FicWad

The Blood Oath Chronicles

The Vampire Prophecy Saga

Chapter 2: The Transformation

The roof door burst open and the three Teen Titans Cyborg, Beastboy and Starfire ran up to Raven to see her checking Robin who didn’t look in very good condition.

“What is wrong with Robin?” Starfire asked as she flew up to him and held him close. Raven felt a twinge of jealousy but quickly ignored it.

“He has been hurt badly and I can get him back to the tower the quickest,” Raven replied.

Her attempt at to sound calm but failed miserably. Starfire hesitated but gave Robin to Raven and She teleported back to the tower and they reappeared inside the med lab but noticed the windows had no curtains to protect him from the daylight.

Raven began to notice that Robin felt extremely light and began to understand why that man calling himself Leo had warned her.

She disappeared with Robin in a flash of black energy and appeared in her Robins room since his didn’t have a window in it and placed Robin on his dead and started checking for injuries but found none strangely and this brought her closer to what she thought had happened to the boy wonder.

She realized that his skin had grown a lighter color and had thinned down and his already muscular body had become more toned as she noticed through his torn clothing. She removed the tattered leather jacket and shirt and his skin was almost white and noticed he wasn’t even breathing. She put her hand on his bare chest and a chill went up her arm because his skin was ice cold. She felt a faint heartbeat but knew that he wasn’t breathing at all.

She pulled up a chair and began to tend to him. She pulled his black quilt over him in hopes of warming his body.

She removed his sunglasses and put them on his bedside table next to his mask. She had an urge to see what color eyes he had but she quickly got rid of that and thoughts began to run through her head and her emotions began playing up as well.

‘Wow Robin’s got a great body, his muscles are great, must’ve spent a lot of time toning them’ Raven thought but then stopped herself.

‘Wait I can’t think about Robin like that he’s my leader and friend nothing more besides he doesn’t like me like that’ she reminded herself and her emotions seemed to calm down but only a little.

She looked around his room and noticed that there were articles all over the walls. Mainly about various criminals the titans had encountered before, most of them were Slade but it was expected since he was obsessed with catching Slade at any cost.

‘He’s still after Slade after all this time well after what I saw in his head it really isn’t that surprising’ Raven thought to herself.

She turned back to Robin and just couldn’t get used to his deathly pale skin which used to seem so alive and vibrant to her.

‘I wonder if I am right about Robin no longer being human and Leo definitely did not seem human’ Raven thought and put her hand in his forehead.

Robins blood covered chest didn’t move a centimeter. She walked to his bathroom and picked up a cloth and wet it with warm water under the tap. She walked back into the main room were robin lied in his bed and began to wipe away the dark crimson blood on his chest. As she wiped away the blood she noticed that his chest had scars all over his chest and arms. The largest one most of went from his shoulder right down to his stomach and was probably the thickest as well and wondered how Robin could have survived such an injury. She figured that he got that one from the fall when he was around eight when Slade threw him off the cliff outside Jump city.

The images were still fresh in her mind from earlier tonight. She never knew that Robin had been raised by the very person he hated the most and it also explained why Slade wanted Robin as his apprentice because that was what Robin used to be before he ran away.

Despite all the pain Robin had endured over the years he still did what had to be done when people needed him the most but under the fearless leader she realized that he was filled with hatred and anger for nearly ten years about what had happened ad what Slade did to him.

Just then she sensed the remaining Titans return so she teleported to the main living room right in front of the three Titans. They jumped a little but quickly calmed down when the saw that it was only Raven.

“Where is Robin?” Starfire asked quickly.

“He is in his room but for some reason there isn’t a mark on him and yet he has lost a lot of blood yet I can’t find any injuries,” Raven replied. “He also seems to be in some kind of light coma and I am not sure when he will come out of it but your welcome to check up on him,”

The four titans walked to his room and she opened the door to reveal the motionless Robin.

They walked in and gasped at the site of Robin except Raven that is since she had already seen it for herself. They just stared at his scarred body with its deathly pale skin.

“What the hell happened to him?” Cyborg asked sounding slightly panicked at the sight they had in front of them.

Not even Raven could be sure of the answer but had an idea about what happened to him and what Robin had become. This was the first time the other Titans beside Raven had actually gotten a good luck at his room. Starfire floated over to where Robin slumbered and shook him gently.

