Chapter Text
The air down here was thin and it always felt like he could never get enough air. Xie Lian had long since become used to being out of breath. The way his throat would become increasingly more tight before the sweet release of death. In the coffin especially, he’d become well acquainted with suffocation. Any time he drowned too, he would be without air for the weeks, or sometimes even months it took for him to wash up on shore, (god forbid he didn’t at all, which thanks to what little luck he had left hadn’t happened yet).
Thinking of it… what he would give to drown right now.
Sure, it was objectively one of if not his number one least favorite way of dying back when he was still… well since a year ago. Drowning was cold, painful, and lasted for an indeterminate amount of time (which simply served to remind him of the endlessness of the coffin after that incident), and his body would be bloated for the days or often weeks following. Still, he was so thirsty, was so hungry, just plain starving. Even if what he was craving wasn’t water, any liquid might help satiate the thirst he was feeling. Just the thought stirred something deep inside him, and an endless craving he’d been feeling throughout his time here.
So how had he gotten here: sitting cross-legged on the ground, arms chained to a dimly lit cave wall, subjected to the whims of a group of vampire hunters turned vampire experimentalists? Well it all started about 800 years ago.
After a hoard of vampires attacked the kingdom of Xianle, the kingdom under the rule of his family, the royal family was blamed for half the kingdom being turned and ruining the lives of so many innocent, but most importantly prominent people. Though the reality of the matter was that all the people of Xianle really needed was a scapegoat and his highness and his majesty made incredibly good targets. Especially after his highness defied the heavens to fight in the attack.
To add insult to injury, it wasn’t long before Xie Lian became alone. Afraid of being caught up in a situation he didn’t need to be and needing to protect his mother who had been turned but refused to drink any blood, Mu Qing left early on. Feng Xin stayed for longer than Mu Qing but not for long enough, driven away by a Xie Lian that was stricken by grief and madness, plagued by the vampires that had taken seemingly everything from him. It was because of this that Xie Lian was alone when, unable to cope with the loss of their kingdom and starting to believe the lies told by the people that it was their fault for the attack, his parents hung themselves. This left him unequivocally and painfully alone.
Fueled by grief and aided by the ghost of a citizen from Xianle, Xie Lian was tipped over the edge of madness and waged a war against the hoard that had attacked his people and left him in such a sorry state. In his haste to avenge his people however, he at first failed to notice the new additions to the hoard… his very own turned citizens. As soon as he did realize however, he forced himself to stop. Who was he to kill the innocent people that had been forcefully turned? Were most vampires not also turned in similarly tragic circumstances just as well?
Unable to kill people he now could see only as victims, he had no choice but to be attacked by the hoard he’d provoked. To his surprise though, as he was having his epiphany the ghost behind him had drawn a rudimentary teleportation array and, right before Xie Lian had the chance to be attacked, the ghost shoved the former prince over it and activated the cursed thing. Immediately, Xie Lian was out of harm's way. Though he couldn’t say the same for the poor ghost of a citizen from Xianle whose fate he had practically sealed.
Almost just as soon as he’d been teleported away, he ascended for a second time to the heavens. It was a farcical ascension in his opinion, an opinion he immediately made known to Jun Wu the moment they came face to face. He requested on the spot, to Jun Wu’s face, that he be cast down again, given a second cursed shackle, and take Wuming’s vampiric state onto his own body. It didn’t take much, only some, coaxing for Jun Wu to agree to this and before long Xie Lian was a twice banished vampire roaming the mortal realm again.
Throughout his time spent wandering the mortal realm Xie Lian had to be careful. It was in his best interest to appear human, which meant making a number of sacrifices and taking a lot of precautions. His body learned how to adjust to a diurnal sleeping schedule, though the exhaustion he felt from this was always present. He learned how to expose himself to sunlight without it immediately burning his skin, though there was a constant itching pain any time he did. He learned to sustain himself off the blood of those close to death, though the hunger and guilt always weighed heavily on him. He really thought it was over that time he was staked through the chest into the coffin, but his cursed shackle saved him from that fate even if the pain was almost unbearable, the two sides of him at war constantly for 100 years.
