#because a vampire's transformation wound will never heal properly & the scar will never fade

[terrified-spider]

omg I finally have a chance to reblog this~

Some fun stuff I adore: (:

I love the changes to Alek's body post mortem, the changes in his skin tone (this is the result of blood settling in the body), and the skin drawing away from the wound on his neck and the stiffness of the body. From what I can tell, both are accurate to life and the timeline decomposition follows. (: Rigor mortis and liver mortis both set in as early as 2 hours after death.

Strahd moves Alek's hair out of his face! Strahd tears his linen(!!) shirt to bandage the wound on Alek's neck! He wipes blood from Alek's chin! They are acts of intimacy done out of care and in spite of death! It makes little difference, and Alek may never truly understand it anymore but it's there in spite of everything!

The crypt would be his bed, however long he sleeps!! Dedication after death!

"The sight remained sharp, but the personality inside was retreating. Perhaps bracing itself against the back wall of his skull."

The similarities and contrasts between Alek and Strahd, both in their teeth and the wounds on their necks, but also struggling to speak, around either blood or teeth.

Alek lets Strahd examine the wound! Despite all that has happened, he still trusts him.

Everything is so physical and nothing is clean or pretty. Alek's body is still damp, his hair is matted with blood and water. The carcass is easier to move after more blood is added. The blood and bodies in the castle will smell with time. Strahd struggles to feed Alek at first, and smears blood across the dead man's face. Eventually spit joins it. They're small details, but its grounding, and the imperfections make it so much more intimate.

12 - Pale

[Based on @terrified-spider's CoS concept for Alek 🫀]

There was no amount of vengeance Strahd could wreak on Leo Dilisnya's remaining men that would bite back this other feeling, which rose like black bile in his chest. No amount of blood would drown it. No amount of violent rage, with sword or claw or hammered fist would tamp it down. And no amount of dragging, throwing, pacing, staring, teeth grinding could wear it out either.

Alek's body still lay in his closet.

Strahd von Zarovich was covered in gore. Castle Ravenloft was smothered in red ichor and corpses, and soon enough it would be rancid in the great hall. But the doors to his own quarters opened on a pristine setting. Aside from the knowledge and the slowly congealing filth Strahd tracked in with his soles, the room belied a quiet night like any other. It would not have seemed out of place, in that moment, to peel off his soaked shirt and sit by the hearth as though he had just come in out of the rain.

The image of Alek Gwilym, snow-damp and wind-chapped, hopping on one foot and then the other to pull off his boots and seat himself down by Strahd's fire, sprang unbidden into his mind.

Regret was its name, this other dark emotion which threatened to throttle him if he could not think of a way to appease it.

Perhaps he could bleed it out. Surely he had consumed enough life for two men. More, in fact. And if he could give back to Alek the blood he had taken… would Alek's life then be restored to him, the way it had worked in Strahd the night before?

The only way out of this mess now was to trudge ahead and try to find the other side. Strahd could not fall backward in time. Could not undo his own reckless mistakes. So, he conceived of only the next best possible option, and moved stoically forward with it.

Strahd pulled the carcass of his old friend out of its slumped position in the closet, wedging his hands under Alek’s arms to drag him out onto the middle of the floor, heavy and stiff. A light sheen had formed on the cold and pallid skin, making it clammy to the touch. The creases of Alek’s clothing were still damp with rain and sticky with coagulated blood, his matted hair plastered to the side of his face and neck. His dry, clouded eyes cracked open to stare mournfully at nothing.

But maybe it was not too late.

Strahd knelt down beside the corpse, to pick the soiled hair free of Alek’s sharp features, pushing it aside to reveal the wound in his throat. Made by the man’s own knife, the cut was clean and straight, but in the time that had passed, the skin around it had begun to shrink back and the incision gaped, revealing glossy strands of mutilated tissue and the severed vein beneath. Strahd prodded gently at the wound, as if to close it up again, but the membrane moved too readily and tore. He flinched back.

Strahd retreated to the table in his study, where the accursed book in dark crimson leather binding still sat. His dagger lay there, sheathed, beside it. Strahd picked up the dagger, and flipped the book open. Its page still blurred, the inscriptions swimming before his eyes. Page after page of useless chaos. He closed it once again, with a delicate touch more carnally vindictive than if he had picked it up and flung it across the room.