“Why won’t Robin wake up and why is his skin so cold?” She asked silently sobbing at the fallen boy wonder.

Raven watched in pity as the Tamaran cried for the one she had a crush on. Beastboy then spotted the blood covered cloth on the floor.

“Oh man that is a lot of blood,” Beastboy said and picked it up and walked into the bathroom to clean it.

“And he isn’t breathing either but there is a heartbeat so what on earth is going on with him?” Cyborg said asking nobody in particular.

“Starfire maybe you and Beastboy should leave since me and Cyborg can take care of Robin,” Raven stated calmly.

The Tamaran shook her head but Cyborg forced both of them out of Robin’s room since they wouldn’t be of any help to Robin’s current condition.

Robin the grimaced in his sleep and Raven got a quick look at a pair of fangs and then she knew what Leo had meant…Robin was a vampire which explained why he didn’t need to breathe and the color of his skin could have been considered blood loss.

“So what do you think of his condition?” Raven asked calmly.

Cyborg hesitated for a minute and appeared to be deep in thought about that question.

“I have no idea I have never seen anything like this,” Cyborg replied. “The only way I can actually tell that he is alive is his heartbeat but that is too slow for a human I…I just have no idea what to do if only we knew more about his condition.”

She thought for a minute and decided to tell him or rather show him what had happened to Robin and the way it would change him forever. She decided to tell him as long as he didn’t tell Starfire and Beastboy since they probably couldn’t handle the truth of what Robin had become.

“Cyborg I am going to tell you his condition but you must not tell Starfire or Beastboy as I doubt that they can handle it,” Raven said and she sat down by Robin’s side and silently motioned Cyborg closer.

Cyborg felt a twinge of nervousness about why Raven wanted to keep this a secret but played along with her anyway.

Raven’s hand traveled to Robins face and moved his lips out of the way to show Robin his teeth.

“Oh my god what the hell happened to his teeth,” Cyborg nearly yelled.

Raven had revealed two fangs which were about two and a half centimeters long which had taken the place of the canine teeth.

“He’s a Vampire Cyborg this guy named Leo turned him into one to save his life otherwise he would have died if Leo hadn’t shown up,” Raven explained.

Cyborg got out a medical torch and opened his eyes but soon regretted it when he did. His eyes were blood red with black slits. His eye whites had completely disappeared and it was nothing but red with black slits. There was nothing left of his old eyes not even their shape.

Raven hadn’t expected this to say the least so now there was no way to keep this a secret for long unless he decided to keep his mask or wear contact lenses.

“This is going to be harder than I thought,” Cyborg said knowing that sooner or later Starfire and Beastboy were going to find out and he would rather tell them than let them find out by accident.

“Raven maybe we should tell the others about this,” Cyborg said.

Raven refused to believe that he actually said that. After all Raven doubted that Starfire and Beastboy would handle the news very well. Starfire was too naïve and if she found out what a Vampire was, she’d be heartbroken.

Beastboy, well he’d be scared shitless and Robin would kill him at the first sign of a bloodsucking joke. Okay maybe that wasn’t a total downside but it’d be best kept a secret.

“No we can keep this under wraps and besides what would Beastboy and Starfire think if they knew what he has become,” Raven replied quickly.

Cyborg scratched the back of his head and realized that Raven had a point about what she was saying.

“Yeah I guess your right but you replied very quickly, wanting to defend Robin huh,” Cyborg said with a grin.

Raven hid her blush as best as she could but failed.

“Cyborg now is no the time for stupid jokes okay,” she said harshly and Cyborg took a step back holding up his hands in an apologetic manner.

“But you do have a thing for Robin don’t you?” Cyborg asked not knowing when to give up.

Her eyes glowed whit and she levitated him out of his room and into the corridor.

“I’ll just take that as a yes then,” Cyborg said walking away from Robin’s room knowing that he was no longer needed.

Raven decided that she no longer needed to take care of him and would be fine by himself. She began to leave his room but decided to take a closer look around his room since she didn’t really have a good look before.

On the table in the very center of his room he kept his most important files there including ones about Brother Blood and Slade. She even saw weapons used by them there as well and saw Slade’s mask on the table, well one of his masks that Robin had collected from the robotic version of Slade. She picked up the mask and knew that Robin would never get over Slade until he was dead.

