Look at the Sun (Lukas)

Lukas started awake when the first few drops of rain hit him in the face. Eyes snapping open, Lukas sucked in a huge gulp of air gasping for breath as his body initiated breathing again rather forcefully. The memories of what had taken place only a few hours before hand weren't even hazy. The images rushed to him. An arena. A giant serpent. Some kind of sick, twisted, powerful demon. He'd failed to kill the teenage boy like it asked. The serpent had killed him. It had bashed his body against the sides of the stone arena until he'd eventually just…passed out? Died?

He wasn't sure. Lukas was sure of was that all of his bones were broken. All of his bones were broken and the monster had left him to die in the middle of the jungle. Still, as his chest heaved up and down, Lukas was becoming pretty sure he didn't have anything all that broken. Sure, his body ached, but he'd had his ribs busted a fair few times and knew it didn't hurt enough for broken ribs. He checked that he had fingers. He did. He wiggled them. He checked that he had arms and toes and legs. He did. He wiggled them. Lukas reached over slowly, looking down at himself and pulling up his shirt. 

The bruising was yellowing, painful to the touch, but as he poked and pressed at his ribcage he determined that no. Nothing was broken. 

Lukas let his shirt fall down, arms dropping to rest on the leaf litter on either side of his body. He looked around. Bright tropical plants were all around him, humming with insects. The occasional colorful bird flittered in and out of view. The air was humid, filled with the static of an oncoming thunderstorm. Swallowing, he went to stand. Carefully. Lukas was still certain that he had some sort of injury and wasn't keen on injuring himself further. 

Something hot and wet ran down his lips. Reaching up, he found he was bleeding profusely from the nose. He checked that he still had a nose.  He definitely did. Pain seared across his face so intense that his eyes water. Lukas held his face, cursing quietly.

His nose was very, very broken. It was swollen and purple. There was really nothing to do for that. Lukas did try to stem the bleeding though, holding the collar of his shirt up to his nostrils gingerly as he started across the jungle. 

Because it was a jungle. He was in a damn jungle. Was he going to keep on waking up in random places or what? 

He hadn't even been walking for five minutes when he heard the sounds of muffled sobbing. It was so close by that not even the loud bird calls drowned it out. Brows furrowing, he headed in the direction of the noise. 

It brought him to the spot a little figure was sitting hunched under a tree. Little in comparison to his wide bulk, anyway. Lukas threw all caution to the wind, much more concerned with helping the poor somebody who he was pretty sure was just as confused and lost in the jungle as he was. Finding confused and lost people was starting to become a real trend. 

"Hey, you!" he called out, voice slightly strained from his still bleeding and clogged nose. "You hurt? Vhats the matter?!" 

He stopped a few feet from them when the smell of rotted meat assaulted his nostrils. 

The sobbing person attempted to scramble up the tree. Backwards. They seemed to actually have a small amount of success before deciding to stop and splutter at him. Instinctively, Lukas raised both of his arms into the air to show that his hands were empty and free of weapons. Of course, his biceps seemed to be having some difficulty remaining within his now bloodied shirt but he could only do so much in an effort to comfort them.

Now that they were standing though he could get a good look at what they were wearing. Lukas recognized the uniform as military, but he had no idea what military or where from. The get up also seemed a tad archaic and above all extremely inappropriate attire for tromping around in the jungle. He quickly jumped to the assumption that they, like him and everyone else he had met so far, were lost in this place and had no clue how they had gotten here. That would definitely explain the crying.

Too afraid he was going to scare them further by moving in closer, Lukas remained where he was with his arms raised and his nose steadily dripping blood down his lips.

He did not immediately recognize the accent.

“Name is Lukas,” he said. He blew air between his lips to expel the blood that had leaked into his mouth. “You, uh, hurt?”

