Vampire Storm (Volume 1 : The Hurricane Journals)

by R.M. Plaiscia

Tuesday, September 22, 1722

  Does fate exist? Can fate exist? Can such a transcendental force such as fate, or destiny, one which allows not for someone to control their own future, but for it to actually be bestowed upon each and every worthy and unworthy creature, truly exist in such a physical reality?

  Is it that fate which guides our actions? Or is it something far greater than that, something far more powerful than any preordained prophecy could ever predict? Or… maybe all this philosophical apeshit isn’t the way we should begin our journey together. Maybe questions such as those just aren’t eye-catching enough. Maybe we need to move things along a little bit faster. Because, after all, it’s all about trust, right? If we plan on making this work, then we both need to trust each other. So, to honor that agreement, allow me to set the stage…

  It all started long before this river’s crescent that I now sit upon, before I even realized how capable I was of swaying the future of any events. Because I’ve never really thought of myself as being anything special, it took awhile before I truly understood the power that I possessed. Before then, I always saw myself as no different from any other creature on this Earth, just as vulnerable to the same emotions as everyone else… joy, anger, happiness, love… but as of late, my goals have become much more focused.

  Once I began to realize how different I truly was, how unnatural my evolution had been, joy was no longer something I craved, love became no more than a distraction, and happiness, ha, if only such a thing were possible… because it is anger, the anger I feel from the failures I’ve accumulated, that I seek to avoid. It had been my anger that guided me for so long, ruling my actions, until I learned how to rise above it, to conquer it… but conquering that anger wound up costing me everything. By thinking clearly, I only learned how to ignore those who cared for me that much better. But it also brought me closer than ever before to achieving the vengeance I shall always seek.

  It was long ago when that vengeance was first spawned, when I basked as a child within the blood of my parents, slaughtered by an ancient species that wished to negate my creation, a species not of this Earth, nor anywhere near it.

  The young Sapien race may have come to know them as Gods, but I knew them as nothing more than monsters… monsters without remorse, without emotion… and they destroyed everything that I ever loved, all that I cared for. They took it all away from me, all but my life… which was not theirs to claim, no matter how much they wished it to be.

  They left me barren and beaten with the corpses of those I loved broken in the path before me.

  But never did I falter from that path, not once, because I knew that it was the only path that led me back to them. No matter how long it took me to find them, whatever star, whichever universe they wished to hide behind, whether the flesh must be melted from my bones for my hands to reach their necks, their deaths will be mine to claim.

  It began with an uprising, and then evolved to a war, but it was all thwarted, and not just by those so-called Gods. They may have locked me within the bowels of a volcano to get rid of me, but it was the guardians left behind by them, the Protectors of Terra, the species of Wicca Urth Dawnicus, that had caused me the most trouble of all. I was able to escape my molten cell in time, but only for them to force me back into hiding, leaving me alone again, and it was there where my true search for achieving my revenge began.

  I was left alone within a frozen landscape, snowcapped domes of ice surrounding me, exactly where I had left something very long ago. I could remember it well as I approached, the one stubborn bastard that simply refused to cooperate with my plans. When he should have been dead, I had given him a second chance at life. And while he should have been grateful for my actions, still he refused me. He had once held great power, and still did, but had locked it all away from me, all so I would never be allowed to manipulate it.

  But little did he know, at that time and forever more, that simply because he was a conscious being that lived within the realm of this existence, he would always be under my control. And over time, I had learned to maximize that control of mine, and to be patient in my search for vengeance. Just as the Gods before had done to me, birthed my creation in their own image, so did I plan to do for him, to create him anew… in mine.

  Never, though, would he give into my ideals, annoying me to the point of no return, fighting against me every chance he found. When at first I saw him as my best chance at achieving my retribution, it seemed that I had made the same mistake as those Gods before me – my creation, what was meant to be my greatest achievement, had quickly become my mightiest foe.

  Thus there was no choice but to dispose of him, no differently than the Gods had done to me.

  I left him just outside of an ancient underground chamber with a dagger through his heart, destined to sleep forever more. But as I arrived at the ice-cave that marked that chamber’s entrance centuries later, he was nowhere to be found, and only a shard of wood covered in frozen blood and the mutilated carcass of a Polar Bear were left in sight.

  It seemed that he had awoken to have his first meal… but he had clearly been gone for quite some time.