She spotted a extra door in the corner o the room and she walked up to it and opened the door to see what looked like a library that wasn’t in the blueprints for titans tower which meant that Robin came here to get away from the others and be by himself. His book collection was massive ranging to horrors to romance.

You name it he had it even from fiction to non-fiction. She whistled at the site and saw books even she would be interested in but minded her own business and left the library and closed the door behind her.

She took one last glance at Robin and left his room.

She knew that the next few days were going to be hard on the Titans as she walked down the corridor towards the lift. She pressed the call button for the lift and the door opened several seconds later and she stepped inside.

She pressed the button for the first floor and the lift whirred to life taking her to floor where the rest of the Titans were probably located. Robin being what he is now was going to be hard on the Titans and especially Starfire who had an eye for the boy wonder but Raven did as well but she didn’t care what Robin had become but Starfire and Beastboy might since they didn’t know that Robin was a Vampire now and reminded herself to read the book Dracula.

The lift door opened and she walked out into the corridor and the walked silently into the commons room where the rest of the Titans were likely to be. Cyborg and Beastboy were playing on the game station but the moods didn’t seem to be into the game and Starfire was eating pudding of sadness. Raven shivered at the thought because she remembered the time was dumb enough to let Starfire convince her to taste it, and she remembered throwing up into the toilet a few minutes later.

She shook the image from her head and sat down on the sofa away from Cyborg and Beastboy.

The sun was beginning to rise and realized that the night passed very quickly that night. Probably because so much had happened to Slade attacking a facility for reasons known probably only to Robin and ending up turning into a creature of the night.

“Friend Raven how is Robin?” Starfire asked as soon as she spotted Raven with concern in her voice.

Raven knew why Starfire asked since it was no secret that Starfire and a fascination for Robin.

“He’s sleeping at the moment and I don’t think he will wake up for a while,” Raven answered as calmly as she could.

Only Star caught the hint of worry in her voice despite how naïve the young Tamaran may be.

“I will go and check upon him,” Starfire said.

Raven heard what she said and quickly realized that doing that alone might be a bad idea, She teleported a few feet in front of Starfire blocking her path.

“Friend Raven what is the matter?” Star asked quietly.

Raven quietly took a step forward towards Starfire.

“Robin needs his rest so I think it is best if you leave him alone for now Starfire,” Raven replied and motioned Star to site down on the sofa.

Starfire sat down next to Raven and Beastboy turned off the game station since the mood for playing games wasn’t with them today and then the alarm blared and the Titans saw on the viewing screen that every minor villain they had faced in the past was up to something. Hopefully they would be able to handle this without Robin and the four Titans left the tower to take care of business.

As Robin slumbered he looked dead but the only way to tell if he was alive was his faint heartbeat. Inside his mind everything was in chaos including himself and these weird dreams but Robin knew better and also came to know dreams as visions, premonitions of the future, everybody had then but not everybody knew how to make sense out of them.

(Inside Robin’s Mind)

All Robin could see was blood and it was now strangely enticing to him and red eyes surrounded him, just staring right at him and through him. Let’s say that it was slightly unnerving to watch. He heard voices some he knew and some he didn’t but one caught his attention very quickly, it was the voice of Slade.

“Now Robin is that the best you can do,” the voice of Slade taunted.

Robin couldn’t take it and tried to lash out but he couldn’t see Slade and couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from either.

“Slade where are you,” Robin yelled as loud as he could.

A sinister laugh echoed throughout the darkness and it only enraged Robin. Blood was all over the floor but he couldn’t tell what the floor itself looked like since there was nothing but blackness around him.

Slade appeared a few feet in front of Robin and Robin attacked with a few punches but Slade blocked them with ease and kneed Robin in the stomach.

“You can’t even touch me so what is the point of fighting?” Slade asked with a calm voice.

Blood dripped out of Robin’s mouth and he then licked it away.

“You’re a monster Robin just look at yourself in the mirror soon all of those that you ever cared for will reject you and leave you because of what you are,” Slade said calmly and kicked Robin in the face.

Robin caught his reflection in the blood pooling around him and saw his own face but yet it was no longer his face. His eyes they were red and fangs were in his mouth.

“What the fuck,” Robin said and looked closer at his reflection.

His skin was an ugly shade of grey, almost whit in color.

