ANATHEMA
by Yih

Note: Unbeta'd.

Prologue
A Waking Death

I remember… running, leaving, journeying from our home to another.

Father said it was necessary. We had to get away from something, someone who was chasing us. Mom told me not to worry, that everything would be all right in the end. But she was wrong. And Father didn't run far enough.

He came like a terrible storm, surrounding us and demanding his price. "I would have the child," he said. His red eyes swirled with a horrible possession of darkness. "Give him to me."

My father's sword was out, a strong blade laced with the etchings of magical runes. I saw him push his magic into his sword, saw the markings pulse with life and gleam with power. But the other did not move, did not pull the sword sheathed behind his back free. He laughed instead.

The sound of it pierced my ears and if it were anything solid, it would have sliced my hearing into nothing. I wished then to have never heard that sound, but the One has a fractured sense of deliverance. Rarely what is wanted is given.

"Give him to me," the daemon, for that must he what he was, hissed. There were powers in those words. They pulled me to him. My mom held on tight, her nails digging into my flesh to keep me near her. She would not relent, would not give in. It did not matter. When Evil said, "If you will not give him, I shall take him," I was yanked from her arms.

I flew to him with a supernatural speed. I recognize the power, for I have felt the same in my father and mother. Looking back, I saw my mother had pulled her double knives from their belt holders. She twirled them in an intricate dance until the sharp edges seem to blur and bend. I had never seen my mother so fierce, so determined before as she leapt toward our enemy.

Father was right behind and I knew how they fought. I had watched them many times. I twisted away at the last minute and managed to jerk free from the daemon's hold. But I was too stunned by the site of my father losing an arm to move. So quick, so unbelievable—but it happened.

The daemon withdrew his sword and Father's arm was gone. My mom screamed once before her throat was cut and her blood spilled over her chest and her twin knives fell to the ground. I crawled to her, my arms cradling her dying, convulsing body. Tears spilled down my face until I could see nothing. But I heard the slicing of flesh against steel, heard how my father died.

I remember… crying and crying when the daemon picked me up and took me away.

"You are now mine," he declared, his clean hands touching the blood he had spilled with his sword. How his hands were clean when mine were crusted a deep crimson was strange. "I have looked for you a long, long time."

His touch was neither gentle nor cruel, but it was hard and his skin burned against mine. "Do you know who I am, child?"

I could not shake my head, his grip one my face was absolute. My voice was lost in darkness, words trapped in my throat. I was afraid if I opened my mouth, I would start screaming. Instead I blinked and I could see the understanding, the knowledge in his eyes.

"I am your master," he declared, "and do you know who you are?"

Somehow I managed to rasp, "No."

He made a please noise in his throat and it frightened me. But his words were even more terrifying. "You are my apprentice," he said as if he were giving me a great gift. "You are mine."

I remember… trying, praying, and wanting more than anything to kill myself.

But he would not let me. He knew I would try. I was only a child, but I knew many ways to try. His sword would be too difficult to get and too hard to wield. But if I fell off a horse, maybe I would be trampled. Or I could try to drown myself in a river. I even considered ripping my own throat out. None of these attempts worked.

He knew what I was after and he stopped each time. I did not know how he knew until we reached the borders of his land and I heard what they called him. He was the Great Lord of Darkness, the Living Dead, and as such he could feel death near.

His name was never said, not outside of his Dominion and especially not within it. They say his name has power, great power to destroy and to desecrate. They do not dare utter it, their homeland already known as the Northern Wastelands. But I read it somewhere. It did not seem like a name of power, but it did have a sinister sound to it… Voldemort.

Once he asked me: "Do you know why I took you?" His eyes, dark and red and fierce, seared mine. "Of all the little boys in the South, even in my Northern lands, do you know why I chose you, child?"

"To be your apprentice?"

He had a smile on his lipless face. He was a terrible site to behold, only his eyes appearing human. The rest of him was warped, like a diseased and wasted body, as such he should be—defying Death as he had.

"Only an illusion," he whispered, his hands, cold hands touching my cheeks. "You have such life in you, life that I need near me to remind of what I am missing—of what I need to have again."

I shuddered and his petrifying smile only widened. "Yesss," he hissed, his tongue flicking out like a snake, "I can sense your fear. I can smell it. It's a fear of death itself, and yet you don't want to live. How strange, how strange you are."

Who would want to live to be Death's Servant?

"But this fear is good," he said, whispered into my ear as he licked it. "You should fear me, child. I am not someone to cross nor am I someone to disobey. You saw what happened to your parents." His hand went around my neck. "You wouldn't want your pretty neck to be… slit like your mother's would you? Or," he said, his other hand gripping my arm, "any of your limbs detached would you?"

I shook my head, trying to gasp for air. It was getting hard, he was squeezing so tightly. I didn't know why I was trying to live, when only a few weeks ago I had tried to die, but I didn't want to die now. Not when I knew he was Death Alive and I feared that if I went into Hell—for where else could I go?—I would see him as more than a ghastly being.

"Then listen well, child, and learn too that I accept no weakness in my followers, and you are in their eyes… my apprentice. If you falter, you will be punished far worse than you can even begin to imagine," he warned me, a glittering, demonic promise in his eyes. "But you won't, will you?"

I lowered my eyes with acquiescence.

"Such obedience," he murmured, his fingers moving through my hair and down my spiny back, "in one so young. But then you have the will beaten and starved out of you, haven't you?" One finger touched a scar, one of the few on my back that had not healed. "Alas, you who wanted death, you got life and pain instead. And I who yearn for life can only stay in life by death.

"The injustice of this world," he remarked, his nails scraping against my scars, "is such a tragic thing to realize at tender age you are. But what an age to learn it! Then you will be prepared for the cruelties, the agonies, and the miseries. Ah yes, you my dear apprentice, will know such cruelty, agony, and misery. But even will you learn to give others a taste of what you have experience. Thus is world, the passage of horror.

"One day," he mused, "you will kill someone for me and you will revel in it. Perhaps I will have you drink their blood like a wild animal. A beast, my beast. Hard to imagine in you now, young and innocent as you are, but give me years and I will turn you into something grown men will piss in fear of."

His knuckles reached up and brushed against my cheek. "Ah yes, you will be a terror, my terror."

I wanted to weep, to wretch at the thought, but I did nothing.

TBC

A/N: The 'antithesis' of Chimera. Loosely influenced by other fantasy stories out there in the HP fandom, but pretty much my interpretation of what I'd like to see. These chapters should be longer and less frequent than my other fic. Of course, if you want faster and shorter updates, let me know. Other than that... what do you? And what do you want to happen after this setup?