Chapter Text
Time was blurring together.
The universe had a twisted kind of humor. It kept Mumbo alive against all odds, let him survive the change, and then made it impossible to live. It wouldn’t allow him to move on, his code frozen in the night his heart stopped beating. He remained static while the rest of the world kept going, kept changing.
At first, he tried to hold onto a daily routine. He would wake up with the stars and go to sleep when the sun threatened to peek above the horizon. Every night for a few weeks – or was it years? – he would go and watch his family’s server portal. Mumbo was not welcome there anymore, not after the night had taken hold of him. Yet he couldn’t let go. He craved comfort – contact, someone to take care of him – but the world stripped all of that away. It turned his living family against him, and offered no undead one in return. Only the wooden spoon his father had carved remained.
The newly changed vampire felt like a toddler left to its own devices. He held onto the familiar sight of the portal, never leaving the shadows of the lush green canopy around the little clearing. Every night he became lost in the sounds – the wind in the leaves, the frantic little hearts of forest animals, the hum of the server portal. He breathed in the smells – the damp moss, the death of prey animals, the unnatural scent of his former home behind the portal. And every night he had hoped to see his family. Instead, he watched the portal slowly crumble, the runes go dark, the hum go silent, the smell gradually dispersing until only the crumbled portal frame remained. It was soon covered by moss, becoming part of the surrounding forest, trees slowly encroaching on the clearing that was once maintained by the careful hand of his sister.
Who knew what had happened to Mumbo’s family?
Perhaps they left the server behind after the loss of their son, perhaps he watched the portal long enough for them to grow old, perhaps the server code became too unstable to support itself and it collapsed in on itself and took them down with it. Even after the portal’s hum faded, he stayed—cradling the rune-stone in his hand. Its surface was damp, cold and smooth under his fingers. He stayed until others – unnatural creatures of night, like him – found him.
“What is that? A little fledgling?” A mocking voice startled Mumbo. They must have been utterly silent in their approach before their voice suddenly appeared barely a meter behind him. There was no sound. He didn’t hear their hearts – had come to rely on the beats to warn him of anything nearby. “Hmmm, what are you doing in our territory, darling?”
“Leave it be, it’s not ours,” came another voice to the right of him. The woman it came from gave Mumbo an unimpressed look. “It’s already starving, no need for us to interfere. It’s not going to live much longer. The poor little thing was an obvious mistake. Even its sire did not keep it – let the universe take care of it.” Maybe he was a mistake for the vampires. Maybe that was why he was abandoned and not welcomed by the one that made him – way too little, way too weak, just a mistake.
The male looked at Mumbo with crazed crimson eyes that rooted him in place. “Well then, why not put it out of its misery?” He came closer, hand gripping Mumbo’s jaw, forcing his mouth to open. Mumbo stayed frozen, mind barely in present. “It still has the changeling fangs. I can’t ignore this opportunity, now can I, Kalma?”
Mumbo was harshly pulled back into the present with the pain that blossomed in place of his now-missing right fang. He wailed and struggled fruitlessly to pull away. “Balor.” The woman’s voice dripped with bored disgust. “We have to keep going if we want to make it back in time to not burn. We’re here to cull threats, not parent the night’s mistakes. The day will not be kind to it, it will be dead soon enough.”
If Mumbo were not occupied by clutching his jaw and trying to see through lights dancing across his vision from pain, he would see the man wore an almost comical look of offence. “But the changeling fangs, Kalma – they’re rare. You can’t expect me to just leave them.”
“Get the other one then, and let’s go. Leave it to its own destiny.”
“If you insist… Let’s not keep it waiting!” the man’s attention quickly turned back to whimpering Mumbo. “Shhhh, darling,” he mocked, “there’s still something you can give me.” He forced his hand back into Mumbo’s mouth despite the young vampire’s protests. It did not take much – Mumbo was far weaker than the clearly matured vampire – and his other fang was forcibly pulled out. A second scream cut through the forest. The fangs that he despised but at the same time were the thing allowing him to feed easily were ripped from him as if they were nothing more than an annoying weed to be pulled out.
“Happy? Now leave it,” was the last thing he heard from the pair. He was left alone, in pain, with only a few hours before dawn.
Without the den of a forest creature living nearby, he would have never survived the day with its sunlight. His hunger soon got the better of him as he killed the inhabitants of his temporary shelter. Though, without the fangs, Mumbo had a hard time feeding. He had to tear open the animal’s chest and squeeze its heart for blood. He was lucky, he supposed, the universe was so determined to keep him alive.
He stayed there for days until he could no longer stand the smell of the rot from the carcass next to him. He emerged from his hideout weak but still standing. Mumbo gave the grown-over clearing a last longing look. The smell of his home was now long gone. The vampire took the portal stone and wooden spoon he let go of in the struggle and in the blanket of night left his human life behind. He could not return. If more vampires found him, he wouldn’t survive again.
It took more than six full moons for his fangs to grow again.
His nails were always stained red as he set to hunt under the blanket of darkness. He was the predator now, nothing he could do about it. His code was written into the unnatural thing he now was and so he became one with night, a lone vampire without coven to come back to. Every day, Mumbo slept curled around the spoon like a child. He fed on forest animals until he became strong enough to feel a bit more like himself again. The vampire knew he couldn’t live in forest caves forever. He considered looking for other vampires, perhaps they would take him in. But every time he remembered the echo of a voice – “It’s not ours,” she said “let the universe take care of it.” – and concluded that he would not be welcomed among his kind. Seemed like community was another thing that was not to be his. That left the town.