“You see you’re a monster nothing more and that is all you ever will be,” Slade said with an emotionless tone of voice.

The blood was now up to his knees and it stopped there and then the blood took forms of his past enemies. Slade, Brother Blood, Killer Moth, Blackfire and several others. They were all pointing at him and laughing. He attacked the blood forms and the collapsed only to rebuild themselves as quickly as Robin had destroyed them.

Robin saw the Titans in the distance and called out to them ad the turned to him but quickly vanished with a look of horror on their faces. Just like Slade said the Titans ad abandoned him without a second thought.

Sinister laughs echoes again and Slade reappeared in the darkness.

“Now Robin I warned you that they wouldn’t accept you but I can,” Slade said with a calm voice.

“You may be my uncle but that won’t stop me from killing you,” Robin yelled and attacked Slade with a spinning side kick.

Robin’s kick hit nothing but air as he vanished into the darkness just as the attack was about to hit.

Robin looked around frantically but couldn’t find Slade as the darkness seemed to engulf everything. Robin took a step forward and stepped on something soft and he looked down. He saw Beastboy and quickly realized that he was dead and then spotted the dead body of Starfire a few feet away and in no time he found the dead bodies of Cyborg and Raven as well.

“See you killed them and being what you are that is all you are good for,” Slade said within the shadows.

What Slade had mentioned had enraged Robin to no end because he would never harm his teammates without a seriously good reason but killing them was out of the question in his mind.

“You lie I would never do something like that not in a million years,” Robin yelled with his voice full of hatred for Slade who had caused him so much pain in his life.

The blood around him began to take form and turned into a fist and in a flash it hit Robin across the face and sent him flying. An inhuman laughter filled the area. It sounded too deep to be a human and the tone itself sounded nothing like a human either. As Robin got to his feet the blood began to make its way up his legs. He tried brushing the blood off with his hands but that ended up having blood engulfing his arm.

For some reason the blood burned his skin on contact and Robin could actually feel the physical pain despite it was a dream but it also seemed too real to be a dream. Robin tried shaking the blood of off him but that was unsuccessful as well.

The blood seemed to have a mind of its own and that inhuman laughter hadn’t even stopped yet, it just kept going on and on and in fact the laughter just seemed to get harder and crueler with every passing second.

Robin screamed in pain and now all of his body had been engulfed excepted above the shoulders. The laughter abruptly stopped and a figure walked out of the shadows but he was pitch-black in color and Robin couldn’t make out any details of the man several feet in front of him.

“Soon you will awaken and soon you will embrace the darkness in your heart,” the shadowy figure said calmly.

“What are you talking about,” Robin demanded impatiently to the shadowy figure.

He made no move and did not reply to what Robin had asked.

“Soon you will be one of us and soon you shall feed,” the figure said and disappeared into the shadows without a sound.

The blood was making its way up his neck and then Robin felt a sudden burst of strength and managed to shake free from the blood that was beginning to cocoon him alive. The blood then took an inhuman shape and began to approach him silently.

Robin got into his fighting stance and prepared to fight but the inhuman shape disappeared and a scream echoed. Robin spun round but could see nothing but blackness and blood. Wherever he was, it certainly was the hellish pit of his own mind and there was no escaping it. Robin turned round to see a figure made of blood and it looked exactly like he did.

“You are soon to become one of us, a creature of the night,” the blood figure stated in an emotionless voice.

The blood figure touched him on the head and dark images spilled into his mind. Images of carnage and death over the centuries spilled into his mind. Screams of those long dead and the whispers of tormented souls.

The laughter of the evil that caused all this pain and carnage echoed around him. The images came so fast that they were a blur and the blood figure then vanished.

(Titans Tower)

The Titans entered the tower appearing slightly exhausted from a hard days work defeating all those villains in one day. They fell down on the sofa and saw that the sun was going down and that worried Raven a great deal since Robin might wake up anytime now. Beastboy got to his feet and started to make his way to the kitchen.

“I’m off to make dinner guys,” Beastboy said and then Cyborg shot to his feet and ran after Beastboy.

“Oh no you don’t we are not having that Tofu crap we are having proper meat,” Cyborg yelled as he entered the kitchen.

It felt strange to Raven not to have Robin there since he is the one that usually breaks up the fights and somehow manages to please everyone. She guessed that is why they had elected him as leader of the teen titans.

