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vampemoqueen · 14 days ago

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Only Goddess Left Alive - A Night Road fic

I was struck by sudden inspiration to write about my Night Road Ravnos courier, Madi Videkar. This fic covers her Embrace and her time during the Week of Nightmares. It also serves as the prologue to a longer fic coming soon! It's also posted here on Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/63157603

Tags: Blood and Gore, Violence, Murder, Embrace story, Suicidal thoughts, Family Issues

Early Winter of 1998

Madhuri Videkar had just finished another miserable day at the call center. Another day of cold calling, enduring abuse through the phone lines, and chasing leads that went nowhere. Her supervisor had warned her if she didn’t meet her quota by the end of the day, she’d face disciplinary action. Before they could pull her into a meeting room, she beat them to the punch and quit, slamming doors and leaving with middle fingers up. She swore to never return.

She returned to her car in a parking lot somewhere in snowy Wisconsin. She pulled the seat all the way down in her dad’s 1985 Dodge Caravan and broke down crying. Her tears nearly turned into ice in her own tear ducts and dripped down her cheeks in a cold burn.

Her years of being an undergrad were over. Trying to balance her academic life with her social life and family grew to be too much and she lost herself along the way. She grew aimless and unmotivated, not caring what her professors had to say about her unconventional tech skills or her work ethic. It wasn’t long ago when she told her parents she had dropped out to find her own way. A decision that she knew they would give her hell for.

What did we raise you for? How could you waste all of our money like this? You’re a disgrace to the family!

She poured extra time into her soulless job just to avoid them. But with the last plan falling apart, she had nothing left to hide behind.

Her tears continued to fall until the swelling forced her eyes shut. Her sobs made it hard to breathe and want to live. She couldn’t handle it anymore. The pain of trying to find meaning, only to lose again and again.

Then her phone rang. It was her mother calling. She contemplated not picking up so she could run away forever. But her better judgement got a hold of her.

She pressed the call button.

“What ?”

“Madhuri, come home,” her mother urges her in Hindi. “Your father and I have a proposition for you.”

----

Spring of 1998

The sweltering hot weather of Kolkata was a welcome reprieve from the harsh cold winter back home. Madhuri’s mother had sent her there to stay with her extended family to take a break and rethink her life. At first, Madhuri was excited to be away on a paid vacation to reconnect with family overseas. That was until one of her aunts brought up the marriage proposal that was arranged for her.

“You will grow to love him, mari jaan! This marriage will change your life. You will have purpose and meaning again after you build a family,” her aunt told her as she gave her the photo of her match. It was a headshot of a plain looking Indian man, harmless enough with glasses, a comb over, and his best suit and tie. “He’s my friend’s son. He wants to go to school in the States and become an engineer. He’s a very nice boy, you will like him.”

Madhuri stared at the photo with a blank look. Her aunt barely knew who she was and yet she made assumptions about where her life should go. She determined that her parents had a hand thinking a marriage would be the only honorable thing left for her to do. Her heart sank from the betrayal.

“Auntie, do I have a choice in the matter? Can I at least talk to the boy first?” Madhuri carefully pleaded. She didn’t want to believe her family would sell her off so easily.

“Of course! I set up the date for you to meet him and decide what you want to do. If you don’t like this one, you will try again with another one.”

This brought little comfort to her. She might not have to pick this boy, but there would only be more down the line. She would not be able to leave without deciding on a groom. She left her aunt’s room that night in defeat.

When she told her cousins and older nieces and nephews what happened, they were all sympathetic. They were old enough to know how the tradition of arranged marriages was limiting and oppressive. But instead of encouraging her to defy it, they told her to work around it. If she did not choose a partner herself, she would have one chosen for her. All Madhuri had to do was to find a partner she liked and be done with it. It was a tradition the family itself used to propagate and strengthen themselves over the years. If it worked for them then, why change it now? Their responses were disheartening to Madhuri, who only wanted to get out of the arrangement and go home with no strings attached.

Lucky for her, there was one and only one listening ear who was willing to take her side. A family friend who the family had known for many years as an eccentric but kind neighbor. A man who went by an interesting name he picked for himself, ‘Brian Lomeyo’, a name that wasn’t local to the area or to any area they knew of.

