by Kindred Ult
"This is a dream. This is a dream? This must be a dream. Is this a dream? Please be a dream!"
The words came out of his mouth as tangible letters, flowed around his head, and soared off into the atmosphere to become phonetically-sound constellations. His breath became two swords that battled each other for what seemed like hours before they finally pierced each other at the same moment and bled to death while cursing their respective mothers. It may have been at this point in the lack of time that he was forced to reconsider his knowledge as to whether he was in a dream or not. Everything that was happening could not have been happening, but it also gave no sign of stopping.
"Please! Please! Please let me out!"
Something hit him in the head and he looked up to see the entire ceiling of the world cracking as it rained down its pieces of atmosphere. Soon the cracks that had once been only at the apex of the earth were heading their ways down to the horizons, and then they wound their ways over the molten hills until Varus realized that they were headed towards him. He turned around to see that all of the myriad cracks were steadily converging on the spot where he was beached.
He could not understand why all of this was happening, but the thought of those cracks reaching him terrified him. He spun to see if there was any place in the psychotic world he was in that had no cracks. He found none so he decided to try his luck; once the cracks were close enough to him he ran towards them and leapt as far and as high as he could. He floated in the ether for several minutes, but eventually he felt the closest thing to gravity that world had bring him back down. He landed on the cracks and, with a cry of agony, crashed through the once-liquid ground into the blackness under it. Once he passed through the earth, normal gravity reinstated itself upon him and he fell swiftly for a few more moments before slamming into the inside of the other side of the earth. Since he had fallen for uncounted miles, his body, upon landing, immediately splattered into uncounted pieces. The last thing he saw was his brain being splintered into a thousand parts and his last thought was that he was glad he could not feel any more pain.
It was at that moment that Varus awoke.
The first thing Varus noticed was that he was cold. He opened his eyes, and soon deduced that this was because he was almost completely naked. His clothes were ripped and he could feel caked blood on almost all areas of his body. The next thing he noticed was pain. The pain was all over his body even though it seemed to have no origin. He ignored the pain for a moment because he was simply glad to see a world that was not constantly shifting. After struggling his way to his feet and pushing himself off of the tree he had been leaning against, Varus took stock of his surroundings. He was still in Darkoven Forest, but he did not quite know where he was inside said forest. Some dead bodies littered the ground around him, and they held his interest for a moment.
"I wonder if I killed them. Well, it doesn't matter, I probably did."
When he checked the bodies he found that none of them were familiar but that all of them were quite dead and that they had been killed in many fantastic ways. He hoped that he had killed them. Still, even with the elation he received from picturing their deaths, he felt like something was wrong with him. He could not figure out what it was until he closed his hands and noticed an absence in them.
"Ah, of course, where are my weapons?"
He searched for those until he lost interest again. None of the bodies had his weapons. He then set about examining where he was and, as he studied the trees around him, he suddenly became aware of a strange phenomenon. He had thought that it was day, because it had just felt that way to him, but as he looked up the trunk of one tree he saw the moon floating its way through the very solid sky. He was perplexed by his lack of blindness at this hour until he snapped his fingers.
"Of course, I'm a vampire. Why didn't I remember that before…Come to think of it, I don't seem to remember much at all…Well, that isn't good."
Varus sat back down on the ground and thought about what had happened to his memories, but even as he came to the conclusion that he had lost them, he heard voices from around the bend in the road. He did not need memories to know that those were probably not other vampires and that he had to hide. He sprang out of the road from his seated position and hid in a very leafy branch. His perfect equilibrium would have been surprising to him if had he not just figured out the reason for it.
As it turned out, his hearing was much better as well. He had heard the people and, since they sounded so close, had thought that they were right behind the bend, but in reality they were much farther than that. The volume of their voices seemed to stay at the same level as they got closer, only getting marginally louder, as if his ears were working to keep the sound at the same level, and he could even hear them speak when they were several hundred feet away. Their conversation was interesting to him and he leaned closer for a moment before realizing that there was no need for it.
"Did you hear about that girl that's with us?" One man said quietly to another.
"You mean the one who survived that vampire attack?" The other responded.
"Yea, that one exactly. Word is, she's going with us out of this forest to go join the paladins."
"Really?"
"Yea, someone said that she loved the boy who was killed and that she's going to become a paladin before coming back and killing the vampire that committed the crime."
"Humph, why not just join the vampire slayers?"
"Probably 'cuz she doesn't want to be anywhere near this forest while she trains. The vampire slayer's castle is just outside of the forest itself, while the Paladins are almost fifty miles away."
"Hmm, true. Wouldn't want to be near such memories myself if'n I was her neither."
"Still, you think that the vampire slayers will send someone after the vampire?"
"Dunno', I heard that the two vampire slayers who were living in the village went after him themselves, but they're new guys, they might not make it."
