Vale… Is Not a Vampire?

Deleted scenes

The side story existed as soon as I was a couple of chapters into volume one. Birnstead was plagued by ahuizotl, brought downstream by a winter flooding. While Vale herself spent little time considering the impact of that flooding on the wider world, I as an author did consider all the implications. I knew instantly that, after the end of the first Volume, the Inquisition would get involved with the ahuizotl. The side story was born.

I wanted to do a lot with the side story. I wanted slice-of-life moments in Birnstead. I wanted to spend some time in Rivenston, exploring all the little minutiae of a vampire blending in in a city. When I began on the side story, I just started writing, not yet knowing which of all of these elements would take center stage. One of the Rivenston moments was Vale traumatizing some poor farmer with a rather outrageous monster hunter tall tale.

The first draft was completed. It was obvious that the Inquisition plotline would be the focus. A lot of the meandering at the start of the side story had to go. Sentences and paragraphs were cut all over the place. The biggest cuts happened in the tall tale scene. Here it is, in full.

I tried so hard not to draw attention to my overly youthful appearance. Even the tiny slit of a window, only letting in the slightest hint of sunlight and casting the room in an abundance of dark shadows, helped disguise my age. Yet he still treated me like a little girl. Never mind not toying with your food. I was going to enjoy this.

I turned to face him and gave the man a far too gentle smile. “Ever shoved your fist deep into one of a cipactli’s many jaws and pulled on their tonsils to prevent it from biting your arm off?”

The farmer froze, his entire body going rigid for a second as he worked to reconcile my friendly tone with the far more disturbing question I had asked. A hint of anxiety seeped into his odor. His posture shifted ever so subtly, from relaxed and invitingly open to a worried closedness. His own body told me he no longer wanted this conversation far sooner than his conscious brain even registered it.

“Ever had to slice open a still-living chaneque and fish out their intestines?” I followed up with a sad shake of my head.

The trick to blending in was to lean ever so slightly towards the eccentric. I would never be able to pull off perfectly human. In a city, even a small one like Rivenston, there were no private moments. Always someone watching. In an absolutely perfect facade, the tiniest slip — a singular hiss, an accidentally escaped growl, a hint of a fang — might be enough for someone to suspect my true nature.

Not to mention that trying too hard to blend in when everyone knew you were from out of town was bound to arouse suspicion. It was much better if I acted out, if people thought me weird, a little wild, a tad unusual, because then I was human. A little too notable, too strange to be fully trusted, but human.

Wildly exaggerated tales were what people expected to hear from wandering hunters like me. So much so, that when I gave an obviously embellished tale like this, explaining why I had my gloves on, everyone just sort of bought it. Still, this was quickly turning into the most preposterously absurd explanation I had ever given for my gloves.

“Both of these required fine motor control and might have cost me a finger if I wasn’t wearing gloves,” I continued blandly. “If the price for keeping my fingers is practicing writing with gloves on, I’ll gladly pay it.”

Sometimes I wondered if I could pull off an “I’m a vampire trying to blend in by hiding my claws.” I was growing more and more certain that with some people I really could manage it. They would honestly believe I was pulling their leg, the mere notion that I was telling the truth too mad to even consider. Regardless, I was not going to risk being that honest.

The farmer fiddled with the bedding, eyes drifting across the room, out of focus.

Right, might have overdone it.

I exhaled loudly through my nose, deposited all the writing implements on the ground — not even enough room for a desk or chair to write on in these cramped rooms — and scooted over to his side of the bed. Sitting down right behind the man, I gently slapped him on the back. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m just messing with you a little.”

The last chapter of the side story has a bit of a time skip. We go from the evening on the overlook, straight to the next day. Initially, there was no time skip there. The last chapter continued where the previous one left off. Vale Shae and Nebby returned from the overlook that same evening.

While it was cute and wholesome, it dragged. Chapter 5 ended with an emotional release. Cutting this scene allowed chapter 6 to open with a nicely contrasting stressed-out Vale working through her issues.

