I did not remember how I got there, but I found myself suspended in a pulsating metallic jade atmosphere that unfolded infinitely before me to no specific dimension as I neared the center of where the color pumped out. Then everything went dark and my memory ceased me.
It took a few minutes to regain my consciousness, and for me to realize I was awakening back into my physical body, and I inhaled a deep breath of air into my lungs that reanimated my carcass, and initially, my motor skills felt very rough and primitive. My vision was a blur, I was deaf, and when I tried to speak, I groaned like an undead corpse emerging from a coffin. To my horror, I started waving my arms uncontrollably, as if my brain was sending involuntary electrical signals to my muscle axioms and I couldn’t control it. Maybe I was in the wrong body or my soul had merged with a demon’s. Before me, I distinguished the silhouette of a thin woman in black, and she placed her hands on both sides of my temples. The haze of my vision was fading away and I was regaining back my clear, sharp sight. The face of the woman, unblurring before me, to this day, I knew was the angelic face of my red-lipped, amber eyed wife. She kissed me, and when I tried to reach out to feel her once again, only in temporary elation that maybe she hadn’t died, she vanished into nothingness, and I found myself very alone, in a dank, obscure catacomb where I heard the rush of a nearby brook.
The pain that coursed through me was indescribable, and I became aware that I had a few broken bones, and a dislocated shoulder. I bit my lip to stifle my cry as I snapped each bone back into place. I noticed I had a dagger of shining sapphire glass that I didn’t have before, and it glowed in the darkness. It came in handy when I inspected myself, noticing that the entire front of my torn white tunic was stained red with my dried-up blood from old wounds. I got up onto my feet, feeling a pounding headache pumping in the blood vessels of my brain. My hair was matted to my skull and covered in dried blood. I carried my dagger and walked towards the nearby brook to clean myself off, and gulp a few, refreshing drinks that felt like dew drops of heaven rolling coolly down my tongue. I swished some water around and spat it back into the stream, cleaning off my fangs with a piece of leather string. Ahead of me, I noticed an archaic boat that was shaped like a swan with a flat wooden platform and a single wooden oar to navigate the brook in the cave or catacomb, whatever it was that I was in. I got onto the boat and with the blue light of my dagger guiding me, I paddled slowly down the water, standing on the platform. The putridness of death and rotting carrion lingered in the dank, stifling air, so heavy I could taste it in my lungs.
Around the boat, I saw floating skeletons bobbling at the surface of the water, and that the high walls of the cave were covered top to bottom in skulls that were slicked with a thick red slime, like coagulated or menstrual blood. It was visceral but not anything I hadn’t seen before. I paddled more quickly now, past the skull wall, and into a high arch made of brick, where I was met my thousands of glowing red eyes, that foreboded the lurking evil that was awaiting me. I heard scuttling and watched as the thousands of eyes scattered towards the skull walls that were now behind me, and I was once again paddling in pure obscurity, with only my dagger illuminating the water directly in front of me. I paused to see my reflection mirrored into the pool of ebony and saw how awful I indeed appeared. My skin was a light grey of a lifeless corpse, and my eyes were glazed over with death. I was a reanimated, breathing body, with a conscience. Once more, I heard scuttling, and a wet, sloppy dragging noise amongst some rocks. Then a stone fell into the water, and the rippling reached to where the boat was, gently rocking the platform in the waves it created.
I was startled when something wet dropped onto my arm from the ceiling, causing my heart to skip a beat. I picked off what was a shiny black, slime-covered leech, with a circular syphon for a mouth with a circle of tiny, sharp and pointed teeth. It puckered in and out in attempt to latch itself onto me, and I threw the thing into the water, when another three landed on me. I tossed them back in just the same, when, suddenly, a whole slithering pile of the parasites dropped directly behind me and began to slowly crawl towards me. I stomped on them with the heel of my boot, and they crunched and exploded their red guts beneath, like engorged ticks. In the distance, a wail that sounded like a banshee pierced the silence and drowned out the tiny shrieks of the leeches as I crushed them to death. Suddenly, the water around me was illuminated by an overhanging yellow lamp suspended on a thick rope.
