Ichor Cell-Chapter 8: Midnight snack

Alex came to with a gasp, his eyes snapping open as he inhaled a mouthful of dirt. Coughing and spluttering, he wiped his mouth and looked around cautiously.
He found himself lying on the ground in some alley, the dusty earthen floor and rotting walls his only company. Flipping over onto his back, he saw the moon watching over him through a gap in the rooftops, its light struggling to pierce through the gathering clouds.
‘What the fuck happened?’
He shook his head to clear it.
‘I swear I was going to find someone to… snack on, then the next thing I know I’m waking up on the floor in some alley.’
‘Speaking of hunger, how long have I been out? Because holy shit.’
Alex clutched his stomach; the dull, throbbing ache had grown into a piercing pain, as if he had swallowed a sea urchin whole.
Getting up, he re-inspected the ground at his feet. To his surprise, he found an ornate dagger laying beside him, its blade still wet with blood.
‘What the…’
Furrowing his brows, he bent down to inspect it, noticing various intricate patterns covering the handle and crawling along the spine of the blade. The moonlight seemed to shimmer as it danced across the flowing lines, revealing its magical nature.
Raising his eyes, Alex finally discovered the reason for his predicament. There, laying in a puddle of blood, was the disfigured form of a man, his neck twisted all the way around in a gruesome display of violence.
“Ah! I remember now!” He exclaimed, clapping his hands together. “This fuck stabbed me!”
Dropping the act, he put on a serious face and cautiously approached the corpse, kicking it when he got there.
“Fucking serves you right.” Bending down, he inspected the man’s features, trying to discern whether he had seen him before. He quickly concluded that he had never met this man in his life.
Already expecting this, he moved on to rifling through the man’s pockets. Alex didn’t really have much experience in this area, so it took him a few minutes, but he eventually laid out the man’s possessions on the ground before him.
Doing his best to ignore his stomach, he appraised the items. From left to right there was a bag of herbs, some copper coins, a silver amulet with a blood red gem in the center and a strange deck of cards.
He discarded the herbs immediately, not interested in whatever drugs this world’s crackheads consumed. The coins he pocketed. He was certain it wasn’t a large sum, but every little bit helps. He did the same with the cards, planning on maybe selling them to someone or potentially keeping them himself.
That left him with the final item: the necklace. He had left it for last, as it was obviously the most expensive item in the man’s possession—quite honestly it was beyond what the man should be able to afford. But that wasn’t the only reason. Something about it called to him, pulled him towards it as if it contained something he had lost.
Bringing it closer, Alex realised that the red part in the middle wasn’t actually a gem, more like a container. Stored inside was slowly shifting drop of blood, and judging by the pull he felt, he had a sinking suspicion that he knew who it belonged to.
‘Fuck, leaving blood at the scene really was a mistake.’
He swore,
‘Well, not like I had much choice, but still… at least I guess it can only be used track me. Silver lining and all that.’
It reminded him of the other necklace, the one he had taken as he ran last night. He had hidden it beneath a loose floorboard at the store, the old storekeeper either not noticing or being kind enough to not question him over it.
Pocketing the amulet for further study, Alex turned to the true final item; the man’s body itself. Judging by the fact that it had yet to go cold and blood still trickled out of its mouth, he confirmed that he had only passed out for a few minutes at most; definitely not enough to get this hungry.
‘Well I guess this confirms that regeneration uses up energy and makes me starve quicker.’
He thought.
‘I could have guessed that without the help but it’s nice to have confirmation.’
Squatting before the man’s prone form, he contemplated how he wanted to do this. His hunger needed to be sated, and he saw no reason to hurt another person when there was a perfectly good corpse right in front of him.
‘I wonder what human actually tastes like? I don’t really remember tasting anything the first time around…’
Pushing the morbid thought away, Alex reached down and grabbed the man’s hand.
Sure, going for the neck or the thigh would be more efficient, the major arteries allowing for easier access, but he didn’t really want to touch this unknown man in those places, especially with his mouth. Also this felt more clinical, less… gross.
