I had once known a man - a human - who could raise the dead.
The circumstances of our meeting are of little consequence, suffice to say the Thirst had drawn me to hitherto uncharted territory in search of fresh fodder. I had tracked my quarry, following the pungent scent of fear, to one of the poorest quarters of town; and it was there, in a squalid, vermin- ridden den that I found him. His ancient frame, withered to the point of emaciation, belied the vitality that resided within. I have always been drawn to such obfuscated sources of power. With a little persuasion, he had revealed to me the intricacies of his art, as well as the arcane rites involved in the capture of souls from the underworld. All this knowledge and more was mine for the taking; in fact, he imparted much of value to me, before he died.
Of course, it was well within my power to turn a live mortal, and indoctrinate him in the ways of our kind. The imbibing of our sacred blood - in the right amounts – was the more accepted way to create offspring; but the act of resurrecting a moldering corpse was beyond my own power. And so, with my recent decision to forgo my usual means, I had recalled the old mage's dying words and decided to make use of them. I had performed a certain rite on my sword, the Soul Reaver, which – if the necromancer had spoken true - would endow it with a new capacity. The imbuement would allow me to draw souls into its mystical blade, there to be stored until the same ritual in reverse allowed them egress. This done, I had journeyed to the Lake of the Dead, where the barrier between the underworld and the blighted land above was precariously thin. It was there, on the threshold of the Abyss itself, on a day wracked with the canon fire of thunderstorms, that I harvested the six souls I required.
Now I stood at last in the crypt, primed and ready for my unprecedented undertaking, while the blade at my side hummed and crackled with the combined essence of the stolen souls. I strode eagerly to my first choice of sarcophagus and tore off the lid, leaving it to shatter into fragments on the floor behind me. No random choice was this! The inscription on the tarnished metal plate informed me that here lay a man who had once held the enviable title of Head Inquisitor. I uttered a low laugh: no doubt his days had been filled with the dying screams of those tortured and judged by his hand. True, the Sarafan were publicly lauded for their honourable fight against the vampire creed, but I knew better. I had seen first-hand the persecution these men had fostered. I hesitated for a moment as I assessed the state of the corpse: it was dry as dust, withered, but through some combination of the elements in the air of the tomb, he had suffered very little decomposition. Were a Sarafan zealot to witness such miraculous preservation, no doubt they would attribute it to their fallen heroes' divine goodness. I scoffed aloud at the thought.
His armour was even better preserved than his skin. The arid atmospherics of the room had allowed the steel casing to remain mostly untouched by the decaying onset of rust, and even in the evening's gloom, a dim lustre could be perceived about the greaves and breastplate. With the unfamiliar sensations of enthusiasm and optimism brimming within my breast, I removed the knight's helmet. At once I noted the hollow eye-sockets, the sunken cheekbones, the withered lips, drawn back from the face with the shrinking of the skin and frozen in rictus for all eternity. Disappointment speared me. The preservation was far from perfect. With no further reason to delay, I tore off the pristine breastplate and exposed the knight's chest, still broad and muscular despite the sunken and withered state of the corpse. Raising the serpentine blade aloft, I closed my eyes and spoke aloud the words the necromancer had screamed at me in his death throes.
By now, the air was beginning to crackle with static electricity, and the scent of ozone lay heavy on the overcharged atmosphere of the chamber. Hairs began to rise on the back of my neck, while the light from the dying sun outside tainted everything as though with a film of blood. As the last word rang out from the walls of the tomb, I plunged the Reaver down in a vicious, vertical stabbing motion, and embedded it deeply in the knight's chest. Immediately, the blade began to glow with a subtle fire; eldritch, arcane, hypnotic, and I soon witnessed the light spread out across the man's recumbent form, enveloping him in a halo of blue flame. With the blade still buried in his chest, I drew a claw across my own wrist and allowed the first droplets of my blood to splatter onto his face.
I had not stopped to consider how this forced resurrection would affect the corpse. I did not need to - I had experienced it first-hand. When the necromancer Mortanius had raised me from the dead as a vampiric engine of vengeance, my first few moments of unlife were marked by searing, unbearable agony – and so it would be for my kin. It did occur to me however, that they had been dead far longer than I when I was raised, so I could only imagine the ordeal this first of my new progeny was undergoing. I supposed he would be in incredible pain as the desiccated lungs attempted to expand and take in air once again; as the withered heart attempted to pulse and propel blood long since dried to dust in his rotted arteries. I smiled grimly as the body, infused now with both a soul and the driving force of my own vitae, began to stir.
The scream that issued from that knight's throat was raucous enough to send me staggering backwards with my hands clasped over my ears. Even in my own worst nightmares, I had heard nothing that compared to this. It was the terror-stricken clamour of a mind gone mad. It was the sound a vessel, empty of all consciousness, might make as it wakes to find itself alive with no personality to give it meaning. It was the screaming of a soul until recently unfettered, regaining awareness to find itself consigned again to a body with limitations - worse, a body that was little more than a dead husk. The twin symbionts of mind and body had not yet begun to meld.
