Vampiric Secrets

Teddie had never been in a library before.

The library of Pugna was supposedly fairly average amongst the cities. However, to Teddie, this place felt massive. It was an endless hallway of books lined up across the walls, with statues of important people standing next to each shelf.

Why was Teddie here? He wanted to find information, at the very least. The issue was that nobody was familiar with the exact specifics of vampiric strength potions. That left them with only assumptions.

He already spent a lot of his time asking around. The issue was that the general populace was just as unfamiliar with this potion as he was. So, he decided to go to one of the places that Adelyn always talked so fondly about, a library. They always stored so much information in here, so he hoped that he could at least find something.

There was a desk with a librarian quietly waiting at the front. Teddie supposed it would be in his best interests to ask her about the situation.

“Um, ah… excuse me, miss-!” Teddie spoke up. “Is there any information on… uhh… how do I put this… forbidden potions in here…. Not that I’m doing anything suspicious it’s just there’s something I need to know…”

Teddie had stumbled over his words a fair bit, but he hoped he got the point across.

“Forbidden potions? We don’t have any books on specifically that, though you might be interested in checking out the crime section,” the librarian said. She pointed to a small section of the library in the corner.

“Thank you…” Teddie said, before walking towards it. After he arrived, he looked at the shelves and stared for a good long while. He realized that even with this limited selection, there were still a lot of books to go through.

“Mr. Bear. How much is that… it’s a lot, isn’t it?” Teddie said, looking down to his stuffed bear that he was holding. As he was waiting for a response, a familiar voice came from behind him.

“Seems like we have to do some skimming, then.”

“Adelyn!”

Adelyn stepped to Teddie’s side. She looked at the massive library of books with a glint in her eyes.

“I didn’t realize you were here too,” Teddie said.

“Did you expect me to see a library and not check it out? The second round is done for today and the tournament finishes tomorrow. So I might as well help you out, right?” Adelyn responded.

“Ah, well… thanks, then. So, are we just going to skim…?”

“Mhm!” Adelyn said. “It shouldn’t take too long if we both go through them really fast. Just, follow after me.”

Adelyn lifted one book off of the higher shelves with her telekinetic abilities. Then, with a spin of her hand, she flipped through it really fast. The pages flapped from back to front, and within less than twenty seconds she put down the book.

“I… I don’t think I can skim the same way you can,” Teddie said. “You really saw everything in the book?”

“As said, it’s just a skim. That one was about the history of fire magic and its usage in crime. It’s not particularly relevant when we’re dealing with potions and vampires.”

“I don’t think I can even skim that fast… but I’ll try,” Teddie said. Adelyn was definitely a weird one. But, he said he would help.

“Right. Put anything that might not be relevant into one pile, and anything you think might be important into another pile. We’ll get through this in no time!”

Adelyn had already skimmed through another book as she was saying that. Teddie had no idea how he would keep up.

***

Despite Teddie reading much slower than Adelyn, he felt pretty happy with his progress so far. They spent around an hour together skimming through the books. At this point, they had probably gotten through about one-hundred collective titles together.

Unfortunately, most of those books went into the unhelpful pile. Crime had a lot of categories that weren’t helpful to this specific case. But they did have a few that might be of interest.

Four books. Mentioning potion and magic based crimes, and one on vampiric investigations.

“Well, it seems like we’ve narrowed things down a bit,” Adelyn said. “Now, we get to the best part. We get to actually pay attention!”

Adelyn grabbed a book on potion crimes and began flipping through it.

“Be sure to keep an eye out for any little details, anything could be important for this breakthrough.”

Teddie decided to grab the book on vampire investigations and begin reading. He looked through each page, detail by detail. He then realized that this might not have been the most fun read in the library.

It went into detail on vampires. Cozy had stated that vampires were frowned upon due to them stealing powers from the moon, but the book went into detail on various evil vampires and their crimes. Then, how they were hunted and finally put to justice.