“Listen, Madhuri. I love your family but they are clearly wrong sometimes. They don’t like to think out of the box and see new things. Why do you think your mother was the only one in a whole family with hundreds of people to leave the country?” He insisted on speaking to Madhuri in English which was flawless in his local accent, a detail that greatly impressed her.

Madhuri furrowed her brow and frowned. It was hard to think of her mother, the woman who set her up in the arranged marriage deal behind her back, as the trendsetter of the family. “She has a narrow way of thinking and she always thinks she’s right. No one can ever tell her she’s wrong.” She replied in perfect American English.

“Ah, that’s what they told me about her,” Brian wagged his finger referring to ‘they’ as the rest of her family. “Your mother is as stubborn as a goat. She was right once as a child and again when she moved to the States. Now she’s right about every decision she has to make about your life. It’s so unfair and inhumane.”

Madhuri was relieved to finally hear someone else criticize her mother other than her. Her family in India treated her like a saint for the money she sent back to them to improve their lives and it made her untouchable in their eyes. Madhuri could understand their reverence and respect but… it was still hard to accept her being lied to and sold off. Madhuri had dreams once and she was still young. Why couldn’t she have a couple more years of life to figure things out?

“How about we get out of here and hide from your family for a while? I know places in town where we can hang out and lay low. They’ll be mad at first, but once they know you’re with me, it’ll all be okay.”

She agreed to go with him. She trusted Brian more than she could ever trust the man in the photo. She had no qualms about ghosting him to rebel against her family, especially her mother. She hoped they would grow to forgive her eventually.

For the first few days, they hopped between inns and bars talking to strangers and smoking hashish. Then one fateful night came when Brian brought her to his own home, a small hovel in the back of a jewelry workshop. Brian was a jeweler by trade who created pieces out of precious metals and gemstones to sell to merchants. In the back of his room, he pierced Madhuri’s nose to fit a gold septum ring and gave her a necklace with a gold pendant and chain.

“If you have more time, there is someone I want you to meet,” Brian said as he poured himself a cup of red wine in a silver chalice. “I have a sponsor who buys most of my work and supports my livelihood. He is also a wise man who imparted to me rare knowledge he obtained from a God. I can show you.” He downed the bitter wine without a sour face.

With a flick of the wrist, he brought about magic in front of her eyes. A hazy cloud turned into a vision of Madhuri in the pale moonlight light covered in the finest silks and jewelry. She laid in a lounger in an ancient temple decorated in pure gold and gems, surrounded by dancers and attendants there to serve her every will. A cool ocean breeze from the outside brushed against her skin and calmed her spirit. The breeze carried the scent of frankincense and blood. She inhaled for the first time in centuries.

Brian was there next to her, sitting in the same spot dressed as a simple man in linens. In his hand was more gold and another cup of bloodwine.

The smoke dissipated with another wave of his hand and Madhuri came back to reality. “Wha-what was that?” She hesitated to ask. She was tempted to ask him to send them back.

“It is a special kind of illusion he taught me. You could learn this art too. He can teach you the art of manifesting your dreams and turning them into a reality. You can do so much more with his help. Trust me.”

She picked up the hand mirror next to her and admired herself in her reflection. The pure gold jewelry gleamed in the electric light and made her feel beautiful and worthy, like the deity in her vision. She was more than the dainty maiden her family expected her to be. She could be a goddess.

Brian was asking a lot from her, bribing her with jewelry and promises of godhood. She agreed to go with him once more. Out of all the people in her life, he appeared to know and understand her the most despite barely being more than a stranger. But ultimately Madhuri trusted herself more than anyone else and she knew her destiny was taking her down this path.

If she could succeed, she felt that somehow, everything would be right in the end.

The next morning, she followed Brian to an estate called ‘Ypotryll’, an unusual name that wasn’t in any language she nor Brian knew. It was a large estate with many rooms that were built in the style of ancient palaces. They spent the next few days and nights there exploring the halls and the lush garden outside. The estate was devoid of all people except for them, and Madhuri felt as though they were in another world.

