Raava Academy

Sunscreen

"Sit down, Korra." Unalaq commands. He's stood to one side of his chair behind his large, old mahogany desk, and his expression is currently unreadable. Su's already sat herself in one of the two leather chairs in front, and she smiles, gesturing at the vacant seat beside her. I feel like I'm five years old, and about to get the scolding of my life, but I sit anyway. What else can I do?

Unalaq pulls his seat forwards, and also sits, folding his arms upon his desk, and tapping his fingers, frowning, as though deep in thought.

"Let me make this brief. As you rather unfortunately now know, Asami is a sane. You will not provoke her. You will not reveal her identity to the other students, and you will certainly not attempt to harm her."

"And what's to stop her harming us!?" I exclaim, slamming my hands on the arms of my chair as I'm filled with a sudden rage. He glares at me in complete silence, his frosty gaze penetrating me to the core as though daring me to speak again. I don't.

He stands, takes a book from a shelf two down from the top, and brushes the dust from its cover with the side of his hand. Then he flicks through the pages, planting the large tome on the desk in front of me, and pointing. I crouch forward to look, finding a picture of something not quite human. It's not the best drawing in the world, but it's clearly a feral - there's grey, wrinkled skin from head to toe, and almost lance-like elongated claws on the tip of each finger. There's a second picture right beside it, a close-up of the head; a long, matted mane around the back, filled-in figure eights for a pupils, and a flattened snout with wide, pulled back nostrils. The worst part has to be the mouth, warped into a monstrous shape with the lower jaw protruding out, and several needle-sized fangs exposed.

"This is the first ever ancient feral in recorded history." Unalaq says, tapping his finger firmly on the drawing.

"Mad Lars?" I ask, raising an eyebrow.

"Oh so you do pay attention in class? Yes, Lars was a sane, almost two hundred years old. Mad as a hatter, and incredibly strong, but quite harmless. It's rumoured that he never killed a single human, and despite his insanity he was one of the first vampires in history to form what we now call blood contracts."

I don't know all of the specifics, probably because the topic disgusts me, but recent laws allow a human to negotiate a contract, and supply their own blood to a vampire. It's supposed to be mutually beneficial, but the thought of it sends a shiver up my spine, makes me think that humans are nothing more than blood bags to them, and the payment is just a formality.

Unalaq sits down again, and continues in a resigned tone, "One fateful day, a band of monster hunters thought it would be a fantastic idea to cage poor old Lars, torture him, and starve him."

"And then he turned feral and killed hundreds, I know."

It's a catalyst we're taught about early on, in basic vampire studies. Any sane has the potential to become feral, and that's probably the biggest reason why I just don't trust them, even though it's supposed to only happen when the vampire is starved within an inch of his life, or unlife, or whatever-the-fuck it is. Some sort of survival instinct kicks in, and they change, they mutate, and then there's no going back. That's all I know. If you ask me, it's best to just kill them all – if there's no sanes, then there can't be any ferals, either.

Unalaq sighs as though reading my mind, then folds the book closed and rests his palm atop it, "Hundreds, you say? Thousands, actually. It took everything the Kyoshi warriors had to take him down, and even then, at a great cost."

"How did they manage it?" I ask, struggling to believe that even Kyoshi's most elite could stand up to one of those things.

"That is a good question. And now, we go full circle. Yesterday you encountered an ancient - a feral vampire over a hundred years old - and from what I hear from Su, already quite injured."