Adapting to the world following centuries of slumber was proving to be more difficult than he thought. Thus the eidolon mused to himself as he dangled upside down with hands and legs bound, inside a thickly knotted net. The net was hung from a sturdy pole in the middle of the Boharan nomad camp, where several eyes varying from concern to fear gazed upon him. Aidoneus began to retrace how this all happened. It all started when he chose to descend the mountain and survey the surrounding land. So much had changed since his hibernation, and it was best to reestablish good relations with the people outside once more. His attempts unfortunately resulted in being caught in the crossfire of a nomad hunting party chasing down large game, and he took half a dozen arrows to his chest. But it was when he merely looked down and then attempted to approach the horsemen that things went sour. The archers began screaming with faces in horror, and when he attempted to assuage their fears it only added more fuel to the fire. As he came close enough to hear what they were saying Aidoneus realized he didn't recognize their language, and promptly was hit by a net. They strung him up, dragged him back to their encampment, and even considered burying him at one point. The only clue he had for that was the digging implements they brought out, then put away.

"Hello? Sir?" He said to a passing guard. The man eyed him nervously and moved away. "I believe there must be some sort of misunderstanding. Could you remove these restraints and let me down? A group of your tribe found me and lodged a few of their arrows in me by accident, but they seem to have misinterpreted my intentions. I mean you no harm, though it would be much appreciated if I could pass on this message to your chieftain or king." When his words were ignored, he went silent, wondering what he was doing wrong. It didn't seem like he had done anything to cause such an extreme reaction. Had he not been civil, showing he was unarmed and willing to negotiate? Perhaps they had certain rules in interacting with outsiders, and he had unknowingly breached their code of conduct. He had only stepped out to ask them what tribe or country they hailed from. 

As the man with blue-black hair continued to remain conscious despite being upended for three hours straight, the Bohar nomads were growing anxious. What on earth had they found? It wasn't the foreign speech that disturbed them; it was the fact that he took nearly half a quiver of straight-fletched arrows and was still capable of speech. The elders were in a meeting, wondering what they should do with this bizarre entity. Should they kill it? What if it retaliated? How in the name of the moons would they be able to kill such a thing anyway?

The Great Chicken of Ultimate Power was a dud. The Bohar nomadic tribe had sent her on a quest to find the Great Chicken of Ultimate Power a few weeks ago. This Chicken was rumored to be one of the best tasting chickens in the world and eating its flesh would give everybody the power of a god. Turns out, the chicken rumor was started by a travelling sales person to sell his chicken stock better. Attie was returning to tell the nomadic tribe of this disappointing news. Her hair was messy and her face was a bit scratched up due to her running into a bush of thorns earlier today. She was more than a mess, she was a disappointed mess. 

As she drew nearer to the tribe's campground, she spotted one of the hunters sitting on a log and waved to them. The hunter spotted her and stood up to get the old lady who had hired her in the first place. Once the old woman arrived, Attie began to explain everything to the woman. The old woman still paid her despite the fact that the rumors turned out to be false. A netted person hanging caught her eye as she looked over to the woman for explanation. The woman explained that he got shot multiple times and was still alive, so they netted him. 

"Well that's no reason to put somebody in a net. Especially after YOU shot HIM!" Attie declared putting her hands on her hips, "Putting people in nets is not nice. Now you ought to free him and apologize. Or…."

An idea popped into her mind. 

"I can free him for you!" Attie exclaimed with a smile, "Then you guys won't have to get the daggers out and potentially scare that poor guy!" 

Claws began to form from her nails as her teeth grew into bear fangs. She hadn't thought about the possibility that she might accidentally scare him. Attie started climbing up the sturdy pole, using her climbing skills and claws, then started biting at the net. Attie could have used her claws to free him but using her teeth was more fun. 

"Hi. Wads yer nem?" Attie asked the man through a mouthful of nets. 

As he dangled left in his thoughts, someone came and began gnawing at the thick ropes of the net. Looking 'up', he saw someone who didn't seem to be from the tribe based on his observations. They were quite agile, having scaled the pole with ease. Holding onto it with their hands while working using their teeth gave the individual greater stability in exchange for a slower rate of progress. It would appear this stranger was trying to let them out, though why use such a method? The Boharan tribesmen could have easily cut him free. Their eyes met, and the person busily chewing on the tough fibers spoke to Aidoneus in words he could not understand. "Hi. Wads yer nem?" Puzzled, he tried to grasp the meaning of these sounds. He had no idea what language it was, if it was another language. It certainly didn't match with Mamlakian or Arriese. Ah, perhaps it was a newly developed one. He had been asleep for so long that there had been a lingual shift. 