She loved it and swore she wanted to die there. Then Brian informed her they had work to do. His master, the man also known as Ypotyrll, was to return and needed them to prepare for his arrival. Ypotryll was a busy man who spent most of his nights hiding from his enemies, rival landowners who despised him and wanted him dead, and occasionally he needed to return home to recover for the next excursion.

They needed to prepare multiple rooms for him, his main suite for his day's rest and several other rooms for his followers, other humans they had to recruit as staff. Brian ince again promised her she would be rewarded with power and secrets when Ypotyrll returned, and that the Master would explain everything when he came back.

She did as Brian instructed and helped him bring back the materials and people the Master required. The night Ypotryll returned, he was welcomed by a strangely austere estate with all of the windows and glass covered, all of the valuables locked away for safekeeping, and all of the new followers gathered around in the main hall. The only one he spoke to that night was Brian and his newest recruit, Madhuri.

Ypotryll the Master was a tall and imposing man who was pale and hairless, barely covered in old silks that were tattered and faded. He was thin and sickly, his skin barely covering his bones and his eyes clouded over in milky white near-blindness. Madhuri pitied him, and yet when she looked into his eyes, he had a presence about him that entranced her and compelled her to stay near him. This was the man with the ancient wisdom that Brian told her about. The man who drank from a God.

“I have a gift for each of you,” Ypotryll casted his spell on both Brian and her and lured them even closer. “Tonight’s celebration is dedicated to your rebirth. You will be blessed by the nectar of life from which all of humanity is bound to. You will know what lies beyond this existence. What dreams and nightmares are truly made of. What separates the Godless from the Godly. You will both become my children.”

Madhuri had her eyes angled up toward his illustrious gaze when her neck was sliced open. She could barely sense her skin being torn from ear to ear before she lost all sight and fell to the ground. Her consciousness faded before she could think to react. She had died before she even knew it.

She wouldn’t have known about her death if she hadn’t woken up later that night, awakening her new consciousness. She didn’t remember what happened immediately after she woke up again, only that there was red in her eyes and pain all throughout her body.There was a powerful hunger that gnawed at her throat and stomach and drove her mad, mad enough to satiate it in whatever means necessary. The hunger, the Beast, took over and shielded her from the horrors she would commit.

When she became lucid again, she saw what had become of her and Brian. There were bodies strawn all around the floor, some in pieces and others whole and lifeless. The ground had become a pool of blood and gore, torn pieces of cloth, skin, hair and teeth from the ‘staff’ they had recruited. There was blood all over her inhuman hands which had turned into monstrous claws. Her teeth, fully extended from her mouth and jaw, stabbed her in the chin and lips with their pointed tips. She could taste the flesh and bile stuck in her mouth.

Brian was nearby on his knees in the same sorry state. He was crawling on the floor slipping in the blood they spilled together, screaming and crying as soon as he realized what they had done. “Master! Why?!” His mouth ajar was filled with needle-like teeth that stabbed his mouth on the inside when he tried to close it.

“You have been reborn. You are now my children.” Ypotryll stood in between them, appearing unfazed by the violence and untouched, aside from the blood on his bare feet. “You have been chosen to help me fight a holy war against our usurpers to the East. To awaken your potential, you had to feast upon the bodies of the unworthy so you would know the taste of Death. May you share the same ferocity to our enemies if you are to remain long enough to find Godhood.”

Madhuri barely comprehended the rest of Brian’s screaming and pleading toward their Maker while she examined the rest of her body. Her skin was dry and lifeless, stone cold and nearly devoid of feeling. She realized she wasn’t breathing until she took a conscious breath and nearly choked on leftover blood in her throat. Her head and her veins remained pounding with pain, and a calling for something more.

It was the Beast. A driving force that fueled whatever power the Master had given them. It was strength, speed, a mental sharpness that primed her to being a predator.

She didn’t feel like herself anymore. She was no longer the hapless Indian girl who was at the mercy of her mother and her extended family. She was a Monster. A Cannibal. A Murderer. A demon.

She soon grew numb to her thoughts and shut down once again.

