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narcasse1949 words. PG for mentions of cannibalism. AU. Pre-series.
They are mad, consumed by this strange death cult of their own invention, deranged things that probably ought not to be called human. Süleyman’s dealings with the House of Luxor.
Based heavily on Vampire: the Masquerade’s clan Cappadocian though the title could also be reference to the Cappadocian region and the semi-underground cities there.
Cappadocia
Disclaimer: Trinity Blood belongs to Sunao Yoshida, Gonzo and others.
++++++++++
It is early morning, an extremely unsociable hour for a Methuselah to be awake and the Duke of Tigris has just finished trimming his nails. He sits, one foot resting on the bed, the other on the floor, clad only in a dressing-gown that he hasn’t bothered to tie closed. The sunlight that filters through the thin barely opaque curtains is easily enough to see by and even with south-western facing windows it is already quite bright enough. Some Methuselah cannot stand the sunlight, they shield themselves from it completely: blacking out windows and drawing heavy curtains tight against any trespassing of the sun’s rays.
“The atmospheric shield will hold, you realise.”
Radu had tugged the heavy curtains into place anyway and turning his back to them had clutched his book to his chest defensively. “I know the sunlight isn’t deadly: I just dislike it.”
And Süleyman had smiled indulgently while making sure to keep himself just out of range of the sharp nails that the young Baron had let grow so long that they could properly be called claws.
Thinking back on it Süleyman had supposed that the pitch black sleeping chambers and fur-trimmed robes were simply an eccentricity of that bloodline. Beyond the walls of their modest estate the House of Luxor hadn’t stood out as particularly bizarre but behind their own walls they had a preference for the skins of dead things upon their floors and rooms full of books so badly lit that even enhanced Methuselah vision often didn’t help matters. Süleyman had once in fact caught Radu walking down a corridor with his eyes closed, apparently navigating his way via memory and the sounds around him. But then the late Baroness, Radu’s mother, it was rumoured had slept in something that far too closely resembled a coffin.
“You do know that they’re neurotic and inbred and probably cannibals.”
Mirka had laughed at him. “That’s exactly why I want him to be Ion’s tovarăş. Who else would dare attack Ion if he were defended by one of them.”
“And what, pray tell, are you going to do if the young Baron decides that your grandson would make a better midday snack?”
Over time he’s discovered that while Radu is indeed neurotic to a fair degree, probably inbred and far too keen to taste fresh blood: he does at least possess other qualities. Other qualities that thankfully include protecting Süleyman from the rest of that bizarre family.
“The term is diablerie.”
“Dia… what?”
“Diablerie: the consuming of your own kind.”
Süleyman had actually spat out his mouthful of tea in shock.
“I had a brother once, so they tell me…” Radu has continued dreamily as if he hadn’t noticed Süleyman’s reaction at all.
A family, he wants to call them a clan since there are so many of them and often tenuously related, obsessed with, enamoured of some strange and brutal form of what? Natural selection, he supposes. They have been inbreeding for centuries or at least breeding for certain traits that they and they alone fine desirable. A clan absorbed by everything the Empire distains, enthralled by the promise of ghastly beyonds and supernatural rebirths. Süleyman is quite certain that what passes as nonsense, that the House of Luxor quite literally consume their own, is very likely to be fact. They do not bury their dead in the stone mausoleums of the Red Islands after all. And Radu has always had a suspicious fondness for pork.
“Forgive me, your Grace, we must prepare for my mother’s funeral feast.”
“So formal all of a sudden? Well, if I can be of any help-“
“None required, thank you. We go into seclusion tonight, everything has been prepared.”
“Are you sure I-“
“Please, leave now.”
Radu had been most adamant that he not be present and it is enough, along with many other clues gathered over the years, to convince Süleyman that that insistence on his departure had probably been for his own safety. Yet he supposes that it ought not to trouble him, technically speaking, seeing as all Methuselah need blood to sustain them weather it be processed in the form of haemoglobin capsules or otherwise. And once a thing is dead surely it can’t matter what becomes of the shell that remains.
“Do you ever wonder what happens when we die?”
“Often.” Radu hadn’t looked up from the book he’d been reading.
“And?”
“I expect I’ll have to die to find out for certain.”
Süleyman had helped himself to another slice of basboosa and considered that.
