CHAPTER 04: THE SUN THAT SHOULD'VE KILLED ME
Pins and needles sparked across my entire body. It had happened at least a dozen times before, yet for what felt like the first time in an eternity, my heart beat again, and the prickling faded without the familiar sensation of dying. An involuntary gasp filled my lungs, bringing with it the taste of salt water and stale air.
I lay there, breathing slowly for several minutes as the world drifted into focus in lagging fits and starts. My mind clung stubbornly to a nonsensical image of playing with a cat in a brightly lit room. I had never seen a housecat in person, and I had no idea why the image was so strangely colorful.
Reality eased back in, and the first thing that stood out was the certainty that the sun was shining overhead. I couldn't see it, I couldn't even open my eyes yet, but I could feel that it was daytime. Waking from torpor in daylight was now an experience I could confidently label as miserable. I felt weak and sluggish, my thoughts tangled, and my entire body ached. Staying awake was a struggle. My mind tried to drag me back under, and I had to fight to hold onto consciousness.
When I finally felt capable of moving, I tried to raise a hand to wipe my eyes—only for my knuckles to strike a hard, unyielding surface above me. I stilled, then slowly lifted both hands, weak as I was, and explored my surroundings. Smooth walls pressed close in every direction. Polished wood. A faint tingling across my skin told me it had been coated in a thin layer of silver paint.
I didn't suffer the severe allergic reaction most vampires did, but I could still feel it. With more care, I managed to guide one hand to my face and wipe the sleep and crust from my eyes. That explained the other sensation. Everything felt coated in something. Damp and salt.
When I opened my eyes, I found myself in near-perfect darkness. Using my hands, then eventually my legs and feet, I mapped out the tight enclosure. It felt like I was inside a coffin that was too small, lying in a bed of sand. There were only a few inches above me and maybe eight to either side. My feet nearly touched the bottom, and my head was only two or three inches from the top.
Even without the strength to test it, I could tell the construction was solid hardwood, and the silver lining ran through the entire box. Whoever had created this prison had done their research into Father's bloodline. Even a wooden container like this would render almost anyone from our coven powerless, surrounded by so much silver. I didn't suffer that weakness, but in my state, it made little difference.
Something was wrong with me. I was always weaker during the daytime, but this went far beyond that. This wasn't a simple dampening of my vampiric abilities; I felt weaker than a human child. No matter how I tried to move, my body responded with unbearable lethargy. That brief attempt to explore had left me completely exhausted, and I hadn't even realized I had passed out until I woke again several hours later.
My eyes opened, expecting to see the face of a kind older man. I was certain he had been telling me something important, but the memory slipped away before I could grasp it. Instead, I saw only darkness. I knew there was a faint thread of sunlight leaking into my prison from somewhere, but it was so little that I couldn't see by it. That was wrong too. I was always able to see perfectly, even in total darkness.
As my thoughts became less sluggish and began to settle, I tried to piece together my circumstances. My memories felt unreliable. The last thing I clearly remembered was collapsing in the Adventurers' Guild. Everything after that came in scattered flashes. Brief sparks of awareness where torpor faded just long enough for pain to find me, only for it to swallow me again. I had never been conscious enough to count how often it happened, but my earlier estimate of a dozen still felt right.
If that was true, I had likely been trying to awaken during the day, over and over. There were probably whole days where I hadn't stirred at all. This was the most awake I had been in what felt like a very long time. And now that I was conscious, I became aware of a painful, clawing sensation in my stomach, accompanied by a slow, constant swaying that made my entire body feel wrong. I had never felt anything like it, and I only wanted it to stop.
I tried, briefly, to find a way out of my prison, but even small movements were difficult and painful. Testing my boundaries made the weakness and nausea worse, and I was soon forced to stop and rest. I knew what must have happened. I'd been kidnapped, likely by the same people I had been speaking with. If so, they were almost certainly taking me east. At least that meant I had a general direction to head once I escaped.
What I didn't understand was how. I had been fine until I'd drunk the wine, but I'd had wine a few times before, and it had never affected me like that. The lack of answers left me frustrated, with far more questions than I liked and nothing to do but wait for nightfall, when I could break free of this coffin.
I didn't have long to wait. In the meantime, I indulged in daydreaming about the moment I tracked down the rogue who had invited me to their table and drained him dry. It wasn't that I was angry—perhaps I was, but I wasn't used to such emotions. All I knew was that a painful thirst was building, and he had wronged me.
