by J K Ishaya
"All of Malorix's warnings fell away, and I didn't think anymore. The thing inside me rose to brood under my skin, and I was consumed with fervent urge, so I continued my slow creep behind them, following their route through the gorge. I let my instincts guide me as I reached out my mind, homed in on each one before me, and found that it was quite simple to prevent them from seeing me. It felt strange, of course, for occasionally one of them would sense me there and look back, but his quivering eyes would look through me.
"I cannot tell you what they actually saw. Perhaps it was just a ripple as with a heatwave, or they only saw the rocky path behind me as if I were completely invisible. Or maybe they did see me, but I'd blocked off that part of their minds that acknowledged it. Whatever the case, I sneered over how Malorix had said this would take practice. Somehow it came easily to me. And then there were the ravens, which occasionally raised their calls into an ear-grating chorus as if aiding in the distraction. They kept a sense of normalcy in the area while every other creature went silent enough to make a man's nerves bristle.
“Growing smugger by the moment, I kept this up for some time, trailing the patrol calmly and without issue until they entered one of the shadiest passes where rocky cliffs and pine juts surrounded them on both sides. The shade aided my vision, rendering everything less hazy, much clearer. Then I struck. I took a breath and let the tendrils of my mind slip back into place. They were all facing ahead on their trek, with the auxiliaries bringing up the rear of each contubernia, so this still didn't bring attention to me. I broke into a run. The ground became a blur under me as my claws sprouted. To my ears their heartbeats grew louder as I came closer then met their rear flank, swiping at an auxiliary, severing the side of his neck so that blood sprayed in my wake, and with his gurgling cries, the clatter of his pack on the ground, the others started to turn, pivoting right into my attacks. All twenty-nine of them. I took each one in like manner, moving too fast for them to see or to remotely move their javelins or shields into place. A few fell behind me, and the blood saturated my hands.
"I streaked past the last one but didn't touch him. This was the centurion, who turned to watch his nearest men stand upright for a matter of seconds, their breath burbling away as blood rinsed over their chain shirts and sprayed the backs of their shields. They fell like dominoes in the order I'd slashed them. I darted into a tree line and there crouched to watch. Stunned, the centurion drew his gladius and walked with a sickened sway into the scene of slaughter. I touched his mind and found a chaos of horror and struggle to make sense of this in such a short space of time. Between the cheek guards on his helmet I could see his face soften from the hard mask of a leader to not unlike a frightened child. It was the most gratifying thing for me, and with that I presented myself.
"I stepped out from the trees, let my footfalls crunch louder on the rocky ground, and pulled his attention back. When he spun to face me, shield raised, gladius at the ready, it took a moment for him to completely register what he was looking at. He saw, at first, the Dacian prisoner before him wearing only trousers and leg wraps, bare-chested but all ink markings gone and replaced with sprays of blood, but none of that blood belonged to me.
"'You,' he said under his breath which quickened to see me very much alive. 'That Dacian wolf… you were as good as dead. How…'
"I stared at him a moment, considering the tribal symbol that my people had embraced for centuries, and as my new ebony companions swept closer to my trail of carnage and I heard them call out to each other, I decided it was time to embrace a new animal representative. Dacia was dead in my mind along with its god, its symbols, its wolf-headed Draco.
"'No,' I said, 'I am the raven among the wolves, and I will pick your bones clean.'
"I dove at him then, moving far faster than he could track, as I completely rammed into his shield with my side, causing it to flatten against and plow him over before I ripped it from between us. His gladius had turned upward, so that it grazed my side. I barely felt it as I stretched upon him, holding him down. I grabbed him by the throat and forced up his chin to open wide his neck before I dove in with my teeth. My fangs popped through the skin and leaked venom into his veins before I completely ripped open a deep hole and began to slurp down the fresh blood. His screams in my ear were deafening but soon lapsed to a gurgle, and then a rasp, and then nothing at all.
