Dhampirica

II

ON THE SECOND DAY of the trial, Yvanna made sure they kept an even lower profile than before. She was still recovering from the hits that she had taken last night. Fortunately for her, as one of the dhampiri, she could hit as hard as a vampire and absorb more damage than a human. Unfortunately for her, her opponents were also dhampiri and they were trained to be merciless in their battles.

The pair spent the day continuing their march north-east. An opportune encounter saw them killing and eating a lone deer. Yvanna took its meat whilst her charge took its blood. The girl, noticing the strangeness of Yvanna's choice to not take blood, commented on this.

"I get that animal blood is disgusting, but you don't want any of it?"

For vampires, drinking blood was a necessity, and eating food was done only for novelty's sake. As a dhampirica, blood was available to Yvanna as an option for sustenance, as well as food. However, blood was also something she actively avoided. At Crossgrave Academy, the attitude towards consuming blood was as liberal as it was in the outside world. With vampires at the peak of modern society, there was no shortage of blood. However, dhampiri were also taught that blood fostered a kind of dependency that was unlike most other addictions. For this reason, some dhampiri preferred a diet of exclusively food. It didn't seem strange to Yvanna to choose such a lifestyle. Though perhaps to common vampires — who spent little time around their kind — it was.  

It didn't seem particularly necessary to tell her charge all of this, and so she merely replied, "I'll be fine. You need the energy."

Later that day, as they were walking up a steep rocky incline, Yvanna noticed something was wrong with her charge.

"Are you alright?" she asked, stopping to get a better look at her.

The girl's complexion looked unusually wan for a vampire and beads of sweat were forming at her brow. "I... I don't know. I feel... strange... light-headed." 

Yvanna frowned. She didn't think that the vampire she had fought last night had done any lasting damage to her, but perhaps she had been mistaken. "That man you fought... did he cut or bite you at all? Did you get hurt by anything else?"

As she murmured in disagreement, Yvanna placed her hand against her forehead. It was startlingly cold. It wasn't particularly chilly outside, and vampires had a much higher resistance to extreme temperatures anyway. Perhaps it was some kind of infection...

Yvanna tossed her backpack to the ground. "Alright, I think you should remove your clothes," she said to her. 

The girl took a step back, her eyes narrowing as she did so. "You're joking, right?" Likely noticing that Yvanna's expression was far from humorous, she added, "There are probably a dozen cameras watching us right now, and you want me to strip? It's not that serious. I'm a vampire — I'll recover."

"I'll decide whether it's serious or not," Yvanna said, giving her a pointed look. "Just do as I say."

She scoffed. "You think just cause I'm not a real noble, I'll do whatever the heck you want? Forget it." 

In a low and steady voice, Yvanna replied, "Whether you're a noble or not doesn't matter to me. If you're willing to throw away our chance at surviving this competition, then by all means, go ahead. If not, then take your clothes off, so I can see what's wrong." 

The look of fury she sent her lasted so long that Yvanna thought she wasn't going to do as she asked. But after a minute of bitter silence between them, she began to cast off her clothes. When she was down to her underwear, she looked clearly discomforted, but Yvanna felt anything but. She moved closer to inspect her body and found, as told, no injuries at all. And even if there was an infection, for a vampire, the sickness would be long gone by now.