Chapter 7: Fledgling Training
Lucius
The training hall smelled of old blood and older stone.
Twenty fledglings stood in a rough semicircle, barefoot on cold granite, stripped to trousers and undershirts. No weapons. No armor. Just meat waiting to be tenderized.
Soren walked the perimeter like a wolf circling sheep. His Blood Appraisal signature burned at [ 201 BP ]—more than triple my current level, and his movements suggested that number significantly undersold his actual lethality.
"You are nothing," he said. The words weren't angry. Just factual. "Fledglings. Infants. You exist because someone chose to turn you rather than drain you. That choice was an investment. This week, we determine if any of you are worth the blood spent creating you."
He stopped before a nervous fledgling at the circle's edge. The kid—couldn't have been more than twenty when turned—flinched as Soren's hand rose.
"Pair off. First blood wins. Losers run laps until they vomit."
The hall erupted into controlled chaos. Fledglings grabbed partners, forming loose pairs across the stone floor. I scanned Blood Appraisal readings, looking for someone in my range—
A hand clamped on my shoulder.
"You."
The voice was familiar. I turned and found myself face-to-face with Nathaniel.
[ NATHANIEL - DEATH DEALER - 52 BP ]
[ NOTE: PREVIOUS ENCOUNTER RECORDED. TARGET DID NOT ACHIEVE POSITIVE IDENTIFICATION OF HOST. ]
The same Death Dealer from the metro tunnels. The one I'd watched nearly die to Raze and Trix. His throat bore a faint scar where claws had torn through—vampire healing left traces on significant wounds.
He studied my face with professional interest. No recognition. The metro had been dark, the combat chaotic, my appearance peripheral to his survival.
"Soren wants fledglings tested against experience," he said. "You're the one who saved Rigel."
"Lucky timing."
"We'll see."
He stepped back, settling into a combat stance that looked deceptively relaxed. Fifty years of vampire reflexes against my three weeks. The math was terrible.
"At least he won't recognize me while he's breaking my face."
Nathaniel attacked without warning.
His fist caught me in the sternum before I registered movement. The impact launched me backward—not falling, flying—and I crashed into a stone pillar hard enough to crack the mortar. Ribs screamed. Nose gushed blood where my face had bounced off granite.
I staggered upright. Nathaniel was already there.
Second hit: kidney. Third: jaw. Fourth: temple.
The stone floor rushed up to meet me. Blood pooled beneath my broken nose. Every breath stabbed like knives between my cracked ribs.
"First blood achieved," Nathaniel said flatly. "Multiple times."
Soren's boots appeared in my blurring vision. "Get up."
I got up. The ribs ground against each other. My nose hung at an angle that would have required surgery in my old life. Here, vampire healing was already working—slow, painful, but working.
"Again," Soren ordered.
Again. And again. And again.
By the session's end, Nathaniel had broken my nose three times, cracked eight ribs, and dislocated both shoulders. I'd landed exactly one hit—a glancing blow to his forearm that he barely noticed.
The lesson was clear: fledgling strength meant nothing against technique and age.
"Good to know. Now I know exactly how outclassed I am."
Three Days Later
The firing range was different.
Twenty targets hung on chains across the hall, each painted with crude Lycan silhouettes. The chains connected to a pulley system that kept them swinging—erratic, unpredictable, simulating combat movement.
Soren handed each fledgling a Beretta loaded with silver training rounds.
"Fifteen shots. Head or heart. Anything else is failure."
The first fledgling stepped up. Two hits out of fifteen. The targets were moving too fast, the silver rounds punching holes in shoulders, stomachs, empty air.
Second fledgling: four hits.
Third: three.
My turn.
The Beretta's weight was familiar. Not from vampire instinct—from somewhere deeper. Surgical tools required steady hands. Precision. The ability to place a scalpel within millimeters of critical structures.
A gun was just a scalpel with better range.
The first target swung left. I tracked its movement, predicted the arc, squeezed. The round punched through the painted skull.
Second target. Third. Fourth.
Fifteen shots. Fifteen hits. All headshots.
The firing range went quiet.
Soren walked to the targets, examining each hole. His expression didn't change, but something shifted in his posture.
"Where did you learn to shoot?"
"Self-taught." The lie came easily. "Lots of practice."
"Practice." He tested the word. "Most fledglings take years to achieve this accuracy. You've been turned—what—three weeks?"
"Four, now."
He grunted. Not approval exactly. More like acknowledgment of an unexpected variable.
Movement on the balcony above. A figure in black leather, watching from the shadows. Blood Appraisal painted her signature bright: [ 178 BP ].
