The Awakening: Part Two (The Lycan War Saga)

by Michael Timmins

  It was during his travel to the nearest city he took the time to find out what had happened in the time he had slept. His natural charm worked on most who passed by and he was able to gleam a great deal of at least the past few decades. He was adept at getting people to divulge information without it seeming like he was ignorant of what they spoke. He found the language they spoke, while not Italian, it wasn’t Celt either. It was a mixture of both. Fortunately, he spoke both and so was able to discern what they said and they were able to understand him.

  He was able to understand the political climate as well as who the principle players were. It was all he needed to get started.

  After arriving at the first major town, Samuel traded in a lot of his valuables and procured contemporary attire, both simple and expensive and paid for transport to the capitol. It was true, much had changed since he went away, but people are always the same on the inside. They are all motivated by much the same things, and while those motivations manifest themselves differently in different people, the basics needs and wants are what lies behind it all. Most people say money and power motivate people, but that simply wasn’t the case. Money and power are what people use to get what they ultimately want. It is a means to an end. People’s needs are more basic than that. They need love, or at least to feel like they are loved and are important. They want recognition of who they are and they want to be accepted by those around them. They want to feel safe, and they want to keep those they care about safe. Sure, there were abnormalities to this basic principle. Religious zealots for instance. There were also those who possessed a singular ego. Those who could care less about the viewpoints and opinions of others. Their motivations varied greatly, but one thing could always be certain of them is they are very, very dangerous people. Samuel counted himself among the latter. He had one goal. His continued survival. If he cared anything for those around them, and their opinion, it was only so much as to keep himself out of harm’s way. Truly, if he was to be said to care for anyone else, it would be for Kestrel. That, however, was more a matter of duty and a sense of obligation. It was, after all, Kestrel who granted him these gifts allowing him his long life. Though surely it hadn’t been her intent. No. She had created him as a weapon to be used to accomplish her goals. No matter. He had performed this duty for her and although he had abandoned her when she was on the verge of losing, her spell had ensured he would once again, someday, be her weapon again. So, he did his best to survive. He had no desire to die anyways.

  People were still the same. It was a matter of finding out what they needed the most, and exploiting it. When you did that, well, they were yours.

  Much had changed in the world. The world, the People, he had known were gone. Killed, or swallowed up by the power and reach of the Roman Empire, and abandoned to fend for themselves. They had been thrown into a vast mortar and the pestle of the empire and had changed them forever so they were no longer Celts. But something altogether different. Now, someone else had picked up the pestle and had begun to once again ground them into a new mixture.

  He was an outsider, and would not be trusted. Not at first. But he was smart and attractive in an exotic seeming way, and something else had happened he had expected. He was young. He didn’t quite understand it, but he believed the same part of his ability allowing him to heal had also turned back the sands of time in his body. His theory was since aging, in a way, was damage to one’s body, when he ‘hibernated’ it slowed his body’s use so much his ability could heal more damage than his body accumulated. Thus, making him younger. It was a theory, but it made plenty of sense.

  Given all he had going for him, he didn’t believe it would take him long to rise to prominence within the new hierarchy.

  It took longer than he thought it would, but in the end, he rose to a position of importance and power. With power and influence he acquired great wealth. Wealth he knew he would need, for eventually he would need to disappear again. However, there were two things he needed to accomplish before he could do this. One; he needed to do his best to secure the safety of The Calendar. He had visited the site and the room was still safely hidden under the table. No one knew enough to disturb the site and to dig under the table, so for the time it was safe. Well, safe enough. To accomplish his first goal, he did his best to foment the belief the Calendar was cursed, or at least a site of great magical power. There was enough folklore surrounding the site already it wasn’t difficult for this rumor to spread like fire over a bundle of tinder.

  To his dismay, at first, he found a sect of Druids. Though these Druids were no longer powerful spell casters. They were simple folk who believed the Calendar was a place of reverence and they used the grounds to pray to Gods who represented nature and the Earth. He befriended a member of their society and subtly made suggestions that would lead them to make part of their spiritual gatherings, elaborate displays. They would wear voluminous white robes, and pray at night, lighting the countryside with fire and torches. He implied the Gods of Earth and Nature demanded sacrifices, and at first, they started with animal sacrifices, he would later hear rumors of human sacrifices being preformed there. The rumor didn’t surprise him, since he was the one who started it. But the rumors persisted, and he couldn’t help wondering if in the end, there was some truth to them. Either way, the general populace steered clear of the Calendar, which is what he had hoped for.

  The other thing he needed to accomplish was to find a place for him to ‘hibernate.’ He had long ago retrieved all the rest of his valuable from his last site. He considered using the site again, but he had no desire to spend another hundred years or so buried beneath the ground. The problem was, it was the safest way to go. It was true he was a very little personal risk if he was found. He wasn’t comatose when he hibernated, just a very deep slumber, made deeper by Druidic magic. He could still be woken up. Little risk, but not no risk, and that was not something the cautious Samuel could live with.