The first man was about to reply when he saw the dead men on the road. He yelled out for the others and ran out to the men to see if they were alive. By the time the others had arrived he had found them all to be dead. They all checked the bodies again and soon chatter was all around them. Amidst the chaos a girl with a bandage on her cheek walked out among them. She looked around before she spoke with a commanding voice.
"There was a girl here too, she's probably somewhere in the surrounding brush. Please find her and bring her back."
The other men and women looked incredulous, but they obediently began to scour the woods. Varus cursed silently when one searched all around his tree, but before he was forced to kill the man a shout came from the opposite side of the road. Everyone ran towards the shout, and soon two women returned carrying a girl in their arms. Many gasps filled the air as they saw her.
"Why, she's full of holes she is."
"Yea, that she is. Looks like the work of bats."
"Korinna." The girl who had told the others to search for the girl whispered.
Varus looked at the dead girl with interest and curiosity. What was it about her that made him sad? He was sure that she should mean something to him, but nothing was there. His mind raced as he tried to recall some kind of a memory that would allow him to place her significance to him. While he was trying this, the girl closed Korinna's eyes, stood up, turned around, and addressed the men next to the other corpses.
"Bring those here."
For some reason they obeyed and, after they had plopped them all down in front of her, she knelt next to each one before shaking her head and moving to the next one. Once all of them had been examined she turned on the men once more.
"Search the rest of this area, there was another one. A man whose name was Jaxon."
'Jaxon,' that one word sent tremors all over Varus's body, and it took all of his newly-acquired abilities to not fall off the branch he was so precariously perched upon. 'Jaxon, Jaxon, Jaxon, Jaxon, Jaxon, Jaxon.' That name, the name, it
was a name, a very important name. His psyche raced through his mind until it came to a door it had not noticed before. The door was very tall, and it had no handles. His psyche stood there for a moment before he whispered the one word that changed his second life forever.
"Jaxon."
The door swung open, and all of his memories came flooding back to him. He saw his sister grow from being a little weed to a blossoming rose. He saw his parents killed all over again. He saw all of his old friends from the army and all of his adversaries while he was a soldier and a bandit. The memory that caught and kept his attention, though, was of his sister's dead body and of that damned vampire. Demenn; he swore that he would kill that bastard and he would be damned if he wasn't going to fulfill that now.
"Okay, I wish we could bring all of these with us, but they would putrefy before we reach our destination. We will have to burn them." Nasoren, Varus remembered her now, motioned to the others. Varus almost cried out in anger.
'They can't burn crystal, I've got to save her from this, she must be saved!'
Varus leaned forward on his branch, spread his arms, and was about to rush onto the road to kill them all when a priest walked past Nasoren and studied the bodies. The priest looked them over before turning to Nasoren. He smiled but his eyes squinted.
"No need for that my girl, I can just send their souls to the afterlife, and then there will be no need for their bodies to be buried. As long as their souls are at peace they have no use for their bodies."
Varus watched in amusement as the priest said something or another in what might have been a language or what might just have been random syllables he had made up. With his new intuition, Varus knew that nothing was happening to the bodies. Any vampire would know that their souls had left long ago. He almost laughed as all of the men and women stood in awe of the good priest. Once the priest was done the other humans picked up the bodies and unceremoniously hauled them to the side of the road, where they threw them as far as they could. As the priest walked away Varus saw him grin and heard him chuckle to himself.
"Stupid peasants, at least this will save the time it would take to burn those wretches. I have pressing business to attend to."
Had he been anyone else, Varus probably would have been enraged. He had long ago learned to not expect any good in this world, however, so he was only slightly amused as he watched this one man use all of those around him. He smiled as he thought about all of the priests in his past. Some had been good, and others had been bad, but all of them had been just that: priests.
'Well, once I bury Korinna, I'll be done here. Then I'll just have to find my weapons, hunt down Demenn, and slaughter him like he did my entire crew, and me.' He was about to leap to another branch when he suddenly felt extremely weak. He slumped on his branch and panted. 'Of course, we vampires have to feed, don't we? Well, I suppose I could just suck that one priest's blood and call it a day…Um, night. I always did want to do in another priest.'
Varus waited while the entire entourage reassembled before he used his new eyes to pick out the priest. He grinned. The priest would not be a problem; he was flirting with one of the women near the back. 'He dared to treat Korinna like an object. I hope that this kill will even be a good test of my abilities.'
Unfortunately, the priest had managed to position himself on the side of the road that was opposite Varus's side. This small fact gave him pause; he could not just walk out and attack the priest, but it would still be hard to cross over the road unseen. 'Unless…' He grinned once more, and as one of the carriages passed under his branch, he leapt onto it. Before anyone even noticed him, he was off of the carriage and onto a branch on the other side. The entire action had taken only seconds.
