Ascendant Path of a Lustful Vampire Chapter 637: The Vampire and her Prized Slave

"He doesn’t like her," Philip said quietly.

Athenodora turned to look at him with a raised brow.

"You think?" She asked.

Philip shrugged.

"It’s all over his face. He hated to be snuggled up against her like that. He despises it actually. But he’s powerless to resist. I’ve seen it a lot of times."

"With Spawn slaves?" Caius asked.

Philip shut his eyes for a second and when he opened them, he looked detached.

"Showing even a tiny bit of detest for your creator gets you killed. Enforcers—"

"Like you?" Caius supplied.

Philip gritted his teeth and tried to continue as though he hadn’t been interrupted.

"Enforcers know to look out for it and carry out the eliminations. Otherwise, if allowed, detest becomes contempt and ultimately, dissatisfaction," he said.

"Dissatisfaction is worse than contempt?" Caius asked.

"A contemptuous Spawn Slave might be sickened with their station but is likely still too cowardly to act. A dissatisfied Spawn Slave has become totally disillusioned and begins to find loopholes in orders they have been given to escape their servitude.

The Lords can’t allow that. So rather than bother closing any loopholes in the orders they give and constantly watching their backs, they cull every seed of dissent before it can properly mature."

"Hmm," Caius intoned.

Philip scoffed.

"Of course, you’d say that," he said.

"I didn’t say anything," Caius countered.

"And you’d go well to keep it that way. Privileged as you are to have Dora as your Creator, you cannot understand—"

"So you think I’m privileged," Caius said.

"Of course you are," Philip said through clenched teeth.

"Which means you acknowledge that you are not," Caius inferred.

"Wh— what?" Philip turned to glare at Caius.

Caius shrugged.

"I’m just saying, you wish your circumstances were different. You don’t like your Lord and creator despite how much you act to the contrary," he said.

"I didn’t say that," Philip said, raising his voice slightly.

"Hey, you were abused. Tortured. You are allowed to dislike the one who did that to you. Especially if you’re essentially doomed to serve him for eternity," Caius said.

"Don’t you dare put words in my mouth!" Philip growled.

"You’re scared," Caius said and he didn’t sound mocking but compassionate and then he shook that off as he said in a half jovial and half serious voice,

"You’ve survived for centuries harboring that hate. I think you’ll survive a few more even with an asshole like me dredging up those dangerous thoughts in your head."

Philip clenched his fists and then began to close and open his eyes over and over, as though trying to clear his sight. But Caius was sure it was more about clearing his head.

"While you two bickered, you missed all the fun talk," Athenodora said with a smile.

She was right. The figures of Valeria and the sickly vampire melted back into darkness, then reformed until the sickly vampire stood before what looked like an Altar formed from the darkness. Atop that altar lay Valeria, her arms bound to the altar by chains of darkness.

"Don’t—" Valeria choked, "Don’t do this, Viktor."

"Shhh," Viktor, the sickly vampire cooed, "It will all be over soon. It will hurt a lot, I must admit. But it will be over fairly quickly."

"I order you— I order you to stop!" Valeria cried.

Orders she could give easily without saying a word were apparently now useless even when spoken with such emotion.

"Your authority does not bind me. There is too much of me to be bound," Viktor said, his eyes as mad as ever as he began to croon,

"Days into weeks. Weeks into months. Months into years. Decades into centuries. Centuries into millennia. 3053 years I have been your spawn. Your slave—"

"I loved you," Valeria choked, tears running down the corner of her eyes.

"No, you didn’t. You watched me endure great mental torment and would not even grant me the gift of death. You ordered me to live on and I’ve hated you ever since," Viktor said.

"You had ambition. Death would be such a waste for such potential," Valeria said.

Viktor let out a little laugh.

"I struggled against your bounds to no effect. Searched every possible loophole but whenever I thought I found one, you were always there to address it. Always smug, like you’d won something.

Because my pain didn’t matter to you. It entertained you.

Ironically, the very torture I wished to escape by the death you denied me is what set me free from you.