—-

July of 1999

Over a year had passed since Madhuri and Brian’s Embrace underneath their duplicitous sire Ypotyrll. They were told what they were: vampires, or Kindred from the Clan Ravnos, an Indian bloodline known for their trickery and illusion magic. They remained at the Ypotryll estate where they practiced their abilities in their sire’s absence and suffered under his strict tutelage when he was present. Outside of the estate in the human world, rumors had spread that Madhuri and Brian had eloped and moved into the abandoned estate themselves, greatly upsetting her family knowing there was nothing they could do. Madhuri and Brian had to continue to propagate the lie themselves to keep them away from discovering their true nature.

It was an uncomfortable and dreadful existence, one that drove Madhuri to run away several times only to return nights later. Brian himself had to rescue her a few times from the clutches of bloodthirsty hunters and other Kindred who were less keen on her existence than she was. There was still so much she didn’t know and didn’t have to be able to survive in the urban wilderness alone. The last time she returned battered, shattered, on the verge of hunger and Final Death was when she finally had her spirit broken enough to stop resisting Ypotryll’s will.

Brian fared better than she did but not by much. He had been a dutiful servant for longer and had already been a wanderer before he was taken under Ypotryll's wing. His chimerstry, which had been at a competent level since he was a ghoul, grew even stronger and more vivid, strong enough to rival other Ravnos. But in the end, he was only an artist and never a fighter. He didn’t have the resilience or independence that Madhuri had. Without Ypotryll’s guidance or absolute will, he had nothing to follow. If Brian had been the one to run away instead, he would’ve never made it back alive.

Madhuri and Brian depended on each other more than they cared to. Their Kindred nature and imprisonment by their sire strained their friendship to the point where feelings of genuine closeness were nigh impossible. Madhuri resented him and Ypoytrll equally for their manipulation and lies while Brian grew sick of her lack of loyalty and constant defections. If they had separated at this point in their unlives, they wouldn’t miss each other.

But Ypotryll the Master needed his childer to cooperate as there was a war call in the distance they had to answer. To the East in Bangladesh, an intense battle was forming between the local Ravnos and the Kindred from the Far East. Bangladesh had always been a contested area between the borders of the West and the East, but this time the Ravnos were in real danger of extinction. All three of them felt a fire in their bones, their blood roused to burn by Elders in their dying cries to protect what was left of their kind. They were dying en masse and in danger of losing the centuries long war. Ypotryll and his childer were all equally determined to fight and defend their clan.

It only took them a few nights of nonstop travel via caravan to reach the floodplains of Bangladesh. As they grew closer to their destination, they saw evidence and remnants of the war everywhere. Ashes and blood littered the streets as Kindred fought openly in public, tearing down any human and vampire in their wake. Mass embraces performed in village squares where the resulting childer would soon turn and devour one another. Diablerie was a constant and regular occurrence. Lone Kindred were dragged into the fields by humans and other Kindred to burn and die in the sun for their crimes. A motley of false visions and weak attempts to distort reality around them impeded their travel, until Ypotryll was able to see past them and charge through. There was chaos and destruction everywhere, among their own kind no less. It shocked Madhuri and Brian - they had never seen this much violence in their lives.

When they finally stopped to unpack, they had reached an area that was the last Haven for their kind. The Ravnos Methuselahs, the Eldest of them all beside their clan Progenitor and Caine himself, still had a hold on the area that laid closest to the border between them and the Eastern Kindred. It shocked Madhuri when she realized she hadn’t seen a single Eastern Kindred yet despite the carnage behind them. Their own clan was tearing each other apart out of power and madness, a desperate struggle by Kindred acting like rats in a flaming bucket. The situation had become dire and hopeless with their own Methuselah foretelling their Final Deaths in defense of their Gods.

Upon hearing the deadly prophecy ahead of them, Madhuri held Brian’s hand and kissed it for the first time, praying to the Heavens that somehow, they would return with what remained of their unlives and start over again. Brian returned the kiss to her forehead and held her close, whispering the prayer back in unison.

The following morning, they were awoken by a terrible development. The Eastern Kindred’s warriors had begun invading during the day to pave the way for their magicians. A massive storm of purple clouds swirling in the sky where the sun still hung high had formed above them to give the Eastern Kindred more time to strike.