  And not only was he gone, but he was awake for the first time in over a hundred-thousand years. It was a slumber that would have meant death for most species, but the blood that coursed through his veins was anything but normal. Still, despite his length of life, after sleeping for so long, there was no telling how much his mind had deteriorated in that time, how much he would actually remember of his former life. If it was too much, he could ruin all that I had been working towards during his absence. But if his memories have since been washed away by the blackness of his sleep, then it would only be that much easier to manipulate his actions.

  And that’s exactly why I remained patient, both before and during my search, despite losing that once and never love of mine to the grains of time, because I don’t care if fate is working against me. It doesn’t matter if fate is even real, because maybe, with the right amount of planning, I can even manipulate it.

  Because maybe fate isn’t some magical force of the universe after all… maybe it’s just something we all make for ourselves, something that each of us builds for ourselves with each step, every action, all the breaths we take. And maybe that fate is just as unavoidable as any prophesized destiny would be, just as forceful in guiding one’s choices, yet still able to be wielded by free will. And if so, does that free will actually allow those otherwise unworthy souls the chance to control their own fate, to help themselves, to, say, rise up beyond one’s own given status, becoming, themselves, worthy of a better future? Or would that, in essence, simply be fate playing its role within the laws of our reality?

  Has the future, my future, truly been written by some unseen hand, one that just goes around scribbling the fates of those deemed worthy enough on some random pages somewhere out in the shadows of this existence? Are the words carved within the stones of time truly unchangeable? Or can that destiny be manipulated simply by understanding that it is there, by doing nothing more than reading those words with your own eyes?

  I say… maybe it can be.

  Maybe each and every one of those weak and feeble creatures walking brazenly throughout this reality has the ability to mold their own future. Maybe destiny can be attained by any that strive towards it, and no mere words carved in any stone would be able to stop them. But either way, in the end, no one would be able to avoid that impossibly long list of decisions and choices that are always left lingering within the inevitable wake that every life tends to leave behind in the end.

  Maybe no one escapes their fate, whether designed or not. Maybe it is just impossible to change the future that our own past creates with each passing day. Or maybe I’m just cold, wet, and frening lost in some damned by the fates swamp, too impatient to think out the entire concept properly.

  So I digress.

  I don’t even know what the fury I’m doing out here, anyway. I’ve tracked this creature seamlessl
y for the past five years, but because of this damn storm, I’m probably so far off of my course and nowhere close to my intended destination. But something keeps tugging at my memories, pulling me towards a familiar feeling in this completely unfamiliar place, words that were spoken so long ago but still found a way to connect to this very moment.

  If only this rain would give me a moment to frening think.

  Alright… so, now that I’ve found a nice place to hide from this stupid rain, and since I just explained the whole core of my plans to a frening notebook, everything is beginning to feel a bit clearer. I can see now that my memories are trying to remind me of something.

  I had not found this swamp by accident.

  What that says of fate, I cannot be sure. But however I found it, whatever brought me here… I was without a doubt meant to find it… because this is the moment that Waken scum was talking about, that crazy old wizard, my ancient adversary of so long ago.

  This is the exact river’s crescent that he spoke of, his words still ringing with clarity inside my mind… “That’s where it all went wrong, isn’t it… back upon that river’s crescent… back in 1722… in that fury-bound swamp… after Ashish disappeared. You found that creation of yours and forgot all about her, didn’t you?”

  At the time he spoke those words, they meant nothing. But over time, without me even noticing, events began to fall into place. When I first met Ashish, her name had been so familiar to me, but never could I place it… not until she was gone.

  Only then could anything make sense to me. She was gone because I had begun my search, a search for my creation, and it was in those moments when I realized that I had reached the time that my ancient foe had spoken of, the time he fought so desperately to keep me from reaching. And now, here I stand… upon a river’s crescent… within some fury-bound swamp… in the year of seventeen-hundred-and-twenty-two… and my search continues.

  I know that it has all led up to this, and that this will at last lead me to the something that I’ve waited so long for. I can feel it, somehow, this familiar… something or another.

  It has to be what I came here for, the culmination to all of my efforts, and for some reason, maybe because of nothing more than those words that were spoken by my ancient wizard foe, I know that if I just keep waiting here in this swamp, here in this exact spot, I’ll find exactly what I sought out to find all those years ago.