They were caused by humans who forsook their humanity in exchange for power. A taboo tactic where one’s blood became tainted by a ritual in order to harvest energy from the moon. Vampires are never born. Instead, the path was chosen. A human had to undergo a painful ritual to become one. The ritual was not described.

Vampires themselves were very difficult to track down. Their signature quality was red eyes, but those were not mutually exclusive traits to vampires. Teeth were another trait that indicated vampirism, but it was also not mutually exclusive.

This seemed to cause a lot of drama across history. A lot of traits vampires had were not mutually exclusive to only them. As a result, in modern times, the hunt against them has died down. Primarily because of the fear of catching an innocent person. The only way the described traits were surefire is if the person was already well-known and established.

Vampires had intense physical strength, and an appetite for blood. They healed much faster than the average human, and the blood that was within their veins caused immense nausea to those who were in contact with it.

That last trait was one of the few traits that were inherent to vampires. It was something to keep in mind, as Teddie began delving deeper into the book. After a few more pages of flipping through history, he finally found something of interest.

Vampiric mimicry. It was a small section of the rather large book, but this was the main thing that he needed to learn about in order to find the cheater. Teddie began to read through the pages in hopes of finding something.

The book said: Attempting to mimic the essence of vampires is an act prohibited by law. It is not as severe as becoming a vampire yourself, but there are still ramifications. Such mimicries include via potions, temporary arcane arts, or machinery. They are more difficult to track because there is no consistent basis for this. Even the surefire methods of detecting a vampire are not universal for those simply mimicking their traits.

This wasn’t helpful so far, but Teddie kept on reading.

There is a strong chance that after persistent use, the drinker will start to exhibit strange qualities. This includes both mental fatigue, lack of control over their emotions, and blood leaking out of the corner of their eyes.

That was disturbing.

“Adelyn, I think I found something…” Teddie said, looking over to her. It seemed like Adelyn was on her second book now.

“Oh? What is it?” Adelyn looked up and at Teddie.

Teddie showed Adelyn the passage, reading it out loud to her.

“Ew… that’s gross. Though wait, that actually lines up!” Adelyn said, before taking out a book and flipping through it. She showed Teddie a page, an illustration of a defeated man with some kind of dust dissipating away from him. “This is the case of someone who was suspected to use an incomplete vampiric ritual, but instead it consumed him and formed a massive monster instead. There was blood from his eyes!”

“So we just wait until blood comes from their eyes?” Teddie asked. “Are we really just going to have to wait…”

“Well, I don’t think so,” Adelyn said. “There has to be something else.”

Teddie looked back into his book, and flipped onto another page. The very last page, but something did catch his eye. He began to read it out loud.

“Lots of these results are because vampiric mimicry often comes from incomplete portions of the actual ritual itself. That is why they are inconsistent with the features they give. But, due to their instability, the user often loses their ability to control their magic well. It comes out stronger, but often more wild.”

“Bingo. Isn’t that perfect for our tournament investigation?” Adelyn asked. “If everyone’s trained for this tournament, then we’d be expecting far greater control than normal. So, Teddie, if you can keep a mental note of the rest of the combatants for us… and who might be suspicious tomorrow… that would be a huge help!”

“Really?” Teddie said. “If it’ll help you guys, then sure. I think I can do it.”

“You’re the best,” Adelyn cheerfully smiled at him before getting up. “I think we spent a good long while here. I need to be rested for tomorrow’s matches, so I’m gonna go back to the inn.”

“Ah, same,” Teddie said. He watched as Adelyn began to telekinetically sort all of the books back onto the shelves. “I’m hoping that the organizers will be able to do something about this too.”

“Mhm. If you tell them this information, then they’ll know what to look out for,” Adelyn responded, quickly finishing her sorting. “I’m sure they would appreciate it as well.”

“Well, good luck with the tournament then,” Teddie said as they both began to leave. “You guys got this.”

“And you got this too. Remember, we’re counting on you!”

Teddie supposed that was right. They were counting on him to solve this problem, and he absolutely did not want to disappoint.