"When I stepped back and gradually came to my senses, I analyzed my kill without interruption. The Centurion's face had gone slack, his vacant eyes staring at the sky, and I watched as the flesh of his throat began to blacken. It was the venom destroying the tissues very quickly, until most of his neck appeared necrotic. I had not seen this effect in full on my first vengeful feeding, and once more I was disturbed by my new capacity for monstrosity but also fascinated. Malorix had been right, I would have to control this, or it would control me, but not yet. I told myself I would learn control, but I still had certain business to attend to.
"I left that scene quickly, not giving myself the chance to stew in the lament this time. Malorix did not catch up to chastise me, which at the time I did not pause to consider when I should have. It was strange given that he had been not far away up the mountain side when I first wandered off, and now I had followed this group considerably far. The night before, he'd pursued me all the way to the hills near Trajan's headquarters but now there wasn't so much as a peep of dissent over my latest deeds, and I couldn't have given a damn less. I focused now on one man and one man only."
"Bielis?" Howard says quietly.
I nod grimly. "Yes. I set out at the same pace, running at an inhuman speed. I kept to the shade where my vision was best, unblinded by sun glare.
“It was dusk when I reached Sarmizegetusa because I wanted to see it at least one more time, and I wondered if my quarry had returned. The sun had dipped below an adjacent ridge when I easily, using my claws, scaled a section of the northern wall of the fortress. I perched there and found that that there was nothing for any Dacian to return to. Part of the Roman camp still spread out around the western wall, and there were patrols as well as men assigned to keep searching, digging if necessary, for any last Dacian treasure. The fires had not leveled the tower house's stone walls but there was no longer a roof on it or floors within. Most of the other homes behind the walls had the same damage, and the Romans had finished off the spiritual district. Only charred beams still stood, like rib bones protruding from the earth. I stared upon those ruins and saw every detail, from the splinters in the broken gates to the place where my family had died most horribly. My eyes burned, threatening tears, but everything in my middle was cold as ice.
"I climbed down and set out for Trajan's castrum, the only other place I could think to search. I reached that by midnight, finding it calm and quiet on the plateau. A gibbous moon hung in the sky beyond the log palisades and, as everywhere I went, the night insects and birds fell silent and allowed me to better hear human stirrings and whispers. I tapped into the thoughts of the guards at the main gate. My last bloody conquest had not yet been discovered and reported, so for the most part all was calm, though I sensed worry from them: the one to the left regretted joining the legion, though he'd had little choice; his partner to the right was listening to the darkness, concerned over what creatures out there could rip apart a contubernia. I, the very creature in question, approached them directly, radiating a vision of nothing, and they stared into it and saw only the meadow before them with its road tamped down by carts and horses, and the dark tree line fifty yards out.
"Once inside, I cloaked myself against the nearest legionnaires who either patrolled on duty or wandered from one fire to another, but otherwise I used the darkness. I used their surface thoughts to guide me, too, and I avoided Trajan and his entourage when they walked through at one point and returned to his huge tent with its comforts and security. He was no longer a concern to me, but I did linger near enough to get the information I needed, and after a long moment, the subject of my search
came up, and I knew now where to find the traitor Bielis."
✽✽✽
"He had been ensconced in a tent of his own and treated quite well from the looks of it, though I still doubted any Roman respected him. Even if he had cooperated with Trajan, he was still Dacian, and he was a Dacian who had kissed asses to get where he was, which made him a traitor to his own people and still untrustworthy no matter his sworn allegiance.
"I entered the tent and did not touch his mind to cloak myself. I meant for him to see me, first as a man, and then the monster when I felt ready. His back was to the entrance as he stood at a long, carved table. He was sticking his nose in a series of pewter pitchers, picking out wine or water to drink. I only watched him at first and gazed around the tent with its rich woven carpet, bed, and drapes that divided off a sort of vestibule where I stood waiting. Clay oil lamps glowed softly around the enclosure, not too uncomfortable to my now sensitive vision. Unaware of me, he swirled the pitchers before he selected one and poured a cup of wine. I could smell the sour sweetness of it.
"'Is that you, Titus?' he said dismissively, a little slur in his speech. 'Fetch me more water.'
