.
But then they fell from the sky—smoking, searing, scorching, and snarling.
They lost their humanity when they fell, so they drank what essence of life they could to live on.
It was a beautiful tale that he paged through endlessly. Perhaps it was where the source of all of his sympathy started. And preferably, where it ended.
Do not trust the undead.
“Stay for a while.” Diluc says in spite of this, once.
The moon is high in the sky, past half-quarter in phase. The golden-haired stranger stops only to look at Diluc over their shoulder.
“Why?”
It is foolish, Diluc realizes this now—he visualized that the stranger would say yes, and that they would share a meal of deer meat stew by the fire. But vampires do not eat. They drink.
“I’d like to know you.” Diluc says instead, and it is painfully honest to the point it hurts.
But Aether agrees.
Aether sits at that fire.
He does not eat. He does not drink. He does not even sleep.
But he takes the night’s watch. He gathers firewood. He turns to Diluc and whispers, “ Go get some rest. ”
When the dawn comes, he is gone.
When the night returns, he is there.
And Diluc decides to travel by night, and work by day.
Diluc notices many things about Aether.
He knows that Aether wears a glove on his left hand, because it his preferred arm when he wields the sword, which is silver. He also knows that the glove is lined with lead, because it is meant to block out the harsh, holy energy radiating from the blade, enough to protect Aether and comfortably hold it.
He knows what Aether’s lashes look like when they catch the moonlight. He knows that Aether laughs with too much teeth, and that his voice is rough and grated in his throat in a beautiful, charming way. He knows that Aether makes his own makeup, grinds down his own pigments, and paints his skin to make himself look alive.
Diluc would like to think that he knows more. He does not.
He wants to.
Aether is intoxicating, and Diluc is drawn to him like a moth to a flame.
Diluc should not be interested. Diluc should not be touched when Aether gives him a gentle smile, or when Aether leans his head in to listen more to what Diluc has to say about his past, his life, his family, his present.
Diluc should not care.
But he does.
It's months later when they bandage up a human victim who lost his arm to another dark beast, another vampire who ripped him of his limb.
Aether is shaky, the palest he’s ever been—he has no need to breathe, but Diluc watches the way Aether’s eyes dilate, the way he exhales deep and inhales fast. It is like he is trying to keep the smell out of his nostrils.
They are sitting together in a cave just before sunrise. It is deep enough where Aether won’t get caught in the light.
“When was the last time you fed?” Diluc asks him slowly, after he adds another log to the fire.
Aether does not answer, simply stares into the flames.
“You looked ravenous.” He explains without explanation at all, unsure if he was pushing too hard. But he worried. He cared. He shouldn’t, but he did.
“He smelled awful.” Aether finally whispers. “But my body still wanted it. It’s been hungry for a long time.”
“Vampires die without blood, Aether.” Diluc frowns.
Aether nods, and says nothing more.
A few moments pass. The fire continues to crackle.
Diluc scoots over, yanks down the buttons to his undershirt until his neck is wide open, and the cotton peels down his chest.
Aether's eyes bulge, squirming just a few centimeters backwards. “What are you doing?”
“Eat me.” Diluc tells him, with a confidence that he doesn’t quite feel.
For a few heartbeats, Aether simply stares at him, fingernails flexing at the furs underneath his legs. Eventually, his shoulders loosen, and he raises his hands to clasp them over Diluc’s shoulders instead.
Diluc isn’t sure what he is expecting. He isn’t even sure why he is doing this, but some part of him is terrified that something might happen to Aether if he doesn’t.
Aether gets behind him, brushes his nose right where his jaw meets his neck. Diluc shudders, hearing Aether inhale—not to breathe, but just for a scent. Diluc’s heart pounds in his ears, waiting.
Should he be afraid?
Maybe. And yet…
Aether's teeth ever so softly scrape up the side of Diluc’s throat, and he crumples slightly.
He waits for the inevitable bite. For the pain of silky canines sinking into his flesh.