So many tortured cries in my head— so many personalities. They made me suffer but they also made me strong. With them, you can’t order me around."

"So you’ll kill me. And once the order I gave you to keep you alive is gone with my death, you’ll kill yourself?" Valeria asked.

"That may have never been my goal once but not anymore. Over a century ago, we had a conversation and I told you I was going to be turning my attention to a different war. Well, you’re my key to winning that war.

The cries in my head will never end so long as their death have no meaning. And for their death to have meaning, I must go all the way. My conquest can’t end in the mortal realm.

When all, even the pantheon of gods and the deepest pits of Hell is under my feet, I shall finally know peace."

"You’re mad!" Valeria cried.

"Yes, I am. It’s a curse... and a blessing. The multitude of cries in my head not only gave me the strength to break free from you, but they gave me the drive to devise my masterpiece creation.

And you Valeria, will be a vital part of it. So you see, your death is more than just a chance for me to die. It’s a necessary sacrifice for a much greater good

An end to my mental suffering. An end to my madness!"

With that, Viktor thrust his hand over Valeria and began to chant an incantation Caius didn’t bother trying to understand. Viktor had gone quite a bit off the deep end and his madness had granted him insight that would boggle any mortal mind. The only reason he could handle it was that his mental state was already fragmented.

"Viktor! Viktor— NO— AAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHH!!!"

Valeria’s cry of pain rocked the dimension and even tugged at Caius’s heartstrings. But that was nothing compared to how it affected Athenodora.

"That bastard!" She cried and went at Viktor.

Caius and Philip grabbed her arms to hold her back.

"You can’t do anything," Philip said, "You’ll just go right through him. He’s not real."

"He’s killing her," Athenodora said angrily even though she did relax a little, "She saved him and he’s killing her."

"Did she really save him?" Caius asked slowly.

Athenodora turned to look at him. Philip glowered.

"Oh, don’t give me that look," Caius said, "You know it’s true. Valeria didn’t save him because she cared. She did it because she wanted him. It had nothing to do with his well-being."

"You think she wanted that thing?!" Athenodora gestured at Viktor’s sickly, horrific, and desiccated appearance.

"You’re projecting. Valeria isn’t you. You like beauty. You care very little about strength or ambition. You care about what looks and tastes good to you. Power comes second because you wish to be independent and rely on your own strength which is already abundant. You’re all about freedom and all that.

Valeria, however, loved Ambition. It wasn’t a coincidence that she found Viktor on that battlefield. She must have followed his conquest and when she saw him injured, she took her chance to have that ambition by her side.

She saw that he was tortured mentally and it didn’t matter to her.

He got ugly as the decades wore on and she liked him still because he remained ambitious. His madness and the fact that he achieved so much despite it endeared him to her all the more.

Valeria had power of her own but never went as far as Viktor did because she didn’t want to be in power. She wanted to have someone in her control who was in power. And Viktor was perfect for her.

He was her entertainment. Her prized slave—"

"And so she deserves what she’s getting?" Athenodora asked.

"My father wants your head. You tortured him by turning me into a vampire spawn which essentially caused me five years of depression. If he succeeds in taking your head, would that not be fair?"

"I’d like to see him try," Philip growled.

Caius ignored him and kept his eyes on Athenodora.

"You don’t mind that my father wants to kill you, do you? You like that you’ve gotten that much under his skin, don’t you?

Imagine yourself in his shoes though. Imagine yourself in Viktor’s shoes.

You’re not Valeria but there’s a reason you just got more emotional than you’ve ever allowed yourself to be; It’s because you can see the similarities— The parallels between the two of you.

Which is fascinating since—"

"Since what?" Athenodora challenged, "You believe what Philip said. That she’s my ancestor?"

"I know she is," Caius said.

Athenodora laughed.

"None of this is real!" She yelled.

"No, all of it is real. It’s dramatized with rivers of blood and dark smoky walls and altars but the events did happen.

Viktor and Valeria did exist. Valeria is your Ancestor."