"He turned and saw that it wasn't the servant assigned to him as I stepped beyond the drapes and into the dim, golden light. The cup slid from his hands and popped into two neat clay halves, spilling wine upon the rug.
"'Z-Z-Zyraxes,’ he stammered. His gaze roamed up and down my body from head to toe and back, over dried blood splatters, and pausing to note that there was no ugly, festering wound in my side below my ribs. That my tattoos were missing was a feature that did not quite register, and yet he tried, in his drunken haze, to discern what else was different about me. 'How—?' It was all he could get out as he searched for the right questions.
"'You were right, Bielis,' I said as I came closer, my new height rattling him as he couldn't explain the wound being gone, let alone that I practically hovered over him now. 'Trajan has treated you well, even with me going missing. I might have thought he would accuse you of facilitating that.'
"'There were witnesses,’ he said weakly. 'No one saw how you… I was with him when you… How did you escape?' His voice was growing progressively higher as he continued to look me over.
"'You would not believe me,' I said as I moved closer. 'But you know I could only be here for one thing, right?' As I took another step, he raised a hand from his side, drawing a dagger with it, and shoved it up into my belly. It stung fiercely but it was pain I could ignore. I looked down at it unfazed and then up again at him, and the red in my eyes bloomed, and my fangs budded behind my lips.
"'Str-stri-stri-' he gasped. He was trying to say something that is now the Romanian word strigoi, which I mentioned before, for the restless spirit of a person who returns from the dead to feed on the living. I was amused by this to say the least for I was no mere spirit, but in some sense, I had returned from the dead.
"'Oh, but I am far more than that,' I said, still standing there with that dagger in my gut. I grabbed his hand in mine, gripped it tightly to almost bone breaking pressure and pulled the blade free, he winced and gaped, drew in a breath and whimpered when he watched it heal instantly.
"'Please, Zyraxes, I only did what I had to do to live, to see that Dacia lives.' And upon those words, his most recent memories floated to the surface, fresh for me to pluck and read, and I saw therein how he’d intercepted the servant boy who was delivering water to our king and therein cunningly slipped drops of a potent mushroom extract that was known to cause delusion and fever.
“But far more than that, I saw how Bendis and our children had died: I saw through his eyes as he crept into the chambers where Bendis had lain down with Breslin, and Tsinna was occupied carving on the handle of his sica as I had suggested he do. I saw how Bielis reached up to tear an oil lamp down from its chain and dashed it upon the floor. Clay shards flew in many directions and the wide splatter of oil was consumed in a bloom of flame. Then there was a blur as he reeled for the door and looked back in time to see Bendis rise in a panic and call after him as flames spread fast through the room. And I saw through his eyes how he shut the door on her and shoved a wedge underneath to keep it from opening easily before running down the corridor, upsetting more lamps in their fixtures until there would have been no way out for any of them, not even a single house servant on that upper floor with its windows covered. I could hear, through his audible memory, the pounding on the door from inside and Bendis' voice crying for him to, 'Let us out!' The rest was a collage of hazy flashes of him easing past Decebal’s room, another oil lamp dropping on the floor, escaping over the sill of a lower window at the rear of the enclosure where a guard already lay dead.
"'Yes,' I said, my voice now an otherworldly growl, 'you did what you had to do for you, but Dacia is dead now, you see? It died with my wife and children, the ones whom you burned, and with my father, the king whom you betrayed. There is no more Dacia. Not for you, and not for me, either.'"
To hear myself repeating these words after so long is a renewed little death of sorts in Howard’s quiet room.
"Then I was finished playing with my food. I grabbed his face in my spread hand, forced his head back, and opened my mouth. In this particular state of fresh rage, I felt new and disturbing transformations happen. My jaw came unhinged and warped so that it gaped wider as I dove in and locked down on everything there from trachea and esophagus to arteries. He couldn't possibly scream with the force I exerted, and when I pulled back I tore it all out in one gruesome mess which I spit down the front of his tunic. My clawed hand sought the back of his skull and dug in, sharp enough to pierce bone. I clenched and pulled, and when I drew back to look in his face, I watched him gurgle and spout blood from his exposed and shredded windpipe while some spurted out of his mouth. His eyes bugged wide and helpless, and when I tore out the back of his neck, I savored that he was still alive for most of it until I dropped him to the floor and pulled the column, vertebrae by vertebrae, from his back all the way down to the tail of his spine. Nerves and arteries stretched and snapped, and flesh tore away along with pieces of fabric. His body slumped at my feet and I watched with no desire to feed on him, this trash, this filth that he was.”