All in all, he’d done pretty well for himself if he did say so, and he would’ve said so if it hadn’t been for his slip up almost… had it really been almost a year ago? Time moved weirdly down in the cave so he couldn’t be sure but that seemed about right given how many times he’d been fed. That was twelve times, about once a month if he was guessing right. He was often visited once a week for a blood draw and, if he didn’t comply, which he often unconsciously didn’t, a beating. And once every four weeks or so they’d bring a handful of mouthfuls of what tasted like animal blood given the complete lack of spiritual power and strange aftertaste. They gave him just a little bit more than they took from him over the course of four weeks, since it wasn’t like he was burning much of it off by sitting around doing nothing in a cave. Only needing a little extra blood in order to heal wounds.
As a vampire, he really wasn’t supposed to be able to live off of animal blood anyways but his body still circulated it as if on instinct and his shackle kept him painfully alive if not unconscious for half of the time. Time crept by slowly when he was awake so sleep was a blessing when it came. When it didn’t he was hungry, and that just made time go even slower than it was going to begin with.
Thinking back on his time as a wandering cultivator while sitting on the cold hard stone floor, hungry and shivering, only made him crave blood more. He would take anything at this point really, even food. Sure, vampires didn’t need food but in his delusions of his life as a royal he remembered it satisfying hunger just as blood now did and his addled brain was mixing the two up but he didn’t much care to stop it. Sure it was painful to think only of the things he would no longer have, but there was little else to think of these days. Little else but his brief fantasies of death that is.
He often found himself wishing these days that he could stop thinking of death. It was nice, in a strange way sure, something different from the monotony of hunger and thirst. It was also highly mentally detrimental, the back of his brain reminded him every time it came to the front of his thoughts. He dreamed of how it felt to be asleep but forever. Dreamed he could be free of the forever gnawing hunger and maybe pass on to a different life, maybe one where he hadn’t so royally fucked up. Maybe one where he still could be surrounded by the ones he loved. One where they weren’t all dead and it wasn’t all his fault.
He was just starting to drift off again into the thoughts of death and new life when he heard the noises. He always heard the noises first, humans were always so noisy. There were two of them like usual, but this time one of them was a new one. It seemed that way at least, he didn’t recognize their footfalls at a minimum. The sound of their loud stomping was a painful contrast to the almost complete silence he lived in for the majority of his time spent conscious, when they started speaking it got worse. It took him a while to parse out what they were saying, words like “vampire” and “blood” he expected, same with the words “fun” and “annoying” though contrasting they were. The two of them were probably talking about him, talking as if he couldn’t hear them no less, as if he were below the ability to understand, like an animal rather than a human.
When they came around the corner holding a brighter flaming torch than the singular one on the wall behind him his eyes began to hurt a little, even with it only in his periphery. As he blinked away the spots in his vision the two men came closer. The one holding the torch walked over and replaced it with the one on the wall, then blew out what little there was of the old one by waving it around in the air harshly until only embers remained. After setting it down on the stone ground the second man joined the first in unloading three items from a small satchel the first had been carrying across his torso. They took out two bottles, one small and empty, the other four times the size and filled with what looked like dark red blood. Unconsciously Xie Lian licked his lips in anticipation of the blood, he wanted it now, needed it now. He didn’t let himself make a sound of despair when he saw them reach for the knife in the bag and the empty bottle first.
There wasn’t much room for his arms to move, chained above him as they were, and he was extra tired today, it had been so long since his last drink. This is why he didn’t struggle today, not when they took the dull knife to his wrist and sliced deep. Not even when they were forced to squeeze his arm to try and get the blood to flow out of him, he didn’t have very much left this time of the month after all.
“It’s finally being obedient today and yet it still can’t give us enough blood, what the fuck?” one of the men exclaimed, the one holding the two-thirds-empty bottle under the unsightly wound. He scowled at Xie Lian who gave him nothing in return, as if he would dare even if he had the energy to.
