A/N: This bonus chapter was brought to you guys by stone kiss.
[Blood Diary Entry]
Rebekah gave me a dry look; her eyes were half-lidded, her eyebrow twitching in borderline irritation.
"Sigh, did you really have to do that?" She pinched the bridge of her nose. "That little stunt of yours was entirely unnecessary. We could have just sneaked in, and you could have set them on fire with that flame of yours…"
I shrugged my shoulders. "You're forgetting that I still need to practice my disciplines."
She gave me an unamused look. "Right… that's why you were roaring like a prideful and stubborn lion." She shook her head softly.
"Uhm, that was also me practicing, you know?" I said sheepishly.
"How so?"
"I imbued a bit of Presence in that roar, to emphasize-"
"Your arrogance?" She interrupted me.
"…" I looked at her for a couple of seconds before I spoke again. "Power. To emphasize my power. Show them despair."
"Why?"
"One thing I learned from Sol'Vahr's memories is that half the battle is fought before the first blow is even traded."
The rushing wave of monstrosities was getting closer by the second.
"Right, I've heard many egotistical and self-important army commanders say that across the times," Rebekah said with an unimpressed tone, turning her attention back to the cave entrance.
"It's because it's true. An enemy who has a weak will to fight is no enemy at all… Even if you are fighting mindless beasts, the concept still applies. A being who has little hope of winning will never be able to show its true strength."
"Why go so far? These vermin are no threat at all... to either of us." She asked curiously, though her attention was still fixated on the darkness ahead of us.
I looked at Rebekah, studying her features for a couple of seconds. "Hard to say really… There is this thing inside of me that abominates the idea of holding back, that is insulted by the sheer possibility of anything ever thinking it has an upper hand on me. It has always been there, but it got more intense after I absorbed Caine, and I know for a fact that this isn't Sol'Vahr, because I have no recollection of him ever feeling this way…"
Rebekah laughed under her breath. "That is called pride, Darian."
"Yeah, maybe it is, but I think there is more to it, maybe."
"What do you-"
"Not the time, Rebekah!" I interrupted her as the first traces of pale skin appeared inside the darkness.
The ghouls had finally gotten out of their self-made maze.
Rebekah nodded and looked at the rushing creatures. "You said you wanted to test your disciplines, right?" She asked a rhetorical question. "Just focus on that, I'll deal with the rest."
Then I saw something that really caught my attention.
Yellow lightning crackled between her fingers, beneath her irises, and flowed through her golden hair.
The air around her started reeking of ozone, and faint glimmers of electricity danced around her.
'Now this is surprising…'
She noticed me looking at her through the corner of my eyes, and she smirked proudly. "There is a reason why I wasn't worried about you turning on me when we first met, you know?" Then she mumbled quietly, her tone a mixture between amusement and a hint of unbelief. "Though you went ahead and became even more ridiculous since then…"
I laughed. "It's reassuring to have you by my side," I said fondly.
She blushed a bit, but then her face erupted in a beaming smile.
'Note to self: Rebekah is really weak to honest praise.'
She giggled and waved me off. "Go and have your fun. I have your back."
I took a deep breath and cracked my neck. Then I restrained my own body to human standards.
It felt wrong. I felt suffocated in doing so. Every cell in my body screamed in protest.
Day to day, it was fine; I had to blend in and not break everything around me after all. But there was something about doing the same during a fight that I really didn't enjoy.
Especially in this particular situation, since I have no intentions of sparing any of my prey.
"My 'prey', huh?" I muttered, low enough that even Rebekah didn't quite catch what I was saying. "Funny how distorted my own world views became in the span of barely two months… Vampire instincts are scary."
Then I flared up a couple of the disciplines that were quietly resting inside my soul. Namely: Celerity, Fortitude, Potence, and Auspex.
I pushed them to their current limits, which would only increase as I mastered and used them more.
These four disciplines that served only to improve my body to ridiculous levels and nothing else. But their simplicity was also their greatest strength.
My body burst with newfound strength. My muscles tensed and contracted like they were made of steel. My skin took a faint metallic hue, evidence of the ridiculous durability it now possessed.
The faintest hint of movement from me seemed capable of crushing down entire buildings with ease. My surroundings now seemed as if they were made of brittle glass, creaking and breaking at the gentlest of motions.
The world slowed to a crawl. I could see and perceive things that even my improved senses failed to notice, though there were also quite a lot of things that my own natural senses were better at perceiving. Colors I had never even dreamt of before shone in the daylight, details so infimal that escaped notice were now infinitely obvious. And then there were those flying nonsensical chains that floated in the air all around me.
I wonder what would happen if I mixed this with my own natural senses…
Though I felt as if thirty or more seconds had passed by, not a single second had actually come to pass.
This ridiculous amount of power made it almost impossible for me not to be filled with a sense of superiority. I fought against the feeling, containing this arrogance before it was even allowed to take root.
The ghouls were frozen in a single instance, their faces locked in a wretched snarl.
Way behind the wave stood the alghouls, their eyes shone with a hint of cunning and cruelty.
I'm curious as to what goes inside their heads right now…
Not that it matters.
I tensed my body and burst forward, diving straight into the sea of monsters.
A dance of carnage and death soon followed.