Again, I sense Howard growing uncomfortable, and I take a moment to find my own equilibrium again.
Your eyes, Kvasir sends to me, and it is then I feel that they are warm, a signal that I've allowed the red to emerge, and Howard is looking right into them even while my gaze has mostly been angled toward the floor.
"Excuse me," I say and look more steeply away, closing them while I calm the little tremor within. The only escape is to keep going. "I knelt down and grabbed the king's ring from Bielis' finger by ripping the digit off. I removed the ring and slid it back into its rightful place on my own finger, and I felt my blood-covered face settle back into that of a man. Vengeance was satisfied, but the rage still lingered, and what happened next tipped my world even more steeply over than my transformation ever did. Malorix's warning about madness could never have been severe enough.
"I stared down at his profile with the eye affixed on nothing as the pupil dilated into a black hole. His mouth gaped open while brains and blood spilled out the back of his opened head as well as his shredded throat which began to blacken with instant necrosis. I prepared myself to step outside and project some image or other upon the legionnaires who were nearest. I knew not what that would be, for I wasn't sure I could stand to keep myself hidden. I wanted to strike terror into the whole camp, even as I simply walked out of there and left the rest alone.
"I made it part way to the drapes and suddenly could not move. My body halted on me even though I felt like I could keep going. It was disorienting; I absently pushed against this invisible barrier that held me, feeling a sort of air pressure pop in my ears with every effort until I stopped. I could turn my head slightly and my gaze flicked around, looking for some solution, and below me I saw the faint, phosphorescent glow in the rug. There
was a circle drawn there that I hadn't noticed before, with a line of foreign symbols around the inside edge and an equilateral triangle that spanned the entire thing with me now stuck at the center. I looked up, feeling panic for the first time since my change, and before me, within the shadows of the vestibule, I saw him.”
Kvasir stirs in his chair, bracing as he knows this part and what came after.
"The eyes staring back at me were large and jade-green with the vertical pupils of a cat, but when they blinked and opened again, an oily blackness washed over them in amoeboid patches and then receded into the sockets; the face was pale, almost sallow, with deep hollows and smears of black kohl in a pattern that you would equate with Egyptian design."
"Like what?" Howard asks. "The Eye of Horus?"
"Yes, exactly, like the hawk eyes of Horus, with their down sweeps and long trails out past the temples. Granted, I can only describe it as Egyptian now. At that time the only Egyptians I'd ever encountered were the very few odd ones conscripted into the Roman army during the occupation period I'd lived through. They were swarthy in complexion and wore no significant pieces of jewelry or the kohl on their eyes as they are known for in their art, nothing to represent the designs and favored symbols of their old culture, so I use the description in hindsight.
"The face under this paint was not Egyptian at all, but it was that of a young man: a long narrow face with a pointed chin peered out from within the black hood of a long cloak, and as I stared in shock at him, he stepped into the light. He was taller than me by almost a head. Strong looking but slender, elegant hands lifted and pushed back the hood to reveal tapered ears with long lobes and an excess of hoops piercing them along the entire outer shell. Flaxen hair, long and lush, was held back by a golden circlet across the forehead and in the center above his pale, arching brows was embedded a ghastly green scarab jewel, which caught the light and therein colors appeared to dance hypnotically. I stared at the scarab for a long moment as the new stranger eased closer and examined me with those strange eyes that danced with inky slicks that would appear, retract, and then linger at the edges as of something lurking inside him that wanted out. I will say, he was beautiful, if horrifying. I was in too much shock already that I could not move, more so when I realized I could not even speak to demand to know who or what he was."