The thought of one so young being so fascinated by death often puzzles him because he doesn’t recall being particularly bothered by the prospect in his youth. At his age such a preoccupation would be acceptable but only in private where it doesn’t impinge upon the eternity of the state. He is a little preoccupied with thoughts of death from time to time he will admit but mostly those creep up upon him when he’s idling in that state between wakefulness and sleep. Sometimes he wonders what it would be like to close his eyes and never wake up, and then he realises that in at least one of the possible scenarios he’ll never know about it so it won’t matter anyway.
“What do you do with your dead anyway?” He’d said it on one long summer’s day when he’d been unable to sleep and had found himself making the precarious journey to the Luxor estate out of a morbid desperation.
“I told you.” Radu had been carefully shelving a stack of books according to some unknown cataloguing system.
Slumping further down on the couch Süleyman had stared at his boots morosely.
“I presume you don’t want details.”
“No, not really. Why are you here anyway, shouldn’t you be with your tovarăş?”
“Ion’s sleeping: this is the only time I have to come do this.”
“What are you doing?”
“Amending the catalogue.”
Which hadn’t made much sense to Süleyman but he hadn’t been about to ask for an explanation. “How old are you again?”
Radu had looked up from his shelving, appearing mildly surprised by the non sequitur. “Fifteen.”
“Really? I thought you were older, you always sound older when I talk to you.”
“Talk to me in public, I’ll sound different then.”
Which was true. Radu does sound different in public, deferential and emotionless, so Süleyman has since discovered. The Baron who stands in the public eye is a mild, inoffensive teenaged noble. He’s pretty but not really much more than dutiful as far as personality traits go: nothing like that strangely disconcerting figure in dark robes and furs that spends days hiding from the sun amongst his books. Of course Süleyman is fully aware that he too sounds different in public and in private. The face he presents to the world is all ease and charm, uncaring of a generality of consequences; in private he’s aware that age seems to be brining with it a touch of paranoia and, when he visits Radu: petulance.
“My mother told me to… take care of you.” Radu had sounded puzzled as he said it.
“She did?”
“Yes. She said-“
“You remember an awful lot about a mother you barely knew, if you don’t mind my saying.”
Radu had smiled. “We all remember much about our ancestors.”
“You mean you make it up.”
“No, we remember.”
“Are you talking about genetic memory?”
“Something like that.”
It’s open to debate whether or not they are all mad of course but Süleyman suspects enough to suggest that the memory Radu spoke of came in the form of blood. There are enough rumours of madness brought on by drinking fresh blood or dead blood or any other number of things that he knows that the House of Luxor might well call such things sacred visions. They are mad, consumed by this strange death cult of their own invention, deranged things that probably ought not to be called human.
“Did you eat your mother’s corpse then?”
Radu had leaned against him, laughing.
“Will they drink your blood when you die too?”
“They should but they won’t.”
“No, why ever not?”
“Because…”
“Because?”
“There won’t be any blood left to consume.”
“Oh. Do you mean to tell me that you know how you’re going to die?”
“Not really. I only know that there won’t be anything left to be consumed.”
He’d never asked how Radu knew that with such certainty because the very idea strikes far too close to his own apprehension. Because if he were to ask Radu how he knew about his own death Süleyman is well aware that he might then find himself asking about his own. And he doesn’t want to consider it, not when it is fairly apparent that he is running out of time.
“How much is really you in there?” He’d asked one day not really expecting an answer.
“Enough.”
“Oh.”
“I know that I am Baron of Luxor and that I am Ion Fortuna’s tovarăş. I also know that I have been-“
Süleyman had put a finger to Radu’s lips silencing him. “I think I’m beginning to understand.”
The smile that answered that statement had been the familiar smile of a woman now dead.
He’d had a moment to consider that before she’d kissed him.
The idea of collective memories jumbled together in younger and younger bodies is contrary to everything he has ever been taught. It makes little sense at the end of the day and he certainly can’t see that it serves any sane reason. It sounds ludicrous even though he doesn’t doubt the idea, even though he doesn’t understand his own certainty that it is the truth. Since even Methuselah bodies must decay it does seem to be a certain sort of immortality but at the same time it is ghastly, it is an aberration. Not that it had stopped him visiting her, them, him… again and under similar circumstances.
“I’ll die of course.”
“No. That isn’t what-“
“But I will and so will…”
“Who?”
“No one, no one.” Radu had waved a hand absently and turned his attention to watching the shadows cast through the long windows.
And so they have embarked on revolution, he and this child who is not a child at all. They must succeed he is determined, even, in spite of Radu’s predictions of his own death. They will overthrow an Empire and when the time comes he will place a royal crown on the head of something that wears the body of a child but never was possessed of a child’s mind.