Staying on the overlook until long after dark had its disadvantages. The old-growth forest we passed through on the way back let no moonlight through. It was the kind of dark I reveled in, and that left the two girls I had to drag back with me utterly blind, defenseless, and terrified of every little unexpected sound.

Shae, I carried on my back. Nebby, I took by the hand and guided with an occasional mention of a root she had to step over, or a branch she had to duck under. I neglected to mention a root or two, simply so that I could point out to the Flint-lock butterfly that she stumbled a lot.

Nebby stuck her tongue out at me when she realized I was doing it on purpose, then started pestering me with questions about my sight once I told her I’d seen that.

Deflecting those questions was easy.

Much worse was the angry crowd waiting for us in the bunkhouse. The parents that had stayed up, worried sick, because their kids hadn’t returned home by sundown. And most of the other adults, because this was still the kind of place where everything was everyone’s business.

At least there was no armed mob waiting for me this time. Small improvements. Still, the extent of the worry and anger proved that there was no real trust in me. I was so tired of their distrust by then, that I simply spat out something ugly and vindictive, and stormed out to get my horse. Damn the concept of friends and everything else. I was not risking my life for this.

Reya hauled me off my feet and dragged me back inside before I’d even managed to reach the stables. “Don’t be an idiot,” she berated me as she hauled me inside, past the crowd, and up the stairs. “You’re almost certainly the most dangerous thing in a hundred-mile radius. Those two have never been safer than with you.”

It was obvious by the timing of that statement, that it was intended for everyone else just as much as it was for me.

By far the biggest continuous cut of content in the side story was a scene that takes place after the conclusion of the side story. I'm still sad even now that I had to delete it. But the side story had a theme, a character arc, and a core conflict, and all of those were resolved.

I might bring it back someday, as part of a whole new, angst-free, and entirely wholesome slice-of-life side story. For now though, it is just this one orphan cooking scene.

“Leave the yawning at home and get a move on Nebs,” Eryn scolded the continuously yawning girl who was supposed to be teaching me the basics of this cooking thing. The affectionate glint in Eryn’s eyes and the nickname she gave the girl betrayed that Eryn wasn’t as cross with Nebby as her tone of voice indicated.

Nebby waved off the angry comment with another yawn and tried to glare at me before yet another yawn could creep up on her sleep-deprived face. “Hoooow are you soooo awake this early in the morning?”

“Dunno,” I deflected. “Guess sleeping out in the wilds gets you used to waking up at a moment's notice.” Stating that as a guess meant I technically wasn’t lying. It was for their own good that I was masking this from them. Some truths were simply too uncomfortable.

“Chop-chop, less yapping, more working,” Eryn interrupted our banter. “Less than an hour till they expect us to pick up the kids, and the men will want their lunch at noon regardless.”

“Hey!” Nebby exclaimed, tossing away her towel in obvious, acted affront.

“Yes, Nebs.” Eryn sighed. “The woman too.” She bent down to pick up the towel the girl had carelessly tossed away and shook it out.

“Yeah, and you wouldn’t forget about them if I was out there helping them instead of in here doing this,” Nebby launched into a pretend-tirade, broke it off to throw me a quick wink, “no offense to you,” then continued right where she left off. “But noooo, Rafe gets a free pass while me, I get to–”

Nebby yelped, jumping to the side when Eryn tried to swipe at her with the towel. “You can get that free pass as soon as you run this town instead of him.”

“No thanks!” Nebby squeaked, shrinking back. Then she turned to me and lowered her voice to a conspirational whisper. “I mean, have you seen Rafe’s face? You’d think he runs a town of 400 instead of 40.”

I chuckled, while behind Nebby’s back, Eryn threw up her hands in mock disgust. I got the distinct impression that this energetic exchange was how these two women interacted every morning.

“Seriously, pay attention to the gray in Rafe’s beard. It spreads faster than an ink stain,” Nebby continued unabashedly.

Riiiight.

…

Oh no, please don’t make me focus on Rafe’s beard next time I see him.

I clutch my head in my hands, already regretting that I had agreed to this. This was going to be such a long and arduous day.

