209 Vampirism 101 IV : Conquering Emotions, Aura

"A vampire is comfortable in any angle of elevation, or terrain. Queen told me how difficult it was for you guys to go through Sera's check point. After getting over my extreme shock that it still exists, I had to get over my embarrassment that you used a formation like some sort of human or elven army. Seriously, that's disgusting! A single vampire of sufficient mental strength and power can bring an entire nation to the ground in hours. You need to learn how to utilize your natural given gifts and talents. Be a vampire!"

"Is that why you have me hanging upside down a balcony?" I asked her with a glare on my face.

"Well you've mastered pain, or at least part of it. Now you have to master your body and your emotions! Do you know that a vampire has the ability to become literally weightless, and it's not limited to elders, even a revenant can do so. Flight is a little out of your league at the moment, but what I want you to do, is to walk on the wall, like you were walking on the ground. You must make your own gravitational field, such that if you're standing upside down, you hair and clothes won't be affected by gravity, they will stay put and down, as if you were on the ground."

"And how the hell am I supposed to do that? Because leaving me hanging upside down from a balcony almost a thousand feet in the air does not seem to be helping. And what's with the ropes." I asked her, as I wiggled my bound body.

"to make gravity walk for you, rather than you walking with it, you have to let go of excess thoughts, and focus on the task at hand."

"Seriously?"

"Yes Oppa seriously. As for the ropes they're a little special, you see vampires can affect their surroundings in very peculiar ways. You're not ready for telekinesis, but your ready for an aura. The world is naturally afraid of a vampire, so they avoid them. The vampires of nowadays are so approachable a bunny would leave it's children close to a vampire that's starving.It sickens me what we've become, but they still have their good points. You must learn to tap into your natural vampire aura to make those ropes afraid of you, and do it fast too, before my familiars chew a hole through it."

"What!?"

"I'm just kidding, Oppa, you should calm down. But seriously hurry up, so that we can get to the next part of your training."

And then she left me to myself and certain doom should things go wrong. If there's anything I've learnt from Baeki so far, it's that the ancient vampires were powerful not just from their body or bloodline, but also due to their mindset. Compared to the vampires of today, those guys were a lot colder, crueler and focused. They had attachments, but never to the point where their attachments would be their weakness. If an attachment would become a weakness, they never hesitated to cut it off. Without a doubt, ancient vampires were poster children for antisocial characteristics. They didn't play well with others and even themselves, living their life with a single minded focus of me, myself, and I.

But I didn't want to be like that. To be honest I have enough darkness as it is, and it was growing. I didn't want to add anything else to it, because if I do, I'll probably won't like what I'll become. But yet the methods of a new age vampire won't work for me, not anymore. All of my decisions and choices from now on has to be extreme, decisive and focused. If I was going to act, I had to make sure it was in the most efficient way possible, and to truly get to that point, I had to fully understand who and exactly what kind of vampire I am. And if the answer doesn't satisfy me, I have to be better.

I took a deep breath and tried to focus my mind, it would have been better if she had told me exactly what an aura was, or how it relates with a vampire. Or even better how do I find and bring it out. But finding an Aura should not be too hard, after all, we all have one right?

One hour....two hours...three hours.....seven hours....sixteen hours...….30 hours. I think I've lost count by now. I was doing nothing but hanging still under the balcony, not exactly sure of what I had to do. It was getting me really frustrated, and I've spent the past thirty minutes yelling at Baeki to come and get me down from here. Unfortunately the person who showed up, was the last person I wanted to see right now.

"What do you want your 'highness', want to tell me how unworthy I am or something?"

"No, I'm not. I understand you don't like me, and that my views and beliefs might have offended you. I will not apologize for that, it's your business if you want to feel bad about what's true."

I shook my head and looked up at queen. Then I said to her.

"You're a total bitch you know that right? There's no saving you, people like you are destined to be miserable and alone, hated by everyone around you, and never truly loved because you see things from the top of a mountain, that no one or anything can ever reach you, even if they're standing right next to you." I said to Queen, moving my head so she could see my eyes glaring up at her.

"The only people who are miserable or a going to be, are your children. For having a father that's as worthless as you."

I felt my blood boil intensely, she was playing with words she wasn't supposed to. What kind of a woman was this, she was playing with my insecurities and for that, I wanted to kill her, but I was tied here with some sort of strange rope that could restrict my vampiric strength. All I could do was glare at her, and whole heartedly wish that my anger could cross the distance and take her head of her shoulder. But it was at that moment I felt a pulse go through and around my body, like a protective coat or a displacement of air. I've been angry before, but this was the first time I had such a feeling. I ignored Queen and furrowed my eyebrows, trying to make sense of this new feeling and what it meant.

"You feel it don't you? To understand what aura is, you have to go back to the most basic description of it. Many people believe that aura is an invisible but well felt form of energy that describes your current state of emotions. Some believe they actually have colors, differing according to what you feel. For vampires, we have more control over our emotions, and that's because we don't leave it inside of ourselves, rather we're always projecting and channeling it outwards. When we do that, the aura is formed, and it is with our aura that we can affect our surroundings, achieving feats like telekinesis and flight at it's advance mastery.

You've learnt how to conquer and master pain, now you have to learn how to conquer and master your emotions, because when you master your emotions, as a vampire; that means you master your body. Focus on the task at hand, do not be swayed by feelings, but be ruled by logic. You'll see things clearer then."

Another ploy to make me an emotionless mass murderer. But one that was very true. I tend to keep everything I feel bottled up, in fact every vampire I know does that. They wouldn't have had a choice in doing so, and that's because over the years they've had to bring their head down and be silent when they were being tortured and beaten by the guards. And on a normal day, they had to bear all of the injustice, so that things wouldn't be much worse than it already is. Quite a few people were willing to stand up and speak out, but their end would be just as bloody as their beginnings.

Being unable to express ourselves, has been the reason why abilities like the Aura have become all but extinct among other vampires. Baeki and her army of stuck up vampires have been relatively cut off from all of the drama for thousands of years. It's why they can still use such abilities. But I was sure of one thing though, if I do teach this to my soldiers, they would be more proficient in it than the vampires of castle Sarang. Because they have a lot of things to express, but anger is not the only one. It would have been detrimental to show love to your family in public for fear of a werewolf or human guard getting irritated by the sight and beating you half to death. It was not just their bodies that were imprisoned, but also their hearts. This would be another way for them to express the freedom.

Before this, vampires only ever expressed their negative emotions. Because those emotions were synonymous with their strength, however I would be doing things very differently. Anger was a powerful driving force, it was the main component of any battle driven man or woman. But it was not the most powerful force to exist, maybe it was incredibly cheesy and stupid for a bloodthirsty vampire to be saying this, but there was no emotion more powerful than love, not even hate. And that's because love is the foundation emotion, the very first and most primal one. Hate, anger, happiness, lust, greed, pride and so many others, are all born from a love of something or someone. So I channeled that, and just as I expected, the ropes snapped, and I was falling. And as I did, I think I should have thought this through.