He looked pretty sick to boot and the smell just couldn’t be a good sign. From what he could see back here they also seemed to have…some sort of injury on their face? Lukas wasn’t sure, but he was sure that the hair on his arms and the back of his neck had begun to stand upright. There was something a bit…odd going on here.

If the individual had contracted some kind of foul demon-realm-jungle-disease, he wasn’t so sure he wanted to get close enough to help. He would just take this slow. And careful.

“Vhat is…hurt? Maybe can help? I don’t know vhere I am either, everyone I met seem lost.”

This was like a scene out of those terrible horror movies him and Dante always watched. Poor lost white guy alone in the woods--or the jungle--finds some creepy half-dead, sickly man blabbing on about how they didn’t understand something and couldn’t help them. Of course the likeable, attractive white dude just can’t help trying to be as helpful as he was likeable and attractive and ended up dead because the creepy guy feeds them to mutated cats or something.

He’d dealt with plenty of creepy things in his life though and was an expert at holding it together. The nagging thought that in this crazy place he had no use of the Science certainly wasn‘t helping him feel secure in the slightest however.

The accent was still hard to place, but he was starting to suspect they were American. He'd heard that accent in a movie somewhere.

Lukas held still as they approached. His arms didn’t even lower. They could definitely walk just fine and he could see no injuries other than their face.  The closer they came, the more that he could truly appreciate how terrible they looked. Lukas’ attention didn’t remain on their positively deplorable outer appearance for long though. Eyes narrowing was pretty sure they had just licked their lips like they wanted to eat him, Lukas’ hands clenched into fists. That was probably him being paranoid though. They probably just had chapped lips. Either way, he longed for the ability to spark flames to his finger tips.

No matter the kind of hungry monster, he would have set them ablaze if they made the wrong move.

“Villin’?” he repeated. “I am…very villing to help. If I can. Is why I asked if you need help, yah? Vhat is you need, huh? I have no medicine.”

The expression on Lukas' face suggested he had expected something else much more disturbing than having his blood sucked out. He blew a breath between his lips, waving a hand at the man like he had his blood sucked out by strange people he met in humid jungles every other day.

"Oh. Sure. Yah. Zhat is no ting. I do for you. You just answer some questions for me, yah? Then you can suck blood. But try anything funny--" Lukas raised his hands, clenching one into a fist and smacking it into his other hand. His biceps flexed and released, jiggling magnificently. "Understand? I am clear?"

Lukas was starting to put the pieces together in his head. The military uniform, the strange accent, the fact that they said they were a dhampyr. A half-vampire. It was a word that Lukas had heard before in many mage research circles, but it was something that had been completely dismissed as a result of fiction. Vampires could not reproduce with people that weren't walking, dead corpses like them. They had to kill you and bite you to transform you into one of them. There was always the possibility that this was just a normal vampire lying to him, but that seemed unlikely at this point. After meeting aliens and dhampyrs Lukas had come to the conclusion that no one here was from the same place.

He knew about alternate dimensions. Other worlds. Pocket folds. Dimensions that powerful, old demons could create, places that was totally under their control. Most of the time they infected other worlds from these sorts of places but it wasn't entirely out of line for one to go ahead and start playing a game of body-snatcher for their own amusement.

"Name? Vhere you from? Not from Sveeden. American? Eh? You fight in war?" He gestured at the uniform. "American history not expertise."

Lukas cocked a brow at the proboscis, not seeming to know what to make of it but at the same time not reacting further. It's purpose was pretty clear when he thought about what he had just seen for a second or two though. It was a straw for sucking blood. The vampires he knew didn’t have mouth straws and this was just pointing toward more proof that this vampire was not the sort of vampire that he was familiar with. The ones he knew had teeth for biting and a whole hell of a lot of them at that.

The blackening of their face was confusing, but Lukas also didn’t mention that. Again, probably had something to do with the fact they were so depleted of their own specific kind of nourishment. No biggie. He didn’t want to embarrass them any further than they had been embarrassed. It was pretty embarrassing having your skin falling off and such while starving in the middle of a jungle. Asking people for blood was pretty bad too, but maybe they were used to it as a vampire or something.

