Sadde is running.
There is no particular reason why he is doing this. He just hasn't really done much of anything properly fun for the past five years, at least for the sake of having fun, so the wind in his hair and the occasional glimmer his skin projects on random surfaces when he's hit by the sun are enough.
Until he finds a key.
He doesn't actually say "Ooh, shiny!" but he does think it.
He comes to a halt and peers at it. It's on the ground, half-hidden by grass, and there's a tree right over there that would have obscured his view had he been running a foot to the right. But as it is, he found the key. It is a very small key, as if sized for a child to hold, and it has a certain shine to it that's not quite like any other keys he's seen during his vampire life.
He explores a radius of about a mile around the key. There seem to be no houses or cabins or mansions or anything like that where such a key might have come from. He returns to it and peers at it, then shrugs and picks it up.
He doesn't pocket it, though, because the moment he touches the key he's quite certain it's a magical key.
It doesn't actually do anything, it doesn't explode or shoot fireworks or glow, there's no mysterious voice saying that he has found the Artifact of Doom or anything like that. He just—knows.
When he straightens up, he notices how he knows it. There seems to be a certain sense produced by the key, a feeling of sorts, that shifts and moves about as the key is moved through the air. He waves it around a bit, and reaches two conclusions: one, most spots in the air don't feel like anything; two, what a spot in the air feels like depends on the spot itself, and if he waves the key around a given spot multiple times he feels the same thing each time.
O-kay, this sounds fun. Now what does the key actually do?
...well, it's a key, presumably it opens doors. It's a magic key—does it open all doors?
After thirty minutes—during which he runs to the closest town, finds the least observed door, and tries to open it with the key, followed by several further attempts on several different doors—he has determined that the key does not in fact seem to have the property of opening all doors.
He has also determined that locks consistently don't feel like anything to the key. Which seems to suggest that, if he wants to use it, it's not going to be on an actual door. So he decides to try the obvious thing. Except not here, this is not a good place, so he finds an isolated spot in the woods to try the obvious thing.
Upon finding an appropriate isolated spot, he waves the key around until it feels like something, then he pushes it and turns it, as if he were unlocking an actual door.
That one works.
He pulls it, and the door opens before him. The scenery on the other side is subtly different, though similarly wooded. He removes the key from the door—it remains open, good—and walks through it.
Is that a statue of a unicorn?
And hey, if we're already positing real unicorns, turning them to stone doesn't seem like such a leap...
That's another statue over there, though, and it is of the same unicorn, broken horn and all. So perhaps not.
Hmm, perhaps not indeed. Very pretty statues, though, he approves! He darts over to them to examine them from up close (not that he really needs to, but.), and then—is that a third statue?
And a fourth statue.
There are a lot of unicorn statues around here.
Very few of them have any sort of visible tool marks on their surfaces.
Someone is going around this island creating many beautiful statues of the same unicorn over and over again by magic or some completely unknown manufacturing process. And someone has been doing that for a really long time, judging by the weathering on some of these.
Hmmmm...
Lacking much reason to do anything else, he decides to follow along the line of statues, oldest to newest. Maybe he'll find a half-finished one? Maybe he'll find whoever's been sculpting them!
There are giant lizards and giant tortoises and tiny rodents and colourful berries and almost none of the plant or animal life is recognizable whatsoever. The trees and creatures clearly share a genre with Earth life - this island would not be terribly out of place on Earth - but the specific species are all novel.
Sadde notices this! Sadde has in fact had to become quite a biology nerd during his studies.
This causes him to be somewhat worried. Either this is a completely new island hidden by magic or he's in another world altogether, which, a) awesome and b) what.
He pauses his search for more statues to try to interact with the animals. Predictably, they run away. He sighs and decides to pursue that avenue of research at a later time.
He continues looking for newer statues.
A large naked demon pouncing on a giant lizard and disemboweling it with his golden talons.
Sadde blinks.
There is a large naked demon pouncing on a giant lizard and disemboweling it with his golden talons. Sadde does not seem to have any vampire instincts about demons to override, so that's nice.
So, lacking vampire instincts, his first thought upon seeing a large naked demon being violent is: Duck, that's hot.
(He had not outgrown his aversion to casual swearing by the time he turned, so that's probably gonna stay.)
He decides to not interrupt whatever-is-going-on, for now, and just watch.
The large naked demon devours the giant lizard! Nom nom nom. What a tasty giant lizard.
What a tasty naked demon! Actually, Sadde sniffs a bit. Hmmm yep, edible, though not as much as a human. He drinks some blood then pushes down his thirst, and makes himself known.