“Hands out of your hair when you’re working with food,” Eryn berated me. “Gloves off as well. It’s unhygienic. And get back to work the both of you.” There was a finality to those words, a clear indication to both of us that our playtime was over and that we should get on with it.

I raked my hands through my hair and looked at the worktop. To the left of me, Eryn’s two fish, which looked untouched just moments ago had already been skinned and cleaned. I had no clue as to when she managed to do that. To the right of me, Nebby was making short work of a mountain of vegetables, the girl having effortlessly switched from messing about to getting work done.

Meanwhile, I was in charge of a single onion. It sat there, ready to be peeled and chopped up. Nebby had explained how I should go about it. Her tutoring had involved a lot of yawning, and very little peeling and chopping. I picked up the union, turned it around, and placed it back down in a new position. I tested the heft of the knife they handed me. I performed another minute repositioning of the onion.

I am stalling.

Shae is so much better at explaining this.

Nebby’s hip bumped my own. I glanced over to find her awkwardly hunched over so as not to tower above me. She grinned at me, winked, and wiggled herself back up to a normal standing position. Then she waggled her eyebrows and made a cut in her greens.

What?

I arced an eyebrow in response. Both of Nebby’s eyebrows rose up in concert, then they twitched in the direction of the greens in her hand. A mad grin curled her lips as she twisted the vegetable-thing in the opposite direction, and then she made another cut. Finally, she tilted both her head and her eyebrows towards my onion.

She trying to help me out by demonstrating what I need to do?

Soooo.... how am I supposed to translate that?

Those yellow-green stick things she’s working on are really nothing like this onion.

“Not. Helpful. Nebs,” I enunciated.

“Eeeeh! She called me Nebs!” the girl squealed, pulled me closer by my shoulders, and squeezed my face against her chest. “You hear that Eri, we’re totally best friends!”

“Nebby!” Eryn shouted.

“Yep, that’s me!” the girl smothering me exclaimed, not loosening her hold on me for even a second. She was so lucky I did not need to breathe. She was even luckier that I had recently fed, because being pressed this near to her made me want to drown in the taste of flint-lock butterflies.

“Let her go.”

“Right.” I could feel Nebby nodding along with her answer before she eventually released me.

“Thanks.” I grimaced, tilted my head at Eryn, and hoped it was enough to hide the need of hunger that had crept up on me.

“Thank me with that onion,” the old woman stated, pointing towards the still unpeeled vegetable in front of me.

Onions are vegetables, right?

Eryn tapped my fingers. “And I think I told you to take those gloves off.”

I glared at her. “Not taking them off.” I thought I had made it abundantly clear that I would not be taking off my gloves. The risks were too great. Yet somehow, no matter how hard I protested, they just kept on pestering me about it.

“You agreed to help out,” Eryn persisted. “That was the condition for you staying. That involves taking off those gloves. I will not have you smearing dirt and grime and gods-knows-what-else in everyone’s food. This might just be a bunkhouse, but we still have standards.”

I continued glaring.

Nebby wrapped her arms around my shoulder and leaned her chin against my forehead. “Hey, it’s okay,” she said. “We know you’re worried, but it’s okay. No one is going to blame you, or point fingers at you, or scream in terror. And absolutely no one you can’t trust is suddenly going to walk in here.” A vibrating chuckle began deep in her chest and worked its way out. “Besides, everyone already knows, you table menace.”

“That’s beside the point,” I hissed, pushing Nebby away from me. Did she want me to sample her? Is that why she kept presenting herself?

Behind me the door opened, and Reya ambled in. “What point?” she asked, before coming my way and tapping me on the nose. “And no hissing. Vulnerable instead of terrifying.”

“Please get her to take off her gloves,” Eryn begged the village healer.

“What’s in it for me?” Reya studied the food we were preparing.

“Nothing,” Eryn insisted. “You are not getting any food from me, no matter how little you like your wife’s breakfast. Vale being here does not change that.”

And that's it for that scene. Sort of a cut-off ending there, I know. That's the nature of deleted scenes. Sometimes you're writing them, and then mid-way through you realize it's not working out, and then you stop.

Anyway, these are the three major cut scenes from the side story. Now for three other scenes. Scenes that were vital to the shaping of the story into what it is today, but that predate Vale as a character.