But it never comes.
Aether simply ghosts his teeth up against Diluc’s skin, then leaves a soft kiss against his neck. The touch of his lips is cold , and Diluc intakes a sharp breath of air.
“You’re sweet.” Aether tells him, voice velvet and rough. “But I don’t drink from humans.”
He presses a thumb against Diluc’s throat, and Diluc squirms just enough that Aether laughs, low and airy, right next to his ear.
“I made a promise to someone.” He continues gently, pressing icy kisses on each of Diluc’s freckles. It is a funny thing, how his stomach twists with each one. “Animals suit me just fine. It’s just… that was a lot of blood.”
He brushes Diluc’s hair to the side of his shoulder, all to press his lips in one last, frost-smitten kiss against the back of Diluc’s neck, where the skin meets with his shoulders. It tickles just enough to make him shiver, and then Aether departs from him with a sigh.
“Go get some rest.” Aether tells him, moving to his usual spot by the fire. “I'll keep an eye out, like always.”
And it is a strange thing, how a body so cold had left Diluc feeling so warm.
They do not talk about the tragedy. It is better to let those gruesome scenes go, or it is another added to Diluc’s endless list of nightmares that will follow him for the next thirty years.
They say where vampire’s blood falls, spiderlilies are born. Diluc had read it in the same book Adelinde had gifted him, years ago.
Aether slits his palm, and dark ink splotches onto the snow beneath their feet.
He holds it right over the gravestone Diluc had prepared for the recent victims. Diluc watches as each drop falls, and from each one, a flower begins to bloom.
“Is it a gift?” Diluc asks him, as he wraps Aether’s skin with a clean, linen sheet for a bandage.
Aether shrugs. “It could just the same be a curse.”
Diluc thinks of Decarbarian , and he thinks he knows.
They still do not talk about the tragedy.
Instead, Aether slides his hand into Diluc’s, but the touch is as cold as death.
In spite of this, Diluc squeezes Aether’s fingers, and it is enough.
Diluc is insatiable, and he knows it.
It should never have gone this far. It should never have led to this. But Diluc decides he no longer cares.
He decides that he wants to kiss Aether’s mouth, so he does.
It is as red as wild roses, as soft as their petals—but when Diluc pulls back and sees the dark hunger in Aether’s smoldering eyes, he knows Aether is nothing but a briar of thorns.
“Fuck me.” Aether demands, tugging on red strands of loose hair as Diluc hisses through his teeth.
Aether rolls his hips to make a point, dark eyelashes fluttering as his golden eyes take focus on Diluc’s own.
“You’re fiendish.” Diluc accuses, without any venom nor bite.
Aether only smiles with just enough teeth to prove that he most certainly was.
He has never known something so charming, so dark and rough, and yet beautiful all the same.
He’s broken-winged and fallen like any other angel, crowned with a halo of golden hair. Whatever feathers he once had are left as nothing more but silvery scars between his shoulder blades, exposed for Diluc to see as he yanks off buttons and pulls back layers of leather and silk.
He loves many things about Aether.
But it is those eyes that Diluc cannot escape.
Those golden, ethereal eyes, that were both holy and haunting—a characteristic Diluc has seen a thousand times before in all of his hunting, but they have never before have hooked him in as they do now.
Diluc kisses him and kisses his skin and he doesn’t care how cold it is—doesn’t care because Aether is gentle and soft and pliant, submitting so easily into Diluc’s hands as if they were not the same fingers that have hunted Aether’s own kind one by one. But even so, Aether’s hands are just as stained. They claw at Diluc’s shoulders, dig between the freckles of his spine, and Diluc wonders how close he is to tearing Diluc apart like every other victim that has met a monstrous end.
Aether knots his fingers into Diluc’s scarlet hair, then tilts his head to the side just to expose Diluc’s throat. His shirt is long gone. He doesn’t even know where his cape and coat went.
“You’re mine.” Aether tells him, somehow tender even as his teeth scrape that same, beautiful spot in Diluc's skin.
