<div class="floatleft">(http://i945.photobucket.com/albums/ad295/Dariusfallenstar/Male%20Rp%20Characters/934973_153446504833029_850690640_n_zps714c10cc.jpg)</div><br/>Thunder rumbled, sending cascades of lightning crawling around the shoulders of the vast, mountain-perched mansion. It was odd how the clouds clustered around the space above the castle-like structure, more ancient than the tall trees that surrounded it on all sides, save for the bare opening leading out to the rest of the world. Weather, it seemed, much like nature itself – given the size and apparent lurid, eerie quality of that forest, behaved oddly around Castle Dracula. Currently, the turbulent sky above, absent the sun, reflected not nature at all; rather, it displayed the emotional state of the land’s absolute ruler: the Count.<br/><br/>“Time is precious, a burning fire, yet spent with no outlet becomes so….tedious,”  murmuring to himself, the Count stood in his grand hall, looking out over the landscape of his home, over his birthright. A birthright that he had grown bored with, as with so many other things. Truth be told, the women he loved had often mentioned how they, too, would enjoy travel, to escape the dreary days and infinite nights and cold of their royal home. It would be good to “let the cats out” from time to time, he thought, provided they exercised control over themselves.<br/><br/>No more slaughtering the peasants mercilessly; like any good livestock, they had to be cultivated, not decimated at every meal. His brides had to obey and allow himself to add a new member to their group, a member whose blood would allow them the luxury of travel that they all so desperately sought. Of course, in truth, provided the soil of his homeland was near and he slept in it, Dracula himself could travel anywhere. Even in the daylight, with the right protections. But his brides, the women he loved, were linked to the land of their birth and his homeland – as their creator and Lord. By adding new brides, carefully and with much thought, who happened to have a drop or two of royal blood, he could grant them all a measure of flexibility.<br/><br/>A way to retreat from this huge and ancient place, this memorial of times long past and the curse that lay upon them all.<br/><br/>Thus it was that the Count stood in his window looking out, the small, but potent, psychic connection he’d formed with a certain older woman pulsing in the back of his mind, whispering of her location. Her location and, no doubt, the location of the surpassingly beautiful young woman that she brought with her to become his newest bride.<br/><br/>Smiling to himself, the elegantly dressed, apparently young man felt the thrill of conquest, of charm and desire and conflict all slip up his spine. How he loved conflict! How he lived for new things! And in that moment, Dracula was, indeed, young again, his pale skin flawless, his eyes dark pits straight into the abyss of sin, his lips rugged and red-tinted, yet full and tempting. In that moment, he was the warrior, the seducer, the Lord of Darkness himself.<br/>