In response to their words, the eidolon attempted to reply. "Γρεετινγς! Αρε yου α μεμβερ ωφ θε Βοhαρ τριβε? Yου αρε λεttινγ με δοwν, yεσ?" When the net finally gave out, he dropped to the ground with an odd squelch, yet didn't seem very injured. Actually that in itself was an understatement, as he still had the arrows sticking out of his chest. This was quite the conundrum. Neither of them understood each other, however he knew of a way to remedy the situation. Motioning, he attempted to tell the girl that he wished for her to give him a small amount of her blood. Putting such a complex concept into hand signals ended with him pointing to her, then motioning a slow cutting motion across her hand, then pointing to himself. Unsure if he had successfully gotten his point across, he used his finger to etch out drawings as to what he wanted. The caricature of a five-fingered hand, then a drop of liquid coming from one of the fingers was how he tried to explain. He only needed a drop or more to obtain the necessary knowledge needed to bridge the language barrier.

Attie hopped down before the net gave out and watched as the man fell to the ground. With the fibers out of the way, she was able to see all of the arrows sticking out of his chest. She walked up to him and began to poke at the arrows sticking out of his chest, trying to tell if the arrows were actually real. Suddenly, the stranger began making motions with his hands. One was a cutting motion across her hand and then he began to draw in the dirt. Once she saw the liquid, she began to understand it all. This was a vampire! Now everything made sense to Attie.

This must have been some poor powerful vampire who couldn't be killed that was starving for blood. She quickly reached into her bag and pulled out a small goblet along with a dagger. Attie pressed the blade to the palm of her hand and dragged it across, creating a wound on her hand. Then she held her hand over the goblet and let several drops of blood fall into the cup before picking it up with the non bloody hand and handing it towards the man. After giving the cup away, she went through her satchel, searching for some sort of cloth to wrap around her hand. She found a thin blue grey fabric and wrapped it around the palm of her hand to prevent the bleeding. Attie didn’t know much else about healing so she just ignored the injury and focused on the stranger in front of her.

“So who are you? Why don’t you burn in the sun? Are you a vampire or was my hunch wrong? What does blood taste like? How long have you been here? The arrows in your chest must hurt. Or at the very least it must be annoying. Do you want me to take them out for you?” Attie asked all very quickly, “And do you want to be my friend?”

Somehow his feeble attempts to communicate had succeeded, though with a new pile misunderstandings added to the mix. Aidoneus waited patiently as the girl gave him a goblet with some drops of her blood, which he accepted graciously. As she peppered him with questions, he tilted the cup back to swallow a few drops. At once the blood was absorbed into his ichor, and he closed his eyes as new information entered his mind. Lowering the goblet, he returned it to her while speaking in fluent Adelunian Common. "Ah, thank you. Any longer and I'm afraid I would have been at a total loss as to what to do with myself. I apologize for the sudden request, though thanks to your generosity I am now able to converse with you in your native tongue. Greetings, I am Aidoneus. Would you happen to be a member of the Bohar tribe? Until this very moment I was unable to understand any questions you might have asked me earlier, so allow me to give a proper answer in earnest." The eidolon happened to miss all of the girl's previous assumptions prior to partaking of her blood, though not all was lost. Now she had a second opportunity, this time without a language barrier.

He glanced down at the arrow shafts sticking out of his torso as if they were nothing. There was no sign of blood around the wounds, as the arrows had not been disturbed. To say he was unconcerned about them was an understatement–given enough time, he would just absorb them into his body. The wound on Attie's palm did not go unnoticed by Aidoneus, as he noted that it was not immediately sealing itself like his own. "Your hand, it is still wounded? How strange… Does it hurt much?" Despite having limited past interactions with the shorter-lived beings in this world, he had come to understand concepts such as pain and injury. Most beings did not regrow lost limbs or other large parts of their bodies as eidolons could. Their ability to heal was far weaker from his perspective. They could easily die if they lost too much of their bodily fluids. "It you would allow me, I could seal your wound to prevent further loss of your blood."

Attie was not expecting him to have questions for her, typically she was the one to ask about things. But Attie didn't mind it and she was excited to share the info with her first vampire friend! 