“Fuck—Are you…” Diluc breathes, unsure, wild with the idea.
Aether says nothing, simply licks his tongue over Diluc’s pulse. He lets out a gust of air against Diluc’s skin just to make Diluc shudder and groan.
“Do you want me to?” Aether teases, sly smile creasing into Diluc’s jugular. “Do you want me to bite you?”
He isn’t sure. Was he truly that far gone?
He isn't sure what it feels like. He has never been caught off-guard by a vampire, the silver too radiant to allow most to get this close. But then there’s Aether.
Aether, with golden hair and sharp teeth and ethereal eyes. Aether, with a rough, warm voice and a human kindness. Aether, who was cold and hollow physically, but burning and gleaming at the soul.
And only Aether could make Diluc feel this way. Only Aether could get this close . Make Diluc squirm and groan and desperate — kissing into a mouth that he wants to claim as his, devouring a body that Diluc wants to have.
“Yes.” Diluc realizes just as he says it, eagerly lifting up his chin.
Aether hardly waits a moment. He sinks his teeth in.
It is a bright burst of pain and pleasure all at once. Aether doesn’t drink. At most, he laps up the pinpricks of crimson against Diluc’s pale throat, and then finds another space to sink in. He bites once, then twice, then thrice—and by this point, Diluc has lost count, only knows that there’s marks on his throat, on his wrists, on his thighs.
Diluc bites Aether, too.
He catches Aether’s skin between his teeth and sucks , grates it against his human-dull canines until there’s flower-shaped colors blooming across ashen skin. And Aether takes it, groaning and beautiful, bucking his hips into the line of Diluc’s own.
Perhaps they weren’t meant for each other.
Perhaps a human should never even have gotten this close.
There’s a sense that maybe he has abandoned everything his family lived for, the legacy that now lives only in him and him alone, reduced to something meaningless.
But he doesn’t care.
There’s something right to the way Aether looks at him, with a warm smile and an airy laugh when Diluc twists his fingers around Aether’s sex just right.
Maybe it would all die with him: his family, his heritage, his lifestyle, his home. But there was something being born between Diluc’s two ribs as Aether presses affectionate, winter-tasting kisses along each bone until he has Diluc pressed down into the furs beneath them.
So then, this would be enough.
This would be enough as Aether rides him, body silvery and scarred and dead.
But even still, Diluc finds he does not care.
All he cares about is the way Aether traces his jaw between his dark fingernails, the way he holds Diluc like Diluc is the world. Aether tastes like a burning star in his mouth, and while he could be every fallen angel the stories had told him, every corrupted monster that his family had warned—he was nothing but human between each of Diluc's arms.
And Diluc has never loved someone more.
This time, he sees a crooked, pale face staring back at him.
She is not an it.
She is not a monster. She is not a curse. She is not a demon.
There’s squirrel bones hung like wind chimes around leftover glass bottles to keep out evil spirits. She feeds two young boys that she found orphaned by the side of the road. She makes them bread, and she smells like tangerines and snowdrops.
This is not a feeding den. This is not a burial. This is a home.
“Here's some gold.” Diluc tells her, gives her a small pouch from a bounty of a far more vicious and cruel thing from last week. Aether stands off to the side, silver sword sheathed—golden eyes always watching.
“You’re not going to kill me?” She breathes tightly from two corrupted lungs. The human boys hide beside her skirts, staring with wide eyes at her gathered palms.
Diluc guesses they have not seen money very often.
“You’re only trying to live.” He says. “If you head to the west, you will find someone named Jean. She will give you a place to stay. It will be safe. Follow the river.”
It isn’t enough, Diluc fears. But it would have to be.
Aether leads the way after the farewell, and the moon hangs red in the sky as they walk between a sea of spiderlilies.
They do not speak of tragedy.
Aether slides his hand between Diluc’s own. It is a familiar touch.
Like always, it is cold, but Diluc intertwines their fingers anyway.