  So, he decided to make a compromise with himself. He proceeded to make an underground complex in which he could live, sleep and survive. Even this close to the capitol there were untamed wildernesses, and Samuel went deep into those to find a place to use. He hired poor, unskilled peasants with no families to dig deep into the ground. When they finished their work, he killed them all. When this was accomplished he found masons from outlying towns and brought them to the capitol and gave them room and board. He used them to build his underground home. He paid them well for their work and their silence. He insisted they stay inside their paid for residence until he would gather them to do their work. After the first worker decided to sneak out and go to the local tavern, and never returned, the rest didn’t leave.

  He paid them handsomely when they finished their work, with the understanding they should not speak of it to anyone. He paid them well and insisted they move on from the city. They gladly took the money and promised they would speak to no one of what they had done, and they left. Samuel hunted them all down and killed them before they could anyways. Samuel was nothing if not cautious. His underground home was built, and as far as he could determine, no one knew anything about it. Even then, he didn’t approach the home for several years. Instead he used another Druid spell he had learned to enlist a sparrow to spy on it for him. Every few days, the sparrow would return to his home in the capitol and let him know if anyone had been investigating his “other” home. No one ever did.

  After a few years, he started moving his wealth to his underground home. One thing you learned when you had lived long as he had was there were some things that were always worth something. Precious gems and metals were universally desired. He had, by this time, become vastly rich. He was a hoarder and spent little of his accumulated wealth, only on things that would bring him more wealth, or more opportunity to acquire more wealth.

  When he was sure he acquired and secreted vast amount of wealth, he parted from the Capitol, supposedly to visit family and he was never seen from again.

  He woke
up periodically as the centuries went by. Not wanting to stay away too long from the Calendar and Kestrel’s body. But each time he found her resting place undisturbed. Each time he would take some time to read the politics of the region, and ingratiate himself into the power structure, he would use the power to procure more wealth, after depleting a large portion of what he had hidden away each time to acclimate himself to society. Depending on the circumstances, he would work to foment fear in the citizenry for the Calendar. Superstition was never in short supply in the uneducated.

  When he again amassed enough wealth, secured Kestrel’s sanctuary and lived for time in the age, he would vanish all over again.

  For many centuries, his first underground home was safe and secure, though in time, like all things it started to deteriorate and come apart, and he was force again to create a new underground home. Which meant a new group of widows and orphans or skilled tradesmen, but it couldn’t be helped. And to be honest, Samuel truly didn’t care. He did what needed to be done. Always. If innocents died in the process to see him safe and secure, he wouldn’t concern himself too much about the lives lost, as long as it wasn’t his.

  Over the centuries, he became practiced at waking, investigating the new time, adapting to it, taking advantage of it, and leaving without a trace. He would sleep for long periods of time, usually a hundred years or so, sometime longer, but never more than two centuries. He found if he rested too long, when he awoke he was by far much younger than the age he had first gone to sleep, and that became problematic to putting himself into a position of power. After the first time of trying this and it taking far too long, and costing a great deal of his cache, he decided he wouldn’t sleep as long again. He found one hundred years was usually sufficient to erase the decades he had spent awake previously, but not too much he would seem, on the surface anyway, to be a youth.

  Many things changed when things began to modernize. He could no longer rest like he used to and was forced to spend less time awake as to not grow too old his body couldn’t heal itself back enough.

  His underground homes became increasingly unsafe to stay in. Man was tearing and digging up the land at a record pace. Kestrel would have been furious if she had witnessed the destruction. Samuel, being less of a fanatic to the cause, was more concerned with being discovered as he slept.

  He had to move his homes further and further away from civilized lands. It was also becoming harder to dispose of those who built his homes. There were constables and other forms of law keepers who would look into disappearances, especially mass ones.

  Keeping the Calendar, what was now referred to by most as Stonehenge, safe, had also become very difficult. Man, was less afraid of ‘ghost stories’ and stories of ‘witches’ and ‘sorcerers,’ than they had been before. Their curiosity often got the better of them and at first Samuel killed any who tried to investigate too closely at the grounds of Stonehenge. This worked for a time keeping others away. Men might not be afraid of ghost stories, but they were afraid of the number of corpses of the overly curious were found on the grounds.

  Eventually, the attention of the government was drawn to it, which had become increasingly more organized and more in control of what happened in the country. It soon became apparent to Samuel he could no longer continue as he had been going. It was drawing too much attention. Instead he decided to use his ability to infiltrate organizations, as he had done repeatedly with governments age after age, and infiltrate the groups who would come to study Stonehenge. That way, he could subtlety move them away from any closer examination of the area around the Alter.

  Not for the first time he began to wonder why he continued to do it. All knowledge of what had happened during that time had either been destroyed, or regulated to mythology. The existence of Kestrel, and her life all forgotten. Not only that, but if she had been meant to come back, wouldn’t she had done it already? The early industrialization had occurred, and had been devastating to the planet. Forests cleared without any care to growing new ones, rivers damned without any understanding of the consequences to the ecosystem. Rivers had chemicals poured into them, poisoning the fish and other animals living there.

  If there had truly been a time for Kestrel’s spell to go into effect, well it was then. Still nothing. Honestly, Samuel had begun to give up hope. If hope was even the correct word. Kestrel was a demanding mistress. Unrelenting in her pursuits, and merciless in her actions. It was possible she would kill him for abandoning her at the end there.