I silenced the screams with the provision of a further supply of my own blood, and, with this second draught, the animated form assumed a semblance of peace. With hindsight, I admit that I was foolhardy to think I could spare sufficient blood and energy to raise all six at the same time, but my pride, arrogance and enthusiasm drove me on regardless. In the space of the next hour, I moved to each sarcophagus in turn and performed on each of the fallen Sarafan warriors the same ritual of blood and souls. For that hour, I was omnipotent, deified, my potency boundless, until at last I stumbled towards the final coffin.
The raising of the Sixth was almost my undoing. Each of the desiccated bodies had demanded the infusion of such great amounts of my own plasma that by now I could barely support myself. Stubbornly, I stood my ground, feeding the last of my new children with the last vestiges of strength that remained in my body. But it was too much – I was overcome, and with a low cry I fell to the ground at the foot of the sarcophagus.
It was at this point, as I lay helpless and drained at the foot of the coffin, that they began to advance on me: six recently animated corpses, minds wiped clean of all but one consuming thought: blood. They planned - though without prescience, for their brains were yet dry in their skulls – to kill me, to tear me limb from limb in the mindless throes of the birth- bloodlust. They knew nothing but pain – and thankfully, they did not yet realize that I was its cause. I would expire at their hands. They would never know of their reanimator, nor of his grand plans for them, and they would stalk from their tomb, leaving my dismembered body to take their place.
Their attack was doomed to failure before they even began!
Not for nothing had I lived this long; not for nothing was my name whispered in fear in lordling's mansion and peasant's hut alike. I was prepared. With the last of my ebbing strength, I tugged at a nearby cord, and the antechamber door swung slowly open. Now, the soft whimpering of easy prey, softened further by a liberal beating, reached the ears of my newborns. As one, they turned and focused their murderous intentions on the warm, living victims that awaited them, weakened and blooded, in the next room. I watched with a great sense of accomplishment as my newest recruits stumbled past me, their eyes not yet reformed, their limbs decayed and wasted from their century-long slumber. It was my force of will, the strength which flowed in my blood alone that drove them on.
Shortly, the sounds in the antechamber began to change from the low moans of those suffering light wounds to the screams of humans attacked by the very substance of nightmares. I delighted in the familiar noise of skin being slashed, in the delicious gurgling cries of victims whose throats were caught in the merciless grip of a vampire in its first feeding frenzy. I laid my head back against the sarcophagus and listened to the tumult with my eyes half-shut, as though lulled by the strains of a familiar and well- beloved aria.
Presently the sounds ceased. The stench of blood and eviscerated bodies hung heavy in the air, thick and cloying like perfume. It reminded me that I also needed to replenish my reserves. I had prepared for this, too. A tug on another nearby cord raised a second gate, and my own meal stumbled out to fall headlong and land at my feet. I fed rapidly, hastened by the twin forces of hunger and danger. When I had drunk enough to enable me to scramble to my feet, I moved to lean on the doorframe so that I could take stock of the situation in the antechamber.
The room was red.
I had chosen well. Stooped above the steaming, mangled corpses ranged the six I had so recently raised, still rake-thin, still barely passing for humanoid – but already, in the first seconds of their rebirth, they had proven themselves worthy of my gift. Heads turned as they perceived that I was watching them, and the dimmest awareness showed on their faces: not that I was of their kind, not that I was their deliverer – but that I too was food. Food they had already been denied once since their waking.
I knew that this moment was critical. Now was the time to make my superiority known. Now was the time for me to assert dominion. My ownership of this moment would dictate and define their subservience to me from now to the end of eternity. It would also determine whether or not they turned on me and tore me to shreds, as they could do if they so chose. I was still weakened from the loss of vital fluids, and they were six – six strong and ancient warriors, blind with pain and rage. My choice of words was crucial: it could spell my victory – or my demise.
I drew myself to my full height and pointed imperiously to the floor at my feet.
"Kneel."
Brows furrowed above empty eye-sockets, fangs were bared on faces smeared with blood, and low growls rumbled throughout the chamber with the threat of deadly violence. Although the feed had not restored me to the fullness of my strength, still I knew I would be unwise to show any weakness to my newly-raised fledglings. I must project superiority, power, arrogance even. They must understand from the very beginning that I was Master here.
Ignoring the warning snarls and aggressive stances of the six who faced me, I stepped forward reiterated my command in a voice that asserted that I would brook no opposition.
"Kneel!"
My whole world hung in the balance, the success of my plans hinged on this one moment – on whether those I had chosen could be swayed by my command.
