Another parallel made, Mayerling notes. This time it is no simple concept but a core tenet of holy words passed down among vampires and especially within his family, within the name he solely occupies for this time, within a long lineage that too is but a transient guest upon the worlds and universes.

How strange but a pleasant surprise to find someone of a similar view. Being from different worlds, it comes in different words; philosophy over the ages treading toward the same destination from different roads.

Mayerling's smile is genuine and delighted, the smile of someone who never thought to smile again, a smile dusty and worn and forgotten even with the anchor of sadness behind it. "It pleases me to find a kindred soul in a new world," he says. Nothing too dramatic like brother in arms.

"Though we remain with the challenge of solving sleep," Mayerling returns to the exhausted and exhausting situation at hand, "In these experiments the Pthumerians shape to their wills, how do we seek the solution? Another's aid I may accept, but were a person dying of thirst, a companion without water would do little help. Something magical or mere presence?" He supposes they could have it however they please, being more akin to the Sacred Ancestor than to him.