As the sun's final rays slipped beneath the horizon, I lifted my hands to press against the lid above me. I expected the surge of vampiric might to flow through me.
It never came.
With a creeping terror that filled every part of me, night arrived with the suffocating sensation of death. My arms fell limply back to my chest as the world faded into nothingness.
When I next awoke, it was to the fading images of a city I was certain I'd never seen before. That was when I first suspected I had been dreaming. I slept through the day, but dreams were not something I had ever experienced. And if those had been dreams, they did not match anything I had ever read about them. What I remembered felt like scattered fragments, random images, and fleeting, disjointed scenes.
Still, I was thankful for the distraction it provided me from what had happened the previous night. Without this odd new development, I would have likely awoken in a far less rational mood. As it was, I was having trouble keeping my thoughts moving in a useful direction. Somehow, these people had done something to force me into torpor. I knew it had to be some kind of curse or poison. The box I was trapped in wasn't magical in nature, only sturdy and lined with silver.
I could only imagine that my wakefulness in the day was due to my unique bloodline. It made me far more human than the other vampires. Normally, I would feel somewhat weakened in the day, but it was not nearly as debilitating as the others. A little over a year ago, I'd even put my hand into a sun-filled room without any ill effects, and then, in an act that I would never have admitted to the others, I stepped into the room myself and even moved to stand in direct sunlight. I'd kept up the habit of sleeping in the day because that was simply how things were done, but I knew it wasn't necessary.
Now, something was forcing me into torpor at night while leaving me alive and in a drastically weakened state during the day. It was as if my bloodline was partly something else, and that part of me was what was functioning while my vampiric side was completely suppressed.
I was the first and only member of my bloodline, and if even I hadn't known this was possible, there was no chance anyone else did. That gave me an opportunity to escape—if I could figure out how to open the prison they had locked me in. And only if they didn't know I was awake.
As my mind calmed with these thoughts, more pressing needs began to make themselves known. I was only beginning to realize that the thirst I was feeling wasn't one for blood. I did my best to ignore it, and for the first time, tried to focus beyond the confines of my box. I hadn't noticed how muffled everything was until then. I could hear a soft creaking in rhythm with the gentle swaying I felt, but otherwise, wherever I was, it remained quiet. Once or twice, I thought I heard men calling to one another in the distance, but with how faint it was, I couldn't be certain I wasn't imagining it.
Feeling safe enough to risk a cantrip, I gathered my focus—far more than it had ever required—and summoned a small ball of light. I regretted it immediately. The silver lining and close walls reflected the glow back at me, blinding me with sudden brightness. After several seconds, I managed to adjust and lifted my head just enough to look around.
I had been right about my prison. It was a coffin that was too small, painted in silver. I also saw that someone had taken my clothes, boots, and weapons, leaving me in a simple white linen nightgown. For some reason I couldn't quite explain, heat rushed to my face, and I found myself increasingly certain that what I felt toward these pirates was anger.
And I was growing increasingly confident that pirates were exactly what they were. The smell of saltwater and the constant swaying motion were enough for me to accept I was on a ship. I was only grateful it was over the ocean and not a river. But the moment I realized they had stolen my clothes, any lingering doubt disappeared.
I wasn't attached to the weapons or the cloak; I had taken them from fallen invaders simply because they were useful. The clothes were just clothes. But the boots had been a gift. For touching them alone, retribution was necessary. Still, the thought of someone stripping my belongings from my body and dressing me in something else kept echoing in my mind. I didn't know why that bothered me so much, but I intended to return the gesture by taking off their skin before I killed them.
I was getting ahead of myself.
Knowing I could cast the most basic cantrip, I let the Light spell fade and attempted another: Condense Water. It was more complex, but still only a cantrip. Unlike a creation spell, it used far less mana by pulling moisture from the air and compressing it into a single point until droplets formed. The concentration required in my current state made my headache worsen, but after nearly a minute, I managed a steady rhythm of droplets falling into my mouth. It wasn't much, one drop every second or two, but the relief was painfully wonderful.
I kept it up as long as I could, but I was exhausted within minutes. I closed my eyes to rest and recover when I heard someone speaking nearby.
