Alexander sighed in relief, finally, the lizard had answered his question. In reality, it wasn't that tough to do so in the first place. Making Alexander burn alive multiple time, practically torturing Alexander was not necessary. Being someone who was blunt, he was very direct with his question.
"How am I alive"
"Come to my hall"
"How?"
Alexander had Afterall tried but failed multiple times, the feeling of the Salamander in his head had disappeared completely. This was another mystery, Alexander wanted to know about but decided to put it on hold for the time being.
"Picture it in your mind"
He closed his eyes and pictured the scene of him standing in a small hall with a wood floor under him and stone walls around him. On the walls were doors of wood and further down the hall he pictured doors of iron.
He felt the difference in temperature in the air around him, it was like entering a mall on a hot day and feeling the cold air brush against ones face. He felt the smell change from his repulsive blood to a rather pleasant smell. He opened his eyes to find himself in the hall.
Shockingly when he opened his eyes he did not expect there to be a salamander standing in front of him, the salamander. It was similar to the first time he had entered the hall, perplexed and quite confused to what was happening. Alexander should have been angry at the Salamander but he wasn't, strangely he was apathetic towards the creature.
If any other entity had caused him pain similar to the salamander he would have nothing but rage towards it. His mind did not allow him to hate the salamander and because he did not feel joy towards the salamander, he was left with a sense of apathy.
The salamanders form disappeared from Alexander's eyes and reappeared in his mind. It's voice as dry and uninterested as ever. It felt like if the salamander was not angry it was indifferent to Alexander.
"You get one question before I will return to slumbering"
Alexander had a few mysteries he wanted to know of, the most apparent one was how he was still alive. He opted towards asking that question as he felt it was the most important question.
"How am I still alive"
"Walk to the end of this hall"
Alexander did as he was told, he did not have any better options after all. When he walked all he saw around him was iron doors. At the end, however, he noticed something strange. At the very end of the hall, he saw two diamond doors, the doors seemed to be of such high quality that they did not belong in this hall. Shockingly, each door was wide open. Intrigued he walked over to the two doors and read what it stood on them.
"Salamanders blessing"
"Impenetrable mental fortitude"
The salamander's voice echoed throughout his mind once again.
"...You fucking sub-human dog, you think this wasn't obvious? A spirit of such magnitude as myself wouldn't come without any benefits" He stood up on his two back legs and laughed.
"How do you think you have been able to survive my wonderful flames without going insane?"
Little did Alexander know that a second of such pain is enough to make any regular man go insane. The salamander was not quite finished though, without giving room for Alexander to respond he kept ongoing.
"How do you think you have been able to stay calm? How do you think your mind didn't break after being murdered?"
"I thought it was my spirit"
The salamander laughed cynically, he took a deep breath in before stating.
"You arrogant, pompous fool. I expected your intelligence to be low but not at an insect level"
He kept laughing at his own terrible joke.
Alexander got shocked by the new knowledge he received. Was he unkillable? Was his mind unbreakable? These question intrigued him quite a lot. He didn't expect himself to be that strong from the beginning.
"Can I die"
The salamander decided to completely ignore him. Alexander kept on asking similar questions but nothing was answered. He was back to being confused, why was the salamander not answering any of my questions. He was not in the mood of calling him a lizard again, and something told him it wasn't going to work. He decided to exit the hall and found himself sitting inside a dried pool of blood.
His foul smell of blood had ended up attracting another creature to the spot, it was a snake. Its eyes were dead and it was heading towards Alexander in an "S" fashion. Alexander stood up and started running away from the snake.
The snake completely abandoned the pool of blood which had attracted it and set its eyes on Alexander. Alexander was running on full speed, the recent discoveries still floated on his consciousness. If the snake ate him, would he be able to survive? Nonetheless, he didn't want to take the risk and decided to run away.
Alexander prayed that he would not run into a dead end. Actually even if that happened nothing would necessarily change because so far the snake was catching up to him.
Alexander could not quite reach full speed since he had not eaten or drunk water in a month. The only thing keeping him alive was the salamander's energy. It was quite amazing that it could sustain him.
He still ran but it wasn't effective, in other words, nowhere near fast enough to outrun the snake. The snake was gaining on him at a significant rate. It was, after all, it's a natural habitat. Alexander didn't give up though, he kept on running forward. The snake got closer as he ran, eventually, it was just a meter away.
When Alexander turned the corner and saw a wall in front of him, a dead end. His mind didn't know what to do. He turned around to meet his death and walked backwards, the snake had for some reason slowed down. Was it taunting him?
As he was lost in thought he failed to realize that the floor under him was filled with cracks. When Alexander had taken one too many steps backwards, he found himself in the middle of these cracks. The floor under him completely crumbled, he fell down into another layer of darkness.
The snake slithered up to the edge of the hole, it got a bad feeling about the spot under it. It slithered away, sad that its meal had ended up escaping. Well, at least it.
Alexander almost started laughing, he was once again laying flat on his back on a rather uncomfortable floor. He felt a repeating pain surge from his leg. He tried moving it and realised that he couldn't, move it and felt a sense of relief.
The relief came from the fact that the snake had disappeared from his tail. With nothing better to do, he decided to go back into his mind and maybe learn a new skill.
What Alexander did not know was that he had just woken up a creature much more dangerous than the vampire.