They were the longest ten seconds of my unlife.
The circumstances of our meeting are of little consequence, suffice to say the Thirst had drawn me to hitherto uncharted territory in search of fresh fodder. I had tracked my quarry, following the pungent scent of fear, to one of the poorest quarters of town; and it was there, in a squalid, vermin- ridden den that I found him. His ancient frame, withered to the point of emaciation, belied the vitality that resided within. I have always been drawn to such obfuscated sources of power. With a little persuasion, he had revealed to me the intricacies of his art, as well as the arcane rites involved in the capture of souls from the underworld. All this knowledge and more was mine for the taking; in fact, he imparted much of value to me, before he died.
Of course, it was well within my power to turn a live mortal, and indoctrinate him in the ways of our kind. The imbibing of our sacred blood - in the right amounts – was the more accepted way to create offspring; but the act of resurrecting a moldering corpse was beyond my own power. And so, with my recent decision to forgo my usual means, I had recalled the old mage's dying words and decided to make use of them. I had performed a certain rite on my sword, the Soul Reaver, which – if the necromancer had spoken true - would endow it with a new capacity. The imbuement would allow me to draw souls into its mystical blade, there to be stored until the same ritual in reverse allowed them egress. This done, I had journeyed to the Lake of the Dead, where the barrier between the underworld and the blighted land above was precariously thin. It was there, on the threshold of the Abyss itself, on a day wracked with the canon fire of thunderstorms, that I harvested the six souls I required.
Now I stood at last in the crypt, primed and ready for my unprecedented undertaking, while the blade at my side hummed and crackled with the combined essence of the stolen souls. I strode eagerly to my first choice of sarcophagus and tore off the lid, leaving it to shatter into fragments on the floor behind me. No random choice was this! The inscription on the tarnished metal plate informed me that here lay a man who had once held the enviable title of Head Inquisitor. I uttered a low laugh: no doubt his days had been filled with the dying screams of those tortured and judged by his hand. True, the Sarafan were publicly lauded for their honourable fight against the vampire creed, but I knew better. I had seen first-hand the persecution these men had fostered. I hesitated for a moment as I assessed the state of the corpse: it was dry as dust, withered, but through some combination of the elements in the air of the tomb, he had suffered very little decomposition. Were a Sarafan zealot to witness such miraculous preservation, no doubt they would attribute it to their fallen heroes' divine goodness. I scoffed aloud at the thought.
His armour was even better preserved than his skin. The arid atmospherics of the room had allowed the steel casing to remain mostly untouched by the decaying onset of rust, and even in the evening's gloom, a dim lustre could be perceived about the greaves and breastplate. With the unfamiliar sensations of enthusiasm and optimism brimming within my breast, I removed the knight's helmet. At once I noted the hollow eye-sockets, the sunken cheekbones, the withered lips, drawn back from the face with the shrinking of the skin and frozen in rictus for all eternity. Disappointment speared me. The preservation was far from perfect. With no further reason to delay, I tore off the pristine breastplate and exposed the knight's chest, still broad and muscular despite the sunken and withered state of the corpse. Raising the serpentine blade aloft, I closed my eyes and spoke aloud the words the necromancer had screamed at me in his death throes.
By now, the air was beginning to crackle with static electricity, and the scent of ozone lay heavy on the overcharged atmosphere of the chamber. Hairs began to rise on the back of my neck, while the light from the dying sun outside tainted everything as though with a film of blood. As the last word rang out from the walls of the tomb, I plunged the Reaver down in a vicious, vertical stabbing motion, and embedded it deeply in the knight's chest. Immediately, the blade began to glow with a subtle fire; eldritch, arcane, hypnotic, and I soon witnessed the light spread out across the man's recumbent form, enveloping him in a halo of blue flame. With the blade still buried in his chest, I drew a claw across my own wrist and allowed the first droplets of my blood to splatter onto his face.
I had not stopped to consider how this forced resurrection would affect the corpse. I did not need to - I had experienced it first-hand. When the necromancer Mortanius had raised me from the dead as a vampiric engine of vengeance, my first few moments of unlife were marked by searing, unbearable agony – and so it would be for my kin. It did occur to me however, that they had been dead far longer than I when I was raised, so I could only imagine the ordeal this first of my new progeny was undergoing. I supposed he would be in incredible pain as the desiccated lungs attempted to expand and take in air once again; as the withered heart attempted to pulse and propel blood long since dried to dust in his rotted arteries. I smiled grimly as the body, infused now with both a soul and the driving force of my own vitae, began to stir.
The scream that issued from that knight's throat was raucous enough to send me staggering backwards with my hands clasped over my ears. Even in my own worst nightmares, I had heard nothing that compared to this. It was the terror-stricken clamour of a mind gone mad. It was the sound a vessel, empty of all consciousness, might make as it wakes to find itself alive with no personality to give it meaning. It was the screaming of a soul until recently unfettered, regaining awareness to find itself consigned again to a body with limitations - worse, a body that was little more than a dead husk. The twin symbionts of mind and body had not yet begun to meld.
