Belongs to WEST LANDS
ACADEMY RECORD:
Name: Monda Vlad
Profession: Vampire
Specialty: Awakening latent potential through blood alteration
Known for: Bringing out the best in her clients. Occasionally something else.
Working hours: After sunset.
Dietary arrangements: Included in the service.
Current status: Professionally respectable, financially practical.
Developed by Crimson Alchemist , Formula available: Lite
KNOWN BACKGROUND:
He pursed his lips, closed his eyes, and leaned in to kiss her. She sank her sharp teeth into his exposed neck and drank greedily from the warm blood.
“Why?” he managed to ask, his voice bubbling in his throat. She pulled away, drew a noisy breath, and laughed.
“Tradition, darling. And necessity.” He dropped to one knee, and his blood began dripping onto the floor.
Drip. Drip. Drip…
Monda shifted inside her coffin and opened her eyes. Rain was falling outside, and water dripped from the gargoyle on the facade onto the windowsill. It was dark already. Time for work.
Preparations did not take long: hygiene and clothes. She never had breakfast. She fed while she worked. It came with the profession. Monda went briskly downstairs to the office on the ground floor, turned the sign to OPEN, and waited for clients.
She thought about the dream and about how much things had changed over the years. A vampire? Ha. These days, vampire was little more than a job title. True vampirism meant taking without giving anything in return. That was how it had been for centuries. And now…
What she did could hardly even be called symbiosis. It was practically altruism! Well. For a few crowns.
Monda gazed through the shop window. A flock of ravens circled above the fountain in the square. Good, respectable birds. Tomorrow half of them would probably leave for Academia or the Kingdom and become doctors, professors, or devil knew what else. Yes. The world was changing. Her gloomy reflections were interrupted by the bell above the door. Her first client of the night.
“Good evening,” he greeted her politely. Monda nearly vomited. A snail. A snail dressed impeccably in a tailcoat, top hat, and carrying a walking cane—but a snail nonetheless.
“I’m afraid, sir, that you have the wrong office.” The snail smiled.
“Aren’t you the one who awakens hidden potential? Alters the coding inside our veins so that it brings out the very best in us? At least, that’s what your advertising brochure says.”
“It’s… not exactly like that,” Monda said, suddenly uncomfortable. “I merely create the conditions. What actually emerges depends on the individual potential of the client.”
“Oh, I am quite certain there is a prince hidden inside me. Or, at the very least, an indecently wealthy merchant.” Monda considered this.
“Fine. Five hundred crowns. No guarantees. You might become a prince. You might become a rotten turnip. That part is not up to me.”
“Five hundred?!” the snail protested. “For that much I could buy dozens of barrels of elixirs and remain euphoric for the rest of my life. Two hundred.”
“Five hundred. And the effect is irreversible.”
“Can I pay in gold?”
“Ha! At the current exchange rate, that would take several wagons. Gold hasn’t been anything special for years. Academia’s Philosopher’s Stone managed to ruin even that.”
“Cheques from the Traders Republic?”
“Deal.” Monda swallowed her disgust and got to work.
One bite later…
“Gingerbread biscuits or vanilla doughnuts?” asked Master Baker Muffin with a cheerful smile. Not a prince. Not a rotten turnip either. A sweet little bear in a baker’s hat. Monda sighed.
Yes, times really had changed. Even she had grown fond of him. Everything had become disgustingly wholesome.