The making off

Let's start at the very beginning. Before the side story. Way before volume one. Vale came from my disappointment with Isekai web novels. I wanted to write an Isekai that challenged all the tropes, themes, and common narratives. I wanted to write something that was as much a making fun of the tropes, as it was a deconstruction of the genre as a whole.

The protagonist was not Vale. The protagonist was a man, a middle-aged, battle-hardened Inquisitor (then called a subjugator). Like all good Isekai, the story started with his death.

“Well, that is disappointing,” I Thought as I looked down at the sword sticking out of my chest. I grasped feebly at the blade that was painting my torso a lovely shade of crimson. This only managed to cut off several of my fingers.

No blade is supposed to be this sharp…

That was about my last coherent thought. I still tried to take a step and get away from my assailant. Instead, my legs gave out. The ground rushed towards me. That very large and spiky rock in front of me growing larger and larger and larger...

If I hit that with my head then I’m de–

Then there was nothing. Not just blackness but real void. Absence. Of everything. I would like to say this gave me time to think. But that would imply that there was time, and thinking. There was only an absence.

Absence.

Absence.

A strangely disembodied voice tore the absence apart. It might have only been a voice, but suddenly there was something, instead of nothing. It was disorienting. It was distracting. It was... making me think these... thought. Making me remember how I had died. Making me think about how I had died.

A lot of things about my death made very little sense. How did that blade get there? Who was my attacker? Why did they want me dead? And then I hadn’t even gotten to the extremely important facts. Minor details like no one in this world being good enough to sneak up on me like that.

I knew I was spending too much time mulling these things over when the disembodied voice repeated the question, this time with a distinct undertone of impatience.

“Who killed me? What is this place? Am I dead?” I replied with my own questions. Their order wasn’t exactly coherent.

Maybe I wasn’t exactly coherent right now?

Okay, so this creepy voice thing is really getting impatient now. Maybe I should answer it. I took a deep breath to calm my nerves... and failed. At the breathing part. I... had no body? Then how was I thinking? Nope. Stop. Answer first, panic later.

But what does it mean by 'try again'?

Okay... that was an answer to something I had wondered, wasn’t it? But I hadn’t actually asked it any–

“Um...” I tried. No further continuation of that sentence came. You could hardly call it a start even. This whole situation was leaving me a bit flustered really. I was used to thinking on my feet but the pace of this was really quite ridiculous. Once again I tried to sort out my thoughts. First of all, I was supposed to be dead. This wasn’t anywhere near what I had imagined dying to be like.

Was reincarnation a thing then? Was I going to be reborn as a squirrel?

“A... I... Um... I...” I still wasn’t keeping up with everything this divine being was–

Nope. Not even going to react to that. Moving on. Another chance at saving the world, that was some twisted wording right there. Sure, I’m a famous subjugator, and I was on my way to deal with some nasty demon shit. But seriously, saving the world? I’m not that kind of pretentious.

“Eh?! Wait? What! No-no-no!” I protested loudly. Or at least as loud as I could without a mouth to speak with. “You can not just tell me the world is going to shit and then pretend nothing happened. Spill the beans!”

“Seriously?” This thing had some g–

“This is a trap, isn’t it?”

“Unique perspective? That doesn’t sound good. What the heck does that mean?”

“Sorry, you’re not getting me with this shit. The answer is no. Make me be dead again.” I put my foot down. Metaphorical foot. I still had no body.

No answer came.

“Hello?”

Utter silence. It didn’t matter how often I called out. It was just me and the absence again. One thing was different however. I was conscious. The absence wasn’t as fun as before now that I was conscious. I was alone with my thoughts. I tried going to sleep, counting sheep, tried pretending everything was normal. None of it worked because the absence was so overpowering.

If this kept up I would go insane. I started telling myself stories. Tales I’d heard bards tell. Tales I made up on the spot. Every single thing I remembered from my life. I had no idea how much time passed. There was still an absence of that concept. Only my thinking seemed to exist. Somewhere along the way of my talking about random things, I realized I had begun to speak utter gibberish.