Mages are fucking weird and don‘t give a shit about stuff that they probably should give shits about.

Actually, what he was saying about rebel and yankee scum seemed to confuse Lukas more than being a vampire and sucking blood did. Reaching up he scratched at the back of his curly blonde head, lips twisting to the side. “Ah, I ‘ave no idea vhat you talking about but is okay. I think this is ting zhat is long and old though, you not from 21st century. Is 21st century vhere I am from and America not fighting each other for Independence. Uniform seems little, eh, dated? Is okay you from old times though. Fadher vas from old times. Nice to meet veteran zho.”

Lukas chuckled at his own joke. "You is from vhat year zho?"

Stepping closer, he reached to roll up the sleeves of his bloodied lumberjack shirt.

“All are lost. Is strange place. Everyone here vhaking up from dreams, yah? Not from same place, same vorld, or same planet is vhat I am starting to tink is case. Okay to be confused, vhe get through it together. Like, vhat American say? Pals. Chums. Buddies.” Lukas stopped in front of him, offering his arm. “You use uh, mouth parts?”

He raised his other hand to flap his fingers in front of his face like they were tentacles. “Have straw? Is like--eh--bug? Oh. Vampires vhere I from zhey just have big teeth. Chew everything to pieces and lap up blood. Seems like better, eh, set up. Less messy.”

Lukas seemed mildly interested by the display, leaning forward slightly so that he could have a better view of the teeth before straightening up again. He didn’t want to expose himself completely to what was essentially a hungry predator, but despite looking like a block headed body builder, Lukas was at his heart a researcher. He was very interested in this particular variation of vampire, but not enough to allow himself to be that easily taken advantage of.

The request made him smile a sarcastic smile. He had very straight and white teeth. “Ah,” he said. “No. Afraid I cannot do zhat. You can have my vrist, or nothing else.” Lukas extended his hand forward more, flexing the muscles in his forearm. “Is about as thick as a neck. Your neck. Which is not thick.”

He was going to punch the shit out of him if he tried anything, right in their skinny little neck. Beggars couldn't be choosers and there was definitely no choosing when it came to someone willingly offering over their own blood.

"Not this time," he said, shrugging his broad shoulders.

A little pressure, he said. Lukas snorted, grinning even as he braced for pain as it definitely wasn't going to be a little pinch. He clenched his hands into tight fists, back molars grinding tightly together as the mouthpieces found their purchase. Lukas had been fed on by a vampire before (though that time it had been much less willing) and the sensation was different in some ways but largely the same in others. Both times it had hurt like hell, but as someone who made their living on the understanding that they were probably going to get hurt and had in the past, it was tolerable.

Demon stings hurt worse.

The rushing, pounding sensation of blood siphoning straight out of his body as his heart thundered along to keep up was different though. He tried not to focus on that too hard, however.

Now that they were close enough to examine more closely it seemed that the rotting meat smell was definitely coming from Jimmy. Furthermore, their outer appearance seemed to be much closer to that of a rotting corpse than a man. Lukas had seen plenty of corpses in his life and knew enough to say. The lack of blood seemed to have effected them to such a degree that they were quite literally rotting away where they stood. Basically, they were Cain on a very bad day.

As the feeding continued it suddenly occurred to Lukas just how badly it would hurt if this went wrong and he did decide to yank his arm away from them and, effectively, their mouth piece out of his arm. Ah, well. He was just going to have to hope that if he was bled to death he'd just wake up again like he had the... other time he had bled to death.

"Lucky I am a mage and not someone else. Someone else go running away screaming and make all difficult for you. This is lucky we found each other. Nice veather we are having, yah?"

Humming absently, he looked up to a sky that was beginning to fill with clouds. It would rain soon.