Melissa stood over the corpse with two very distinct thoughts screaming in her mind. One: It didn’t have to be this way. And Two: If she had only scored a touch higher on the exam, she wouldn’t be in this situation.

A voice spoke. It said something loud and sharp.

“What?” She asked “Come again.”

“We shall ask for the third and final time, Ms Melissa Grove, do you submit as tribute and offering for the use of magic in the country.”

Melissa let out a low, empty laugh. “Do I have a choice?” 

“If you refuse, you shall be sentenced to the highest punishment possible as a heretic and citizen of bad breeding. Your family shall be ruined, and their descendants will be forced to leave the city.”

“A simple ‘No’ would have sufficed.” Melissa raised a hand up to block out the light of the sun, amplified by a strange glass that magnified the light. Perhaps they’d thought she was a vampire, and would be dead from the sun. They’d starved her for days, weeks possibly, in a dark room away from any sound or people. 

Maybe the corpse was meant to test for that too. The first sign of flesh and she was to jump the neck of it. Of course, every vampire knew not to eat the flesh of the dead. That was the basics, and as an Elder of the species Melissa was no stranger to the strange ways that mortals thought. 

“This isn’t going to work.” She said to the air. Her captives were somewhere, hidden away in some hole watching her movements. They probably had stakes at the ready too. By the bones of Ghrist, tell me that isn’t Garlic I smell. She sniffed the air and felt the pungent scent reach her inner nostrils. She nearly gagged. 

“Ah, so you are a Witch! A creature of the great demons sent to forsake us.” 

“I’m allergic to Garlic.” She said, “Can’t you do something about that?” 

“Common fact, Witch’s are scared of Garlic.”

The room paused. 

“What?” She asked, and heard another voice mirror her words in the distance of audio projection. 

“Common truth, Witches and Garlic don’t mix.” The main voice said. 

“What are you on about?” The second voice said, “Thats Vandals what can’t stand Garlic.”

“Aren’t vandals just… well, punks and defacers of property.” The first asked.

“Ah, but you see theres the truth of it. Easy way to spot them, Vandals, using garlic and what not.” 

“I don’t…” Melissa tried to get her mind in line with the idiocy parading before her, but found herself focusing on the corpse. She wasn’t hungry for dead blood, but the thoughts of what to do with a corpse were piling up before her. The pair continued on in the background as she stepped across the room to a far wall. The light had made it difficult for her vision to adjust, but as she stepped into the shade of the dimmer, more simple light of day, she could see the room. It was circular, clearly an antechamber or some small side room, with a high ceiling and an opening in the roof for the light to break through. 

Okay, she thought so I have a way out. Now what do I do about the idiots in the next room? 

She tapped the corpse with her foot. It remained a corpse. 

“So it’s actually Vampires then?” The first asked, their conversation coming back into focus. 

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you this whole time.”

“So why isn’t the sunlight working?” 

“Well I don’t know,” Said the second. “We should just stake her and be done with it.” 

“She hasn’t answered about the sacrifice thing.” 

“She’s a Vampire, right? We can’t sacrifice them anyway, they can’t do magic.” The second voice countered. 

“So we just, stake her?” 

“Better that then be here for the next hour or two.” 

She heard the jangling of keys and the distinct thumps of spears tapping stone. 

So sooner rather than later it is. She stepped back towards the corpse in the center of the room and listened for the sounds of doors creaking or footsteps shuffling towards her. It didn’t take long, the next room over must have been closer than she had originally thought, and she heard the keys once more near a patch of empty wall. Squinting, she could just make out the slits of a door. 

Moving as fast she she could, which was much faster than most even before she was turned, she turned towards the door and slipped her foot under the corpse. The door creaked slowly open, spears entering seconds before the men. It was only when the opening was fully revealed that she acted. With a decisive kick, she slung the corpse towards the men, sending them and the corpse flying against a distant wall. The clattering of spears and a wet thud was all that marked their slip into unconsciousness. 