I had no recollection of when I had started doing that. Was I already going insane? I pretended I wasn’t talking gibberish and carried on. If I was losing my sanity then all I needed to do was carry on until there wasn’t any of it left. Then I’d also lose my sense of self and would no longer worry about this absence.

I broke long before that moment came.

“Yes!” I shouted into the void, “Yes, I’ll do it! Send me back! I’ll try again!”

The voice gloated sensually in my ears. Then I received a violent push and was sent sailing into the void.

“Yahahaha! Woohooo!” I cackeled maniacally. After those eons of absence the simple sensation of movement, of having mass and direction, was utterly divine. Then it became even better: there was sight. A tiny dot appeared in front of me. It grew larger until it was a gaping maw. It swallowed me.

I was spat out onto rough and uneven ground. My body scraped and rolled along the rocky floor for several meters before banging into a wall. Amazing! So many sensations. Ground, rocks, dirt! Walls! Having a battered and bruised body! Glorious, glorious pain!

Lights and sounds and smells. Rough hands grabbing me. Something fastened around my neck. Searing pain in my chest. Debilitating weakness. Lightheadedness. Losing consciousness...

No! Not that! Not again! Can’t lose it again. Not so soon after–

Iterations upon iterations happened. Eventually, the entire Isekai concept was dropped. In its place, the continent of Ostea was taking shape. The war with the vampires raging across the continent was there. And a new protagonist had taken the place of my Inquisitor, a teenage vampire girl caught up in the middle of it all.

“You’re a vampire?” the new recruit asked me after he had spent the past several minutes ogling me.

I gave the boy a cold, hard stare. I had gotten incredibly good at those. Advantages of being dead.

With a quiet squeak and a hint of extra fear in the air, the child leaned as far back in his chair as he physically could.

Rolling my eyes at his pathetic prey reaction I turned to the Butcher. “You want me to kill him now?” I gestured towards the frightened little snack with a quick tilt of my head. “Or are we going to wait until he gets someone more important killed?”

“Attitude!” the mountainous man berated me in his usual monotone drawl.

“I’m working—”

“Stop it,” he sneered. “You’re not. Haven’t been for the past two years.”

Have. You just have no idea how hard it is to keep myself from ripping out your wormy little entrails and—

Luckily I had acquired sufficient self-control by now to not let my instincts run my mouth in unguarded moments. No matter how much it grated to work with the stupid selfish prey at times, cooperation was the only viable way forward. Maintaining the patience to deal with the food’s pathetic sensibilities was still a work in progress though.

“She’s joking right?” The youngling looked at me like a deer that spotted the pack of wolves sneaking up on it.

“No,” the butcher and I stated simultaneously.

“But… but… but… she’s here to protect us, right?”

I broke out in a grin. The new recruits the Butcher brought me were always so cute.

“She’s here to protect her feeding grounds,” the Butcher explained. “That merely happens to conveniently align with keeping us alive. For our part, we try to collaborate—”

I coughed politely. He was a good man, my Butcher, but keeping him from employing euphemisms when it was the time for bitter truth was a chore and a half.

The butcher grunted in response and nodded. “We try to not get in her way.”

After this, I invented the Academy. Fleshed out some of the magic system. Conceived the continent of Myrna, where the Academy was located. I went nuts on wordbuilding, putting my unnamed protagonist and the mysterious Butcher into dozens of different places and scenarios.

Then I ditched all of the worldbuilding and moved things to the modern day, and turned the entire narrative into a contemporary urban fantasy.

Wait for the signal, they had told me.

Why did we agree to this? Those worms out there are having all the fun.

Because I had been stupid. I had agreed without thinking things through. The new recruit had been ogling me so I had said yes just to be rid of him. Now I was stuck here in my dorm room while the rest of the order had to clean up the mess.

It’s no fair. Stuck in here while the pretty infernoes and the screams of the dying are all happening outside.

Me agreeing far too quickly wasn’t the full reason of course. I could have disagreed all I wanted. They simply didn’t trust me. Hadn’t trusted my once in the past 300 years. Never would trust me.

