"Why are you doing this?" I yelled—screamed—at him almost desperately, my voice cracking. "Tell me why!"
That day, years after my father was murdered, I was the one cradling my mother's near-dead form in my arms. My hands felt like they were burning, melting away with each drop of my mother's blood that seeped onto them—boiling red rivers of life-giving lava that scorched and hurt my hands, pain brought about by the fact that I was too late to stop these same rivers from flowing out of her body.
His grip tightened on his weapon of choice: a large rock that easily fit into his palm—no sharp edges, just the calloused surface of the weathered item. It, too, slowly dripped with my mother's blood. A man of his build, a young man who was obviously accustomed to reverting to brute force when all else failed him (his newly dented, yet otherwise unused sword gleamed in the grass a few feet behind him), equipped with something as primitive as a rock…
UNDIGNIFIED BARBARIAN! I held her even closer to me at the thought.
When he failed to answer my question soon enough, I quietly asked another, my voice half-gone from grief. "What gives you the right to do this?"
He huffed, trying to make himself appear bigger (and my God, it was working, with the way he towered over us whilst I knelt on the ground, tending to my unconscious mother).
Drip. The dark clouds in the sky parted and cast a soft glow of light onto the clearing we were at. So clearly, I could see it. So clearly, I could hear it, above the rustling of the leaves of the trees…
Drip. He was drenched in my mother's blood, almost as if he had bathed in it. So much of it, there was, that little red droplets slid from his now-dull chain mail, and onto the ground.
Horrible, so utterly horrible…
"Hail! I go by the name of Hrothgar, son of Healfdene—"
'Another monster killed! King Healfdene will be pleased!' My eyes widened at the name, and I felt my blood run cold.
"—and brother of Hergar, the King of the Danes!" he proclaimed loudly, proudly. "And I am doing this because it is the will of God!" He stepped closer.
"WHAT WILL?" I demanded, my resolve breaking, as I lunged forward but couldn't strike him because of the precious cargo I held.
He laughed in mirth, in amusement with the way I was responding. "Foolish demon!"
Demon?
"Demons, you all are, those born of Cain's blood!" The tone of his voice evolved by that point into something different, something cruel, something inhuman—
-something demonic.
"You demons do nothing but cause grief and suffering! Therefore, because I serve the good and just Lord, I will slay you—both of you—and spare your future victims, my brother's people, from what you may be planning to do to them!"
"WE WERE NEVER PLANNING TO DO ANYTHING TO THEM!" I cried out, desperate to make him understand that he was wrong, and that my family was being wrongfully punished.
"LIAR!" he barked back at me. He took another step forward and raised the rock high above his head, preparing to strike. "I SHOULD KILL BOTH OF YOU RIGHT NOW!"
At that moment, I didn't know what had taken over my body. I couldn't control myself. My body became a slave to a primitive desire that rang out in my head right then.
Kill him.
After gently placing my mother's body down on the ground, mindful of the cracks in her now-deformed skull that this man, this barbarian had made, I stood before him and, without thinking, leapt forward and did the first thing that came to mind:
I latched onto his raised arm with my sharp teeth.
It was at that moment that I received my first taste of human blood, the moment that warm liquid filled my mouth in spurts and jerks, indicating that I had penetrated a vein, the moment that he let out an incomprehensible scream of exactly how agonizing it was.
That was the moment I felt powerful for the first time in my life, that I felt like I could do anything I wanted because I had the ability to cause another person so much pain…
I placed one of my hands on the shoulder of his free arm and the other on his side. And with all the strength I had, powered by the anger and the frustration and the grief I was feeling at that moment, I started to pull my head back, my teeth deep in his muscles.
He screamed, louder and louder, as I, through my mouth, felt tissues and sinews and veins slowly tear away from each other and from his shoulder joint.
Kill him, kill him, kill him! Rip him apart limb from limb in revenge for what he did to your mother! KILL HIM!
And I aimed to do just that.
But at that moment, pain descended onto my head. I held my ground against it, but it came repeatedly. Again and again, the pain knocked into the back of my cranium, and spots appeared in my vision, but I refused to let go. On the contrary, I sunk my teeth in even more. Harder and harder, he brought whatever he was holding down and the harder I bit in return.
Then the pain became unbearable. He struck me with (probably) all the strength he had and I finally pulled back to let loose a loud wail at the sensation of my skull cracking.
He seized the moment and pushed me away by landing a well-aimed kick at my stomach. My strength and power deserted me and I stumbled back and became reduced to a crumpled, bleeding heap of flesh and bones on the ground next to my injured mother.
He unceremoniously let go of the rock, now covered in the blood of me and my mother, and it made a crunching sound as it crushed the blades of grass it had been dropped on.
And with that, he turned around and fled into the thick forest, using the shadows that the trees provided to his advantage.
My hands balled up into fists, unintentionally ripping twin patches of grass from the ground, at that. I wanted to chase him, that cowardly barbarian, and taste more of his blood on my tongue, proof that I was causing him pain, but my body refused to move.
And that was the last time I was human.