The naked demon is startled! He crouches slightly, as though to hide himself behind the remains of the giant lizard, and stares at the stranger.
The stranger waves a bit and tries to look as nonthreatening as he can. He doesn't get any closer to the large naked demon.
He says something in a language that is as unfamiliar as the trees and the giant lizards.
The stranger shrugs and says something in English to demonstrate that he doesn't speak the same language as the demon.
The demon laughs and shrugs.
The stranger laughs as well and takes a step closer.
Conveniently, this causes him to be in the way of a sunbeam, with predictable consequences.
Sparkly!
He grins. Yes, sparkly!
So, what is this place? They should figure out a way to communicate. Hmm.
Is the demon interested in learning how to communicate? He tries to ask that using gestures relating to their mouths and ears and the distance between them.
He says something in an agreeable tone, then shrugs again.
The stranger continues grinning and points to himself. "Sadde," he says. Then he points at the demon and tilts his head.
Nod, point to stranger, "Sadde," point to self, ...helpless shrug.
...okay. Hmm. Well, he doesn't really need a name, at least while they're alone. And they are alone, aren't they? He can't really smell anyone else.
And then it occurs to him that communicating for the sake of communicating—hard. What would he even do? Ask for a grammar lesson? But the questions he wants to ask—where they are, what all these animals and plants are, where everyone else is, and also the demon's life story and biological details because yes—are kinda complicated to do with only gestures.
He can maybe point at things and ask their names in the demon's language? Let's start with the obvious thing: the unicorn. He points at it, and makes a questioning face.
Point to Sadde, "Sadde," point to statue, "Tialle," point to self, shrug.
Point to statue, "Calaste," point to self, "Isavunion," point to Sadde...?
"Vampire!"
Nod nod. They have totally communicated about the names of some species now.
Good! Okay, other things...
His gaze totally accidentally slips to certain places on the demon's form. Or maybe all the places. Ahem.
He decides to ask whether the demon was the one who made the unicorn sculptures. Sadde's pretty sure he did, but asking might invite a story. Like why there are so many. So he points at the unicorn, then invents a gesture with his hands that he hopes looks like it means "sculpt," then points at the demon again, and does a questioning gesture.
The demon considers this question, and then he reaches into the remains of the giant lizard and pulls out one of the long thigh bones and reshapes it with magic into a little ivory unicorn.
Blinkblink. Magic! Yay magic! He considers showing his own magic off but decides that he's more curious about the story than vain about magic. He walks closer to the demon to look at the little ivory unicorn, not because he needs to do it to see it better, but because the very uncomfortable maybe-a-threat distance they were keeping from each other is not very conductive to effective communication in his opinion.
The demon smiles and pets the little ivory unicorn, and then offers it to Sadde.
Sadde takes it and grins. Then he points at the unicorn, at the demon, and moves his index finger between pointing at each of them in a movement he hopes means something like "relationship" or "communication" and then ends this whole gesturing thing with another questioning gesture.
Does his gaze accidentally slip again? Yes, yes it does. That is a very attractive demon, and Sadde has not thought thoughts about attractive people in general in a few years.
The demon giggles. He asks a question that involves gesturing at the area Sadde keeps glancing at.
Sadde laughs. Well, maybe if he knew what exactly that question meant...
He might have some idea. He puts the unicorn in a pocket—the one without the key—and asks a question, gesturing at the demon's body and then at his own, pulling on the neck of his shirt to demonstrate that he is in fact wearing one.
Shrug. Smile.
Well. He guesses that's as good a reason as any! Hmm...
He puts his hand in the pocket with the key and presses it against his thigh until he has pierced the inside of his trousers with it. Then, with some not-totally-comfortable magic, absorbs the key into his body. Specifically, he embeds it in his thigh bone, because he really does not want to lose it. The whole process doesn't last much more than a second.
And now he's naked as well. Because Shrug. Smile. He folds his clothes neatly and drops them by his feet.
So, where were they? Ah, yes, talking about unicorns and statues and occasionally checking a demon out.
He sits down amid the remains of the lizard, picks out a bit of tasty lizard flesh and eats it, makes a gesture perhaps intended to indicate that Sadde may also have some lizard if he likes, and then starts separating flesh from bones and reshaping the bones into more little figurines. The lizard's ribcage becomes a lacy ivory mountain.
Sadde sits down as well, and ponders how to explain that he doesn't need to eat.
He decides to just leave that for when he knows more words in common with the demon and instead just shakes his head a bit and says "Thank you, I'm fine," rubbing his stomach to indicate something to that effect.
He watches the lacy ivory mountain being made with interest.