When something like this happened he usually took over cooking and somehow pleases everyone’s taste buds even with Starfire’s strange tastes in food.

“Friend Raven may I check upon Robin and see if he has woken up yet?” Star asked politely as possible.

“Sorry Starfire but no visitors not yet anyway,” Raven stated and then fire erupted from the floor of the room and Leo appeared with a grin on his face.

After all, Robin was certainly in no condition to have any visitors at the moment. If they saw him now, they would most certainly freak. Especially Starfire, she wouldn’t be able to handle a sight like that.

He may have been cleaned but Robin still looked a mess and it wasn’t a pretty sight.

Raven got up to her feet and Beastboy and Cyborg ran into the commons room and they prepared for a fight but Raven stopped them.

“Guys this is Leo he is the one who saved Robins life,” Raven said introducing the others to the Vampire.

Cyborg nearly yelled out about Robin being a Vampire but he stopped himself and took a deep breath to calm himself down.

“It’s a pleasure I just came to check up on how Robin was doing,” Leo said and began to make his way out of the room and towards the elevator.

Starfire flew in front of him blocking his path but it wouldn’t do much good since Starfire had no idea how strong Leo really was.

Leo stopped walking and wondered what was wrong with the young alien girl. Besides the young girl didn’t exactly seem to like him either. Well most people didn’t like him when he first popped into their lives. It didn’t take them long to warm up to him though but she definitely looked like the stubborn type.

“What’s wrong?” Leo asked calmly but had a strange look in his on his face but couldn’t tell what he was looking at since his eyes were covered with pitch-black sunglasses which hid his eyes perfectly.

Raven knew what was behind those sunglasses, the menacing blood red eyes that could only belong to a deadly predator.

“Robin is sick you may not see him,” Starfire said with solid force in her voice.

“I am afraid that I have to speak with him,” Leo said and walked right through Starfire’s body as if she wasn’t even there.

A look of fright spread across her face at what had just happened and Raven and the others closely followed Leo as he walked through the corridors with unnatural grace for any human. It crept out all the Titans except for Raven.

That was certainly something they had never expected to see in their lives so what was that guy. He couldn’t possibly be human to have these kinds of powers and the air around him felt odd. At the moment he didn’t seem to want to hurt any of the Titans, in fact he acted friendly in a way to them. Maybe it was because he didn’t want to fight or that he had no reason to even fear them.

(Robin’s Mind)

He tried to fight off the blood but no matter how much he tried more and more kept coming for him and this blood had a mind of its own taking shapes of people he had fought and other shapes such as fists, hammers, swords and other weapons and he was starting to tire out from all this continued fighting.

“It is nearly over you shall become one of us and you will awake to a whole new world,” the voice said and the inhuman laughter began again.

Somehow this time it was different and his body itself no longer felt human anymore. The blood came rushing up to him and he flipped out of the way and the blood formed a giant Cobra and it reared itself back.

“Oh shit you’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Robin said and the giant blood Cobra struck.

Knocking Robin down to the floor that was so black that it looked like there wasn’t even a floor there to begin with in the first place. The cobra hissed at him and began to circle Robin slowly looking for an open spot in his defense and watched as Robin got to his feet and the Snake prepared to strike once again. Robin dove out of the way as the snake struck and then it knocked him face down with its tail.

He rolled over onto his back and began to get up but he snake had transformed into a tiger and had pinned Robin on the floor. More laughter echoed everywhere around him and it was that same inhuman voice that he despised so much.

The Tiger snarled at Robin and began to sniff Robin carefully. Robin luckily had excellent control of most of his emotions except for anger and hatred and managed to hide his fear from the tiger’s senses hoping that since it didn’t smell fear the tiger would lose interest.

The Tiger roared and raised its clawed paw and prepared for a swipe. Robin kicked the Tiger off of him and got up into his fighting stance and prepared to fight the tiger but it had disappeared and nothing could be seen anywhere.

“What the hell where did he go?” Robin asked nobody in particular and kept sweeping the area with his eyes just in case the blood Tiger was still around somewhere.

A roar erupted and it didn’t sound like the tiger. In fact it didn’t sound like anything from Earth and a wave of fear swept over Robin but he quickly pushed it aside and continued to sweep the entire are with his eyes.

