About the Dawn's Game – Part 5

"Huh?" Yakatarina's mother? But… "Wait, my question might seem stupid but, are you saying that any of this truly happened? I don't remember hearing that humanity was ever in such a dire situation. Not even during World War II… Also, I heard from Yakatarina herself that her mother was a succubus but you just said she… well, you said that she didn't have any of the disadvantages of the condition so… huh, I am not sure of what I wanted to ask but this is a bit strange."

"That is your concern? Shouldn't you ask me something like: so you are the witch in this story?" she asked, opening her eyes wide.

"Well, I thought it was obvious enough that it didn't need to be mentioned. Your discipline did say that you were so nice that you were evil so I understood right away…"

"So you knew, yet you let me tell you all this…" she said, taking a thinking pose. "Could it be that you did not realize I could grant you any wish you desired if you simply asked?"

"I did think about it but… huh… without… huh, I am not trying to be disrespectful, but a ghoul pretending to grant wishes seems suspicious to me. Besides, if you asked me to have one wish granted, I would probably have some banal wish lik—"

"Don't say it. Do not say it," intervened the Archduchess of Benevolence. 

Her voice at that moment was surprisingly commending and totally lacked the gentleness and slow tone she had up until that point.

"Listen carefully to what I will say now. As my title suggests, I am benevolent and will grant any wish no matter how much pain it may bring to both the person who wished for it and the world. Since helping others is my definition of evil, I do not find any problem with granting the wishes of any person that seeks my help. However, some do not see it the same way as I do."

With her sleeves she pointed at something point behind me. She raised her chin twice as if to ask me to look in the direction she indicated which I did with a bit of reluctance.

"!"

I jumped from my chair. Behind was something, or rather someone with their body wrapped in some dark shadow-like thing.

"Tansy's definition of evil is to stop people from asking anything that could be interpreted as a wish." She put them together in front of her face before continuing, "She kills them."

"K-Kill?"

Looking again at the restrained person, I recognized the elaborate white robe, the empty gray eyes and the pale blonde locks that escaped from under the shadow. But that wasn't all. Her position was strange, with her hand stretched in her weird angle.

"Yes," replied the Archduchess. "I believe she tried to behead you with a back slap. *sigh* Such a lack of taste."

The Archduchess raised from her chair and approached me. Without thinking, I stepped back, falling on another chain in my panic. The Archduchess stared at me for a few seconds and then smiled gently. 

"I know it. I do know it," she said, nodding, with her eyes closed. "You are afraid, aren't you? Hmhm, why wouldn't you? You almost died without even realizing why. Anyone would be striked by fear should something happen. It is a normal reaction for a human and an even more normal reaction for a vampire."

With a graceful jump, she stepped on the table just like a dark feather.

"Do not worry, I will answer your questions and more. Let's start with the one you must be asking yourself right now. Should you fear me? The answer is yes. Make no mistakes, I am a monster that stopped feeling disgusted by eating human flesh long ago. I believe that this is enough reason for a human to fear me. Now the next question: do I wish to eat you? The answer is also yes. Not that your flesh will taste better than any other human mind you, but I because I am under the premonition that YAKATARINA will try to murder me because of that. Up until now, she was obsessed with life but never took any interest in living being themselves. Dawn, in this regard your status is special. A monster in human form seems to have taken interest in you and, sadly, other monsters are trying to understand why."

Her smile grew wider and she opened her eyes revealing dark sclera and glowing gray irises.

"I, sadly, am one of these monsters."

I tried to move but I couldn't. It wasn't that I was so afraid that I couldn't move, but I literally didn't know how to move at all. I was totally paralyzed, like a zombie fascinated by the girl in the frilly black dress looking down on me.

"You see, vampires are all connected to the Alluring One, one way or another. As they grow in age and power, they come closer and closer to them becoming increasingly more otherworldly and… inhumane. At first, Eve wasn't a vampire. She was, for a lack of better term, a dhampyr. A being in between, possessing our strength without any of the disadvantages."

Her smile disappeared and her tone became a bit more serious once again.

"What do you think our principal disadvantage is, Dawn? Our need for blood? Those of the bloodline of the beast can live without it and those of the bloodline of the sun do not even crave it. The fact that we burn under the sun? That is only true for my kind. All of the other 5 bloodlines do not have any problem with it. Then, it is that we can't reproduce? Why, you know that, again, it is only the case for a minority. No, our true disadvantage, our true problem is elsewhere."

