Alen
Legacy Name: Alen

Saving strangers. ... His desperation and haste urged him forward. He felt the necessity to defend, to protect.Isolation was the least of his fears and death had not stopped him for a second. He would even take the latter up for a challenge, see if it could catch up to him and let him surrender to the darker side of existence.
The intoxicating smell of blood filled his lungs, initiating a reaction in him that he only knew too well and tried to avoid. He found the beast in human shape, crouched over it's prey, teasing it and satisfied at the reaction it was getting. It disgusted Alen.

I won't forget.

Hearing the hunter's footsteps, the beast forgot it's prey for a second and turned a bloodlust-tinted pair of eyes towards him. And he knew he was seeing his own reflection. Hungry. Desperate. Pitiful.
With a passive face, he reached into his coat, pulling out his already cocked gun.

I won't forget what I am.

Raising his gun, he shot a swift bullet between the demon's eyes, turning away even before the creature fell. Turning away before he continued from where the beast left.

I live eternally.

And he walked path that he hoped would lead to death.


Living, yet undead. Bursts of strength and extreme fatigue. He felt like he was living two lives in two bodies. Even his mind and body did not synchronize. At times he wanted to save but his body wanted to kill. The sight of blood ruined him because he lusted for it, and when he had had his fill, he would vomit it out because it made him sick.
Such is the life of a dhampir - half-vampire, half-human.
A cursed life, for he did not know who he was or where he came from. But he knew what he tried to be:

A Hunter.





Name: Alen
Age: 26
Gender: Male
Race: Dhampir (half-vampire, half-human)
Personality: Quiet, a loner, Alen keeps to himself. He has a tendency to help people in need. Does not rely on company or people in general.
Strengths: Heightened sense of sight, smell and hearing. Adept with stakes and guns. Can shoot at a long range right on target.
Weaknesses: Prolonged exposure to sunlight, human blood.
Weapons of Choice: Stakes, Guns

When you have mortal enemies, it is bad enough as it is. Imagine an immortal one. Well, it gets worse when he is your father.
Alen was sixteen when he ran away from home. He had long believed his mother and him were left to rot by his father. Somehow, they had gotten by. His mother worked two jobs - day in, day out. She was weary and old, far less graceful than women her age. Still, Alen was very proud of her. Alen never went to school, he could not afford to. He worked with his mother sometimes, and other times, he played an errand-boy for some of the townsfolk.

Alen spent most of his afternoons in the shade of the trees that circled his village. Sometimes he taught himself how to read, other times, he hunted. Squirrels, rabbits, anything that he could take home for supper. His mother had warned him about not wandering off too far since the woods grew denser and denser. Alen paid heed, but did not worry too much because he had no idea what he was supposed to worried about.

The same could not be said about his mother. She was always very fidgety and cautious, not to mention startled easily. Many times, he had walked in on her doing strange things such as peeping through the windows, lighting more candles than a room would require and having one-sided conversations with herself. When he asked her about it, she never explained but told him that if anything were to happen to her, he was to immediately run into the woods and hide in the hollow of the giant willow tree that he used to play in when he was younger. He had thought the request to be strange, but promised her that he would and had dismissed all his other doubts and never thought about them twice.

As he started to get older, things started getting out of control. His mother would wake up in the middle of the night screaming "No, not my son! My only son! Take me!" Alen kept trying to reassure her that nobody was there but she never listened. She shook fervently. Alen finally saved up enough from his daily wages to take his mother to the doctor - despite her constant rebuttal - and he could not give him any more of an explanation than "she's just growing old". Sometimes, after Alen had calmed his mother down and put her to sleep, he would lie awake, thinking about his father. What sick, twisted man would leave his wife and his two-year-old son? Alen blamed him for everything: his mother's mental state, their difficult life, even his dreams.

That's right. Alen had weird dreams too. They often began with a man talking to him in a slow, drawling voice. The man was always hidden, he wore a cloak. The only thing Alen remembered about him were his menacing, hungry, red eyes. They urged him to do things. They urged him to kill. The dreams started coming to him more frequently. They were more detailed. He could remember everything he did in them, everyone he killed, their shocked looks as he took their life. Alen knew he was not himself in these dreams. It could not be him. He was not a monster.

That night Alen woke up with a start. His body and his sheets were covered with sweat. Alen rolled over, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to forget the nightmare. Suddenly, he heard a faint thud. Alen squinted his eyes, trying to make out some shape, but to no avail. It was pitch black outside - a moonless night. He lay still, trying to listen for other sounds, but soon, curiosity got the better of him and he slowly made his way to his mother's room. The windows were wide open, and so were the blinds. Something seemed out of place. His mother would never leave the windows open at night. Another thud. Voices. His mother sobbing.