Then out of the shadows a human shaped creature stepped out of the darkness but that is where the similarities ended since it was twelve feet tall, made of blood and was deformed around most of its body. It took a step forward towards Robin and let out another deafening roar that caused Robin to cover his ears and take a step back from the creature. It ran forward with sudden speed and grabbed Robin and lifted him off his feet with extreme ease. Robin struggled as much as he could but the creature made cinderblock look like a pushover in raw strength and brute force.

It then reformed itself into the giant Cobra yet again and the hand transformed into the snakes body and he quickly found himself being wrapped up by the snake. It squeezed tighter slowly bringing a slight gasp from Robin.

It hissed in frustration and then squeezed as tight as it could and Robin ended up screaming. The Blood Snake took that opportunity and dove forward into his mouth. It let go of Robin and began to enter his body through his mouth. Robin tried to scream to no sound could escape as the snake slowly entered Robins body.

Nearly all the Blood Snakes body was inside and several seconds later its tail entered Robin and he finally managed to close his mouth.

He then noticed that he wasn’t able to breathe when the snake entered him but didn’t feel the need for air for some reason. Robin tried to spit up the blood snake but it didn’t work and his body began to fade and the once completely black area suddenly grew lighter.

(Robin’s Room)

Robin was coming out of his coma slowly and the Titans and Leo watched as he slowly came out of his coma.

“Hm the transformation is complete,” Leo said just as Robin was awake but had kept his eyes closed and reached out onto the table searching for his mask.

Only he found his sunglasses first and put them on instead. He opened his eyes and saw everyone in front of him including the man who saved him but couldn’t recall a name.

“Who are you?” Robin asked looking at Leo with a slightly curious look upon his face with a hint of annoyance.

“My name is Leo, which is the closest thing I have to a first name but my last name is Alistair,” Leo said calmly stating the old fashioned name.

Robin got up and then he felt a surge of senses overtake him and he wobbled slightly on his feet. He pushed past then to get to his bathroom. He felt his stomach twist in pain and ignored it. Strangely he could smell the others and their smell except for Leo’s was extremely enticing to him.

He ignored this new feeling and looked in the mirror at himself. He leaned down and washed the sweat of his face. He stood up to his full height to see Leo behind him in the mirrors reflection.

“Whoa where did you come from?” Robin asked sounding only slightly startled about his sudden appearance.

“Who me? I just came from over there but I moved to fast for them to see and if you had kept you eyes on the mirror you would have seen me,” Leo said calmly.

A gentle smile upon his face yet there was something like sorrow in his eyes as if he had regret what he had done for Robin.

“Robin we must discuss things in private because I doubt that your teammates are ready to hear what I have to tell you,” Leo said with a concerned tone.

The Titans except for Raven and Cyborg left since they already knew what was coming. They both knew that Leo would reveal what Robin had become. Leo glanced at the two remaining Titans as a gesture for them to leave Robins room.

“We already know what you’re going to talk about so there is no point in us leaving,” Raven said calmly and Robin walked up to them and turned to face Leo.

“Well what do you want to talk to me about?” Robin asked as calmly as he could but there was a nervous edge in his voice.

“Remember when I told you that accepting my gift had a serious price and that I asked you to think it over is because you are no longer human,” Leo said calmly.

Robin nodded and crossed his arms over his chest.

Leo held up his hand and a mirror appeared within his hand and he held it up so Robin could se himself in the mirror but then noticed that his reflection was transparent. Robin had a look of shock in his face at what he saw in the handheld mirror. It was strange, he could see his reflection, yet he could see right through it. Robin frowned and lightly touched the mirror…as if in disbelief.

“It gets worse take off you glasses,” Leo said and as Robin removed them he saw that his eyes were completely blood red in color and the only thing that wasn’t red was black slit like pupils.

If Robin had been shocked before his jaw was now practically dropped to the ground and from that gaping mouth he saw he now had fangs.

“Now is it becoming clear Robin, you…are a vampire,” Leo said calmly.

Robin stepped back and then his stomach twisted in pain again and Robin felt hunger for blood make itself present for the first time.

Author’s Notes: Well I hope you enjoyed the chapter and I will begin working on the next one as soon as possible and keep those reviews coming and the chapter is longer as well and I will try to make the next chapter longer than this one, later all.