The caged vampiress laughed and laughed at my puzzled expression. That was until her laughter turned back to tears and then back to laughter again. Fantastic, the first person I had ever encountered outside the household and she had gone mad after whatever they had done to her.

"They took us. Stole us off the streets and from our homes. Stole our bodies, stole our dignity, store our…..stolen stolen stolen stolen!" She sobbed, clinging to the bars. "They stole humans too, they forced us to breed. Breed like we were farm animals. Breed and breed and breed until we made dhampir for their stupid god."

"I'm...I'm so sorry." I murmured, slack-jawed. Even I, who only knew the outside world through books, understood the gravity of what she was telling me.

"Goodness sweet child do not apologize." She giggled and smiled, her face pressing between the bars, her eyes not looking quite at me. "It's not your fault you were a success. In fact, be overjoyed you weren't one of the children that was drained and discarded as soon as they knew they were not their precious dhampir."

"What did they need dhampir for?" My skin crawled and I began to feel sick.

"Something something something father of all vampires. Something something something the bloodless emperor will rise again and purify this land." She sat back and started rubbing her round belly. "I guess they wanted to make a body that the first vampire could occupy? That's silly though. Why would someone called the bloodless emperor want a body full of blood? I mean it's right there in the name? Silly silly silly cultists."

"How long was this going on?" So many questions were being answered, but my head quickly filled with new ones to take their place. My parents were easily more than one hundred years old. How long had this been going on for?

"They gave us making us breed and breed and breed only a little while ago. And one by one they've decided to use us as livestock instead of breeding stock. They've drained everyone dry to feed themselves and destroy evidence of everything they did. I was the last to bear a child, so I will be the last to go." The tears returned and she hugged her belly tighter. "I don't have anything left, they can kill me for my vitae for all I care. I just don't want them to have my babe. They'll cut his tiny throat and drain him right in front of me."

I toiled at if there was any hope of saving this vampiress as much as these words tore at my heart. Even if I could pick the lock, would I be able to get her out safely? Would she be capable of following along in her state?

"Miss, if you birth the babe I'll hide it away safe until I can find both of you a way out."

Her eyes brightened and she smiled a delirious smile.

"Oh sweet child, would you?"

I nodded and patted her hands from where they clung to the bars. At the time I was just trying to comfort her while I continued to search for a way out. Then the very next night I returned with some blankets and tools that would help me pick the lock, but recoiled at what I found.

The child had been born and in the strain of childbirth she must have perished. Her body had shriveled like a mummy and her silver hair was now dry, brittle and gray. The child had a tuft of silver hair and was wailing through a mouth covered in dried blood from where he lay in her shrunken, bony arms. There was clotted, dark wound over her chest, above her heart, where she must have fed him for the first and last time.

I was horrified and fascinated. I had only read about a vampire's death in books. If a vampire slain their bodies degraded rapidly. We were essentially living corpses after all, once the vitae was gone. My heart sank, knowing I had been powerless to change her fate, but still felt guilty as if there was anything I could have truly done besides give her comforting words. I didn't even know what her name had been.

She was slumped against the bars when she had passed so I could reach the infant, small enough to slip between the iron. Sousuke held the tiny being and inspected it as he tried to clean him off. Male, cold body, no teeth yet. I shivered, now realizing she must have clawed or bit at her own flesh to draw blood for the babe to feed. If what I knew about myself was any indication, this babe was definitely not a dhampir. My body temperature had always been surprisingly high and this babe was like a soft, cold sack of cream. Though it was not meant to be a promise, more soothing words to a drowning soul, I decided I would try to keep my word and hide him away.

It was quite a task trying to sneak the child back through the narrow tunnel. I reached a point where I realized there was no safe way to make it through the ceiling in the closet safely. I would have to use the path that led behind my bookcase since the front door to the library was still locked. The last part of that stretched through a main path of the catacombs, I rushed down it as quickly and quietly as I could, the babe held tight to my chest. He started to stir and whimper and I shushed him, swinging open the hidden door and slamming it shut just as he began to wail. It began to dawn on me what a monumental task I had taken upon myself to keep the child safe from vampires that probably wanted him dead.

After he finally stopped crying I attempted to make him a bed. There were a few crates in the library storage. I found an empty one and cleaned it of cobwebs and made a bed of a pillow and a few layers of my old shirts. I wasn't sure how to clothe him so I dressed him in my smallest, oldest shirts.

Finally I had a chance to sit and process everything. The vampiress had been crazy, but everything she said lined up with the peculiar things I had found in the caverns. I would have to start searching the library to more information on this bloodless emperor.