The time blurred together. His body remained eternally seventeen, but by now, he must surely be considered older – eighteen, probably much older judging by the overgrowth that claimed the portal to his former home. That meant he could get an apartment in the town. Yes, natural players, especially the human ones, would hunt him down with spikes if they knew what he was. But they did not need to know. So he slowly crept closer to the bustling town, making sure not to be seen in tattered clothes stained with blood.
For a time he observed the players going about. The town seemed larger than he remembered, bigger and busier. It spread wide from the center with its bell-tower. There were still people walking through the streets illuminated by torches after nightfall. Every night the vampire lost himself in the sounds – the bangs of shutters as they were closed for the night, the beating hearts of players, the crackle of fire they made to keep warm. He breathed in the smells – the damp dirt from roads, the sweat of people working all day, the smoke rising from chimneys. And every night he waited for the opportunity that would surely present itself.
And it came. One night he washed himself in the stream, the water turning crimson, and stole a suit left to dry in the sunlight and forgotten just to be taken in the moonlight. The suit made Mumbo look older – though how old he actually was, he didn’t know – than his lanky, forever-seventeen body. He took another two full moons to find the courage to face people. When he finally prepared himself, he went to the town square. He needed money to get a place to live that was not a damp cave. There was only one place that he would be able to find money in now, in the middle of the night – the tavern.
He tried to steel himself, and before he could talk himself out of it, he entered. The heat, the sweat, the flowing blood in their veins overwhelmed him right then and there on the threshold. Though the vampire did not stand frozen for long. “Outta the way, ya stick!” He was shoved aside by one of the drunken patrons.
There were people everywhere, drowning him in body heat. The crowd pulled him in mostly one direction, towards one of the tables swarmed with cheering men. They all tried to push through to the front, where two men sat across from each other, blades flashing in a game of five-finger fillet. All around the other patrons made bets, stomped, and clapped to the rhythm, splashing Mumbo with the sickly-sweet-smelling mead in their hands.
“…all my fingers, the knife goes…” sang the men while trying to not lose their fingers.
“Chop, chop, chop!” The crowd around joined in the singing, one of the surrounding patrons screaming next to his ear. The yelling made the vampire feel as if his eardrums might burst. The beat was progressively getting faster and the yelling louder. All around him the crowd cheered them both on until it all went eerily silent. At least Mumbo’s ears stopped working for a second or two while the men around him erupted in the loudest cheer yet as one of the players at the table stabbed through his middle finger with full force. Of course, he thought, the universe would decide to taunt him right here and now.
Now, Mumbo never smelled something so good. It was like nothing else, incomparable to the blood of animals. Player blood was something else and he was starving. Animal blood was clearly not enough to satiate him fully, lacking in the nutrients, lacking the code his system so desperately craved. The vampire saw the liquid smear on the table, wasting away while dripping on the filthy tavern floor. He could almost feel the heartbeat of the man in the powerful squeeze of his empty stomach. That was what he was, wasn’t he?
Mumbo was pulled into the present, back into his mind, as the men beside him raised the honey mead high to cheer the winner and promptly went on to dump the liquor onto the vampire’s head. Mumbo tasted the alcohol and the yeast on his lips and almost threw up. He needed to get away. Far from the smell of blood. If he acted, if he did anything, he would be dead before the dawn came. So he decided to not do anything – even as his mouth watered – but move through the gap in the crowd towards the back of the tavern where barkeep sold the liquor.
He stumbled through the crowd of bodies – the sound of their hearts louder than the music, the smell of their sweat and blood stronger than the ever-present mead – until he reached the bar. He hoped to get a paying job, but his hope was immediately crushed. “Hello, I–“ he started but was immediately interrupted by the barkeep.
“Hand here, lad – need to see your age code!” He shouted. Mumbo was so stunned to do anything except comply. The barkeep scanned his wrist with a little device – it looked different, sleeker, a bit smaller and shinier than the brass bulky ones he had seen as a child – then snorted. The screen flashed with the red 17. “Too young! Now get out of here! This place serves the grown folk. Hey, Tauren! Show him out!”
“But I–“ the protest died on his tongue as the barkeep signaled an imposing bull hybrid that did not hesitate to take a step in his direction. The vampire didn’t particularly want an altercation in the middle of a crowded tavern, so he cut his losses. He went out of the tavern, the bull hybrid decidedly slamming the door behind him.
The universe had a twisted sense of humor. He was sure he was living in the woods for at least a few years. He was certain he was watching the town for about a year. But his code was frozen in the night he changed. His mind was older, but his body and code was locked in time.
Now he was immortal, forever trapped at an age that others dismissed at first glance. It seemed that everyone would be against him – a little mistake to vampires, a naïve youth to players. So Mumbo was once again forced to stay alone. He wandered through town – that got him a few looks, but nothing threatening – until the world gave him a place to stay. At the outskirts of the town stood an abandoned building. It was left behind, not even wholly built, but still good enough. Certainly better than the caves he lived in up until now. And it was surrounded by farms with animals he would be able to feed on without gathering attention easily enough.
He made the building his home. He started by getting a bed and a bookshelf. He filled his new place with books and little mementos of the years that passed by, and kept the spoon and the portal stone on a shelf where he could always see them. The vampire observed the town slowly grow into the City. He watched the people around him wither away – he made a friend once, a farmer from one of the surrounding farms, but it did not last. The farmer died in the blink of an eye.
Soon the universe would watch him live alone through his 300th winter. He supposed then that solitude was safer – no chance of betrayal, abandonment, pain. Yet, buried deep, he still craved someone who might look at him and stay.