“I’m old… my love.”
“You will not die of old age.”
So he has been assured that he will not die of the deficiency of blood that takes all Methuselah. It is enough to make him suspect that he will die anyway but at least it will not be a dull, lingering death: hours, perhaps days measured out in weakness and fainting spells until eventually he is too tired to open his eyes and the darkness takes him. He will die when the revolution comes he is certain and somehow, strangely, Radu will die with him. But perhaps, for Radu at least death will not be some mysterious spectre. How can it be for one who is haunted by shades of those long past?
“We carry with us the knowledge of those long past, we retain it through their blood.”
“But you said that your death…”
“No one will carry forward my knowledge: I will take it with me into the dawn.”
“Why?”
“Because we have reached the end of a cycle and now we must begin again.”
++++++++++
The use of the term ‘diablerie’ is obviously lifted from Vampire: the Masquerade sourcebooks.
Basboosa is a semolina and yogurt dessert. Minus the rosewater it looks remarkably like a Burmese dessert served in a similar fashion.
248 words. G. Pre-series.
Radu’s mother and the fate ordained for her son.
Fairly obvious historical references.
Future
Disclaimer: Trinity Blood belongs to Sunao Yoshida, Gonzo and others.
++++++++++
She curses as she deals out the cards, long past caring for correct form in her readings as she snarls behind her veils, fangs bared at the world.
There is no one left to censure her: she is head of the House of Luxor alone, her husband a century dead. And yet with a faithful spouse in the grave she now carries an heir, a son. Soon he will be born and the days dictate what she will name him. If he is born as the moon waxes she will name him Vlad and he will be a prince among men but if he born as the moon wanes his name will be Radu and with him will fall a dynasty.
Some of the misfortune will be upon her head she knows. Vlad she would see grown to manhood: Radu will become an orphan with his first breath. Vlad would gather allies to his standard, men of war who would glory in his revolution: Radu will be subverted, first by a sultan’s lust then by the treachery of the world. At least she supposes there are no Methuselah of her son’s generation who also carry a name of old: she has already had four children slaughtered for such a crime.
Still, all her plans may yet come to nought. But without that terrible sultan perhaps… and then it occurs to her: the Empress’ great favourite bears the name of Solomon. What greater king or calamity could there be?
++++++++++
They are mad, consumed by this strange death cult of their own invention, deranged things that probably ought not to be called human. Süleyman’s dealings with the House of Luxor.
Based heavily on Vampire: the Masquerade’s clan Cappadocian though the title could also be reference to the Cappadocian region and the semi-underground cities there.
Cappadocia
Disclaimer: Trinity Blood belongs to Sunao Yoshida, Gonzo and others.
++++++++++
It is early morning, an extremely unsociable hour for a Methuselah to be awake and the Duke of Tigris has just finished trimming his nails. He sits, one foot resting on the bed, the other on the floor, clad only in a dressing-gown that he hasn’t bothered to tie closed. The sunlight that filters through the thin barely opaque curtains is easily enough to see by and even with south-western facing windows it is already quite bright enough. Some Methuselah cannot stand the sunlight, they shield themselves from it completely: blacking out windows and drawing heavy curtains tight against any trespassing of the sun’s rays.
“The atmospheric shield will hold, you realise.”
Radu had tugged the heavy curtains into place anyway and turning his back to them had clutched his book to his chest defensively. “I know the sunlight isn’t deadly: I just dislike it.”
And Süleyman had smiled indulgently while making sure to keep himself just out of range of the sharp nails that the young Baron had let grow so long that they could properly be called claws.
Thinking back on it Süleyman had supposed that the pitch black sleeping chambers and fur-trimmed robes were simply an eccentricity of that bloodline. Beyond the walls of their modest estate the House of Luxor hadn’t stood out as particularly bizarre but behind their own walls they had a preference for the skins of dead things upon their floors and rooms full of books so badly lit that even enhanced Methuselah vision often didn’t help matters. Süleyman had once in fact caught Radu walking down a corridor with his eyes closed, apparently navigating his way via memory and the sounds around him. But then the late Baroness, Radu’s mother, it was rumoured had slept in something that far too closely resembled a coffin.
“You do know that they’re neurotic and inbred and probably cannibals.”
Mirka had laughed at him. “That’s exactly why I want him to be Ion’s tovarăş. Who else would dare attack Ion if he were defended by one of them.”
“And what, pray tell, are you going to do if the young Baron decides that your grandson would make a better midday snack?”