As I stared down at the child it dawned on me that I had damned this child. By taking responsibility for his nurturing I was forcing him into a vampire's unlife of bloodshed and shadows. I played at the thin, soft white hairs on his head. He would age no different than me. Was letting him live a life where we would probably be stuck in this cave as well be any better than death?

My heart nearly slept through my throat when I heard a knock at my door and the sound of keys jingling. I hurried to slide the crate under my bed and grabbed a book, opening to a random page. Cirucci entered the library and closed the door behind her, a box under one arm.

"Cirucci? What's the matter?"

"Do not go telling anyone, just take this." She placed the box on the bed. Inside was a stack of clean children's shirts, blankets, small pillows and some crude wooden toys like blocks, balls and animals. She opened a tin that contained a sewing kit with needles, thread and shears. "I can show you how to use this sometime. As you know resources are limited down here, you should learn to repair and reuse what you can. You need to be more careful, you're lucky I was the only one who spotted you with that babe."

Looks like there was no avoiding the elephant in the room, or the babe as it were. I slid the crate back out from under the bed and set him down between us.

"Here, he won't be comfortable in something this loose, bundle him up like this." Cirucci took a blanket and showed me how to wrap him into a snug little bundle. "The only blessing of raising a suckling vamp babes is there is no need for diapers if you only feed them blood. Speaking of which."

She produced a few full vials marked as human blood from her cloak pocket. "You shouldn't feed him your blood. The vitae levels could kill him. Maybe a few drops every now and then if he's fussy. It'll make him sleep for hours."

"You say this like you have seen it happen," I stared her dead in the eye.

She regarded me and set the vials down.

"Yes, yes I have Sousuke. And you have no idea how confused and relieved I was when I saw you scurrying out of the cavern with him. If you keep him safe and speak of this to no one I will do my best to cover for you. If I can help save at least one of the children, maybe I could sleep through the night for once," she grimaced as tears pricked at the corner of her eyes.

"Why was the house doing this? Who is the bloodless emperor?"

"Yikes Sousuke, one enormous question at a time please," She rubbed her temples and sighed. "I'm not sure myself. The count says he was the first vampire, Juhabach, who had domain over everything living and dead. When he was sealed away thousands of years ago he swore he would return again one day in a being that existed between life and death. The count is convinced he meant a dhampir. I don't want to talk about what we did. Choujiro Sired me, I didn't have any choice in the matter. I was human and wished dearly to have the glamorous life of a vampiress from the stories. I was a fool and agreed to serve the first vampire who offered to take me into their fold. And now here I am, stuck underground haunted by the screams of all the people, vamps and children I've hurt."

She could have been lying, but I wanted to believe her. If for no other reason than she actually took the time to help me and talk to me. Something no one else in the underground bothered it. I wanted to hate Cirucci, but if she was actually going to protect us, I had to control my anger. This was clearly distressing her just as much.

"Then my parents?"

"Two of our few successes. Your mother could talk a fish out of water and your father was stronger than any of us could ever hope to be. You should have seen the fury in the count's eyes when he realized he couldn't control them. The war was their idea and none of us could stop them if we tried. The count saw this as a sign that one of them was clearly the second coming of Juhabach if they wished to topple the Luisenbarns and what they stood for."

"That didn't stop the dhampir breeding, did it though?"

"No." She huffed "It didn't."

I needed to drop the topic for now it seemed.

"Can you tell me more about them. My parents?"

"Not tonight, I've already spent too much time here. I'll check in on him every now and then and bring new blood, but I have to be careful too. And for his sake you have to stop sneaking around, you have to think about his safety too now."

She started to leave and stopped as I ran up and hugged her around her waist, my face buried in her red cloak.

"Thank you Cirucci, for everything."

She hugged me back and patted my head.

"You're welcome, Sousuke. Please be careful."

Cirucci was good on her word. Two years passed without incident and she brought fresh blood and new clothes as he grew. I only asked her about my parents, never the breeding project. It was mostly amusing accounts of how easily my mother fooled the household to do what she wanted or how my father had no control of his absurd strength.

Now that I wasn't sneaking around I had more time to dig deeper into my library for more information on the bloodless emperor. I initially overlooked a ton of useful accounts initially for some older texts spelled his name as Yhwach or Yujabakk. Accounts on the origin of all vampires varied, but most agreed that he was a being that could freely give and take vitae, the energy of life itself, the energy in blood that fed vampire kind and gave us false life. Every single creature, both living and dead, was his to command. Some wrote of him as a monster, others a savior and vampires were his believers that had scorned him, their damned life a divine punishment.