She made a little pause, hiding her mouth behind her sleeve.

"Eve was created as a proof of an argumentary yet to be made. Her purpose was to prove that her father was right about his approach to save the world. She liked him but she had no special attachment to her duty. You could say she was normal but then… she met Dorothy and fell in love with her. Whether or not the recipient of this love knew about it is unknown, besides, it is irrelevant. What is relevant about that love is that it brought up something into her blood, something that makes all vampires what they are: lust."

She slowly shook her head.

"Not the way you understand it," she said, denying a thought I wasn't in a state to have. "I am talking about what could be called true lust. Desire, obsession, feelings like that. As she grew obsessed with Dorothy, her blood awakened, turning into a vampire. While what happened between her and Dorothy at the time would be interesting to tell, I will simply say that her transformation gave her additional powers while making her a slave to her obsession. Her obsession was to live her whole life with Dorothy, by that I mean of course marrying her and maybe having children since she mentioned wanting to be a mother. But you already know what happened, don't you? Dorothy died and with her, the target of Eve's obsession. Sadly, a vampire cannot live without such a thing so her obsession switched to bringing back Dorothy, something so that she could have children with her resulting in poor kids like the little Iovanna. Before that, she tried again and again and again to have a child herself. That child had the name of one of her friends from back when she was a member of Squad 13 in Dawn Harbingers – a Q-Qla named YAKATARINA. Her name was always in upper case like required for Q-Qla back then and if I recall it correctly, she spoke the same way as a girl you know. How Eve succeeded to do that is beyond me but they do say students always surpass their teachers."

Again, she stared at me in silence as if thinking about what to do next. She jumped on the ground again and went back to her seat. Her eyes had returned to normal, but I was still unable to talk or to move for reasons I couldn't understand.

"But I digress," she suddenly said. "As they say, old people tend to ramble a lot. When you get my age, you always have that itch that pushes you to unfold all of your life even to unknown people. Hm, my point is relatively simple. Vampirism is a disease but mostly of the parasitic type. The cursed blood of the Alluring One wishes, like their owner, to like eternally, or rather, is cursed to. As such, it manipulates its host to make him live a long life. Sadly for it, humans don't have a mind that can last for eternity. They eventually grow bored of all and everything which invariably leads them to their demise."

She slowly poured herself a cup of coffee and emptied it on the spot as she used to do.

"'How to handle this predicament?' thinks the parasite. 'Oh! How about giving them something they will never grow tired of?!' it replies to itself. A few generations of adaptation and we have vampires – beings that stay alive because they cannot stop wishing to do a specific thing. We call them… Heh, it would be more correct to say that I decided to call them Ways of Evil because no matter how pure an obsession is, it ends up twisted after such a long life."

She poured herself another cup of coffee and emptied it again. The cold of the room started to get at me, the strong smell of the coffee started to make me nauseous and the fact that I couldn't move no matter what I tried made me panic so much that my stomach hurt yet, I couldn't do anything to make it stop. The Archduchess of Benevolence continued her monologue without a care for me illustrating her earlier claim as a monster.

"Of course, the fact that this blood makes us obsessive doesn't just apply to our respectives ways of evil but those other things have more complicated explanations. What you need to know is that, generally, our way of evil doesn't change. They represent our souls and changing them means changing our souls which is why you must understand our curiosity. The Archduchess of the Crimson Roses's way of evil was to extend people's lives. No matter how painful living was, she was determined to maintain people alive in any form necessary. You cannot begin to imagine how much love and hate her name has gathered in the past centuries. She was merciless, just like a machine doing her task without any emotions involved. Even for a vampire of our rank, such a lack of humanity is rare. She was clearly beyond us both in mind and body yet…"

Yet again, she poured herself a cup of coffee and emptied it before continuing.

"A few months ago, she started showing emotions. The reason, a human girl without much for herself. It was as if she returned to being simply Katrina and not the Archduchess of the Crimson Roses. A cheerful girl enjoying life to its fullest. How strange, we thought. Garlic, no matter how clingy they were with her, never succeeded in bringing back the little Katrina… oh wait, Kate in their case. Oh well, that isn't important. Dawn, it seems that you changed Katrina's way of evil from 'keeping people alive no matter what' to 'keep this specific human alive no matter what'. When we talked, she seemed quite excited when talking about you while still being her old self when talking about the others. It seems you are quiiite important to her which is why I wonder: what exactly did you do for it to happen?"