"Oh I'm not a member of the Bohar tribe." Attie explained, "Though I did help them out once or twice. What about you? Are you from the Bohar plains? Its obvious that you aren't a member of the tribe. Otherwise they wouldn't have put you in that net. Why are you here? How did you get those arrows in your chest? Aren't they uncomfortable? Are you immortal? What's your favorite type of food? Why are you in the sunlight? I thought vampires wouldn't be able to go out in the sun. Are you even a vampire? How old are you? What's your favorite color? Do you want to be friends?"

She had thought up of more questions than earlier and she was excited to get to know this person. He then started asking her about her hand and its wounds. Attie knew he had to be some sort of immortal if he didn't understand the concept of pain or permanent injuries, not that she was judging. Most everyone's information came from personal experience so if they had none, then they didn't know the information. 

"It hurts a bit. Though I've had worse." Attie said with a cheery attitude, "Oh one time I got stabbed in the gut by a knife. Luckily I got saved by a magical healer but lemme tell you, that was painful. And messy. I had to buy new clothes and I ended up ruining a beautiful rug with blood! Oh sure you can heal me. That would save me a lot of trouble. Healing stuff is pretty expensive!"

Attie held out her hand to Aidoneus to let him do his work. While he was healing or doing whatever he was doing, many of the Bohar tribe members were watching Attie with their jaws dropped. From their perspective, she was taming this potential threat. Aidoneus was speaking her language, healing her, and being completely non-threatening while in her company. So they assumed that she was the cause of his good behavior, despite the fact that she had nothing to do with it. 

"She has tamed the immortal beast!" One tribe member claimed. 

"Hey!" Attie shouted, "Don't insult the people you put in nets! It's very rude. In fact don't insult people using beast either. Beast is a perfectly good term so don't make it into a bad one." 

He took her hand and held it. At once an unusual sensation began to spread through her wound and then to the rest of her hand. The bleeding slowed and the skin on the sides of the cut grew until the ends met, sealing it shut. The process was very quick and it was like her hand had never been injured at all. With his present concern resolved, the man started to tackle her questions, one by one.

"I am indeed not a member of the Bohar tribe. I was brought here after a minor accident with an errant hunting party–resulting in these arrows lodged in my torso. Though the fault was all mine; I had unknowingly walked into their path. As disquieting as it may seem, the arrows themselves do not cause me much discomfort. With time they will disappear into my body." Had she directed her barrage of questions to someone else, she would be met with a curt reprimand. But Aidoneus had plenty of patience to spare, and plenty of time. "Contrary to one's expectations, I am long-lived, but not immortal. Like all children of this world, I bear no immunity to death. However, it may take a much more focused effort to do so. Forgive me for not being able to provide you an answer with my age; I simply do not know. I have found that I am relatively much, much older than most creatures currently alive on this world. Consuming food is not something necessary for an eidolon such as myself."

The girl then asked if he was a 'vampire', a term he did not understand. "I am in the sunlight because it is currently a few hours past noon and there is no cover above me. What is a 'vampire'? What sort of creature or being is it? I have never heard of such a thing." There were many things he didn't know, but he was willing to learn from whoever would share their knowledge with him. Her act of liberating him from the net did not go unnoticed by the tribesmen, and they were aghast at how she was civilly engaging him in conversation. There were comments of surprise and exclamation, to which the girl took offense. She shouted back chastising them for insulting him, though he himself did not mind. "Regardless of how they address me, pay them no heed. They speak the truth; eidolons are considered unnatural beings according to the precepts of this world. We are aberrations who should not exist, only maintaining presence upon a technicality."

He smiled, to further emphasize the point that he wasn't bothered at all. "It is merely natural for people to react with fear and suspicion upon encountering something strange and foreign. Once they come to the realization that I mean them no harm, their defensive behaviors should cease."

She inspected her hand to see if there was a scar but she realized that he had healed it completely, as there wasn't a trace of injury left. He then began asking about vampires as though he knew nothing about them. Attie realized that he couldn't have been a vampire, as he would have known about the term if he was. 

"Well a Vampire is basically a being who feeds off of blood to survive." She explained, "They have long fangs and can't go into the sun. Their skin is typically pale and they usually wear dark clothes and have some sort of brooding attitude. Most people don't like them but I don't see any problem with vampires as long as they ask first before drinking another's blood and don't drink all of it." 

Attie began to listen him talk about how he was an aberrations who technically shouldn't exist and that it was natural for the people to fear a strange thing like him. She didn't care much for this viewpoint as it suggested that any of them had more right to exist than another. So she gently grabbed his face and looked at him with dead serious eyes before beginning to speak. 