What did we ever do to deserve this much distrust? It’s not like we go on wanton slaughter sprees.

Entrails?

… a girls gotta eat, okay!

And so I desperately clutched my phone, waiting for a call, while outside my window the apocalypse was passing me by. Half the campus burned down before that call finally came, so when it did I answered long before the first ring.

“Butcher, am I good to go?”

“Mel!” A panicked voice shouted from the other end of the line.

Huh? That’s not Butcher? Whatever, I don’t have time for this. “I don’t care who you are, don’t call me back. I’m expect–”

“DON’T HANG UP!!” The girl screeched into the phone.

The worm dares to command us!

“Mel, it’s Kira! If you’re home, open your door!”

Kira? As in the girl from the channeling assignment? But that was ages ago. Before the fiery inferno of apocalyptic doom kind of ages go. Yesterday kind of ages ago.

“Huh?” I enunciated into my phone, my eloquence a true testament to how unexpected this call was.

“Open your fucking door!”

Fuck it. I stepped away from the window, tossed the phone on my desk, grabbed my dagger, and walked out the door. If this were a movie then someone would have probably made a badass montage out of it. Sadly this was no movie. And no amount of clever camera tricks could ever hide that my dorm room was all of 10 feet from window to door.

The meat is coming to us. We must not let it wait.

Yes, my rushing to open the door was out of worry, not hunger.

I hoped.

We do not worry about these pathetic meat bags. They are insects barely worthy of my attention.

There was no more time to debate my dubious motivations. The door of the stairwell slammed open and two girls came pinballing out of it. The first was a short little thing I did not recognize. She looked around bewildered, unsure of where to go. Kira dashed out right behind her, and shouted “Second door on the left!”.

They were both past me and in my room in an instant. I had already stopped paying them any attention because something else was coming.

Coming to steal our prey!

“Mel?”

“Close the door, Kira.” I unsheathed my dagger, ignoring the wave of burning pain that ate at my fingers.

“Mel? Get in here?”

“Now!” I rushed forward as the stairwell exploded in a cloud of concrete and shadow.

I abandoned the contemporary setting, returned to my old one of Ostea and Thysa, and basically tossed every single idea I'd had so far into a giant blender. If all of the ideas didn't work out individually, then certainly things would be better all smushed together.

A couple of iterations after that, I ended up with little more than a depressed, near-suicidal vampire girl on a horse, riding back toward a small little village. I simply wrote. One paragraph turned into two. Out of nowhere, an outline bloomed in my head. Less than a week later, I had the full, beat-by-beat outline written down, and 10k words of my first draft.

Here's the first page and a half of that first draft. This roughly matches up with scenes from chapter 1.1. The rest, as they say, is history.

Six months of running away from myself, and all it had amounted to was me ending up back at the one place where I had accidentally let my guard down. My return wasn’t even intentional. I had just taken a couple of odd turns.

Yes, odd turns.

Completely unintentional.

I let out an exasperated sigh. I hadn’t magically gotten any better at fooling myself. I’d probably never get better at it. My entire life had been a lie after all. Since before I was born, really. You could almost say I lied as easily as I breathed.

Almost.

I didn’t breathe. Every breath you saw me take was a lie. That’s how good I was a lying to other people. I hated it. It’s why I’d been on the road for ... nearly a year now I think. So much easier to hide from your own lies if you stay on the move.

It was fun, waking up in that hayloft. Terrifying, but fun.

“It’s okay. It’s okay. I thought you were dead.”

That was the first thing she had said to me. No running away in terror, no pitchforks and torches, and burning at the stake. Just childlike innocence and honesty.

I had been exhausted and had gone to sleep without all my usual precautions. When Omar’s daughter had found me, she hadn’t been afraid of the monster, she’d been worried the monster might be dead.

We’d spoken for a bit. Just a little, maybe half an hour at most. Only afterward did I realize how liberating it had been. A single moment of respite, of not hiding behind a web of lies.

That was the reason I’d come back here. Right beyond that bend, there’d be a little farm. A farm that maybe hadn’t yet gotten a new cat. A farm that had the first person I’d been comfortable enough around to not pretend.