When I got a closer look, kicking off the last of the leeches off, I realized it wasn’t a lamp at all, but a body part of a shadow of a very badly misshapen glob with antennas that was coming right for me. It towered almost to the clearance of the ceiling and smelt overpowering, of fermented fish. The nauseating odor flavored the air I breathed in. When it stopped in front of my boat, I saw that it was a gigantic slug-like creature with the same syphon for a mouth, and when it growled at me, it revealed at least ten circular rows of teeth the size of a human head. It had two vine-like whips for arms that it launched and tried to wrap around me, before I stabbed the slimy extensions with my dagger. I jumped off the platform, and went straight towards the creature, to stab it anywhere I could. I failed miserably, when its other vine-arm grabbed me and lifted me up into the air before slamming me into the water of the pond the brook ended in. It held me beneath the surface for a minute or so, when I managed to claw my way into its flesh and tear it to shreds slash by slash. It released me, and I swam up to meet the beast and started piercing its multiple eyes, one by one, as it jumped around the pond, trying to knock me off its back. It jumped around so carelessly, that it knocked an overhanging rock formation in the shape of a cone that impaled the creature through its thorax. It still didn’t die. It was my time to deliver the final blows. The water of the pond was poisonous, I noticed, as my muscles began to feel heavy, and my bones were vibrating with sharp, shooting pain, and my skin lightly stinging with a mild chemical burn. I had to act quickly.
I flew towards the agonizing beast, and when it opened its mouth to try and swallow me, I drove the dagger all the way into the back of its throat, where I had to shove my arm all the way inside, but the strike was fatal. Its teeth clamped down heavily on my arm and I cried out in pain, as thousands of tiny daggers broke my flesh, but as soon as it died, the clamp loosed and released me. The creature dried up, and its carcass ebbed into the center of the black pond and sank.
From the back of the cave, an epically sized slab of stone slid upwards, and revealed another passage of water that led somewhere past those arches. I hoped to not find any more slugs and hovered just right above the water. In this passage, the waters were lavender, and the surrounding narrow walls were made of brick. There were rows of black marble pillars on either side, and a purple ominous light of a featureless sky shone through, without sunlight. At the end of the stream here, there was a vortex of water that I allowed to engulf me, and it sent me in a downward spiral, towards a pool of crystal clear water from the cascade. I saw endless wildflowers along the embankments on either side of the pool, not being mindful, that the grandeur serene natural beauty before me was beaming down with daylight, even from overcast clouds above me. My skin was beginning to sear, and there was nowhere for me to hide. I looked around frantically, and then saw a ravine along the embankment made of boulders not far away, and ducked here, hiding myself away until the day turned into night. I had dried off in thanks to the bitter cold, and my hunger for blood was so strong, I was going mad. When nighttime came, I dusted myself off, and hunted the first animal I could come across and drained its very last drop of blood. It was a red foxhound. Later, I found myself on the outskirts of Meytros, and had one mission in mind, to find Magalesti and to take justice into my own hands. What I manifested into my mind I made come true. After a bar fight and stealing the clothes of someone I knocked unconscious, I made my way towards the forsaken cathedral, where I had found the priest having sexual relations with one of the girls of the convent. One of his men sent out to k
ill the girl before I could save her, but I murdered him, and drank his blood. Then, I confronted Jedediah Magalesti, who mocked me and thought I had been an apparition. He went as far as throwing a vial of holy water in my face, which he ignorantly believed it would my flesh to burn as if the substance were acid. He was clearly surprised to see me alive, and he did admit that he had left me as a snack for the Glutton crawler, the beast I killed in the subterranenan dungeon in the side of the mountain. All of this terminated when I drank his blood but didn’t kill him. Instead, I left him for dead, and positioned him to where he fried into a pile of charred meat and oozing fat dripping off his bones, from the rays of sunlight when my vampiric disease took him over. I had never more alive after taking justice into my own hands, and the lust for blood was insatiable and the most satisfying sacrament that I couldn’t believe I barred myself from forever. It was only the commencement of an aeon of blood that was to come, as the energy of Basilisk’s coming was very alive, and the beasts of the Lower Astral Planes were emerging into a place I once called home.