Alen strode into the room, ready to console his mother again. He was not prepared for what came next:
A tall man stood in the middle of the room. Alen did not have to think twice. This was the man who frequented his dreams. He stood, rooted to the floor, unable to think or speak, processing the fact that he was -quite literally- facing his nightmare. The red eyes turned to him, speaking to him like they did in his dreams. What would he ask Alen to do now?

"Alen! Run!"

He turned his attention to the voice and saw that it came from his mother who was kneeling behind the hooded figure, posed as if she was holding his feet or begging him. Alen turned on the light and moved towards the man, his anger getting the better of him.
The man remained calm, silent, watching Alen with interest. He did not blink at all. The red eyes followed Alen - except they were not red anymore. They were gold. Like his own eyes. And the man's hair was red, just like his own. Then realization struck him, brutally, with enough force to knock him off his feet. The man smiled and spread his arms wide, as an invitation to Alen.

"Hello, son."

At that moment, all the anger Alen had kept bottled up for the past sixteen years erupted like a volcano and Alen did nothing to hide his fury. He screamed till his throat went hoarse and he charged towards the man - his father - ready to feel his hands around the man's neck, ready to deliver some sort of physical pain to the man. He wanted to hurt him for all the pain and suffering his mother and him had gone through.

When he made contact, he delivered a blow, then another, and another. It went on till he could not hit the man anymore and his fists throbbed as they turned blue. His father had received each blow with modesty, he had not attempted to raise even a finger to defend himself. Alen was worried whether he had broken the man's ribs but the man showed no sign of pain - or remorse - whatsoever. He just started at Alen, almost as if he was evaluating him. Alen frowned and pushed past the man, taking his mother's hand and helping her up. She kept begging him to leave, to run away, to hide.
Holding his mother's hand, he walked across the room, towards the window, keeping distance between them and his father. They stood like that for a few minutes.
He had so many questions, so many accusations to make but first and foremost, the one that made more sense:

"Who are you?"

"I am you, Alen, and you are me."

"Don't play games with me! What do you want?"

"You." his father simply answered.

His mother began a fresh string of sobs and pleads. Alen squeezed her hand to calm her down and inched closer to the window.

"I'm not going anywhere with you!" Alen yelled, quickly swinging one leg over the window sill, then another, stepping on the narrow ledge between the ground and first floor of his house. He held his hand out to his mother. "Mother, we have to leave. Now."

"When I'm done with your mother I'll still find you, son." His father said, still rooted to the same spot. Alen wondered why his father had not made a move to try and stop them but he had no time to analyze things. Getting his mother and himself out of there was his priority. He urged his mother again, tugging her arm.

His mother hugged him, kissing his neck, she whispered:
"It's over. Hide in the willow till daybreak, then leave this place."

Without warning, she withdrew from him and pushed him off the window-sill. Alen scrambled, trying to hold on but his fingers missed the ledge, scraping the wall instead.

The fall was short but the moments that followed were long and etched in his memory forever. His mother's scream was the last thing he heard that night, and for a few nights after she was brutally murdered. He had made his way to the willow, feeling like a pathetic coward for not being able to face his father or save his mother. Guilt ate him up, bit my bit, and Alen felt as if he had lost his mind. He spent countless nights, starved, curled up in a ball, screaming. He saw red eyes in every nook and corner and the only thing he could do was to run away. Everything reminded Alen about how weak he was. Disgusted with himself, Alen left his home, his village, never looking back.

~*~*~*~*~

Ten years after that fateful day, Alen had become a completely different being. As his father had predicted, he was stronger, more agile and able to defend himself. Food and shelter were not his primary concern. There was something else he needed to survive - blood, albeit in small quantities. In the first few months after Alen had left home, he found it difficult to control himself and his thirst. He had cornered people in alleyways, deserted buildings, old motels, in order to drink from them without their consent. But he had never killed an innocent person. He knew when to stop and needed much lesser than full-breeds. This was the only advantage of being a Dhampir. In a way, his father had won. He had made Alen like himself - a beast.

His father had been persistent in finding him. Most of the time, Alen was shadowed by one of his father's minions. Alen took a lot of pain to eradicate the newly-turned vampires since their main goal was to turn more humans. They torched entire villages down, trying to smoke people out. Most of the villagers knew of Alen and often paid him heftily with supplies, food (which sometimes included donated blood) and shelter in return for his services.

He had learned how to use stakes deftly and carried a semi-automatic pistol with him as well. Vampires can also be killed with a bullet to the head. Every time he killed one, his father had taken revenge by hunting Alen down when he was most vulnerable, making the fight for his life more difficult. Regardless, Alen took care of every beast his father created to stalk him, spy on him and hurt him. His only goal was to slowly make it to the top and drive a stake through his father's heart and for that, he remains a target to this day.

The Hunter is also the Hunted.