Over time he’s discovered that while Radu is indeed neurotic to a fair degree, probably inbred and far too keen to taste fresh blood: he does at least possess other qualities. Other qualities that thankfully include protecting Süleyman from the rest of that bizarre family.
“The term is diablerie.”
“Dia… what?”
“Diablerie: the consuming of your own kind.”
Süleyman had actually spat out his mouthful of tea in shock.
“I had a brother once, so they tell me…” Radu has continued dreamily as if he hadn’t noticed Süleyman’s reaction at all.
A family, he wants to call them a clan since there are so many of them and often tenuously related, obsessed with, enamoured of some strange and brutal form of what? Natural selection, he supposes. They have been inbreeding for centuries or at least breeding for certain traits that they and they alone fine desirable. A clan absorbed by everything the Empire distains, enthralled by the promise of ghastly beyonds and supernatural rebirths. Süleyman is quite certain that what passes as nonsense, that the House of Luxor quite literally consume their own, is very likely to be fact. They do not bury their dead in the stone mausoleums of the Red Islands after all. And Radu has always had a suspicious fondness for pork.
“Forgive me, your Grace, we must prepare for my mother’s funeral feast.”
“So formal all of a sudden? Well, if I can be of any help-“
“None required, thank you. We go into seclusion tonight, everything has been prepared.”
“Are you sure I-“
“Please, leave now.”
Radu had been most adamant that he not be present and it is enough, along with many other clues gathered over the years, to convince Süleyman that that insistence on his departure had probably been for his own safety. Yet he supposes that it ought not to trouble him, technically speaking, seeing as all Methuselah need blood to sustain them weather it be processed in the form of haemoglobin capsules or otherwise. And once a thing is dead surely it can’t matter what becomes of the shell that remains.
“Do you ever wonder what happens when we die?”
“Often.” Radu hadn’t looked up from the book he’d been reading.
“And?”
“I expect I’ll have to die to find out for certain.”
Süleyman had helped himself to another slice of basboosa and considered that.
The thought of one so young being so fascinated by death often puzzles him because he doesn’t recall being particularly bothered by the prospect in his youth. At his age such a preoccupation would be acceptable but only in private where it doesn’t impinge upon the eternity of the state. He is a little preoccupied with thoughts of death from time to time he will admit but mostly those creep up upon him when he’s idling in that state between wakefulness and sleep. Sometimes he wonders what it would be like to close his eyes and never wake up, and then he realises that in at least one of the possible scenarios he’ll never know about it so it won’t matter anyway.
“What do you do with your dead anyway?” He’d said it on one long summer’s day when he’d been unable to sleep and had found himself making the precarious journey to the Luxor estate out of a morbid desperation.
“I told you.” Radu had been carefully shelving a stack of books according to some unknown cataloguing system.
Slumping further down on the couch Süleyman had stared at his boots morosely.
“I presume you don’t want details.”
“No, not really. Why are you here anyway, shouldn’t you be with your tovarăş?”
“Ion’s sleeping: this is the only time I have to come do this.”
“What are you doing?”
“Amending the catalogue.”
Which hadn’t made much sense to Süleyman but he hadn’t been about to ask for an explanation. “How old are you again?”
Radu had looked up from his shelving, appearing mildly surprised by the non sequitur. “Fifteen.”
“Really? I thought you were older, you always sound older when I talk to you.”
“Talk to me in public, I’ll sound different then.”
Which was true. Radu does sound different in public, deferential and emotionless, so Süleyman has since discovered. The Baron who stands in the public eye is a mild, inoffensive teenaged noble. He’s pretty but not really much more than dutiful as far as personality traits go: nothing like that strangely disconcerting figure in dark robes and furs that spends days hiding from the sun amongst his books. Of course Süleyman is fully aware that he too sounds different in public and in private. The face he presents to the world is all ease and charm, uncaring of a generality of consequences; in private he’s aware that age seems to be brining with it a touch of paranoia and, when he visits Radu: petulance.
“My mother told me to… take care of you.” Radu had sounded puzzled as he said it.
“She did?”
“Yes. She said-“
“You remember an awful lot about a mother you barely knew, if you don’t mind my saying.”
Radu had smiled. “We all remember much about our ancestors.”
“You mean you make it up.”
“No, we remember.”
“Are you talking about genetic memory?”
“Something like that.”
