Chapter 1: A Place for my head

ArGh

Hurts.

Painful!

Augustin felt an abnormal throbbing pain in his head, as though someone had ruthlessly beaten him up with a blunt weapon. He tried to move his body, yet his limbs refused to obey. At first, he thought he was lying flat on the ground, but wasn't so sure anymore.

The pain is unbearable.

''Sleep Paralysis? Lucid dream? No, it's something else but...'

Ahh...

It's getting annoying...

He tried to remember what happened before the pain, but his memory got hazy... even dark. He found his thoughts hard to control.

And at that moment, when he felt an immeasurable amount of pain. The reason, unknown to him.

Am I dying right now?

I DO NOT WANT TO DIE

All his suicidal thoughts in life were nothing in the face of that instinctive dread that is death.

He wanted to survive. Who doesn't he thought? He knew it wouldn't help in this situation. Unfortunately, he had lost control of his emotions, thoughts, and even his body. Thoughts of his drifted to strange things and questions about what life is, and other unrelated questions surfaced in his mind.

He tried to focus on his memory. Augustin used all the willpower left in him to focus on that something. That darkness, that sad life he once had.

Until he instinctively felt that it was time, time for the final push, to escape this place.

Nevertheless, at that moment. He did something unexpected. He followed his instincts to escape. Like a cornered animal, he went for it. Without a single thought, he lashed out with everything that he could. Final struggle, that final push.

He felt as if something sliced him in half, cut him off from the thing that imprisoned him.

Then he lost concusses once again.

Once, he woke up again.

He drifted into nothingness, a moment that felt like an eternity. That was all he could perceive.

'At least I'm not in pain anymore, yet I'm still in a deep shit if I wake up and will be late for work.' Augustin thought.

'Fuck! Why am I still thinking about work? I'll take time off. They can't do shit about it.'

By going with the current he saved his strength, and while doing so he was thinking about problems for the future him.

When suddenly throbbing pain inundated Augustin. He felt internally that it was his last chance to escape. While slowly accumulating immaterial strength. He saw or rather felt a peculiar light. Instinctively his mind feed that strange glowing orb his accumulated strength, and slowly, but steadily, that strange light was coming closer and closer to him until he could finally open his teary eyes.

...

His vision blurred first before being obscured by a faint crimson red. All he could see was an appealingly blue sky dotted with white clouds that drifted lazily in the light breeze. Crows circled on the horizon. The blazing midday sun mercilessly shone at his eyes, forcing him to close them. A cold breeze swept over him and a smell of damp moss, rain, and wet tree trunks invaded his nostrils as he blankly stared at the sky. He was dazzled there for a while as he felt too many factors at once after a long time of nothingness. It lasted until he heard graceful footsteps slowly coming in his direction.

Finally, waking up from the daze, he turned his head. Light no longer shone straight into his eyes. Immediately when he saw the vast forest, this unfamiliarity bothered him like a stone in a shoe. Dark tree trunks cast their shadows like overhanging limbs across the path before a flat expanse of land with a layer of emerald and lush grass, which I was the center of. Whoever approached him felt no need to sneak, as it was coming closer and closer. He couldn't lose that feeling that something was wrong, very wrong. As he was coming closer to the truth, a few meters away was standing a woman wielding a sword dripping with blood, contemplating whether to attack.

With a glance, he identifies the girl as a threat. She was much younger than him, in the prime of her youth. Possibly because of the lack of sunlight, her face was slightly pale, but her skin remained lustrous as it exuded the vibes of a young girl. Her beautiful brown eyes had a murderous gleam, which added to them something exciting. Curly auburn hair obscured her eyes, slightly moving in the breeze. On the left side of her waist was a wound. Still, she was armed, and I certainly would not stop a blade with bare hands, leaving me no choice but to escape. But before I could get up and make a run for it, she charmingly tilted her head and asked.

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"So, lovely brother, are we fighting or what? ~," Asked the mysterious woman.

"What about no?" Said Augustin, who sprung to his feet, still thinking about what to do.

She started moving in his direction, visibly not pleased with the answer. With a smile on her pale face, the mysterious woman said, "Oh, don't be like that Augustin. You knew all along we had to do it~. You are even the one who started it~..."

This smile, though momentary, stunned Augustine. However, this was not the last thing the mysterious woman had to say. Since when she had barely finished her sentence, she burst out angrily and, shouting, said, "WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY NO!!! I'm doing what they taught us all our life to be something more, so much more than what we are now. I'm bleeding Augustin... You did this to me !!!"

Just a second after this outburst of emotions, she rushed toward him like a hungry wolf left behind by a pack, weary of waiting for its prey to get close enough to finish it with one precise blow. She drop-kicked him. That woman didn't want it to end just now. She wanted to feel the adrenaline rushing straight into her head. She seemed as if she lived by nothing else. Moved just by hunger, hunger for blood, hunger for screams. Without even for a moment, for a blink of a second thinking about the consequences of her actions.

The pain hit Augustin again like a raging waterfall, racing angrily to the bottom to upset the calm water below that was his head. Some of his hazy memories brightened like a misty day in the morning.

...