CH. 9
RAPHAEL AND THE CATHARSIS.
A nocturnal snowfall fell onto the sloops of the evergreens on the outskirts of town where I found myself once again, under the light of a full moon, absorbing and remembering as much as I could about the events that transpired. Magalesti’s blood lingered on my lips, and I felt a slight warmth and color rush back into my cheeks, and I hadn’t appeared so sickly anymore. I pondered deeply on the death of my wife that whose passing soul I was able to feel, and I was absolutely certain that I’d seen in the cave. Silent tears welled in my eyes and rolled down my cheeks when I thought of her, and my daughter, and our unborn child I would never have the chance to meet. Yes, by Selenian code of conduct, the way I carried out my vendetta against Magalesti was heinous, but self-justified, when I imagined the face of my new born baby that would have been.
The self-questioning poured in. What would have our baby looked like? Was it a little boy or little girl? Would it have my platinum hair or my wife’s ebony tresses? What would its persona have been like? How would have Vanya faired to having a sibling? Vanya’s lavish yet lonesome childhood longed for the companion of a sibling. But now, I didn’t even have my daughter anymore. I wept and wept, tasting the salt of my melancholy, and cursing the silence that settled around me. Why did this happen to us and what was the motive that had brought it on? What evil was so great that it was able to execute a strong, metaphysically talented and supernaturally empowered vampire? Soon enough, and almost carried away in my ocean of negative emotions, the amber rays of the sun were peaking just behind the ridge of the Transylvanian Alps, which rendered me to either duck or burn to ashes. The latter was all I had ever wanted, I really wished for the embrace of death to have taken me away forever. I did not want to be in the plane of existence any longer than I had to be. My heart longed so badly to join Nayeru in death.
Vanya however, her death I did not feel. Even at the thought of her name, it didn’t deliver the same unyielding heartache of missing somebody that it did when I simply thought of my wife. But why? I loved my daughter just the same, unconditionally, as she looked exactly like me, and was such an intelligent, bright-spirited little girl. Could it have been my daughter was still alive? I couldn’t run after the man on the black stallion who carried her away, but one thing I taught my daughter very well was how to defend herself. It was very likely that she fought the man off, disabled him and the animal, and ran away and could have currently been in hiding. My heart filled with hope, and I regained a bit of composure from my morose state I was in, just in time before the sun fried me. I had flown up just in time and hid underneath a behemoth of an iron bell hanging high above in a steeple of the Magalesti Cathedral, where I slumbered until dusk turned the daylight away.
During slumber, dreams of my wife displayed during my siesta where I was suspended in motion underneath the iron dome, and I also saw many children running carefree through a garden of roses and row of green mazes made of hedges. I was standing idly by, simply in observation of the kids playing hide and seek, when the voice of a crying child broke my spell of concentration, causing me to turn my back to the kids. I followed the voice, and ran down the botanical maze, that became more treacherous as I neared the voice of the helpless child. Twisting vines covered in thorns erupted from the ground, and giant Venus fly traps tried to bite me. I hacked and slashed my way through the carnivorous botany, and finally, I found the child, a little brown-haired boy crying his heart out, looking past me and pointing to something behind me. When I turned back, I saw a behemoth with the body of a spider but the head of a ram or a goat charging right towards us. And when I was about to counter-attack, I woke up. A cold sweat ran down my face, and thousands of voices of the population of the city danced in my mind. I couldn’t stand it!
Every thought, every conversation, every sigh and yell, it vibrated loudly in my brain, as if I had an insect crawling inside. It was a side effect of drinking all the blood I did last night; the nutrient absorption hadn’t finished completely. After a fleeting time, the voices were melting back into silence, but the crying of the little boy in my dreams was real, and it was coming from inside the cathedral! Alarming to say the least, I set out to investigate, as this priest and his posse of scripture-preaching imposters were well-known to carry out acts of pedophilia that the town chose to be in denial about.
