That which I once was I am no more; what have I become?
For a millennium have I sat and observed—I now rise!
Who is this that comes to our remote cabin? We see no strangers lest we travel far in rare instances and for rare supplies.
We were as innocent in our trust as we were defenseless against, them.
Came they, and did they to us out of a form of ravenous desperation. They had traveled far and wide, it was the witching hour when they approached our quaint abode and they were—hungry.
The door all but exploded with the violence of their encroachment. Father, mother, sisters and brothers shouted in terror, they were upon us before we could take a second breath.
Tore them, did they, to pieces and bit them, did they, me—the teeth sinking deep into me. I, somehow, in the midst of the macabre terror did abscond via the entrance into the cellar and from the cellar outside.
The night was blacker than the space between the stars. The humid air so cold I could feel it giving way as I ran. And run I did beyond my ability to run any longer and much longer still, somehow. Driven as I was by primal horror, I ran and climbed, climbed and ran up and up. Up until atop this mount I was.
Bleeding, bruised, bodily and mentally exhausted, in the throes of madness—I sat.
I sat and could non but watch as my beloved home and family burned as they, the them, the unknown escaped back into the night from whence they came.
I sat and watched until I could watch no more. My eye lids became heavier than the mightiest oak and fell they atop my eyes until my sight was obscured and I fell into a deep, deep sleep.
When I awoke, it was as though I had proceeded forth from another word, from the dessert dry throat of death itself. I woke to shaking with fear, cold and what seemed like madness. The night’s events seemed to be but a dream—the stuff of which a monster dreams, a monster’s nightmare.
I sat as I could not move out of exhaustion and mental delusion as phantasmagoric flashed filled my mind. My mind eventually fixed upon a memory, a tale, a legend, a myth: they, the them, were they of whom we spoke in hushed tones. Half in warning to beware and be aware and half in the jest with which tall tales are told, we had spoken of them. They, or so our ancient lore did tell, were once as we and yet were now wholly other.
“A man’s bright lamp will damp, when by piercing flesh with fang,
born would be a vamp
”
Or so, our ancient tales told.
Yet, told we were also of half-broods. A vamp would only be created by utter draining of blood and replacement thereof by the blood of the clan of vamps who sought to increase their numbers.
I sat and in otherworldly fear I realized what I now was and it was that: a half-brood—not quite human, not quite vamp but either or neither.
I sat until my mind’s racing subsided and stilled, a stillness unlike any I had ever known. I was more than ever and yet no more.
I observed as my beloved home burned to ash, as the they, the them, fled, as the ash blew away, as that which remained rotted, as the rot fed the soil, as the soil brought forth new life, as the new flora obscured what was once my home, as it brought forth its fruit, as the fruit ripened, as it fell to the ground and rotted, as its seed sunk into the soil, as the soil brought forth new life.
I sat and became a shadow, a shadow’s shadow as hours passes as days and days as weeks which passed as month and moths as years, decades I sat, centuries.
I saw the valley turn into an encampment and that into a town, town became city and city, became state. People scurried about their various activities as I sat and watched.
Season upon season, snow upon rain, sun upon wind. In times of growth I oft became obscured by plants, vines, leaves and branches as if cocooned—undergoing my transformation.
Putting a label to that which I now was, that which I had become, was not enough for me to have any conception of that which I now was, that which I had become: a dying life dying to death to live again.
In times of cold snow packed around me and froze me into an igloo colder than my soul.
I sat as the Sun chased the Moon and the Moon chased the Sun. What was the passage of time but a spinning wheel that slowed, sped, stopped—I knew not as I sat and was.
Often creatures happened upon me, sniffing me out, as unsure of what to make of me as I was unsure of what to make of myself. Insects nested in my ears and as they burrowed deep into my skull they were absorbed as nutrients by some function of my gray matter feeding on them. The ground beneath provided sustenance I absorbed through my skin.
Once a serpent crawled across my face and as I opened my mouth it startled and struck rapidly, wildly at my face with its pin-sharp fangs, drove them deep into my eye as I bit down into its body. The pain was a mere sensation like any other, neutral, a mere bio-chemical reaction. As my eye healed to perfection I could again see, observe, behold.
I sat and watched as occasionally they, the them, made their jaunts into homes. I watched them hunting like packs of wild creatures.
As the very seasons that passed as fleeting moments, I wasted away and was restored to fullness again. My body waxed and waned as the Moon above being, as it were, emptied of all I was and filled with that which I became.
I sat and saw them, the they, smelled them, perceived them, studied them, contemplated them.
I sat until I knew them and plotted against them.
I sat and as if driven by an imperceptible volition: I arose.
I stood as if a dream pierced an illusion. I took a step and it seemed that I would pull down the mountain with me so woven was I to it by root, vine and branch. I proceeded forth to seek and find them, to encroach upon them within their very lairs.
I had become death’s death, consumer of darkness, the one whom nightmares fear.
For a millennia I sat, I now rose, my ire to be expended until there is nothing left to expend.