Never Gets To Grow Old

Vampire!Horatio, version one.

In Muzillac, Horatio attempts to halt French soldiers from assaulting a young woman. His efforts result in him being fatally stabbed by the men who are certain in their command and the fact that their marquis will not fault them for their actions. Still, they find themselves compelled to leave, and Horatio lays upon the ground, feeling his life slip away in the blood that blossoms over his chest. The woman kneels over him and the world goes black – but when he wakes, everything has changed.

Turned into a creature of the night against his will, Horatio is at first infuriated – but he lacks the time to wholly respond due to the sound of cannonade at the bridge. Responding to his duty to his men before wholly considering all that has been done to him – all that she was explaining – he ran for them and terrified himself with his speed. Blessed only by the fact he was not seen, Horatio went about his business as he needed to, confronting the woman afterward to learn more of what he had become. She gifted him with a book, and the tale of Muzillac and its failure continues to unfold as normal.

In this story, Horatio becomes a vampire as of Frogs and Lobsters and must learn both to adjust to what he has become, master his new body and its needs – and somehow conceal it amid the incredible confines of a ship at sea. What he must do to survive and how he may prove a more deadly adversary than ever before, shall come about based on discussion and story telling.