All games begin innocently enough. A child's proposal, saying, Hey, won't this be fun? Won't this be great? And an idea sparks, catches in the back of the mind where it then lingers and intensifies until it is nothing more than an absolute conflagration. It's a proposal for greater, more admirable things.
War is one such game. Children run around in their parents' houses, taking their toy swords and slashing away at invisible enemies, always the victor, never the slain, creating great deeds in the back of their minds that they will grow up and be great conquerors. And at times that is precisely what they do. They age, become wise – or at least, more wise than they were before, because a man is never truly wise – overtake those above them and rule. And then, they aspire for more. One taste of greatness is not enough. Nothing, for a mortal who knows his days will end, is ever enough. He must have everything while he has the chance, marvel in the beauties that will outlive him, and strive for more. He is never content.
Neither are we, this I know. We, in our immortality, strive to see the beauty that we once saw as mortals, however long ago that may be, to recapture our youth that we never outlived, but are forever torn apart from in the same breath.
We are the vampires. I will not say we are the victims, because we are not. We are merely getting our just desserts at human hands after centuries of preying upon them.
But they are weak and will not win. The chopping off of heads and the stuffing of garlic into orifices is no way to defeat us. We do not wish for defeat, and we will not aid them in doing so, but defeat is always far away, a goal for humans that, in their short lives, cannot be reached.
And then there are those who wish not to destroy us but idolize us. Once, long ago, vampires took on human bonds, attaching themselves, with all their love that could never be given to anything else, for everything else would die around them, to a single human being, granting them life so long as they both lived; a marriage of souls, inexorably twined together, where if you cut one thread, both would snap and be sent to death.
Why do I say this, write down things that we already know? Because being known as an immortal does not mean immortality. Vampires die. We can be murdered, we can be slain, we can die at our own hands. Nothing natural may be able to kill us, but it is possible for us to die. That is why I have kept this book, this massive, leatherbound behemoth, along with its compatriots in my study. I will pass one day. I will pass, and beyond me someone may live, and I hope - hope but do not pray - that they do. That some mortal can peer into the life of a vampire and voice aloud that we, as a species, are not wretched. We were human once. We had our own heartbeat, our own mind, or own will and our own bracket of time upon this earth.
We simply went beyond it.
I have found a boy, a wounded youth; I have seen him, peered into his mind as he lays upon my bed. He is dying. His blood has been almost entirely drained, the marks still linger at his throat, bruised and territorial in nature. Someone bit him to say, he is mine, do not touch him, I will be back if he lives. It was not me, but I took him, whisked him to my castle. He is too young to perish. He can only be seventeen, no older. I will save him. I wish to save him. I wish to dote upon him, cast my love to him in these, my waning immortal years - a vampire hardly lasts longer than a few centuries, and I am already older than that - and know that I, somehow, made a mark on someone.
I want to love him. I want him to love me. With all my festered, withered heart I do.

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Author's Note: Gasp. Added to it, when it was up for less than a day. -Faint thud-