She was in a church, though that much wasn’t too surprising. In her quick run from the room she’d been trapped in, Melissa found a spare set of clothes that looks as if they belonged to a servant, and dressed quickly in those. Then she moved out into the halls and slipped by the guards that occasionally sauntered through, making her way towards the central chamber. 

There has to be something better than this. She thought as she lifted a candle towards a tapestry. This running, this fighting, this constant back and forth.

“Stop! What are you-” The spear left her hands before the man could finish his sentence, sticking through his neck in a singular violent motion. He collapsed backwards, toppling over a table holding another set of gleaming candles. 

A blaze was beginning in the halls of the church. 

“I don’t need a babysitter.” Melissa stretched out in the large oaken chair. She ran her fingers over the arms and felt the smooth, well worn wood beneath her lithe, nimble fingers. It was only then that she wished once more for a piano, oh the longing to play vexed her each morning now. 

“I believe, Ma’am, that you do.” The young vampire said. His name was Josph or Joseph or Chopin, something uninteresting and drab. He shifted his weight with an unease that seemed ill fitting on a vampire. 

“Is that right?” She turned, half in a malaise of the day, and stared the young vampire down. He wasn’t ugly, just plain. The thoughts of which lesser vampire could have turned him and brought him into this life of decadence and obedience made her stomach twirl. Plain people, mortals, brought up and given eternal life. There used to be standards, at least, she thought there did. Then again, the uglier the vampire, the more vile and temperamental. It had been in vogue to turn creatures of the mortals into creatures of the night. 

Something was off about this one though. He seemed distracted, highly agitated, and his eyes lingers on her figure more with each second. Was he… Oh no. Melissa hid a chuckle and spread her legs out further. The young Vampire blushed, completely unaware of her stare.

“Something… catching your attention?” She asked. He shot up straight and stood a bit more at attention than before. 

“No, Ma’am.” 

“Do you find me attractive? Do you wish to bed me?” 

“I…”

“Do you wish to ravish me? Make me scream your name?”

His face grew more red with each sentence, bits of him striking firm the dedication to the ideal.

“What do you see when you look at me that makes you so attracted?”

He didn’t reply, and when she could see that the words were caught in his throat she peered into his mind. It wasn’t surprising what she found. Lust, longing, a temptation of the flesh. Melissa fought a scoff, bit back a reply, and shook her head. 

“And do you know what I see when I look at you?” 

Again he failed to reply, so Melissa focused the thoughts in her mind with a practiced ease and sent them to the boy. The child. He shook his head at the thoughts, struggling to focus through the sharing of minds, and stepped back. 

“I’m sorry to have disturbed you Ma’am. I’ll leave you now.” 

“Yes.” She breathed. “That would be best.” 

And so he left, and she was alone again. She felt it, like a sickness overwhelming her. She was alone. Alone. Alone. Time passed but Melissa paid it no mind, ignoring its weathering and aging as anything eternal would. Days turned to weeks turned to months turned to years. 

Melissa had made five vampires in her youth, a youth of a few hundred years as it was, and had taught them the rules and orders befitting a vampire. She’d instructed them in language, ethics, economy, and have even furnished them each with a small fortune in which to set out on their own. Her children had made more, and they in turn had made more. Yet all the while they had never left her side. Each one had stayed, content to wait for their Master to raise from her stupor. 

And as these days passed to years, so too did these children. They raised their youngers when their Master failed to do so, and taught them the rules as they aged. Some taught with an iron fist, others coddled. Melissa watched this all in a haze, shifting through the days without a thought in her mind. She heard others thoughts, and tracked their movements through the world without ever leaving her chair. 

Eventually, as years progressed to decades, the followers and lower vampire left. They abandoned their makers in exchange for a life of intrigue and adventure. As time marched further, the stronger vampires of the group also grew bored and impatient, choosing to explore all that they had neglected in their eternal lives. 

And, as is the way of life, her children soon departed. They took their fortune, each blaming the other but swearing their fealty regardless to her. Each took a blade from the armory, a collection of relics from a world long past, and separated. 

Still she did not move. Still she waited, though she knew not what for. 

