‘We are each tainted by the decisions we make. And the taste of our soul reflects that.’
A man was once suspected of contracting leprosy. As the infection was highly infectious, the man was isolated by being taken to his own island and left there. With no way of getting off the island, the man lived for many years, surviving off the land and a monthly drop of supplies.
Over time, the man grew to hate the outside world just as the world hated him.
They had left him to die a slow and lonely death, isolated and alone. Each month, a small window of opportunity would present itself to him. The supply ship would dock to unload his monthly allotment of food, and each month he would take his opportunity to infect one of the crew with his ailment.
His own parting gift, a taint sent back to a world that had given up on him and treated him as a monster.
It is a tough life being a leper, is it not, Kaine?
You live your life, marked with a taint that blackens the soul and destroys the lifeforce. Shunned by the world and forced to live a half-life. Forced to succumb to your desires and hunger.
How you must resent those mere mortals that come and go, their lives but a fleeting moment in a blink of your eye as you contemplate your lonely existence. How that moment that you feast upon flesh must fill your spirit as you sate your hunger.
You drink your fill, but you tarnish your soul in the process.
The world shunned your kind, and rightfully so. For your kind continue an unnatural existence, serving only a purpose to taint the world with one bite at a time.
Am I your ultimate hunger, Kaine?
As our paths cross, like a ship dropping supplies upon your isolated existence, do you seek the opportunity to infect me? Or is the Dead right and you’ve already taken that opportunity? Even as I speak, does that taint coarse through my veins?
Gehenna.
I will fight this infliction with every fibre of my lifeforce, for I have no desire to be forced into your ranks. The Mighty Mountain is no weapon to be wielded upon your own tainted politics. If you want to drag me kicking and screaming into your war, you can but try.
For the moment you sunk your teeth into my neck and spread that taint upon my lifeforce, you bit off more than you could chew.
It is not the fact that you are a vampire that sours the taste of your soul, but that you are every bit the monster that the world sees you as. You gave in to your desires; let them harbour power over you.
When the dust settles upon this mess you have created, I will still be standing opposite you, never at your side.
I will drag you back to that leper’s island so that you can spend the rest of your immortality tasting your own tainted soul.