"… can't believe they're storin' that thing near our food. It's dead, right? We can't have dead things near the food. Everyone will get sick," A voice that trembled with fear said.
"Don't joke about sickness, Bill. And it's not dead. Just stuck asleep for a few weeks. We're only a few days from port, and that thing will be sold off for the reward." The second voice was more mature and even a bit stern.
"I heard about that. Someone said the captain's sellin' it to another vampire. How would he even get a contract like that?"
"It's probably just a stupid rumor. What would one vampire want with another? It's none of our concern."
"I don't know, but they must be payin' a fortune for the captain to bring us all so damn far just to pick it up. You got everything? I want to get out of here. It's givin' me the creeps."
"Yeah. I know what you mean. It's like it's listening to us. Let's go."
A door thudded shut a moment later, and I let out a relieved sigh. The conversation gave some interesting insights into my situation, but all of it paled in comparison to knowing that whatever was wrong with me was temporary. It had been a lingering fear in the back of my mind. If this were something that would last a few weeks, I was already well on the way to recovery. Maybe that's why I'd been able to stay awake in daylight at all. I only needed to survive a bit longer, and then I'd be back to normal. If I wanted to know how much longer this would go on, I'd need to keep track of how much improvement I saw each day. As it was, the only ability I was confident in was my sorcery. How difficult it was would be a good indicator of how much I'd recovered.
As I tried to think of other simple cantrips I could use, I probed the coffin's edges with trembling fingertips, searching for seams. It wasn't very difficult, but they gave me no indication of how the lid was intended to be removed. Pushing on it did nothing; clearly, my prison was locked shut. I doubted they'd pile something heavy on top of it, especially aboard a ship. I ran through every sorcerous cantrip I knew. Aside from burning the coffin—which would be slow, noisy, and leave me trapped in a pyre—there didn't seem to be an option. I could try necromantic cantrips, but I'd need a dead rat for a minor minion, and I'd never been good at raising the dead anyway. It was the rot. If I ever unlocked that class properly, I might bind spirits or raise bone constructs, but the smell of rotting corpses was something I could never stomach.
And… that sparked another idea. This coffin was made of dead wood. We were at sea, everything around me damp and salted, and the moisture had seeped into the box with me. That environment was perfect.
I took a steadying breath, focused on the wall beside my head, and cast Decay. It was a simple necromantic cantrip that accelerated the decomposition of dead material. On plant matter, it was extremely effective—a spell even a farmer would value for compost. But here, it was especially difficult to cast. The silver layer made focusing harder, even if it was thin. The wood had been treated, lacquered, and reinforced to resist rot, but I wasn't trying to break down the surface. I targeted a tiny spot in the bottom corner, no wider than my finger.
The wood resisted me stubbornly, but time was one resource I had in abundance. It took hours, but eventually, I felt the wood beneath the lacquer turn soft, then crumble to dust. My head spun from the effort, and exhaustion settled deep into my bones. I drifted into sleep for several hours.
When I awoke later that afternoon, I prodded the spot I'd targeted with a tendril of magic and knew it had been a complete success. The idea of rotting out the entire wall would certainly take too long. The men I'd overheard said I only had a few days. So instead, I focused on another spot near the first and began again. My plan wasn't a complicated one. I needed to weaken the wall above my head in enough places that I could brace my legs beneath me and push with my hands to break free. There were some flaws in this plan, chiefly that I didn't know exactly how thick the silver was, but silver was not a strong metal. A thin painted layer would crack and flake as the wood deformed, and that was what I was counting on. I only had to do enough damage to make the wood give.
I'd managed to put three holes into the coffin before, sometime while sleeping to recover my strength, night fell, and my sleep became torpor.
The next morning was the least horrible one I'd experienced since this ordeal began. Instead of rising from the dead, I was startled awake as something thudded into the top of the coffin. My eyes shot wide, and the edges of a dream were sticking to my confused mind until I heard someone speak.
"Are you crazy? Don't put things on top of that!" I recognized the voice as the scared man from the day before.
A woman's voice scoffed, "I don't think she minds, Bill. It'll take a lot more than a little bump to wake this sleeping beauty. It's a shame, really."
"It will be a shame if that thing wakes up and kills us all!"
"If she wakes up, she might kill and eat the lot of you, but the two of us were meant for each other. One look at me, and she'd fall head over heels in love."
