Why bow before a king, when you can claim his throne?
This was the only thought that lay in mind the day I took that first sweet taste of blood. Oh, how I will never forget that sweet, but biter, taste. It was like a warm tea on the coldest of nights. It was the first time I had felt alive in ages.
Unlike my kin before me, I was no great King of Men, or a mighty Knight who traded virtue for revenge. I was nothing more than a whelp, born into poverty and bound to servitude of the crown of men. A pathetic means to an end was more than a noble death for the likes of my kind. From a young age it was made clear where I sat upon the pedestal of life; beneath all. At a young age, I watched my mother die from disease as my drunkard father dropped coin at every corner for the women who adorned them. A so called 'Priest' they called him. A Holy Man of power. And I, his bastard son, whom he left to rot in the rat-infested corners of our dearest town. Even now, I can remember the smell of rot and death -- the only comfort I ever found in that hole I called home.
I was but only a corpse to most, that fateful night, when they came. I can still remember the screams of the townsfolk as the bats swept from the night sky, blotting the moonlight as they came down. I remember the fear I felt, as I lay curled up like an infant, awaiting its mothers care. There was no humble beginning to this life, only murder and chaos. I'll never forget the cold that took me, as she sank her teeth upon my flesh, and the feeling of my very life lifting and escaping my lips. Darkness took me, and I awoke in that crypt, that for eons I called that place home, until finally I was birthed. Anew, reborn into this world, as a Vampire.
A great ruler of our kind once said, "Given the choice, whether to rule the corrupt and failing empire, or to challenge fates for another throw, a better throw against one's destiny - what was a king to do? And does one truly have a choice? One can only match, move by move, the machinations of fate and thus defy the tyrannous stars."
I often wonder...
Do we see those same stars?