Decades turned to Centuries, the house she resided in was sold in an exchange by one of her children and was given over to an organization that monitored the supernatural. She signed the paper as instructed when asked, making her first movements in nearly 200 years. 

Cities rose, empires fell. The great beasts of the continents laid their heads down for the last time and succumbed to their waiting. She acknowledged that their was death, wars, creation and loss. Melissa witnessed it all from her hovel, for that is what it had become. What had once been a legendary mansion sat atop a range of destruction were now nothing more than ruins, what had once been pride was now ash. 

In all this change, she felt nothing. No spark to life, no reasonable hunger for experience. She was dead, eternal, and bored. It had been boredom that had driven her into the state. It had been depression and ill temper that had slung her so violently into a hibernation of the soul. 

Words were said to her, spoken from people with strange accents. They asked her for aid, the smell of blood pungent on their clothes. A thought to ask them what had happened to her guardians entered her mind, but she let it pass without incident. Afterall, what did it matter? It was just death.

When they spoke again, her mind shifted and rocked. Something deep within her, a torch that had long since been extinguished, reignited with a fervor that threatened to topple her world. It was as if all at once the fog of dissociation and indifference was lifted, and through its easing came a void that needed filling. It started as a burning, as quiet and ill formed as a rumor, yet it grew, and it grew. So it changed from a whisper to a spoken word, and then a shouting, and finally it reached a screaming. 

Melissa looked down, expecting to see a blade or stake piercing her chest, but found nothing. It was only then that she realized she was standing, not just standing, floating in fact, some feet from her centuries long resting place. A familiar sensation trickled down her arm, and another piece of the world came into the every flowing view. She had killed someone, or not fully but had certainly deposited him on the way to death. 

Without a single thought, her mind acting on pure instinct bred into the vile embodiment of death that she was, Melissa brought her head down and bit from the neck of the body. A man, it had been a man. As she drank the blood, her lips pulsing with every drop that passed across them, she could see visions. A creature of beauty and grace in the most violent position, draining the life of the another being. A man holding some strange binding of sticks and muttering words. Blades, lots of blades. The shine and clanking filtered slowly through her mind at first, then transitioned to a roar. It became too much, the noises the flesh at her lips, the people around her. 

“I need… to breathe…” She managed, drops of viscous fluid pooling and falling from her lips. Candles flicked and froze, breathing slowed to a stop, and the air itself almost became as still as a lake. As sanity slowly returned, she dropped hard onto the floor with a wet thud. 

Melissa stumbled her way out of the room, paying no attention to it or the destruction around her. The building was burning, or had burned, to the ground. Smolders remained in small piles, and bits of stonework stood as reminders to what had been, but the manor was otherwise gone. Two dozen men and women in plate armor and holding spears stood at the entrance to the property. 

She breathed, deep and slow. The pallid air filled her lungs with a sluggish, dusty difficulty that made the first few breaths come out as coughs. Not a soul moved, not a one breathed but her. 

Light broke gently over the crops of trees that surrounded the wrought iron fencing of the manors lands. A decrepit fountain, broken and aged with moss and disuse, stood at the center of courtyard. Its figure, a molding of her maker, long since destroyed. Shattered pieces of its once proud form spread throughout the immediate area and in two of the three tiered levels. She knew the wind would be blowing if it were allowed, and could feel the damp on her skin of the time frozen rain. 

She noticed the invaders next, creatures of all species and race. Most were dressed in fine armor and holding steel pikes. Several sat atop horses and other beasts that look strange and alien to Melissa. 

“I’ve frozen them.” she breathed. “I’ve frozen them all. That's rather new.”

“I’m quite surprised that's all you’ve done.” 

He stepped with an ease that put her mind of a king, ruling over his domain. He wore white, not armor, but a suit of a different kind. His hair was salt and pepper, slick back but given a slight height, and he had the eyes of a reptile in the color of the most crimson red Melissa had ever seen. He smelt of ash and death, and with just a hint of lavender. 

And he wasn’t armed. 

