The Fallen Vampire

A frightening woman with dark mottled green skin and hair resembling seaweed was staring back at him.

\'A naiad...?\'

Even if this woman was a water spirit, she was utterly unlike any normal one he\'d seen.

She seemed to be a mix of multiple creatures rolled into one, and boasted a considerably eerie aura to boot.

Taira looked past her, toward a deeper part of the water where multiple women were sleeping on top of large lilipads; each of them still connected to each other and inside the illusion.

"Girls...!"

His reaction seemed to infuriate the naiad.

The water spirits are famously known for their jealousy, and this one seemed to be no different from others of it\'s kind.

"Don\'t look at them, only look at me.. SLEEP FOR ME!!!"

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The naiad suddenly sank underneath the water and Taira developed an instinctive feeling of danger.

Moving quickly, he leapt above the surface just as the naiad reached to pull him under.

With more of her uncovered, Taira could get a better look at her full body now.

Her upper half was womanly and almost normal, but her lower body resembled some kind of sea serpent, with multiple sets of lizard-like legs and some bits of what appeared to be... fish scales?

"COME TO MEEE!!!"

With the creature lunging at Taira with it\'s arms outstretched, he just barely slipped between the gap in it\'s grasp and buried his claws directly into her head.

The naiad made a shocked choking sound as her body temporarily twitched in midair.

She inevitably fell back into the water, and Taira watched as the bubbles went from many to none at all.

Sighing in relief, he let his feet land on the surface of the underground lake and slowly made his way towards his sleeping wives.

A blue flame burst to life on five of his furry silver tails and floated over to their sleeping bodies.

While they were set ablaze, nothing on them was burned up, save for the parasitic vines encompassing their bodies.

Not a full three seconds went by before they sat up with a start.

Lucia: *Gasp!*

Keran: "W-Where..?!"

Enyo: "M-My head..."

Vermeil: "W-What\'s happening?!"

Aveena: "What happened to my entree!?"

Taira smiled dryly. "Take a moment to compose yourselves, my wives. Remember who we are and what we are."

Like a fog was slowly lifting, the five of them blinked their eyes and tried to regain clarity.

"That... was all a fabrication..." Enyo slowly realized. "How exactly is that possible?"

Taira sighed as he ran his hands through his hair. "If I am honest... I am not certain.

There are many illusion techniques in Tayar, and I\'m sure that there are ones of even greater profundity here.

There\'s no telling what the naiad could have done to us, but if I were to devise a hypothesis, I would say that she scraped through layers of our mind and constructed an ideal \'life\' for all of us.

The fact that we are all connected probably made it even easier for her to accomplish. And since we were unwilling to leave our dream, she slowly fed on us in the real world."

"A little naiad did all of this...?" Aveena grimaced.

"She wasn\'t exactly quite like the ones we know at home, but... yes." Taira nodded.

While everyone else wrestled with the fact that the past 10 or so years of their life were a lie, Vermeil was more embarrassed than others.

Because she knew that certain parts of the illusion were all too real.

In 50 full years of marriage, Vermeil had never once mentioned her mother, or her father.

When the subject of parents was brought up, she and Taira tended to stay quiet since they didn\'t exactly have happy stories to add to the conversation.

And now, she was worried that her family was going to look at her oddly, or start asking more questions she really wasn\'t ready to answer.

As a result, she prayed to whatever great power would listen that something, anything, would get her out of having to talk about it.

"We should find a way out of here." Taira suddenly stood up and helped pull each of the girls to their feet. "It\'ll be best if we can figure out where we are, and just how long we\'ve been in her-"

*Splash!*

"FEED MEEEE!!!"

In a completely unexpected twist, the naiad leapt out of the water with holes still in her brain from where Taira had attempted to give her a back-alley lobotomy.

Reacting surprisingly quickly, Lucia parted her full lips and spewed an arc of green flame that lit up the cavern.

The naiad let out a horrible, pitiful scream before she dove back into the safety of the water, but dragon flames don\'t just go out just because you try to put them out with water, or roll around in the dirt.

They aren\'t extinguished until whatever they seek to burn is a pile of ash.

But even underwater, the group could see that the naiad wasn\'t burning up like she should have been.

She was simply flailing about unconsciously, dealing with the immense pain of being burned alive without the sweet release of death to accompany it.

...Lucia\'s pride was a little hurt if she was honest!

With a vein bulging out of her temple, she summoned her oversized nine-ringed sword and leapt off the lily pad.

While airborne, she performed a large slash in midair that cut the water all the way to the lakebed; cleanly severing the naiad in half.

The water inevitably rushed back into place as she landed beside her husband, and she sighed in relief; already feeling much better.

That was, until she saw the two halves start to move and come back together once again.

"No. Fucking. Way!" she roared.

Lucia\'s yell inadvertently caused the entire cavern to shake like a cold stripper, and Taira was worried that she was going to be the reason this entire thing came down on top of them.

Dragon lungs aren\'t just for breathing fire and having pretty moans after all, as a single roar can flatten an entire town.

Enyo patted Lucia on her back so that she wouldn\'t be the reason this place buried them alive. "There there, dear. It\'s alright, you did your best."

"I-I hate that fishy harlot so much!"

"Yes, she\'s the absolute worst." Enyo agreed calmly.

The naiad appeared to have heard the words being slung at her behind her back as she leapt out of the water once again; still alight in green flame and still hungry.

"IT HURTS, IT HURTS!!!!"

"Yea, yea..." Vermeil unslung her sai from her waist and gave them a twirl.

Several replicas made purely from starlight appeared around her in a flash, and with a waive of her hand she sent them shooting towards the naiad.

The sai lodged themselves in various parts of her body and stapled her to the wall opposite them.

Though keeping in line with tradition, she still wasn\'t dead, but was least immobile.

"Should we... just leave her there?" Keran suggested.

The group shrugged as if they had no real problem with this.

As they turned around to leave, the red gem in Taira\'s chest began to glow of it\'s own volition.

"Hm?"

The fox demon watched in surprise as his trusty soul weapon Yasuke appeared of his own volition.

Miraculously, the gold and red scythe flew towards the impaled naiad on the wall and buried it\'s egregiously long blade in her sternum.

The strange water spirit twitched in a way that was different before and her entire body slumped over.

But this time, no matter how long the group waited, she never woke back up and started raging.

Even the flames on her body were finally beginning to consume her as intended.

Yasuke returned to his master\'s side happily, seemingly demanding praise.

"Ah... So that\'s how you kill creatures in the spirit realm."