Bringing the man’s wrist up to his lips, Alex paused.
‘Now, how do I get these to come out?’
He licked his canines, which had reverted back to human size after last night’s transformation.
He tried willing them to extend, baring his teeth, snarling, hissing, even muttering “Vampire time!”. Nothing worked. His teeth stubbornly remained human. Getting frustrated, Alex was just about to slice the man’s wrist open with his new knife when an idea struck him.
Narrowing his eyes, he dabbed a finger into the puddle on the floor and brought it up to his mouth. As soon as the blood contacted his tongue, he heard a quiet
schnik
and felt a light pull on his gums.
Running his tongue across his teeth, he found nothing remaining from his previous denture. It felt like someone had filled his mouth with serrated pencils, their tips sharp enough to cut diamond—as demonstrated by his lacerated tongue.
‘Ow. Better not try to talk like this.’
He thought, looking back down at the poor man’s limb.
‘I guess, bon appetit?’
Tucked within a shadowed alley, a man sat quietly; his legs were crossed, his posture relaxed, and his eyes closed as if meditating. Beside him lay the mangled remains of a man’s corpse, drained of life and blood, its grotesque form resembling a shriveled husk. Yet the seated man appeared entirely at ease, his calm demeanor at odds with the grisly scene mere inches away.
Alex had never really tried meditation, all his knowledge of it coming from his experience reading novels and watching his mother practice yoga a few times, but he was trying his best to enter that state now. The reason he was attempting it was the unexpected aftereffect of his new source of “nutrition”.
The previous night, while he was busy devouring the unfortunate owner of that bedchamber, he had felt a strange energy gather and condense somewhere inside his chest. He had quickly forgotten all about it amidst the chaos that followed, and he was surprised to feel it reappear tonight while he fed on his attacker.
Upon noticing it, he had immediately pulled himself away from the man to focus on the sensation. Alex had read more than enough novels to know that a gathering of energy in one’s chest—especially while one was consuming something—usually meant the unlocking of some power.
Crossing his legs, he immediately focused on the elusive sensation within his core, trying to interact in any way with the new energy. He inhaled deeply through his nose and out through his mouth, doing his best to still his mind and relax his thoughts.
Unfortunately, even after twenty minutes of effort, he still could not fully relax, the ball of power resting untouched by his efforts. The adrenaline from getting stabbed still hadn’t fully left his system, and the excitement from discovering a new potential power definitely wasn’t going anywhere.
If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. it.
Huffing in frustration, Alex got up to stretch his limbs.
‘I don’t know how those cultivator dudes do it. I was sitting there for less than half an hour and my joints are already killing me. I’m supposed to believe they can do it for a month straight with no problem? No wonder they’re so eager to kill anyone who slightly inconveniences them. I’d also be murderous if I spent most of my time like this.’
‘Well, since I can’t meditate right now, maybe I can just figure it out by doing? Since I’m obviously some sort of vampire creature I’m guessing this power is blood related.’
He looked around to make sure no one was watching, ignoring the body lying by his feet.
“Okay then,” He limbered up, shaking his arms and legs out. Glancing around once again, he closed his eyes to focus on the faint pulsation in his chest. He constructed a simple shard of hardened blood within his mind, trying to imagine its length, weight and even texture with as much precision as he could.
Once he had an image of what he wanted firmly held in his mind, he took a deep breath, snapped his eyes open and threw his arm forward.
“Blood bolt!” He shouted, fingers splayed outwards as every muscle in his arm bulged with effort.
The air seemed to hold its breath as the sounds of nighttime filled his ears. The faint murmur of distant conversation, the slow drip of wet roof tiles, the distant chirping of crickets. The smell of damp earth mixed with the sharp tang of blood entered his nostrils, reminding him of the company at his feet. Alex narrowed his eyes.
He felt it, rising from deep within him, slowly at first but getting faster and faster, a powerful, overwhelming… shame. After holding the pose for over a minute, he became acutely aware of every inch of his body.