The man raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, opening his palms to reveal them empty spare a single coin between his left pointer and middle finger. “Vampire Melissa of…”

“A land I’m guessing no longer exists.” 

“Nevertheless.” He moved the coin between his fingers with a litheness that seemed familiar, yet as she focused on the item her vision pinned it to the tree. She heard the ting of metal being hit with force, and calculated its exact landing by the sounds of the grass it landed in. 

“What is this?” She made to turn her head and nearly spun her whole body around. 

“Relax, tell me where you’re from.” 

“Messentriux, I’m from Messentriux.” 

“Messentriux is not a place that has ever existed by my knowledge.”

“Well your knowledge is wrong.” 

“So it would seem.” The man, if he could even be considered a man, ran his eyes over her with evident confusion. “What does that mean?”

“Who are you?” 

“Melstifitzer, it’s an awful name I’m aware.” Melstifitzer said, offering a bow. “At your service.” 

“Of where?” 

“Here, there. I’ve been to a bit of everywhere really, and when you’ve travel as long and as far as I have you come to recognize things. And Old things at that.”

“I’m not a vain woman, but I don’t believe I show my age.”

“Not show, or not in so far as your appearance. Vampires able to stop time? Those are rare, and only five have existed as far as we know.”

“We?”

“Not so much working with, as i’m sure you can imagine. More they’re working for me.”
“They always are.” Melissa muttered then raised to a speaking tone. “People often used to seek me out. They searched for so many trivial things. Immortality, Wealth, Fame.”

“You gave them this?” 

“I gave them power beyond comprehension, and life eternal.”

“And what did they give up?” 

She paused, consideration and confusion swelling within in ample measures. Her head was a mess, like waking from the deepest sleep. A sleep of death.

“They gave up nothing but their desires.”

“What of their desires for flesh?”

“It would grow, but many of my kind do not require eating that often.”

“Mhm,” There was a glint of sliver near his chest as the inside of his jacket slipped in the unwavering light. 

“Melstifitzer, if that is your name-”

“You doubt me?” 

“I don’t know you,” She said. “Surely you wouldn’t expect me to believe you right away. I am, as you said, old.”

“Indeed, perhaps the oldest.”

“My maker was…” She drew up the thoughts long hidden, of the night her maker… her husband, was killed. She pictured his face, burning in the purple flames of eternal night. She strained her memory, racing through every thought and memory that could be scrounged. There were far fewer than she had expected, and the ones she did have were hazy. Anger threatened to boil over in her, but the absence chilled her flames. “He was my husband. He made me in the year of second planting.”

“Planting? My dear Vampire Queen, we have not dealt with plantings as a marking of time in… well far before my time.”

“What do we use then?”

“Months,” He said simply “Years.”

“What’s different between the two, yours and mine I mean.” 

“Well the calendar has existed for nearly twelve hundred years for one.”

“Surely not.” 

“You’ve been sleeping, or resting, or removing yourself from society i’m not sure, but you’ve been doing it for nearly two thousand years by estimation.”

“Whose estimation?” 

“Mine, and a few others.” He slid through the rows of frozen soldiers, still maintaining the ease of motion he carried himself with before. Only now it seemed less confident, like the shift in who was investigating who had switched. 

“I’m only interested in finding out what I’ve missed.” She said “I don’t care about these people, or the house. I don’t care about the damage or-”

The shine of silver shone bright in her vision as Melstifitzer removed an advanced looking piece of metal and wood from his coat.

“I want to believe you, I really truly do.” He said, aiming the device at her. “But I’m afraid I can’t take that chance.” 

“Take what chance? What are you talking about? Why did you call me the Vampire Queen?”

“I suspect you to be her. Some of the more ancient vampires still talk of the days when their Queen, their leader rather, entered an eternal slumber. They said they worshiped at the masters feet while they slept. Hidden away in a manor atop a mountain.”

“Mountain? I built this manor on the Fourteenth Spinal Pillar of Ghrist.” 

“We found your home along the Spine of Ghrist. It’s a mountain range that runs most of the continent.”