Kneeling over Alek again, Strahd pulled the dagger clear and set its sheath down on the floor. He set the blade against his wrist. “Don’t look at me that way,” he muttered, and drew the thin edge up, along a brief span of his forearm.

Blood welled and dripped from his arm, but the wound closed too quickly as he brought it close to Alek’s face. Setting his own jaw, Strahd pried Alek’s mouth agape. He pressed the blade into his wrist again and left it there, leveraging his own flesh open to spill the contents of his life down Alek’s throat.

Alek’s mouth filled with blood until it spilled from the corner of his lips and dribbled over his cheek. Strahd cursed. He dipped his fingers into the pool between Alek’s jaws to move his tongue. Blood continued to stream down over his hand, like a potter adding slip to the contents of his turning wheel, pulling a vessel up out of a heap of mud, until it was clear that Alek’s body would not take more, no matter what he did to maneuver it, and the waste flowed over his chin.

Strahd examined Alek’s face. Carefully, he checked the corpse’s eyes. He bent his ear close to listen for breath, and watched the gaping wound on Alek’s neck fail to recover. No color beyond the fresh haphazard smears of red upon his skin returned to those sharp features. Strahd’s stern gaze did little to convince the body to animate.

Irritation simmered at his own foolishness. Strahd cleaned the dagger and tucked it back into its sheath. Perhaps it would take time, he thought. Perhaps…

He looked to the window, where the barest light of creeping dawn had begun to turn the black sky gray.

Perhaps tomorrow, then.

Strahd picked up Alek’s body, now more limber than it had been, and hefted it over his shoulder. Holding fast to the man’s long legs, he descended to the catacombs and laid the body down inside a crypt. Whatever happened, this would be his bed, for as long as he would sleep. In the cave-like darkness, Strahd watched again for any sign of movement. Just as gingerly as he had opened them, Strahd closed Alek’s eyes again. He positioned Alek’s hands over his stomach, as though he really had just fallen asleep, their blood on his face be damned.

. . .

Strahd woke from his own deathlike slumber to the sounds of war. He leapt to his feet, senses alert, adrenaline high, before he could remember all that had happened. He snatched up his dagger, the only weapon near to him, and didn’t question why he had been lying in the catacombs—only accepted it as a fact of the moment, and stalked toward the dungeons, where he heard the voices of men shrieking in abject terror.

And only then did he remember who the occupants of his dungeons were, and why they were there.

He rounded a corner and stopped short. For a flash of an instant, relief shot through him, for there before him was the back of Alek Gwilym, standing on his own two feet.

But he also had his arm shoved through the bars of a cell door, and at his feet lay one of Strahd’s prisoners, the face mutilated and horror-stricken, the throat ripped out. The other man inside had ceased to scream and was blubbering instead, pressed bodily against the back wall of his cage.

“Alek.” The prisoners went quiet at the sound of Strahd’s voice, muffling their already helpless whimpers.

Alek’s face turned toward him. His eyes, now paler than ever before, had an animal wildness about them, but their pupils locked on Strahd, boring into him quick and sharp like arrows.

It was him, then. And yet… it was not.

Alek slipped his arm out of the bars. The ends of his fingers were like claws, which clacked against the iron. As he turned more fully into view, Strahd noticed other changes—and lack thereof, not least of which the wound in his throat, which remained raw and open, catching on the collar of his clothing when he moved. But Alek’s teeth, like his claws, had lengthened. Unlike Strahd’s own fangs, which could be easily hidden, the ones in Alek’s maw were long and sharp, jutting out past his lip. And it wasn’t just his corner teeth; those were the shortest of the lot, far surpassed by the vicious, almost rodent-like incisors.

Strahd fell back by only half a step, but it was enough.

With a furious yell, Alek launched himself at Strahd. He was fast and strong, and Strahd staggered as Alek barreled into him, baring those hideous teeth and lunging for his throat. Strahd’s heels scraped across the stone floor with the force of the impact, but kept his footing. He was strong, too. If he were still human, he would have been dead in a moment.