It’s open to debate whether or not they are all mad of course but Süleyman suspects enough to suggest that the memory Radu spoke of came in the form of blood. There are enough rumours of madness brought on by drinking fresh blood or dead blood or any other number of things that he knows that the House of Luxor might well call such things sacred visions. They are mad, consumed by this strange death cult of their own invention, deranged things that probably ought not to be called human.
“Did you eat your mother’s corpse then?”
Radu had leaned against him, laughing.
“Will they drink your blood when you die too?”
“They should but they won’t.”
“No, why ever not?”
“Because…”
“Because?”
“There won’t be any blood left to consume.”
“Oh. Do you mean to tell me that you know how you’re going to die?”
“Not really. I only know that there won’t be anything left to be consumed.”
He’d never asked how Radu knew that with such certainty because the very idea strikes far too close to his own apprehension. Because if he were to ask Radu how he knew about his own death Süleyman is well aware that he might then find himself asking about his own. And he doesn’t want to consider it, not when it is fairly apparent that he is running out of time.
“How much is really you in there?” He’d asked one day not really expecting an answer.
“Enough.”
“Oh.”
“I know that I am Baron of Luxor and that I am Ion Fortuna’s tovarăş. I also know that I have been-“
Süleyman had put a finger to Radu’s lips silencing him. “I think I’m beginning to understand.”
The smile that answered that statement had been the familiar smile of a woman now dead.
He’d had a moment to consider that before she’d kissed him.
The idea of collective memories jumbled together in younger and younger bodies is contrary to everything he has ever been taught. It makes little sense at the end of the day and he certainly can’t see that it serves any sane reason. It sounds ludicrous even though he doesn’t doubt the idea, even though he doesn’t understand his own certainty that it is the truth. Since even Methuselah bodies must decay it does seem to be a certain sort of immortality but at the same time it is ghastly, it is an aberration. Not that it had stopped him visiting her, them, him… again and under similar circumstances.
“I’ll die of course.”
“No. That isn’t what-“
“But I will and so will…”
“Who?”
“No one, no one.” Radu had waved a hand absently and turned his attention to watching the shadows cast through the long windows.
And so they have embarked on revolution, he and this child who is not a child at all. They must succeed he is determined, even, in spite of Radu’s predictions of his own death. They will overthrow an Empire and when the time comes he will place a royal crown on the head of something that wears the body of a child but never was possessed of a child’s mind.
“I’m old… my love.”
“You will not die of old age.”
So he has been assured that he will not die of the deficiency of blood that takes all Methuselah. It is enough to make him suspect that he will die anyway but at least it will not be a dull, lingering death: hours, perhaps days measured out in weakness and fainting spells until eventually he is too tired to open his eyes and the darkness takes him. He will die when the revolution comes he is certain and somehow, strangely, Radu will die with him. But perhaps, for Radu at least death will not be some mysterious spectre. How can it be for one who is haunted by shades of those long past?
“We carry with us the knowledge of those long past, we retain it through their blood.”
“But you said that your death…”
“No one will carry forward my knowledge: I will take it with me into the dawn.”
“Why?”
“Because we have reached the end of a cycle and now we must begin again.”
++++++++++
The use of the term ‘diablerie’ is obviously lifted from Vampire: the Masquerade sourcebooks.
Basboosa is a semolina and yogurt dessert. Minus the rosewater it looks remarkably like a Burmese dessert served in a similar fashion.
248 words. G. Pre-series.
Radu’s mother and the fate ordained for her son.
Fairly obvious historical references.
Future
Disclaimer: Trinity Blood belongs to Sunao Yoshida, Gonzo and others.
++++++++++
She curses as she deals out the cards, long past caring for correct form in her readings as she snarls behind her veils, fangs bared at the world.
There is no one left to censure her: she is head of the House of Luxor alone, her husband a century dead. And yet with a faithful spouse in the grave she now carries an heir, a son. Soon he will be born and the days dictate what she will name him. If he is born as the moon waxes she will name him Vlad and he will be a prince among men but if he born as the moon wanes his name will be Radu and with him will fall a dynasty.
Some of the misfortune will be upon her head she knows. Vlad she would see grown to manhood: Radu will become an orphan with his first breath. Vlad would gather allies to his standard, men of war who would glory in his revolution: Radu will be subverted, first by a sultan’s lust then by the treachery of the world. At least she supposes there are no Methuselah of her son’s generation who also carry a name of old: she has already had four children slaughtered for such a crime.
Still, all her plans may yet come to nought. But without that terrible sultan perhaps… and then it occurs to her: the Empress’ great favourite bears the name of Solomon. What greater king or calamity could there be?
++++++++++