I silenced the screams with the provision of a further supply of my own blood, and, with this second draught, the animated form assumed a semblance of peace. With hindsight, I admit that I was foolhardy to think I could spare sufficient blood and energy to raise all six at the same time, but my pride, arrogance and enthusiasm drove me on regardless. In the space of the next hour, I moved to each sarcophagus in turn and performed on each of the fallen Sarafan warriors the same ritual of blood and souls. For that hour, I was omnipotent, deified, my potency boundless, until at last I stumbled towards the final coffin.
The raising of the Sixth was almost my undoing. Each of the desiccated bodies had demanded the infusion of such great amounts of my own plasma that by now I could barely support myself. Stubbornly, I stood my ground, feeding the last of my new children with the last vestiges of strength that remained in my body. But it was too much – I was overcome, and with a low cry I fell to the ground at the foot of the sarcophagus.
It was at this point, as I lay helpless and drained at the foot of the coffin, that they began to advance on me: six recently animated corpses, minds wiped clean of all but one consuming thought: blood. They planned - though without prescience, for their brains were yet dry in their skulls – to kill me, to tear me limb from limb in the mindless throes of the birth- bloodlust. They knew nothing but pain – and thankfully, they did not yet realize that I was its cause. I would expire at their hands. They would never know of their reanimator, nor of his grand plans for them, and they would stalk from their tomb, leaving my dismembered body to take their place.
Their attack was doomed to failure before they even began!
Not for nothing had I lived this long; not for nothing was my name whispered in fear in lordling's mansion and peasant's hut alike. I was prepared. With the last of my ebbing strength, I tugged at a nearby cord, and the antechamber door swung slowly open. Now, the soft whimpering of easy prey, softened further by a liberal beating, reached the ears of my newborns. As one, they turned and focused their murderous intentions on the warm, living victims that awaited them, weakened and blooded, in the next room. I watched with a great sense of accomplishment as my newest recruits stumbled past me, their eyes not yet reformed, their limbs decayed and wasted from their century-long slumber. It was my force of will, the strength which flowed in my blood alone that drove them on.
Shortly, the sounds in the antechamber began to change from the low moans of those suffering light wounds to the screams of humans attacked by the very substance of nightmares. I delighted in the familiar noise of skin being slashed, in the delicious gurgling cries of victims whose throats were caught in the merciless grip of a vampire in its first feeding frenzy. I laid my head back against the sarcophagus and listened to the tumult with my eyes half-shut, as though lulled by the strains of a familiar and well- beloved aria.
Presently the sounds ceased. The stench of blood and eviscerated bodies hung heavy in the air, thick and cloying like perfume. It reminded me that I also needed to replenish my reserves. I had prepared for this, too. A tug on another nearby cord raised a second gate, and my own meal stumbled out to fall headlong and land at my feet. I fed rapidly, hastened by the twin forces of hunger and danger. When I had drunk enough to enable me to scramble to my feet, I moved to lean on the doorframe so that I could take stock of the situation in the antechamber.
The room was red.
I had chosen well. Stooped above the steaming, mangled corpses ranged the six I had so recently raised, still rake-thin, still barely passing for humanoid – but already, in the first seconds of their rebirth, they had proven themselves worthy of my gift. Heads turned as they perceived that I was watching them, and the dimmest awareness showed on their faces: not that I was of their kind, not that I was their deliverer – but that I too was food. Food they had already been denied once since their waking.
I knew that this moment was critical. Now was the time to make my superiority known. Now was the time for me to assert dominion. My ownership of this moment would dictate and define their subservience to me from now to the end of eternity. It would also determine whether or not they turned on me and tore me to shreds, as they could do if they so chose. I was still weakened from the loss of vital fluids, and they were six – six strong and ancient warriors, blind with pain and rage. My choice of words was crucial: it could spell my victory – or my demise.
I drew myself to my full height and pointed imperiously to the floor at my feet.
"Kneel."
Brows furrowed above empty eye-sockets, fangs were bared on faces smeared with blood, and low growls rumbled throughout the chamber with the threat of deadly violence. Although the feed had not restored me to the fullness of my strength, still I knew I would be unwise to show any weakness to my newly-raised fledglings. I must project superiority, power, arrogance even. They must understand from the very beginning that I was Master here.
Ignoring the warning snarls and aggressive stances of the six who faced me, I stepped forward reiterated my command in a voice that asserted that I would brook no opposition.
"Kneel!"
My whole world hung in the balance, the success of my plans hinged on this one moment – on whether those I had chosen could be swayed by my command.
They were the longest ten seconds of my unlife.