The dilemma was the mass of citizens roaming outside of the church, appalled by the death of Magalesti, throwing accusations aloud at random. I clearly heard someone say the word “vampire”, and in my current state of still healing, I wasn’t prepared to have to fight off an angry and fearful, ignorant mob. I used the method of astral projection to cut and shove through the crowd unnoticed, except by one psychic medium who noticed me in plain sight, but I dashed away before she opened her mouth. I rushed into the cathedral, and followed the voice of the boy, into a path of stone that led down into a spiral stairway of about ten stories where there was no light and terminated at the bottom of an expansive underground tunnel, at least two hundred feet beneath the church.
Down here I did finally find the boy, locked inside of a cell, and I assured him to not be afraid of me. There was a notable quaking beneath our feet that became stronger with passing time. I realized I couldn’t open the cell door in this etheric double I was inside of and assured the boy I would be right back in less than a minute. He had cried out to me to “don’t let the Centaurian eat me,” or something of that sort. I rushed quickly back out up the stairs, up the church halls, out to the crowd, and up to my physical body, and once I was inside this plane, I retraced my steps back to find the frightened little boy. He jumped into my arms and I embraced him lovingly, assuring him that I was there to save him, and that nothing nor anyone would harm him. He revealed to me that his name was Raphael and he asked me who I was.
“My name is Enttu Tepes,”’
The little boy gasped, “Wait, you’re a vampire! You’re the Strigoi Voivode! Are you going to eat me?”
“No, absolutely not. I am one of the nice, or, nicer vampires. I have a little girl of about your age….”
A piercing growl that sounded like a crazed prehistoric creature echoed through the walls of the tunnel and caused the ground to rumble. Approaching stomps rattled the ground, and the air soon stunk of a vinegar-like odor that burned the nostrils. I instructed Raphael to hide behind the bars of the cell, and then I withdrew a gold katana adorned with red dragons and rubies, ready to fight the monstrosity before us. It was indeed a demonic spawn very similar to the one I battled off in the cave of the mountain side, with the hairy bristly body of a black arachnid, but the head of a horned goat, and glowing, green eyes. Acidic saliva dribbled out of its mouth and burned indentations into the ground where it fell. I had never seen beasts like this appear anywhere before, not even in my most violent battles, and my naivete of this era at least made a loose connection between the Va
tican and the demon Basilisk.
This though fleeted as quickly as the creature spew out a caustic bomb toward me that I strafed out of the way from. I was able to sever off its front two legs, before it began to bounce around wildly and crush everything beneath its pregnant belly full of spiderlings. When it hurled its spiderlings at me and I saw them heading straight for Raphael, I was powerful enough once more to perform a spell of fire that sizzled the offspring into embers. When the mother beast charged at me once more, I remembered slashing open its underbelly, rendering it on its side. When it was down, I propped Raphael onto my back and instructed him to drive my blue dagger straight through a glowing spiral between the two giant eyes of the monster. I didn’t let him go and pulled him away just in time after he stabbed the thing fatally, before guts and green slime that I supposed were blood exploded in all directions.
After the exhausting battle for our lives, I carried the boy in my arms out of the cathedral, permeated heavily with the toxic odor of the onset of decay from the corpse of the priest no one had yet touched, possibly out of some superstitious fear. I didn’t know if it had ever been removed, being as I never came back here for eons. The little boy and I talked for a good while, and I took him to get something warm to eat from the only pub open past midnight. After he was done, I took him to where he told me his parents lived, and much to my surprise, the man who answered the door was the same one who picked a fight with me a night ago and lost to me terribly after he came at me sideways, in stupendous inebriation.
His eyes were full of bewilderment and the gleam of a sight he couldn’t believe, darting from the little boy, then to me, and back again. His chagrin slackened into a countenance of gratitude, when Raphael ran and leaped into his arms. Silently, I inhaled a sigh of slight jealousy and anguish, wishing so much that I could have my own child again once more to hold. I veiled my sorrow through a veil of neutrality at best. I covered my lower half of my face with my cape.
The Dhampir Dimension Page 23