Realization flittered across her mind, and she remembered. Remembered things that transpired during her absence, remembered hastily spoken words said by members of the family. News, rumor, truth. The Great Beast Ghrists eternal slumber had been one of those rumors.

“I… Remember hearing something about the Great Ghrist coming to a rest.” She offered. “But I don’t recall the time or day.” 

“You needn’t worry, if it’s truth at all, which your account leads me to believe it is, then it happened long before my time.” There was a click of metal as something locked into place. The metal of the instrument in his hand gleamed bright. With her vision enhanced and the light still, she could see down the length of the tube and could spot the small metal ball deep within. “Now, like I said. I’m afraid I have no choice but to put you back in the basement of this house and remove you from the world.”

“Who are you?” 

“I’m Melstifitzer, chief vampire assassin.” There was a bang, and the ball within the tube shot forward nearly as fast as she could see. It ripped through her chest, where her heart had been long before, and out the otherside. The bravado and air of authority that he seemed to wield wavered and fizzled as she stood there, confused. 

“I’m not sure what you expected to happen here,” She said as she raised a hand to the hole in her chest, “But after your crossbow of metal fired, does it also need to reload?”

“I…” He dropped the weapon, and it would have fallen to the ground if she hadn’t stepped across the space between them and caught it. 

“Is this what a Vampire Queen is expected to die to? I have no belief that I am her, but if you would suggest I am and only brought this to end me…”

“You’re worse than them.” 

“Them? Please, don’t play the pronoun game with me.” She paused, words having spilled from her lips that made no sense to her mind. It was the blood, it had to be. The blood of the first man she’d drank in nearly two thousand years, it was doing something to her. Racing her mind ahead and filling it with history and thoughts. 

Melstifitzer pulled another of the same weapons, though a touch bigger and more intimidating, from his coats’ other side. As he pulled the trigger, Melissa stepped again across the space and struck him across the face with the weapon. He’d predicted the movement, if not the attack, and had fired where she would step. The projectile ripped her left arm off, but the strike sent him flying into the far fence. It bent harshly, barbs and spike poking through his throat and chest.

“Shame.” She bemoaned emptily. “I wish I could give you a hand.” 

The cut was clean, and as she picked it up, she felt the sensation of her body wanting to return to whole. 

“This is also new.” It was a comment to no one, but Melissa felt a strange comfort in her own voice. 

“You… you can’t…” Melstifitzer said through coughs laden with blood. His throat was pierced the worst, two spikes stuck out in opposite directions with their barbs holding him in place. 

“You didn’t explain anything, you questioned and tried to kill me.” 

“I… Did what was… asked.” 

“Well that’s just stupid.” She laughed. “Think for yourself. I taught my children to do that.” 

“Your…” His words became a gargled mess of breaths and hardly audible croaks.

“You’re dying Melstifitzer.” She stepped across the space, stopping just before the spurting blood from his wounds. “Would you like me to save you?” 

His eyes were frantic, darting left and right. It looked to Melissa as if he was trying to will the world to work for him again. 

He croaked a reply. 

She leaned in, getting close enough to whisper in his ear. “I will not. Because you drew a weapon on me without cause.”

His eyes grew wide. The appearance of speech formed across his lips, moving and mouthing words that Melissa couldn’t and didn’t care to hear. She raised a hand, feeling through new tendrils of energy around her, the minds of every soldier and attacker that had walked in the vicinity of her home. She even mentally spotted a few that had been kept back, she could feel their worry and stress like pulses against her brain. She gripped each of the frozen minds, taking control fully and firmly, and did what anyone who had been attacked would do. 

“Good Morning.” She whispered. Melissa moved her hand in a strange, almost twisting motion and heard a cacophony of cracks. It took her a moment to figure out how to drop the time stop, and when she did the entirety of the army's heads spun wildly and they each fell limply to the ground. 

Melstifitzer watched this all in horror, his one red eye that remained was finally focusing and taking in the visage of death. 

“Good bye, Melstifitzer. I hope the house, or what remains of it, treats you well.”

He didn’t reply, he just stared at the corpses of the soldiers.