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Authors: Hideyuki Kikuchi
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upkeep by machines. Though no one could say how many millennia ago they’d been planted or sculpted, they looked as fresh and new as if they’d been placed there only yesterday. But there were no signs that life went on here. The machines alone lived, and their mechanical eyes and fiery arrows were trained on D.
When his horse halted before the palace gates, D quickly slipped out of the saddle. The thick doors dotted with countless hobnails were already open wide.
“Enter, please.” The same synthesized voice reverberated from the dark corridor.
A hazy darkness bound the interior. Not that the windowpanes were dampening the sunlight—this effect was a result of the artificial lighting. In fact, the windows in the vampire’s palace were no more than ornamentation, impervious to the slightest ray of light.
As he walked down the corridors guided by the voice, D noticed that each and every window was set in a niche in the wall. It would take two or three steps up the scaffolding to climb to the window from the hallway: one couldn’t walk over to the window, but would rather pop up in front of it. The design had been copied from German castles in the middle ages.
The predominant element of vampire civilization was their love of medieval styles. Even in their superiorly advanced, tech-filled Capital, the designs of many of the buildings closely resembled those of medieval Europe. Perhaps something in their DNA cried out for a return to the golden age that lived on in their genetic memory, a time when superstition and legend and all manner of weird creatures prevailed. Maybe that explained why so many detestable monsters and spirits had been resurrected by their super-science.
The voice led D to a splendid door of massive proportions. At the bottom of the door there was an opening large enough for a cat to come and go as it pleased. This door opened without a sound as well, and D set foot into a world of even deeper darkness. His haggard air was gone in an instant. His nerves, his muscles, his circulation—every part of him told him the time he had known had suddenly changed. The instant he smelled the thick perfume wafting throughout the room—which appeared to be a hall—D knew the cause.
Time-Bewitching Incense. I’ve heard rumors about this
stuff
. When he sighted the pair of silhouettes hazily sketched by wispy flames at the far end of the vast hall, his suspicion became conviction.
The silhouettes gave off a ghastly aura that made even D’s peerless features stiffen with tension. Beside a slender form—which he knew at a glance to be female—stood a figure of remarkable grandeur dressed in black. “We’ve been waiting for you. You are the first human to ever make it this far in one piece.” From the corners of the vermilion lips that loosed this solemn voice poked a pair of white fangs. “As our guest, you deserve an introduction. I am the lord of this castle and administrator of the Tenth Frontier Sector, Count Magnus Lee.”
.
Time-Bewitching Incense could be called the ultimate chemical compound born of the vampires’ physiological needs.
For the most part, the information and rumors people passed along about the physiology of these fiends—the various stories told since time immemorial—were essentially true. Outlandish tales about transforming into bats, turning themselves into fog and billowing away, and so on—stories that there were vampires who could do such things and others who couldn’t were taken as fact. Just as in human society ability varied according to an individual’s disposition, so too among the vampires there were some demons who freely controlled the weather, while other fiends had mastery over lower animals.
Many aspects of the vampire’s fantastic physiology, however, remained shrouded in mystery.
For example, the reason why they slept by day but awoke at night remained unclear. Even enveloped by darkness in a secret chamber that blocked out all possible light, a
When his horse halted before the palace gates, D quickly slipped out of the saddle. The thick doors dotted with countless hobnails were already open wide.
“Enter, please.” The same synthesized voice reverberated from the dark corridor.
A hazy darkness bound the interior. Not that the windowpanes were dampening the sunlight—this effect was a result of the artificial lighting. In fact, the windows in the vampire’s palace were no more than ornamentation, impervious to the slightest ray of light.
As he walked down the corridors guided by the voice, D noticed that each and every window was set in a niche in the wall. It would take two or three steps up the scaffolding to climb to the window from the hallway: one couldn’t walk over to the window, but would rather pop up in front of it. The design had been copied from German castles in the middle ages.
The predominant element of vampire civilization was their love of medieval styles. Even in their superiorly advanced, tech-filled Capital, the designs of many of the buildings closely resembled those of medieval Europe. Perhaps something in their DNA cried out for a return to the golden age that lived on in their genetic memory, a time when superstition and legend and all manner of weird creatures prevailed. Maybe that explained why so many detestable monsters and spirits had been resurrected by their super-science.
The voice led D to a splendid door of massive proportions. At the bottom of the door there was an opening large enough for a cat to come and go as it pleased. This door opened without a sound as well, and D set foot into a world of even deeper darkness. His haggard air was gone in an instant. His nerves, his muscles, his circulation—every part of him told him the time he had known had suddenly changed. The instant he smelled the thick perfume wafting throughout the room—which appeared to be a hall—D knew the cause.
Time-Bewitching Incense. I’ve heard rumors about this
stuff
. When he sighted the pair of silhouettes hazily sketched by wispy flames at the far end of the vast hall, his suspicion became conviction.
The silhouettes gave off a ghastly aura that made even D’s peerless features stiffen with tension. Beside a slender form—which he knew at a glance to be female—stood a figure of remarkable grandeur dressed in black. “We’ve been waiting for you. You are the first human to ever make it this far in one piece.” From the corners of the vermilion lips that loosed this solemn voice poked a pair of white fangs. “As our guest, you deserve an introduction. I am the lord of this castle and administrator of the Tenth Frontier Sector, Count Magnus Lee.”
.
Time-Bewitching Incense could be called the ultimate chemical compound born of the vampires’ physiological needs.
For the most part, the information and rumors people passed along about the physiology of these fiends—the various stories told since time immemorial—were essentially true. Outlandish tales about transforming into bats, turning themselves into fog and billowing away, and so on—stories that there were vampires who could do such things and others who couldn’t were taken as fact. Just as in human society ability varied according to an individual’s disposition, so too among the vampires there were some demons who freely controlled the weather, while other fiends had mastery over lower animals.
Many aspects of the vampire’s fantastic physiology, however, remained shrouded in mystery.
For example, the reason why they slept by day but awoke at night remained unclear. Even enveloped by darkness in a secret chamber that blocked out all possible light, a
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