“We could try its other arm?” the man with the knife suggested thoughtfully. So they stopped trying to aggravate the wound on his right wrist and moved to his left where they drew an even deeper gash which felt as though it might’ve hit a deeper layer of muscle than usual, one uncomfortably close to the bone. This one they also had to knead in order to get the blood to flow and it hurt even worse than the first. After that they cut at his thigh and that, well that was new. Xie Lian couldn’t help but let out a little whimper as the knife was plunged in and tore down a few inches before being roughly yanked out. Today they didn’t make fun of him for whimpering and simply left him in silence to feel the pain alone. They squeezed at his leg like they did at his arm before it and it hurt worse than the arm but not so much that he couldn’t handle it without making anymore noises.
Once they have collected enough blood from him and have stopped up the now full bottle, they finally, finally, bring over the one full of animal blood. Xie Lian feels his fangs automatically bare themselves just as much as they can manage, which has been becoming less and less each time he feeds. The bottle of animal blood is unstopped and brought to his lips by the man responsible for stabbing him – the new one. It’s tipped up and immediately Xie Lian can tell the angle of the bottle is too steep, it’s like the man is trying to pour the bottle into another container rather than a mouth that needs to swallow. He tries desperately to drink as much of the liquid as fast as he can before it inevitably starts to pour quickly out of his mouth and down his chin. The man in charge of this disaster of an exchange is facing away from Xie Lian, talking to the other of the two humans and doesn’t notice he’s spilling the contents of the bottle until Xie Lian lets out a sputtering cough, unable to get enough oxygen into his airway as it had been perpetually blocked by the unrelenting stream of blood flowing into his mouth. The last of the blood sprays onto the standing man’s torso before Xie Lian can realize what he’s just let escape his grasp. As if instinctually, the man in front of him bolts upright and lands a heavy kick to Xie Lian’s side, making the rest of the unswallowed blood be coughed out onto the floor beside him. It pains the vampire to look at it. All of that, wasted by him.
“Fuck!” the man who kicked him exclaims, “It fucking spit on me!” The human beside him cocks a brow, confused.
“It doesn’t usually do that, what did you do to deserve that reaction?” thank the gods, Xie Lian thinks gratefully, someone understands that it was the human’s fault not his own.
“I didn’t do shit to it, it just stopped swallowing and spat in my face!” The words are accompanied by an even more forceful kick, one that elicits a small crunching sound from one of his upper ribs. The blow is forceful but his wrists are bound close enough to the wall that he isn’t knocked to his side and remains slumped but upright. The man behind the aggravated one simply shrugs as he watches and says in a resigned tone,
“Well if it doesn’t want to drink the blood we can’t force it, now can we. Just as long as it keeps giving us enough of its own we should be fine, right?” The aggravated one scoffs in what might be agreement before spitting down a large wad of saliva on Xie Lian’s face in derision and storming off, calling out loudly,
“I’m getting the fuck out of here! Why did I even bother to come with you, this thing is fucking offensive!” Says you, Xie Lian thinks offhandedly before going to lick his lips in search of any leftover blood. He finds the taste of not only blood there, but also the foul taste of the man’s spit which had dripped onto his lips as he sat there. A cold shiver runs down his spine as he forces himself to swallow down the dribbles of blood along with the gross tasting saliva. Fuck, it was going to be on his face for a while thanks to how humid it was down here, wasn’t it. It smelled just as bad as it tasted and even once dried would leave a sticky residue on his face. He knew because this wasn’t the first time he’d been spit on. He just regretted not being able to stop one of the rivulets from rolling down onto his eyelid and forcing him to close his eye. This was especially annoying since it stopped him from being able to play the game, “how far into the cave can I see when the torch is newly replaced.”
He sits there in half-blindness instead, waiting for the footsteps of the men to fade away completely, glad to be rid of them. It's as he sits there that he realizes it: for the first time after a feeding session since he got here, he still feels thirsty.
This wasn’t going to be a fun four weeks to come.