Now he was ready. He slid down the tree and waited for the priest. As the priest passed him, still talking to the woman who must have been twenty years younger than he was, Varus was about to reach out and snatch him into the shadows when his eyes were drawn to something that sparkled brightly on the priest's chest. Once his eyes rested upon the small crucifix, he threw himself back, clutching his eyes as if they were burning. He had never felt such intense pain in his life, and he wondered if he would ever see again. In time, though, the pain fell away and he opened his eyes to see the night again as if nothing had happened to him.
Varus cursed. 'Well, I guess I can't get him now. But I do need to drink someone. I'm feeling weaker by the minute.' The caravan had mostly passed, but there were still a couple wagons still passing his position. He looked around desperately for some humans, but all of them were driving the wagons and would be missed quite quickly. His desperation increasing, Varus grabbed a dog that was wandering by and snapped its neck before it could yelp. His fingers trembling, he ripped apart the flesh on the neck of the mutt and poured its blood into his mouth. He drank incredibly fast; as soon as the blood poured into his mouth it was down his throat. It tasted surprisingly good, considering the source, and he could already feel his body strengthening.
Varus was about to go off into the woods when he remembered that his little sister's body was still lying in the forest off of the road. He returned to her and carried her body away from the others, then held her in his arms as he walked through the forest. He felt like falling to his knees every time he looked at her face, but by now he also felt so emotionally drained that he almost felt guilty for not showing more emotion. He walked until he found a clearing that seemed big enough and set Korinna down. Quickly measuring the ground, he found that Korinna's body would fit fine there. He began to rip at the ground with his hands. The task would have taken far longer than it did, but his fingernails had lengthened to about a half-inch past his fingers and had hardened until they seemed as hard as nails. These, working along with his new strength, made this task easy enough for him to complete in only a couple minutes. Once he was finished, he gently lifted his sister from the ground and set her inside the small hole he had dug for her. As he sat there looking at her white face, he found himself speaking to her.
"I guess you never did get that perfect man…Or maybe you did get him, but I scared him off. I did do that to quite a lot of them didn't I? I'm sorry for that. I was just trying to protect you from getting hurt, but it doesn't seem like such a big deal now. I never wanted it to end like this you know. I wanted to die before you, so that I'd never have to see this exact thing. But if I did have to bury you, I always wanted you to be wearing a black dress. This is all wrong…"
He had no idea how long he spoke to her, but at one point he simply stopped, covered her grave with of the dirt he had excavated from it previously, and walked back to the road.
"Demenn, I'm coming for you." He whispered before running off towards Valestren. "But first I need to get my weapons back, and some decent clothes"
………………………………………………………………………………………………
Varus cursed silently for a full minute, letting all of the best and worst words he could think of flow out of his mind as he lip-synced to them. Once he was done with his little tirade, he looked around again and assessed the situation. Getting his weapons and some clothes was trickier than he had though it would be. He had never been very good at stealing things, and since Korinna was always the sneaky one, he had never needed to. Now, however, he was faced with two options: he could either break through the locked door to the weapons shop, or find some other way to pick the lock.
He was sure that his weapons were in there. That Nasoren girl had known about his and Korinna's deaths, and since she worked there and it was the only weapons shop in Valestren, there was almost no chance they were not there. Now it just came down to getting them without alerting too many people to his presence.
'Well, I suppose there's nothing for it. I'll just run up there, smash my way through the door, grab my equipment, run to the tailor's store down the lane, raid that, and get out over the wall through those steps Korinna and I made. Okay, here goes.' He sprinted across the street and
lowered his shoulder in preparation for the impact. But just as he was about to hit it, the door opened and Jacob, the storekeeper, stepped out.
"Crap." Varus collided with the old man and the two of them flew back into the store. Varus leapt to his feet as soon as they crashed into the wall and looked around the shelves until he spotted his trusty sword and shield. "Jackpot."
He lunged for them but fell to the ground when Jacob rapped his large arms around Varus's legs. Varus tried to shake him off but the old man was adamant in his refusal to be moved.
"Help! Thief! Thief!" Jacob's loud, baritone voice echoed throughout the street and Varus cursed once more for good effect before he finally got one leg loose and kicked Jacob in the face. He heard Jacob's nose smash and the man let out one last cry before Varus kicked him in the temple and he went quiet. Even as he ran to get his weapons, though, Varus could hear what sounded like the entire town waking up and heading towards his position.
"Freaking' crap!" He ran out the door, bowling over a couple people who were the first ones to get there, and ran down the street towards the clothing store. This route was quickly abandoned when he saw the large crowd of armed townsfolk that had already formed in the street. He turned to run the other way, but that side of the street was blocked too.