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Stop the wars and the famine, and something marvellous will happen. Just wait and see. I cannot wait for you to ‘find yourselves’, and I have meddled more than once. Most Vam’pirs have in one way or another.

When you sail into the unknown, there’ll be at least one Vam’pir that’ll go with you.

Nasty thought, isn’t it, that you will be responsible for siccing us onto another culture? By the time-space travel is developed, I hope that you have grown up enough to accept us for what we are.

???

Returning to my story…

Groups of twelve journeyed worldwide. We chose people younger than two hundred and who had no chance to birth children. Our DNA was incompatible with humanity. We couldn’t have children by the barbarians, a rather nasty prospect, but desperate times spawned wild ideas. Plus mankind was certainly beginning to breed prolifically.

Har’ches sent out over half the population and left Har’ches with just under four hundred people living there. Though sadness reigned, comfort existed. It was good to know that our knowledge wouldn’t die out. That comforted us through the long and lonely nights.

Fighting the inevitable was fruitless, Har’ches was dying, and we’d to face that fact.

Stoically, we did. This was harder for the Vam’pirs as we had already lost so much, and we were losing our one link with the old life.

If Vam’pirs hadn’t have been created, would Kaltos have survived? I doubted it. Something else would’ve come along to ruin our life, but it was nice to believe we might’ve made it.

Only Vam’pirs survive, the remnants of a once-promising civilisation.

Quietly reflecting on the past, I find comfort in time acting as a healer and friend. However, a hint of sorrow remains. I may proclaim to have great sadness, but really, there is only a little. Some things are not meant to be, and obviously Kaltos, Mora and Har’ches were one of those. We had had our chance, and we admitted defeat gracefully.

Har’ches continued for another six hundred years before dying out completely. The knowledge that kept them alive was the fact that somewhere out in the world were their descendants and families. That gave the last few Har’chen hope.

With dignity and sorrow, we buried the last Har’chen with a piece of our hearts. All our hopes and dreams had gone with him.

After the last person died, Vam’pirs were unsure how to proceed. The city was a literal ghost town; there was no reason to stay. Finally, we turned our backs and travelled north to Scotland and stayed there out of the way of prying eyes. It was easy to lose ourselves in the Highlands.

Scotland was safer for us in more ways than one. If we had remained in Har’ches and Mora, then who knows what melancholy would have done us? It was best to start anew and begin again somewhere else.

Ah. I hear you ask.Then how did you get your blood if they had all died?

Quite easy really, we had reached the stage where we didn’t need as much, and so we drank the fresh blood of animals. There were plenty around, and so we took judiciously from them, careful not to decimate a breed. None of us wanted to be responsible for wiping out a species.

Vam’pir’s stayed together for another thousand years. Then, as mankind grew more interesting, we all went our separate ways. After three thousand years, you yearn for someone different to talk to.

We irritated each other intensely; surprisingly, we didn’t resort to violence. I was lucky to be alive, as I did one outrageous thing after another. They all chastised me, and Nathan was caught as often as I was.

Nathan and I were a pair of rouges with years stretching out ahead of us, and we wished to do what we wanted.

I can’t rightly remember who first drank the blood of another human for food, but I think that it had been Nathan.He’d discovered a murderer hiding near to us, which had just been simply dubbed Home.

Nathan took matters into his own hands when he realised the man would escape unpunished. Nathan was dreadfully ill after and took weeks to recover, as he had drunk, until the man’s heart stopped beating. This never happened when we drank from an animal. That meant there was something in human DNA that makes us sick if we drank till you died.

This period yielded two additional self-discoveries. The first was that we could hear each other if we wanted to. I forget who demonstrated this ability, but if we thought at a person, then they would hear it. This allowed many private conversations nobody could interrupt.

This came in mighty handy for Nathan and I to cause more mischief, and we did.

I shrug. Don’t be so disapproving. Given my history as a troublemaker, why stop now?

We could also hear if someone called from a vast distance, and it was with this in our hearts that we split. Being completely aware we were only a thought away helped a great deal.

The second was incredibly helpful. Antonio hadn’t been paying attention and had been unable to make it back from his coffin and been caught by the sun rising. Fortunately, thick mist and cloud cover prevailed that day for Antonio.

Antonio had not burned to a crisp and turned into ashes, which I was sure he was intensely grateful for. One lesson learned was only direct sunlight could kill us. The daytime was open for us to move around as long as the sun remained hidden behind clouds. Although most of us were cautious, we all did it at some point.

It appeared our bodies had taken on a change, as we no longer needed to sleep nightly either unless we wanted to.