Delicia

Delicia was born the youngest daughter to a roman senator, and a young Celtic woman that head once been a mere slave; when the great superpower was at the height of its power. Their affair had been kept secret for the most part, but upon the death of his wife; their love became something that was known to the public, or those that cared about it at any rate. He had already fathered around seven children at that time, though they quickly came to calling the woman their mother. All biological allegiance to the former lost upon them. After around five more children she was born, a young girl with shorts tufts of brown hair and deep piercing green eyes. She had gained all of the beauty of her mother, but the fierceness of her father, which made her quite the hassle to raise.

From a young age she was given a proper education by her father, who held high expectations of all of his children, regardless of their gender. She was taught elegance in her spoken language, through both speaking as well as writing. The language of the Celts as well as the Asian languages was within her repertoire. She was schooled in debating, philosophy and even the knowledge of many holy books, as well as the mythologies of the pagans that they associated with. What interested her most were the stories of the Greek Gods, such as Zeus, Poseidon and the pitiable Hades. While she did not worship these mythological beings, they held a certain interest within her heart.

By the age of fifteen, she had become more knowledgeable than even the males her age and some twice as old. The eyes of a roman senator had fallen upon the young girl, and he vowed that she would be his, no matter the cost. So he began what had begun to be an arduous process of wooing, with every advance turned down by the free spirited female. She had no interest in such a preening fool, but to him there was no answer but yes. Wines, flowers and poetry were heaped upon her day by day, until they were a literal pile within her room. Eventually she grew sick of such unwanted affection and he grew sick of the rejection, so he did the most atrocious act that one could do a fellow human being.

He raped her, something that her eldest brother soon enough punished, though the mental scarring was done. The man was not killed but simply beaten to a near unrecognizable state, left to hang between life and death within his room for what seemed like weeks. However, he would not be given the chance to recover, as the young Delicia snuck into his room late at night and planted a dagger between his ribs, puncturing the heart and ending his miserable life. There was no way that she could have been implicated for the crime and so it went unpunished, the mans multiple enemies all possible killers.

It only took weeks for her to figure out that she had in fact been with his child and that left her with a sense of hopelessness, that she would soon be forced to bear that bastards child. Emotions foreign to the female swam through her and she thought of only one solution, and that was suicide. No one was informed of her pregnancy, let alone the horror of her rape; which made her sneaking out of the house so much easier than it had to be. She stood at the edge of the large palazzo, and with a single motion she fell to what should have been her death in the canal below.

The impact had broken her bones and she began to drown, water filling up her lings; arms too weak to keep her above the powerful current. Within the veil of darkness she felt the arms clasp around her waist, something that preceded the infinite black. There was no white light at the end, or gods waiting within their halls of glory, but just an infinite gloom that smothered her soul, and then the sweet voice that brought her through it. She woke up on the bank, with a pale faced male with short cut brown hair looking down upon her. He had saved her from the water, yet there was still the burning within her throat, one that felt good.

“Good, I never thought you would wake. Its not every day that I drag someone out of the canal, let alone have to revive them. However, I wouldn’t like to see someone like you die such a pitiful death, it would be sad.” His voice was so far away to her, yet it felt like a dream really. Delicia was confused by his beauty as well as his rough manner of speaking, as if he were from a distant land. The cheekbones were too high, and skin too pale. “Drink” he said with a command, and her whole being was repulsed when he presented her with a bloody wrist that dripped with the crimson fluid. Her mind told her not to drink, but her body craved the fluid and with a hungry lapping tongue, she drank her fill.

Starlight danced across her vision and in an instant it stopped. Everything grew with such clarity and then she felt herself being pulled away, his teeth sinking into her neck. This dance went on for hours, Delicia slipping in and out of consciousness, until she felt a burning within the back of her throat that was actually painful. It was as if someone had stuck a branding iron down her throat and she cried out in agony, as pain would sweep through her bowels like a wave before ceasing. The final death of her body had occurred; all that was left was the immortal shell that held what she once was.

Her arms had become responsive again and everything about her had become more intense: sight, smell, hearing and so much more. It was as if she had truly come alive for the first time and everything was so beautiful. This was her first night as a vampire, a night where she had been freed from her burden, the baby seemingly evaporating within the vampiric womb and only feeding her with its vitality, as if its death had given her more than it would have within life. From then on, he had become her teacher and with him, she would learn the ways of the vampire; as well as all of the secrets that he had kept. How he could hear a person heart beat and break a sword in half with his bare hands. How jumping into the highest story of a palazzo was possible for him, and no earthly treasure could be denied him.

She had become a creature of the night and it was the most wonderful thing, minus the fact that she could no longer see her family; nor could she stay within society as a whole. She was a casual observer, that watched kingdoms fall and rise. All that changed about her was how pale her skin was and with the decades, her heart grew as cold as ice. Humans had become only a food source and nothing more, she began to compare them to cattle. They were weaker, slower and their intelligence was subpar. Even her maker eventually grew scared of how powerful she had become, though her strength was simply human; even if it were superior to any that she fed on. In the end, Delicia was not a match for the vampire that created her, until she had found a way, and reason to betray him; taking the powerful blood for herself. She did so by using the weakness that he had managed to hide from her for so long, which was the blood of a dead man. With bear death, she had drained him and gained his inhuman strength, regeneration as well as his ability to walk into the sun without instant death. This little rebellion had taken place around the time of the crusades, when knights fought for their holy city and the vampires had gone underground; deeper underground.

Within the time between her conversion and the holy wars, Delicia had mastered the use of the bow, and with it become a rather skilled thief, taking advantage of her new day walking powers that had proven very useful. While she was not as strong as in the light of the moon, she found the tradeoff to be pleasing. Becoming a ranger, she came upon a practicing mage in hiding and after a minor disagreement, came upon a powerful bow, one that proclaimed itself to be Dragonbane: Slayer of dragons and all evil that would plague the land. Delicia bent the powerful weapon to her will, and with it became a silent threat to all, especially those with gold lined coin purses. However the crusades came and went, and with them the middle ages; until at last man had gone beyond their continent into a new world as they called it. As they went, so did the young vampire among them.

The new world had proven strange to the vampire, though at the same time it held many mysteries that she had never seen in Europe. One being when she had met a young female of the natives, though unlike the others who had course white hair and dark skin; both were white as fresh fallen snow. She was rumored to have a touch that could heal all maladies and even bring the dead back to life, something that interested the vampire more than anything. While she had no one to bring back, the thought of such a human alone had made her curious. Upon finding this woman, she had begun investigating her and eventually learning the language language of her tribe ; and finally becoming her friend. Her name in English was, Blessed Moon.

She would catch food for the girl and their tribe, in return they gave the blood of their enemies to her. She had become a goddess to them, someone that would provide and protect them in, the one touched by the moon healing them also. That was ended however when a group of settlers had gotten it within their mind that the land belonged to them and started a war with the natives, which ended with more bloodshed than she wanted. In the end, Blessed Moon was killed and in response Delicia had killed all of the attackers, slaughtering them with her trusty weapon Dragonsbane.

In the last moments of the woman’s life, she drank her blood, taking in part of her memories and in a way keeping her alive even beyond death. A side effect of drinking her magical blood was her hair turning a strange silver color and eyes doing the same. With a sea of corpses left in her wake, the vampire would continue to survive within the world, living as best as possible in a world that died around her.

Not much happened after the turn of the twentieth century, with it bringing more innovations that confused the young vampire. Health care grew greater and with it the population began to increase until the world entered a better era, one where she would find herself with more food than she knew what to do with.