“Ughh.” He crouched down and held his head in his hands, a grimace distorting his face. “Nobody look at me! I’m an embarrassment to my ancestors! Just kill me now!” He moaned, screwing his eyes shut.
After wallowing in self-pity for a few minutes, he sighed and got back up. As much as it hurt him, he was going to figure something out today even if it killed him.
‘Well, maybe not if it kills me, but I’m definitely going to try my best.’
Stretching his hand back out, Alex got to thinking.
‘What am I missing?’
He thought, frustration gnawing at him. The energy in his chest was there, a small but undeniable presence, pulsing softly like a heartbeat. He could feel it, almost taste it, yet it eluded his control, like trying to grasp flames with his bare hands.
“Just do something!” Alex clenched his outstretched hand, feeling the cool night air brush against his skin. His fingers twitched, as if expecting something—anything—to happen. But the alley remained silent, indifferent to his efforts. He exhaled sharply, dropping his arm back to his side.
He glanced down at the corpse, the lifeless body of a man that had tried to take his life mere minutes ago. The blood that had once coursed through those veins now seeped into the dusty dirt street, dark and glistening in the moonlight. It was fascinating, really. Maybe he’d had a family, people that cared about him.
He might have been a good person, probably a soldier simply doing his duty, or a desperate man with nothing left to lose, paid pennies to do the nobles dirty work. To people like him, Alex was a monster, a bloodthirsty beast that had attacked them and murdered a woman in her sleep. It made him feel sick.
Taking another deep breath, Alex tried to clear his thoughts again, calming the storm in his mind.
‘Okay, let’s think about this logically. I fed on the guy, I felt the energy… so why can’t I use it? What’s the trick? What am I missing?’
‘Is it just a skill issue?’
His thoughts drifted back to the novels he’d read, the countless protagonists who had unlocked their powers with ease. They made it sound so simple: channel the energy, focus, and boom—instant superpowers. But reality was proving to be far more complicated.
Alex paced back and forth, his boots making soft thuds against the ground. Now that the excitement was starting to fade, he was left with nothing but irritation. He was certain that he would figure it out eventually, but progress he wasn’t making now could mean his death in the future.
“God dammit.” He rubbed his face with his hands. “How do I make it do something?”
Alex thought back on the two times he had felt the power react. Both times it had been instinctual, instant, with no deliberate manipulation or action on his part. Even his transformation obviously used some sort of catalyst to trigger, though he hadn’t felt it back then.
‘Maybe it’s not about trying to force it,’
He mused, slowing his steps.
‘Maybe it’s about just letting it happen.’
He had been treating it like some sort of external source of power, something to tame or control, but maybe that was the wrong way to look at it. If he changed his frame of reference and started treating it not as something new, as something separate, but as an integral part of himself… that might be the key to unlocking this power.
‘
I don’t force my limbs to move in the way that I want them to, and I don’t manually command my heart to beat every second.’
He nodded along to his thoughts.
‘If I try to consciously tell my biceps to flex, nothing happens.’
‘So do I have to effectively learn to control a new limb?’
He frowned, studying his hand.
‘But then comes the issue of time. It takes a person years just to learn how to walk, and here I have a whole new aspect of my body to master.’
‘Even if my adult mind is much better at complex thought and prior experience makes things easier… I bet it’ll take weeks before I can do anything useful with this.’
He sighed in disappointment.
‘Well, no time to get started like the present.’
He closed his eyes again, this time letting the sounds and smells of the city wash over him without resistance. Everything gradually faded into the background as he focused his full attention on the steady pulses of energy within him.
He inhaled slowly, feeling the air fill his lungs, and then exhaled, directing the breath through that warm core in his chest, letting the current carry the energy along. He wasn’t deterred when nothing happened, repeating the exercise again and again, holding the imagery of power flowing through his chest with every breath.