Madhuri and Brian rose during the day for the first time in years, to scramble and fight for their survival. Madhuri grabbed a knife that was given to her by her sire and rushed out into the battlezone. Madhuri was forced to fight, subdue and kill her fellow Ravnos who had gone mad from unknown means before she encountered a single Eastern Kindred, a bald man in orange robes similar to a Buddhist monk’s. She charged forward to strike without hesitation when he dodged and struck Madhuri at the back of the head, stunning her but not killing her.

What happened immediately after was a blur. Seconds turned to minutes turned to hours;for Madhuri it felt like an eternity suffering in blind agony. She was conscious but immobile, no different from the dead bodies that fell and turned to ash near her.

It wasn’t until later when she saw inside her mind’s eye, a terrifying living vision of their clan’s Progenitor awaking from his slumber to devour everyone and everything. The blood of her clanmates, most of the Eastern Kindred, her sire Ypottryl, and even the Methuselahs, all descendants of the Antediluvian Zapathustra, spilled into his mouth as he ripped them all apart from a far distance. Their unlives taken in an instant to feed the very being they swore to protect; yet another illusion and lie propagated by the Ravnos clan. The strongest of the Eastern Kindred and mages had finally arrived to strike him down, using their magic to break apart the skies to unleash the power of sunlight onto him. Others opened portals and summoned demons the Western world had never seen and would likely never see again. The visions seared into her brain, pain like red-hot needles traveling through her veins.

She didn’t want to get up, couldn’t get up, fully conscious in the nightmare world. She wanted so badly to gnaw at her own hands and cut her own throat to end it all, but the mysterious Eastern Kindred’s ward wouldn’t let her.

It wasn’t until that very Kindred’s death when she was freed and her eyes opened in an instant. Brian was with her, covered in blood and gore and struggling heavily to carry her with torn and exposed muscles and skin; his own organs beginning to fall out of his chest cavity. He had avoided the brunt of the original onslaught, though he was now on the verge of Final Death himself from Zapathustra’s second attack. He sensed Madhuri was finally awake and flashed a smile as large as his broken face would allow.

Before she could say anything, he led her to a trunk freezer and told her to hide inside. “Say nothing. Never leave,” was the most he could say before his voice gave out. She said nothing and obeyed him, preferring to stay awake for him rather than the nightmares. She closed the freezer with her eyes open, desperately staying awake so she didn't have to go back to the visions, when she bore witness to yet another tragedy.

An explosion went off in the midst of battle and ripped through the landscape with an ear piercing shockwave. The building Madhuri was in broke apart and the floor underneath her collapsed, sending her tumbling down to the bare rock below. If not for the sturdy freezer she was in, she would’ve disintegrated or be ripped apart by the blast or the impact. It was through sheer luck, or expert engineering that preserved her inside the ice cold box with minimal impact on her body.

Her body fell into day sleep when she sensed somehow that the sky had opened once more and the storm was gone.

After sundown, it took her a while to regain her senses and find the courage to leave. Her muscles cramped horribly as she pushed against the freezer wall to pop out from the top lid which laid sideways. She rolled onto the blackened ground and gazed upon the scene around her.

Everything and everyone around her was gone. She could sense no blood, visions, or presence in the battlezone. There were no more Kindred, no more fighting, no magic. She was truly and utterly alone.

On the ground next to the black ash and debris was a massive scarlet vein that was actively pumping vitae. Her head was beginning to spin and her chest throbbed in pain. She was beginning to lose her sight and her mind to the absence, the black hole in the universe that wanted to swallow her whole. She was left a painful parting message in her heart that urged her to claw, eat, drink, tear, dig. Anyone. Anything. Anything to not keep still in this cruel, horrid existence. Anything to spite the world for the loss of Zapathustra.

She leapt at the massive vein of pumping blood and tore it apart viciously with her extended claws. It poured like an endless fountain all over her mouth and body. It was the sweet nectar of a God, the very thing Brian and Ypotryll promised she would have all those months ago. She bathed and drank in its ecstasy, filling to the point of excess then vomited and drank over and over again. She lost herself to the searing madness and the intense burn in her veins that only this blood could quench. She cackled and laughed under the light of the newly born Red Star.

She was unstoppable. She was unkillable. She was Madhuri Videkar, the only Goddess left alive.

#vtm #vtmnr #vtm night road #vampire the masquerade #vampire the masquerade night road #my writing

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