*Creek*

I heard the metal gate to my training room open, at least that's what they call it. I would rather call it a prison or an arena. It was a rare sight, but a welcome one, at least. It was getting pretty boring. First, I rushed into a corner to not get circled by a pack of beasts and get a clear sight of what was coming this time. But they never came to be. What I expected to be a pack of flesh-hungry beasts was a human, a maid to be exact. When she first saw me, or rather the ''furnishings'' she was visibly frightened. Do they expect me to kill her? No, it doesn't add up. She doesn't have any visible weapon on her, and she is frightened of me, or rather, she is frightened by all those bodies.

Finally, the maid mustered up the courage to speak. She took three steps forward and said, "Young Master Augustin, your father wants to see you. P-Please, come with me. "

The maid was clearly nervous and inexperienced. He could tell by her posture and how she behaved. Probably a new one, a trainee, he thought. Augustin let his guard down and went in her direction. Just three steps before he stopped in his tracks and said to her in a low tone, "Lead the way"

Augustin said nothing else, as if it wasn't necessary for him to do so. Tell more and you don't seem like the one with authority. He didn't need to excuse his bearing to the mere maid.

Maid turned and went back through the metal gate. The gate was four meters in diameter and had strange engravings that resembled various beasts. Augustin saw that specific gate for almost one and a half year. It all started after he awakened his bloodline. Following was one hundred sixty degrees turn for the worse, and it wasn't pleasant for body and mind one.

The reason you ask is simple for him to understand and not ask too many questions or it became one after a long hour of being beaten to death by knights that were supposed to defend him with their lives. Considering the fact that our family was of the believing kind, it wasn't strange to offer a prayer or not-so-significant sacrifice of some sort. It all became a real problem when he got to know that he was one of such sacrifices, and not only him, but his brothers and sisters, too. 

*step* *step* *step*

As Augustin was thinking ahead of him extended a luxurious dark hardwood corridor, the same corridor that probably still remembers the time of Augustin's ancestors. A long, straight line spread out, that line was a carmine carpet, which harmonized with the old-fashioned elegance of the dark hardwood. The ornate design, woven texture, and mixed shades of the threads strongly counterpointed the dark wood. It was really a piece of art, figuratively and literally because of all the wall paintings and sculptures placed throughout the hallway.

After a while, Augustin noted they were going the wrong way. The maid led him in a direction of living quarters and not his father's office, but for now, he thought about letting it be. He wasn't in a hurry to see him. And he surely could kill at least the maid if something went wrong.

Finally, the maid stopped in her tracks, before her a bathhouse. Immediately, Augustin realized clotted blood was not the best perfume, and his appearance of a stone age man whose last bath was a century ago did not count as one of the newest fashion cachets. 'It wasn't the best idea to present myself like that to my father. I need to save some dignity, at least. I'm still a nobleman,'' thought Augustin.

When Augustine moved to enter the bathhouse, the maid was already noticeably calmer than before, so she said this time without trembling, looking him straight in the eyes, "Young Master Augustine, please go in. The water should be hot enough for a bath. For now, I should excuse myself, as I must fetch maidservants and a hairdresser to help you get dressed and bring your hair in order, for a meeting with your father, Lord Osborne."

Paying no mind to her, Augustin entered the bathhouse. He threw off his dirty, torn rags and stepped into a porcelain tub of warm water. The bathroom itself was not unusual in his eyes. Paying no mind to her, Augustin entered the bathhouse. He threw off his dirty, torn rags and stepped into a porcelain tub of warm water. Marble and river rock gave the walls and floors a natural and luxurious feel. Pure extravagance and lavishness, used to decorate one of the smaller bathrooms in the mansion, was something not every noble house could boast. The painting dominated the front view by an anonymous author depicting a holy battle with a sentient beast led by Saint Marks, the first to be endowed with a holy will. To the left hung a Victorian mirror unadorned with a hint of ruby and a gleaming gold frame with a bit of the beast's core. And a standing porcelain bathtub right in the center of it all. 

 

Augustin was lying in the warm water. He enjoyed every moment. This feeling allowed him to remember his life before his bloodline awakened. 'Those days were better, or maybe I wasn't paying enough attention to notice,' Augustin thought. 

 

After some time, the servants the maid mentioned before appeared at the door and came in with bath equipment and outfits in hand. Maidservants began to work. They cut his long curly hair and thoroughly washed his muscular for his age body. The fresher scars on his body stung when maidservants started putting moisturizing lotions on him. But it wasn't a pain that he couldn't ignore. After numerous life-and-death battles, he has built up some resistance to the pain. Finally, it came to the outfit, accessories, footwear, and makeup. 

Ten minutes or so and a maid came back with a big mirror in her hands. His wet, curly hair was black as tar with crimson highlights. The colors of anger and power. They perfectly reprised his social status and his youth. They were his pride; his father named him after them. His attire emphasized his dominant aura, as well as his emotionless blood-red eyes.

Pleased with himself, Augustin nodded his head and said, "Lead me to my father, maid."

The maid nodded and said, "Yes, Young master. " After she said so, she opened the door for Augustin, who followed her and went together to the office of the head of the family.