  On the other hand, he would no longer have to pretend to be other people than he was. He would no longer have to create an alternate persona and make his way through positions of power and influence, just so he could do it all over again. While part of him enjoyed playing the con on all around him. Convincing them of who he wanted them to believe he was. It was becoming tiring and tedious. He had been doing it for centuries, and frankly he was tired of it.

  It was one of those times of doubt he had sired a child. In all the time he had lived, he had avoided long term commitments with women. Not wanting to become attached to anyone for any length of time. He had always been careful not to impregnate anyone, or if he did, he would ensure the child was not born. That had happened only a dozen or so times in the millennia he had lived.

  When one of the women he had been with became pregnant, it had been during a time when he truly believed Kestrel would never return, and he was wasting his life constantly trying to keep her safe. So why shouldn’t he have a child? Someone to teach, someone to carry on businesses while he was ‘away’ sleeping?

  So, he allowed the child to be born. A boy. Samuel named him Cirrus. The mother increasingly became demanding of him and his time and so he took the child and told the woman to never come back. She did of course. She would not give up her son. So, she suffered from an ‘accident’ and the boy was his, and his alone.

  It was awkward at first. He knew nothing of raising a child and was forced to hire a nanny. It didn’t stop him from spending as much time with the boy as possible. He didn’t fail at anything, and he wouldn’t fail at this. No matter how uncomfortable it made him. He was not a compassionate person. He was not expressive with his feelings. A child are these things naturally. Samuel taught him through his own actions to be cold and aloof. Cirrus learned swiftly and soon became like his father, passionless and emotionless.

  In time, the nanny was dismissed and Samuel was able to take care of Cirrus on his own. In part, because Cirrus required very little in the way of parenting. He had become very self-sufficient and showed a maturity well beyond his years. Several months after Cirrus’ sixteenth birthday Samuel got a call from one of his informants about an American woman who had begun poking around Stonehenge.

  This came as a bit of a surprise to Samuel. It had been decades since any in-depth investigation into Stonehenge had occurred. It was believed, that what was to be discovered about Stonehenge had already been discovered. It was part of the reason Samuel had felt comfortable and guiltless about not taking a more active role in keeping Stonehenge free of interference.

  With knowledge that his abandoned role of protector of Kestrel’s resting place was being tested, Samuel had no other choice but to resume it. If Kestrel was found, and her resting place, and therefore her body, were found and disturbed, destroyed even. Then all of his earlier work would have been for naught. He would not have that. As much as he wished to be finally free of this obligation, it was a failure he could not accept.

  He contacted his informant to locate where the woman was conducting her research and after finding out it was at the Institute of Historical Research he created a new background for himself as a Professor and used his influence and considerable money to gain a position at the Institute. He would need to keep watch over this woman, and to steer her away from finding anything of importance about Stonehenge.

  The problem of course was he couldn’t do this with a kid in tow. He would need to deal with Cirrus. Keep him out of the way and cut ti
es with him. The boy was sixteen now. When Samuel had been sixteen he had already done so much in his life, but times had changed, and the expectations on the youth in this age were minimal.

  Cirrus of course was different. Samuel had made sure of it. He had done his best to train him to be self-sufficient. Not only self-sufficient, but also a highly trained and skilled individual. He had Cirrus trained in fighting. Both martial and with weapons. He had educated the boy and trained his mind to think way more analytically than a child his age would normally be capable. Samuel had trained him in tactics, and warfare as well. Trained him in survival, wilderness and city. Cirrus could make snares to catch prey and make bombs to kill a different type of prey.

  And as with all children of Trues, he carried lycanthropy. Though it only manifested itself in rapid healing. He would never be a real lycanthrope, only a dormant carrier. That wasn’t true. He could one day be a real lycanthrope. If Samuel were to die and Kestrel returned, then Cirrus would have it awakened in him.

  When Samuel realized this, he realized he needed to tell Cirrus what he was, well, what he could someday be. Cirrus already understood he was different. He had noticed his rapid healing. Knew it to be unusual. He hadn’t been prepared to hear the truth of it though. Samuel remembered the day vividly.

  Samuel had returned home later in the evening than usual, to find his son Cirrus reading. Cirrus was bent over a book sitting on the green plush sofa prominently placed within their homes great room. The sofa faced a massive cobblestoned fireplace, the stonework framed the open hearth and traveled up the wall above it all the way to the ceiling. A second plush sofa faced the fireplace at an angle, across from a black recliner, also angled to face the fireplace. The fireplace was cold at the moment, it being mid-summer and there being no reason to have the extra heat. To a visitor, this room would seem peculiar to most other homes for its absence of a television. It wasn’t as if Samuel didn’t like to watch TV. He did. He felt it important to keep up with the news, no matter how dodgy it sometimes was. He also made sure Cirrus was kept apprised of current events as well. Both of their bedrooms sported state of the art televisions which would make any AV enthusiast giddy. He didn’t feel it belonged in a social room as what he considered the great room to be. That room was meant for conversing, interaction, or if there was no one about than quiet contemplation, and of course, reading.