I grew about two inches and the babe was able to walk now. While I was glad he was growing it was now harder to keep him in one place for long. At least he liked it when I read to him, it was a nice break from my research. After a time he only ever wanted me to read Nice Tricky Tales of Ichimaru Gin, stories of a trickster silver fox. He had good taste. Cirucci had warned me not to give him a name until we made it out of the hiding. But I was getting tired of called him "babe" and he always laughed and clapped when I opened the book. One night I poked his nose and said "Your name is Gin now. It suits you." I said pulling his hair up into two silver ears.

"Gin! Gin! Gin!" He bounced up and down and clapped.

Gin loved to latch onto me while he slept; but I couldn't sleep with this tiny cold body clinging onto me like a leech. I finally took Cirucci up on her offer to teach me how to sew and gathered together some old clothes. After a few nights, several pricked fingers and a great deal of patience I had made him a soft fox-shaped toy made out of a torn grey shirt, complete with blue button eyes. Gin loved it and would waddle around the library dragging his namesake with him and hugged it close to sleep every morning.

One night Gin was crying again. I had to be quick to comfort him in case one of the cultists was passing by. I couldn't just keep feeding him my vitae even if it did make him sleep instantly. I picked him up and bounced him around and went up to the dressing mirror.

"Look Gin that's you!" I said holding him closer and pointing at the surface. Gin's crying slowed to a whimper. He reached out to our reflection and batted at it with his hand. I wished I had brought over a toy for him to wave around, maybe the stuffed rabbit. In a moment I will never forget the rabbit just...appeared. We stared at the thing in his tiny hand and immediately puzzled at what had happened. Trying to touch it I realized it wasn't actually there at all. I imagined one of his other toys, the chipped, wooden elephant, suddenly it was there instead of the rabbit. Gin laughed and waved it around. He tried to hit the mirror with it, but it made no sound and didn't seem to actually connect.

An illusion.

I stepped back a bit and imagined Gin had pink hair, suddenly his silver mop was replaced with rosy pink curls. He giggled even more as I set him down in front of the mirror and concentrated. All around us I began to think of all sorts of images. Beasts, fish, fowl, clouds, rain, suddenly all the things I had only seen in my books were appearing before me with a single thought.

I had to sit down, alright so this was my Curse. It manifested in such a simple, quiet manner, I was expecting something more bombastic.

"Gin can you believe it? We're gonna have so much fun with this." I grinned, picking him back up. He proceeded to try and blow bubbles with his spit.

Since the trail of information I could find on the first vampire had ran cold, I would have to wait until we were out of here to find out more. So I began to focus on my newfound powers instead. Anything within my imagination was possible as long as it was a sight or sound. I couldn't quite get a handle on smell, touch or taste. I could alter those senses a little, but not by much, hopefully I could refine those facets of my power later. It seemed I was limited by what I could actually imagine and I had never tasted anything besides my parents blood. I could not simply imagine what a cake or carrots tasted like. While my Curse was exhilarating I had to restrain myself from showing it off to Cirucci.

One night after another slap from the count I thought of an utterly devious plan. If he had done all of these insane breeding experiments thinking that the first vampire would emerge, then there was no way he would dare strike me again if he thought Juhabach had actually picked me as a vessel.

There were very little I could find on what the bloodless emperor actually looked like. All I could do was think back on stories of gods and divine beings and stories where people were possessed by demons, malevolent spirits or ghosts. I tried all sorts of images. Levitating, glowing eyes, eyes filled with darkness, a wind from seemingly nowhere, other worldly voices. The last one was difficult, I had not yet heard a great deal of voices during my existence. The rare few times I had heard my father speak during war council I thought he had a fantastic voice, deep and commanding, I hoped I would have a voice like that someday. I used that as a base and practiced all sorts of ethereal voices.

After plenty of trial and error I created an illusion of what I thought would pass as a good "possession" by Juhabach the bloodless emperor. A slow powerful breeze, levitating a few feet off the ground, eyes filled with nothing but a violet glow.

Something was definitely missing though. I toyed with adding some wings. In the Aizen stories he would sometimes summon a pair of black, bat-like wings, some older legends said he had six. I liked the sound of that and I tried to add both versions to the illusion. It was certainly dramatic, but did not look particularly divine. I tried wings of black flame instead and that seemed to fit a little better, but I was still undecided if it would make the final cut.

I used my Curse to entertain Gin too, but had to restrain myself. I was the only person he ever interacted with besides rare appearances from Cirucci, I was probably distorting his perception of reality.

The war council was no longer the only thing I had to look forward to, though the war seemed to be going along at a good pace finally with reports coming in that the attack on the palace of Las Noches was imminent. I was growing excited, but still wondered how in the world I would explain Gin's existence once we were free.

Then one war council, everything changed.