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Bloodlust for Aedwaerth is like the daily tides: inexorable, inevitable. The force exerted by his own mind to feed on humans is like the gravity of the moon; he will be crushed if he does not give in. His mental faculties are debilitated, the reasoning centers of his brain are disoriented, and he murders indiscriminately for more than thirty seasons.
There is only the hunt, the kill, the relief and the quickly reappearing burn which incites a repeat. He is other, entirely alienated from anything remotely resembling human. Luckily for his yet-to-develop conscience, he is drawn by scent almost exclusively to the battlefields of Pryden, enraptured by blood exposed to air on such a scale. He feeds on dying soldiers strewn behind the tireless beast of war, and there is no adequate precedent to compare the sensation of drinking blood. It consumes him. His victims are resigned to their fate and when they beg for the release of death; he accedes. When he isn't playing Charon, he is a forest wraith, moving so fast and so far afield it seems he is barely corporeal.
Encounters with nomadic vampires are not infrequent given their tendency to congregate at battle sites. Amidst the haze of territorial bloodlust, Aedwaerth uses his mental abilities and newborn strength with deadly effect. He anticipates any aggressive maneuvers and preempts any defensive tactics. The island is his by any and all means. Within a few years as a vampire, Aedwaerth has done what he never endeavored to as a human: rule the entirety of Pryden. Solitary vampires and mated pairs become ash under his heel.
He experiences unfettered joy at the sensations of his new body. Before he had been an exceptional human specimen, his vanquished enemies a testament to the power and speed he possessed. But that deadly combination is tame and tawdry compared to this. Reflex doesn't exist; there is simply action, absolute control over his facilities. The electrical impulses controlling his movements travel the synapses and traverse his enhanced nerves faster than a human body could tolerate.
The precision and breadth of his strength is miraculous and he finds the only limits lie when having to leverage his own weight. And despite the unyielding quality of his skin, he can tell he still weighs about fourteen stone: the law of conservation of mass applies to vampire transformation, too.
The tailwind that follows his forest romps makes him grin, as do the deep ruts his feet leave in the earth as he accelerates. The brilliant clarity of his vision, accompanied by the heightened differentiation in color and newly visible light spectrum leaves him trancelike at trivial and tame sights. Between his vampire audition and his telepathy, the world has become a noisy and distracting place. Perhaps the most abrupt and drastic change is his ability to process and synthesize every last bit of information from every single enhanced sense, and commit it to eternal memory.
These physical sensations are the source of his alienation; they've left him with no reference to his human life. There is little or no reconciliation between his human life and his new vampire existence while the bloodlust dominates.
Some winter, nearly ten years after his change, he has wandered to the far north near his Caledonii. By chance, or providence, the first one of his kinsfolk he comes upon is an ascetic, sitting under a haphazard lean-to at the mouth of a cave. He is a relic of the druids forced into secrecy by the Roman emperor Tiberius in 22 A.D. This man is learned and as close to a religious leader as the Caledonii have. The tenor of his thoughts is unlike anything Aedwaerth has experienced so far; he is in meditation, the chant rendering his mind in soothing, colorful tones. This is the first human that Aedwaerth has come across that did not unduly provoke his hunger, and he scrambles silently up the talus slope adjacent to the mangy wise-man.
He's been sitting, utterly silent, for a few hours, privy only to the skinny hermit's thoughts when the first memory of his human life resurfaces. It's simultaneously inconsequential and vital. In his mind's eye he's sitting by a stream, bare feet buried in the mud at the water's edge with his sword in hand. It's braced on his leg at the pommel and on the stone at the tip, and he's running a wet rock over the length of the blade, sharpening the iron into a perfect instrument of death. The repetitive motion of his hands is hypnotic and matches the rhythm of the ascetic's chanting in real time. He's pulled out of the memory gradually as it fades into the recesses of his mind, but the precarious link to his human life is established.
Anxiety and disquiet tighten in his chest when the dreamlike trance he was in is disrupted, so he refocuses his telepathic talents onto the repetitive meditations that inadvertently generated the first memory. Though his patience and focus is tried, his goals are actualized. Memories begin to resurface at a steady rate. The culmination of his meditative state is a fully-formed memory with dim sights, sounds, and sensations as his augmented brain converts the human experience.
Adventurous and able, the two outdistanced all their companions in a race. In fact, most had turned back in favor of another trial; a game that one of the rest might actually have a chance to win due to the absence of a certain pair.
The race was no short affair, taking the better part of an afternoon. If the dappled sunlight cooperated they would catch glimpses of each other through the trees as they moved quickly and stealthily.
Autumn's silence was complete, the forest seemingly complacent in the return of winter. The cold air hung heavy under the bower of the woods, and their panted breath swirled, crystalline in their wake. When he glanced over his shoulder and they made eye contact, she surged, feeling satisfaction, and the cool hard ground gripped under her feet. Then just as he rounded the turn-around, a massive oak with five thick branches forking evenly at head height from a stout trunk, he vanished.
She clenched her fists in frustration and pressed on, a few seconds away. Reaching out with a calloused hand, she used the nearest branch of the oak as a pendulum. Mid-air, she collided with a devious, grinning thirteen year old boy. The playful roughhousing was short-lived, and he was properly chagrined when she was crumpled under him gasping and croaking for air.
They gradually became aware of their intimate position amidst his breathless apologies, her thrown fists and gasped insults, but neither shied away, the two of them caught in constant unspoken competition. Even then, especially then, the warrior was a willing slave to his instincts. Infused with the adrenaline and endorphins from the afternoon's activities his mind relinquished control, drawn in to the unconsciously alluring creature beneath him. As he leaned down over her wide baffled eyes, he pulled her raven-dark hair from her slightly parted lips and kissed them.
Aedwaerth knows two things immediately after the memory recedes. One: that this was the most poignant moment in his young life. Two: that this girl, whom he once loved, was raped and murdered at the hands of invading Saxon vermin not long after their first intimate encounter.
The grief claws at his heart like living thing, loss incarnate. The sharp contrast he finds in the stillness of the world around him accentuates his profound and overwhelming emotional upheaval. In the cool mountain air of his home, Aedwaerth has already begun to remake himself in his own human image, despite the vague discontinuity of his memories. His rational mind is triggered, and his humanity is reengaged. Never again will he let the animal within him enslave his mind or reign his consciousness.
By way of thanks, he tracks and kills a deer in the nearby forest to lay at the mouth of the cave for the underfed hermit. Then he vanishes like mist on a sunny morning into the mountains to contemplate his eternal existence.