Eclipse: CH 4

Chapter 4

When he came to, the first thing he see is the ornate white ceiling of the medical ward. His entire body feels heavy and his mind is still hazy from sleep. His first thought when he realizes his whereabouts was 'Ah, here again'. Dull pain coming from his left hand had him turning to that side; there's an IV drip connected to a bag of fluid. For a moment he stared at the steady drip of the fluid inside the small chamber.

..How did I get here?

Strangely his memories of the previous day are in broken pieces, floating around in his mind, unable to be connected.

The soft click of the doorknob pulls his attention towards the ward's door, which then swings open to reveal a familiar face.

"You're up, Dougai?"

"..Yeah, just now."

Haruto looks to the side for a bit and nodding before properly entering the room, followed by Gai immediately after.

"Thank goodness you're up. You were sleeping for the whole day yesterday." Relief comes in waves from Gai who is looking quite bright.

A whole day? No wonder..-

"I'm out for that long?"

Both of them round up to the right side of the bed, pulling out chairs to sit.

"Yeah, you were considerably weakened when we found you back at the old church."

Gai's sentence is picked up by Haruto, "By the time we got there, there wasn't much left, only vampire bodies scattered on the floor. So, we assumed that it was your work. We didn't expect to find you passed out from a blood loss since there weren’t any visible injuries."

He does vaguely remembers that - the place, the bodies, and something else..-

"You were bitten, weren't you? Tell us what happened?" And once in a while, Gai wears his more serious expression, mirrored by Haruto.

What..how to say?

Slowly he tries to piece back together his disjointed memories. "The bodies weren't my doings. They're already there when I got to the old church."

"Then who?"

Something, no, someone else.

A flash of red came to mind. Silver. Pale yellow eyes.

"Someone else...-It was like you suspected, Haruto."

His eyes widen in shock, "The cannibal-?"

Ryuga nods slightly in response.

"Then the bodies were his doing? But why?"

"I don't know, but I did saw him feeding on one. Though I don't really remember what happened after. I think I fought against him a bit, and then.."

"Looks like your memories were blown. He must've been the one who bit you as well."

The conversation falls into a momentary pause following the revelation. It's entirely understandable; they've come to realise that they may or may not be able to do anything about their current enemy. Regardless, they still need to handle this somehow, not for themselves, but for the ones that depends on them. And so, for a while the three of them sat in silence.

Trying to break the cloudy mood, Ryuga slightly derails the topic. "By the way, how much blood did I loss?"

Seemingly having shaken out of their ruminations his questions were picked up after a beat. "..About four pints. And fluids on top of that." Haruto responded while gesturing towards the bag of saline fluid hanging next to him.

"The doctor panicked when we brought you in. He said he'd never seen you that bad before."

"Well, he's not wrong at all. I do still feel like shit, though." Four pints is quite a lot. The most he'd get usually is two, and even that is exceedingly rare.

"Thankfully, your blood wasn't contaminated. Otherwise that'll be a whole different problem altogether."

He hummed in return. Thank goodness for that. Though he's not sure why did the man left without either killing him or turning him. Did the man not perceive him as a threat, or maybe he had a different thing in mind..? Either way Ryuga has no way of knowing.

 

*

 

A few days passed since then and he's well discharged from the ward, though he's still feeling the dregs of that day. The church is bustling as usual.

The villagers that they transferred over then are currently staying in the town area for the time being. It was such a relief to hear that they're recovering well from the attack. For now, they were told to stay here considering the condition of their village, as well as the imminent danger surrounding the place. It's much safer here close to the main church.

After that, apparently the frequencies of attacks had been decreasing quite a lot. In a glance it's easy to say that it might have been related, but one could wonder if that's really the case.

It took him a considerable amount of time to piece together his broken memories and give a proper description of the pureblood that he encountered that night.

Yes, a pureblood. After much consideration, they've come to conclude that he's indeed one. Vampire's blood can adversely affect fellow vampires, including higher levelled ones. Thus, to be able to tolerate - or rather, exclusively feeds on vampires - most likely can only be done by a pureblood. Though most of that is really just assumptions.

It's better to expect the worse than be underprepared.

For every day since the first contact, he'd been going back and forth to the medical wing for follow ups. Up until now, his case was the first recorded encounter with the ever-elusive purebloods in a really long time. Not just them, there are requests coming from other churches as well for the new data.

It's really a pain in the neck. It's a pain but he understands that it is necessary.

They didn't find anything wrong with him, though.

 

Unconsciously, he rubs the side of his neck.

 

*

 

The time passed by unnoticed in between duties. The sun sets for the day and the ground lights up in return. Ever since the incident, the level of security around the area has been increased. They have begun to evacuate the peoples from the outliers to the central area where it is closer to the church. At the same time, they are also concentrating their forces to the core area as well.

Though, this is just about the only thing they can do in the meantime. It'll be hard to request for additional manpower within a short period of time, not to mention their region aren't the only one facing problems. Just around last week they received a message from outside - supposedly originated from the western region. They’re at their wits end with having to face an unknown in the midst of ongoing cases of mass kidnappings and vampire attacks. No doubt the issues would have reached the Council's ears by now.

Deaf ears.

Wasn't a first, that's for sure.

Same with all the other cases they've left to fade away in the wind.

Ryuga shakes his head at the thought.

Looking upward to distract himself. The moon is bright as always, framed by countless stars in the heaven. His breath came out in a cloud of white in the cold temperature. There's no use getting worked up over the Council's lack of responsibility. There's nothing he, or anyone, can do about that. Matters of dealing with figures of authority are in a way much more difficult than dealing with these man-eating monsters.

Unlike that, these he can do something about.

Persistent growling can be heard coming from behind and around him. There are a lot of them tonight too. He supposes Haruto was right, these vampires are produced as food stock for the pureblood, for him.

Tch. Anger slowly rising inside, like a burning ember spreading through the dry land.

Because of that the people are being sacrificed.

He grips his sword hard enough his knuckles gone white from the pressure.

The growling stops for a split second before the attack comes. Their attack blurs out at high speed yet they were still unable to beat his reaction time. He turns around just in time to intercept the first attack, cutting the vampire into half.

"Come! I'll cut all of you down."