"It's a damn monster, not one of your pleasure district dancers. If you can't have a little common sense, you don't need to be coming through my kitchen!"
"Now, now, Bill. Don't be so disrespectful to the love of my life. I might get offended. Then you'd have a much bigger problem than worrying about a pretty girl sleeping in your pantry. It's a crime to keep her locked away like this anyhow. Think I should open it up so we can take a peek?"
"I'll get the captain!" Bill yelled in a panic, only to be met with a melodic, teasing laugh.
"You're no fun. Fine. I'll go, but I'm taking this apple."
They continued to bicker the entire way out of the room, but I froze at the thought of discovery. When the door finally closed behind them, I relaxed. The pain in my stomach was worse than before, and the thirst was ever-present. I was only glad that I wasn't in a state yet where I was going mad for blood. The woman was right, though. Once I was free, I was going to kill and eat all of her friends. But when I was done, I was going to stop and talk to her. I wanted to know what she meant by all of that before I drained her dry.
The thought made my thirst worse, and I began again with the tedious process of Condensing Water. After several swallows, I stopped as a thought came to me. I tried my best to peel away some of the silvered paint. Once I pressed into one of the spaces of rot I'd created, it wasn't so difficult. My nails went through the thin layer easily enough, and after that, I was able to peel away pieces almost as easily as peeling away actual paint. The exposed wood wouldn't take well to the moisture in the air, but as I began to condense water into the spaces where I'd already rotted the wood away, I knew I'd be doing a lot of damage with much less work.
That's how I spent the day. Hunger pains gnawed at me and threatened my concentration, but I managed to rot out several more holes, adding water to each before moving on. By evening the wood had begun to swell around the damaged spots. I only hoped it wasn't obvious from the outside.
I'd learned from the day before and made peace with exhausting myself so I'd be asleep when torpor took hold. When I awoke the next morning, it was to the sounds of the ship rocking in heavier waves and the distant cries of sailors at work. I was grateful the sea had been calm before, and I'd had some time to adjust to the constant movement, or I knew I'd be in bad shape now.
I didn't wait long before following my routine. I thought about things as I worked on my cantrips and decided that they were easier than on the first day, but not in a way that would lead me to think my recovery was speeding up. I was certain that there would still be a couple of weeks to endure this condition. I was beginning to feel even weaker and more lightheaded, and I knew that I didn't have much time left before I would need to make my escape. It would be the next day, or I wouldn't be strong enough to get out of the box, let alone find a way to take or escape the ship. With that thought driving me, I pushed myself to make as much progress as possible.
Throughout the day, the sea was becoming rougher and rougher. I could hear a storm outside, and I'd even needed to move as far against one wall of the coffin as possible and brace myself so I wouldn't be sliding around as I tried to concentrate. I didn't know a lot about sailing, but the storm seemed particularly bad. It was extra motivation. If the ship sank, I didn't want to be stuck on the bottom of the ocean.
By the time the sun was setting, I was mentally spent but confident I'd be ready to break free by morning. I closed my eyes, drifting toward sleep—then the entire ship lurched. I couldn't tell if we'd struck a reef or hit a massive wave, but the vessel suddenly listed hard to one side. It wasn't steep enough to crush me, but enough that gravity now pressed me firmly against one wall.
From the noise above, it sounded like the crew was already scrambling to fix whatever had happened. There was nothing I could do but wait. I tried to relax, to let go of the tension, but it was impossible. Then came a sharp, splintering crack overhead, like a tree snapping in a storm. My eyes flew open.
The shouts above weren't coordinated orders. They were screams. The sailors weren't working—they were fighting and dying.
A door somewhere nearby slammed, and I heard someone muttering something I couldn't understand. Before I could make sense of it, there came a heavy thunk, followed by the grinding click of gears locking into place.
The lid above me swung open, flooding the coffin with dim, shifting light. Standing over me was the woman I'd seen at the dinner table. Her left arm hung useless at her side, and blood soaked the front of her clothes.
Before I could even think to react, she pitched forward, half-falling into the coffin beside me. Her good hand reached up, slammed the lid closed, the locking mechanism snapping back in place, sealing us both inside.
As the last traces of sunlight faded and she tried to make herself still in the cramped space, I could hear only her broken whispers, over and over
"Oh gods… oh gods… oh gods…"
And then my world faded to nothing.
TO BE CONTINUED...