Instead, with great force of his own, he heaved Alek back and drew his dagger. They fought, Alek swiping at Strahd with his claws. Cuts and parries with the dagger. Strahd ducked and weaved, where Alek seemed to be singularly focused and all too clumsy about it. Alek’s hands and arms opened up with wounds that didn’t bleed and were slow to heal—but they did heal, Strahd noted. He glanced at Alek’s neck again.

That moment of distraction opened him to Alek’s raking fingers. The claws slashed across Strahd’s own throat. Strahd choked. The dagger clattered to the floor. His hands flew up to brace against Alek’s chest again, to push him back as he dove toward the blood which flowed down over Strahd’s own collar. Alek snarled at him. Strahd gurgled, staring Alek down while he waited for the wounds to close. He coughed, and cleared his throat.

“That’s enough,” Strahd said.

To his relief, Alek stepped back, though he was seething, the blood he had already drunk foaming on his parted lips. His jagged hands hung limply at his sides.

He made a horrible, muffled lisping sound that might have been Strahd’s name.

“You’re angry,” Strahd said.

Alek practically hissed.

“You are hungry.”

Alek turned his razor gaze on the nearest cell. The man cowering inside it looked frantically between the two monsters. Strahd produced the key.

“No… no, please.” The man’s words cracked between a whisper and a voice. Only minutes prior, this had been the only thing he wanted—more than anything—for that cell door to open. But now he couldn’t think of anything he wanted less. “My lord, I beg you,” he pleaded. “Don’t.” 

Strahd unlocked the door.

“No. No, no, no! Please—god, no!”

He watched Alek descend on the prisoner, rending the throat with his teeth as he had with the first. Strahd felt no small degree of annoyance that Alek had stolen that recompense from him, but he supposed that Alek was also deserving of the opportunity. While he slurped, Strahd regarded the rest of his collection in the adjoining cells. They all cowered, watching with wide eyes and bated breath, their hearts thrumming like drums in his ears.

He unlocked each of the barred doors. “Go on,” he said gently. “Run.”

The people eyed each other warily. Seeing no better alternative, they slunk past him cautiously and padded quickly through the doors, glancing at Alek’s hunched and preoccupied form in the shadows on their way out. Perhaps the prisoners thought to grasp at a fragment of hope in that dark dungeon, when the cursed Count Strahd had suddenly thought to exercise his benevolence and spared them from such a gruesome fate.

Little did they know.

Strahd and Alek set upon them like a wild hunt. Strahd quickly drank his fill, but Alek kept going. He was a ruthless creature, running them down one by one and savaging each with great frenzy, until there were no living humans left to find.

Only when half a dozen men at least had all been devoured and wrung dry did Alek seem to have the capacity to calm himself. His gait changed, and he seemed to stand a little taller. He scoured the immediate area as though he were back on patrol. Then he caught sight of Strahd again, and his expression seemed almost… cheerful, if not a bit embarrassed. The look in his milky eyes was somewhat more familiar, if not the grin itself.

Strahd went to him. Alek looked as though he had something to say, but he shrugged his shoulders, at a loss. His lips struggled around the new configuration of his teeth.

And then he rubbed his neck, and winced. Perplexed, he touched the spot again, dabbing at it with the heel of his hand.

Strahd gestured, and Alek let his hand fall away. He lifted his chin for Strahd to better inspect what was bothering him. It was the wound in his throat. Strahd frowned. It had healed somewhat at the farthest ends, though not nearly enough for the kind of regenerative properties that Alek should possess, especially after such a feast. He had scratched it with those claws of his, and now the edges were ragged.

Seeing that his own shirt had been torn from his duel with Alek earlier, Strahd ripped away a strip of the linen and wrapped it securely around Alek’s throat. He wasn’t sure what good first aid would really do in this situation, but it might at least prevent the wound from tearing open further.

Even as he did so, he noticed Alek’s eyes begin to glass over again. The sight remained sharp, but the personality inside was retreating. Perhaps bracing itself against the back wall of his skull.

Strahd wiped a bit of bloody spittle from Alek’s chin. It made little difference.

He dared to wonder, for the first time in many years—if not, indeed, the whole of his life…

What have I done?

* * * [Ao3 Collection] [prompt list by @syrips]