Selene.
She'd been observing training all week—evaluating recruits for Death Dealer potential. But her attention had been distant, professional. Routine assessment of disposable assets.
Now she was focused. On me.
Our eyes met across the firing range. Three seconds. Her expression unreadable. Then she turned and disappeared into the mansion's depths.
[ SELENE RELATIONSHIP: INTRIGUED (8/100) ]
"Fledglings shouldn't have that accuracy. She's wondering what I am."
Good. Let her wonder.
The Feeding License
Training week included sanctioned hunts.
Every two days, Soren released the candidates into Budapest with six-hour windows. Return with blood on your lips or don't return at all. The coven needed killers, not philosophers.
I used the time efficiently.
The homeless were easiest—marginalized, invisible, rarely missed. I found them in underpasses and abandoned buildings, their heartbeats slow with exhaustion and cheap alcohol. Quick strikes. Arterial precision. Unconscious in seconds, dead in minutes.
[ BP ACQUIRED: 4 ]
[ BP ACQUIRED: 3 ]
[ BP ACQUIRED: 5 ]
The addicts were next. District VII's back alleys teemed with them—heroin, methamphetamine, the slow suicide of poverty. Their blood tasted bitter, chemical-laced, but the system didn't discriminate.
[ BP ACQUIRED: 3 ]
[ BP ACQUIRED: 2 ]
[ BP ACQUIRED: 4 ]
Eighteen kills in one week. Eighteen humans whose lives ended beneath my fangs.
The first few still registered. Guilt flickering at the edges of surgical detachment. Memories absorbed through Memory Siphon—fragments of lives, loves, losses.
By kill twelve, the guilt had faded.
By kill eighteen, I felt nothing but satisfaction at the BP totals.
[ PSYCHOLOGICAL ADAPTATION: PREDATOR MENTALITY INTEGRATING ]
[ NOTE: HUMANITY SCORE DECREASED. CURRENT: 72/100 ]
I stared at the notification in the dim light of my chamber. Humanity score. The system was tracking my moral decay with the same clinical precision it applied to everything else.
"Does it matter? I'm already a monster. Might as well be an efficient one."
The thought should have troubled me. It didn't.
[ CURRENT BP: 64/100 ]
[ GENE TREE UNLOCK THRESHOLD: REACHED ]
[ PROCEED TO INTERFACE FOR SELECTION ]
I waited until midnight, when the fledgling quarters were silent, to explore the gene trees properly.
The interface expanded in my vision—twin trees branching with possibility. Vampire on the left, roots thick with potential abilities. Lycan on the right, still locked but visible now, detected through Trix's blood from the metro tunnels.
[ VAMPIRE GENE TREE - TIER 1 UNLOCKS ]
[ ENHANCED REFLEXES LV.1 - COST: 10 BP ]
[ - REACTION TIME IMPROVEMENT: 40% ]
[ - COMBAT TRACKING: BASIC ]
[ - DURATION: PERMANENT ]
[ NIGHT VISION LV.1 - COST: 10 BP ]
[ - DARKNESS PENALTY: ELIMINATED ]
[ - DETAIL RESOLUTION: STANDARD ]
The choice was obvious. Surgeon's precision plus vampire speed equaled surgical lethality. Night vision could wait. Reflexes won fights.
[ CONFIRM PURCHASE: ENHANCED REFLEXES LV.1? Y/N ]
Yes.
Fire poured through my nervous system.
Every nerve ending ignited simultaneously—a million tiny explosions racing from brain to fingertips. My muscles spasmed. Teeth clenched hard enough to crack enamel. The stone bed groaned as my body arched, fighting changes it didn't understand.
The transformation lasted seventeen seconds. Felt like hours.
When it ended, I lay gasping on cold stone, sweat soaking my undershirt, tremors still rippling through my limbs.
[ ENHANCED REFLEXES LV.1 ACQUIRED ]
[ CURRENT BP: 54/100 ]
[ NOTE: NEURAL PATHWAY OPTIMIZATION IN PROGRESS. FULL INTEGRATION: 24 HOURS. MINOR TREMORS EXPECTED. ]
"Thirty-six hour shift was easier than this."
But when I stood, testing my new body, the difference was immediate. The room felt slower. Movement that had been instantaneous now registered as trackable. Soren's earlier attacks—lightning-fast, impossible to follow—replayed in memory with new clarity.
Still too fast to block. But visible now. Learnable.
I grinned in the darkness, fangs fully extended.
Time to become dangerous.
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