December
Lucy's Age: 15
I just had a rather charged discussion with Venice. She's still not happy with the way things are between us right now. She's finally forgiven me for being so distant after my last run-in with Imastious, but I haven't been able to give her a good reason as to why we can't be together now like we were before.
I've told her that it's too dangerous for her, but she doesn't believe me. I suppose she has good reasons not to believe me though as it's only part of the truth. I am trying to protect her, but I'm also keeping her at arm's length because of Lucy. There wouldn't be any way to keep Venice ignorant of Lucy and Renworst if she and I were living together.
It's already somewhat difficult to keep her in the dark as it is. She knows entirely too much about my habits and activities already and I can't risk her finding out about the two of them. Venice's mental shields have continued to improve, but Imastious could still break her at any point assuming he's willing to invest the time and effort into doing so.
I've gone back through my journal entries from right before and right after the last time Imastious tortured me and I continue to be struck by the difference in tone between the two blocks of time. I've spent a significant amount of time contemplating the idea that I proposed of doing a regular cleanse of my mind to keep me from becoming too emotionally attached to any of the people around me. There are some definite things to be said about the option. It's been less than two years, and already I feel as though a significant percentage of my time is spent dealing with things related to maintaining a relationship with Venice or Lucy.
Just yesterday I spent an extra hour with Lucy shopping after our training session. What started out as an operational necessity to make sure that we weren't followed back to her apartment, has turned into a mini ritual.
And then, once we made it back to her apartment, I noticed just how old and tired Renworst is looking. At another point in my life I wouldn't have even given the fact a second thought other than maybe to make a mental note that I would need to replace him at some point in the next decade or so.
Instead of dismissing the information, I spent most of the rest of the day trying to come up with a workable solution to the problem. Renworst has plenty of vices and failings, but he's been a faithful servant for nearly a decade. More and more I feel like that kind of loyalty should be rewarded.
The obvious answer is to turn him. There is an element of risk to that, not everyone who is exposed survives the transformation process, but the risk is acceptable and the potential long-term benefit is sufficient that I'm nearly positive that Renworst would choose to be turned if educated and then given the option.
The only real difficulty is deciding when to attempt the turning. I know that Lucy and Renworst have had their share of friction over the years, but it wouldn't be fair to her to take away the man who's been more of a father to her than I've ever been. I won't risk turning him when he's still living with her, though, because new vampires are still too unpredictable. That means I can't turn him before I turn Lucy, but by the same measure I can't turn the two of them at the same time because bringing along two new vampires at the same time would be much too big of a time commitment. There would be no possible way for me to keep that a secret from Venice or Imastious either one.
I briefly considered having Venice take care of Renworst after I turned him, but Imastious would eventually know anything Venice knew and if Imastious found out that I was making new vampires he would kill me in a heartbeat.
The only solution seems to be to wait a few more years, turn Lucy, get her stabilized, and then turn Renworst and stabilize him as well. It's workable, but it sentences Renworst to a number of additional years of aging. Being turned tends to reverse some of the aging process, but I'm not sure how far it will go. I wouldn't want to doom Renworst to an eternity in a tired old body that wouldn't be suitable for the incessant combat that is vampire life.
It's a sticky problem which I'll no doubt spend many additional hours pondering, but I don't begrudge Renworst that time. I think that is the fundamental difference between who I am now versus who I was immediately after sanitizing my mind.
I know that there is an argument that I'm wasting time on things that are unnecessary. Renworst is probably never going to be anything other than a blunt instrument at best, but I want to spend that time regardless.
Not only that, I think that there is a perfectly valid counter-argument in that I've never managed to connect successfully with Lucy in the absence of emotion, and she still represents my best long-term chance of breaking free from Imastious.
She truly is amazing. I've begun teaching her kenjitsu and she's picking up techniques at an incredible pace. It's not just the physical aspect of things either, she continually displays the proper mindset for combat. It's still mostly a game to her, but I suspect that she will have no problem making the adjustment to life-and-death conflict when the time comes.
With everything going on, all the progress being made with both Lucy and Venice, I think that the thing I'm still happiest about is the fact that Lucy and Renworst are starting to get along better than they have been.
I've been dropping by a couple of times a week lately and working with Renworst after Lucy goes to sleep. I've learned a lot about implanting subtle constructs since my difficulties with Mrs. Agosti, and Renworst is taking to my latest round of suggestions very nicely.
The longer I work with Renworst the more I become sure that there was some kind of severe psychological trauma that had a central role in shaping his character. I could probe a little deeper into his memories to find out what it was, or even just ask him about it. His loyalty conditioning would make him tell me what happened, but that feels like a very poor trade in return for his loyalty.
Whatever the original cause of Renworst's mental scarring, I'm glad to be able to say that some of the worst effects of the trauma are slowly being reversed by the constructs that I've been implanting.