"Never refer to yourself as an aberration." She said, "Everybody has the right to exist, no matter what kind of being they are. You are a valid boy who needs to be shown kindness and respect. To expect less for yourself is bad."

Attie wasn't the best at giving people motivational speeches but she was determined to give it to people anyways. She freed the poor man's face before standing up and looking around. The rest of the tribe members had calmed down and was starting to ignore the scene, as they had other things to do. Winter was on its way after all. She hadn't a clue on what she was planning on doing next as she just went from place to place learning about things. There wasn't a firm goal in her mind. 

"Soooo do you want to see any place?" Attie asked, "I'm just travelling around and learning about stuff but I don't have any specific place I need to be. Oh, my name is Attie by the way. What's yours?"

He listened to her explanation carefully, as if Attie were imparting a pearl of wisdom. "Ah, I see. There truly are many kinds of beings in the world, aren't there? Every being requires something that sustains their existence. For most it is food, and for them it is blood. Perhaps their physiology has led to them to adapt to such a method due to some sort of incapability they are unable to overcome. Having fangs would make eating difficult and their aversion to sunlight would force them to avoid half of the day. Foraging and hunting could not be performed as efficiently in darkness…" Aidoneus mused these things and much more aloud as he attempted to understand the possible reasoning behind vampire behavior. What took him by surprise was the sudden act of the girl grabbing his face. Her eyes looked directly into his, her voice holding a solemn seriousness that wasn't present before. "Never refer to yourself as an aberration. Everybody has the right to exist, no matter what kind of being they are. You are a valid boy who needs to be shown kindness and respect. To expect less for yourself is bad."

As she let go of him, he stood in stunned silence for a while, eyes unblinking. A string of memories resurfaced in brief flashes–the image of a dying elderly human man being given a bright green liquid, the form of a great chimeric beast towering twice the height of a person with glowing green eyes, and finally…the image of the great beast's corpse lying on the ground with bright green fluid seeping from its wounds. If only things had happened differently, he would not have had to deal the final blow. If only there had been no rejection… He blinked at last, and gave a small smile. "As you wish. I will not use such a term to refer to myself from this point on." He was hardly a boy though, in fact he was far too old to be considered just an 'elder' by the younger races' standards. The girl's carefree attitude returned once again as she asked him if he had anywhere he wished to go. Addressing herself as Attie, she then asked for his name in turn.

"My name is Aidoneus. I have not been outside the boundaries of the mountain for quite some time, so I have no distinct goal or destination in mind. That is one thing we share in common, I suppose. Thanks to your assistance earlier, the world has expanded its horizons for me as I should be able to converse more freely with others in these lands. If you will have me, I wish to travel with you wherever you choose to go. Walking is always better with company." By now the arrows were slowly sinking deeper into his body, gradually being sucked in by his ichor. The shafts appeared to be much shorter than before and less obvious. Given a few more hours, they would be absorbed entirely. Then they would be broken down and be added to his internal composition. This was precisely why consuming food was not an ideal method of obtaining energy for eidolons. The process was simply too slow for too little return. 

"Well it's nice to meet you Aidoneus!" Attie exclaimed cheerfully, "Let's see. Since we both are interested in learning more about stuff, I suppose we ought to go find a place with lots of knowledge. Or perhaps we should go find one person to learn from."

Attie took a map from her bag and inspected it to see if she could figure out their next destination. Suddenly, an elder of the tribe began to walk up to the two, as though he had something he wanted to say.

“If you’re looking for a place of knowledge” He began in an old creaky voice, “I know of a temple that was used long ago to worship the celestial being known as Reverie. The temple is west of here, you'll know when you get to it when you see a forest in the shape of a circle. I bet there is more information in that temple than any library around here. But you’ll have to be careful. There is a reason that the temple was abandoned. But…if you have somebody like him….then I think you’ll do fine."

The old man was mostly telling them all of this because he wanted the two strange visitors to leave. The tribe had wasted enough of their time focusing on these strangers. Venti was coming and the last thing that they needed was a distraction to the workers. However, Attie didn’t notice this and her eyes lit up with joy at the prospect of a mysterious temple. After the village elder put the temple on her map, he left to go take care of other things.Attie turned to her new friend with excited eyes.

“Do you wanna go to the temple?” She asked, “I think it would be really informative and we might even get to know more about Reverie! I don’t know much about this person myself but I hear she is super important! So, do you want to come with me?” If he said yes, then they would begin heading through the tall grass, over to the markings on the map.