He was no longer trying to accomplish anything with the power, he was simply trying to interact with it in any way. Like a baby kicking its legs just because it can, with no goal or specific movement in mind.
As the minutes passed, Alex’s focus only continued to deepen, his thoughts giving way to a strange sense of calm. His breaths became more even, gradually matching the steady rhythm of the energy within him. With each inhale, he felt the warm, pulsing sensation grow slightly more distinct, more a part of him. It was still elusive, refusing to acknowledge his efforts, but no longer completely foreign.
‘It’s just a muscle.’
He tried to convince himself.
‘Nothing special, just a brand new, imaginary magic muscle. It’s a part of me and I can move it at will. You can already use so many, what’s one more?’
The more he relaxed into the sensation, the more he began to notice small shifts in the energy’s behaviour. It wasn’t a flood of power or a dramatic surge, but a subtle, almost imperceptible change—like the twitch of a finger.
‘Okay… Now I just need to make it twitch how I want it to.’
He shook his head wryly.
‘Easy peasy.’
Instead of forcing it, he allowed the energy to simply exist, to be present without his interference.
As Alex continued to focus, he felt a faint stirring within his chest, a whisper of movement. It was subtle—so subtle that he normally would have wondered if he was imagining it. But as he maintained his steady breaths and clear mind, the sensation slowly grew stronger, like an ember catching a gentle breeze.
A flicker of excitement threatened to break his concentration, but he reined it in, choosing instead to observe the sensation calmly.
‘Okay, easy does it. It’s definitely twitching.’
He thought, suppressing the urge to grin.
‘It’s like learning to walk all over again, except this time, I might accidentally blow something up.’
He took another deep breath, trying to guide the energy just a little bit more, imagining it moving down his arm, maybe sparking a tiny, harmless blood bolt. But as soon as the thought crossed his mind, the energy flickered and retreated, slipping away like a shy animal.
“Dammit,” Alex muttered, letting his arm drop in frustration. “Of course it’s not going to be that easy.”
He glanced around the alley, half-expecting to see some hidden observer laughing at his attempts, but thankfully, the night was still and empty. Except for the dead guy at his feet, of course.
With a sigh, he crouched down beside the corpse, avoiding eye contact. “You wouldn’t happen to have any tips, would you?” He asked it, only half joking. “No? Yeah, didn’t think so.”
Shaking his head, Alex stood back up, running a hand through his hair. He knew he couldn’t afford to give up, not when his life—or un-life, or whatever—was on the line. But the sheer frustration of not being able to do something so seemingly basic was getting to him.
‘Fine,’
he thought, squaring his shoulders.
‘If I can’t force it, I’ll just keep nudging it until it does what I want. I’ve got all night, and it’s not like I’ve got anything better to do.’
With that, he closed his eyes again, settling back into his breathing, letting the energy pulse within him without trying to control it. Maybe if he could just get used to the feeling, it would become more familiar, more manageable.
As he focused, the energy responded in kind, this time with a bit more consistency. It still wasn’t much—more of a gentle ripple than a wave—but it was progress. And right now, any progress was a win in Alex’s book.
‘We’ll get there,’
He thought, raising his hand once again.
‘One twitch at a time.’
As the first hints of dawn brightened the distant sky, an exhausted Alex stumbled wearily into Grenil’s store, carefully placing the shattered remains of the doorway back in its place. In the excitement of discovering actual magic, he had forgotten how little rest he had gotten the previous day.
Instead of a nice, long sleep to wait out the daylight hours, he had gotten rudely woken up by a grumpy old man and then worked until dusk. Immediately after—once again instead of getting some rest—he had gone out into the slums, gotten stabbed, and spent hours practicing his new magic, to little success.
‘I should really do something about this, it’s becoming a habit.
’ He blearily thought as he collapsed to the ground in the same spot as last night, his eyes struggling to stay open.
‘I hope… the old man… lets me sleep… for a bit longer…’
Rearranging a random cloth into a pillow, Alex finally closed his eyes and succumbed to the blissful embrace of sleep.