Part 1, Prelude and Chapter 1
Part 1: A Dance of Crimson amid Ashen Plains
Prelude
He doesn’t scowl as he looks upon me. His features merely settle into a cool, dispassionate frown. But he cannot hide his thoughts.
Surthath; self-styled god of fate and knowledge, sets himself opposite to me in our cosmic limbo as we continue our game for the right to rule mortals as we see fit. I am Dur’Artoth, and I have set myself to grim but necessary purpose; ending the mistake of mortality once and for all. I cannot abide these fickle, fetid creations a moment longer.
A board sits between us. The pieces on this board, more metaphor than substance, represent our worshipers, witting or otherwise, willing or otherwise, waging war all throughout the many, many words of creation.
There are other pieces, of course, belonging to other, feeble gods, whose presence is but a nuisance. They are nothing. Surthath alone commands my attention. This will be our final bout.
Surthath checks my move, taking a pawn with little ease. This is acceptable, as I see a fitting retaliation in the next six turns.
I ease into my seat, an apt reflection of Darkmoor; the tortured realm of my predecessor. Jagged, cruel, and unyielding. A seat befitting a true sovereign. A nearly comical contrast to Surthath’s humble cushion.
My black feathered wings unfold, twitching as I consider my next moves. A rivulet of acidic slime drips down the tendrils of my beard, and strikes one of his pawns, dissolving it into vapor.
“You put much stock into these creatures. How tragic.” I say with a chuckle, weaving dark Magik into a new piece to replace the one I’ve lost, its surface pitted and scarred. My brother feigns indifference, but he cannot hide his feelings, talons gouging into the board.
“How far you have fallen, my child, calling upon the dead, but have you forgotten in your haste that it is now my move?”
One of Surthath’s sapphire pieces; an elven magister residing in the mortal world of Carthspire, strikes out at one of the Vampyre; a virulent nocturnal species, and it falls, its wretched soul writhing as it is pulled into my realm of afterlife, and there extinguished by the enervating negative energy.
I feel my divine power grow by a nearly imperceptible amount, and smile.
“Was it not you who suggested this gambit? You, who seek to preserve something which is doomed to failure? You do this for what end, I wonder? Do you perhaps seek to finish Anima’s work, or your own? A god of logic, indeed…”
There.
I whisper my next edict, calling to fruition a gambit that I had made decades previous. The souls of all mortals shall wither and die upon my victory.
I will succeed.
Chapter 1
The path led him through utter desolation. The wind blew in torrents, blasting him with loose grey sands, and the Couatl forced to bear the name Ryū tried in vain to shield his eyes. The wind seemed a living thing; it pushed around his defenses, seeped through the cracks to irritate his eyes and wounds. It was cold…so cold…and he had nothing for warmth but the shredded loincloth that had been given to him by his vampiric Camazotz masters.
Ryū pawed at his back, at the red-black gashes all across the ashen sheen of his skin, trying to clear the irritation in vain, until finally, his strength failed him and he collapsed. When he had lived among his people, Ryū had been a healer, and so he clearly understood the gravity of his injuries. It was over; he would die here, on this day, alone and so very far from home.
The Couatl did not see his life flashing before him, as they often claimed would be the pre-mortem transition. Instead, he only had one thought flashing through his mind; that of Akna, his mate. She’d been so young, and he, in his middling years…the others had often wondered why she had chosen him as her mate, but he hadn’t needed to understand. He still didn’t. He’d been so happy, more so than he had ever imagined…until…
Ryū coughed up bloody phlegm, and after the fit, he saw something that nearly stopped his heart. Within his own sick, black streaks intertwined with the red and clear saliva. A very clear hint of what awaited him when he lost consciousness.
No! He had to get home, get away! This was not happening!
He had seen the profane ritual, observed as the Camazotz had mutilated themselves and their Couatl slaves in worship to the death god Dur’Artoth. Vampyre blood was black…and his was turning black as well!
Ryū tore himself from what was not to be his grave, gritting his teeth through the pain as his breath started to fail him. N0! He would escape, find someone…cure it before…
The pale serpent collapsed a second time, and his vision grew hazy, with black spots swimming in the blurry, unreal sight of the wastes. He thought of Akna, of the child he would never see, and finally, unmercifully, he knew no more.
The figures stood in two columns on either side in a darkly lit hall, shrouded in black robes. They didn’t speak. He couldn’t even see their faces, but Ryū knew what they wanted from him.
They were the servants of the World Serpent, calling him to the afterlife.
He walked between them, garbed in the very same robes, his twin Macuahuitl sheathed at his back. Their names were Hyosho and Kaminari, ice and lightning. For some reason he couldn’t explain, the moment they’d been forged the names impressed upon him, as if the blades had demanded them.
At the end of the hallway, the walls began to warp and twist, as if melting, and eventually only darkness lay before him. The guardians beamed with approval, perhaps eager to at last finish their duty of ferrying him to the other side. He should have died, so many times… Why had he not?
“They need me. I swore an oath to protect them.” Ryū whispered, and the Couatl knew it to be true.
He stopped, as he always did, just before the lightless abyss became too black and dense even to see with his undead eyes, and the guardians tensed with agitation.
Ryū shook his head, “I cannot join you, Akna. Not yet. I still have my purpose.”
They shrieked; an unnatural, unspeakable keening that forced him to his knees, and his vision darkened further. And in an instant, they were gone, leaving him alone as the hallway faded away.
Ryū woke, adrift in a sea of memories, some recent, others long, long since passed, idly pawing at the leather pouch hanging from his neck. Within it lay dust taken from those desolate wastes, in the exact spot of his death.
“Night falls, Sir.” The Couatl forced to bear the name Shirudo said, kneeling beside him. Ryū had long given up on asking his apprentice not to call him that...
He sighed, rose, and collected his Macuahuitl and mask from beside the fire intermittently lighting their cavern niche. He’d forged them himself, melting down the mithril breastplate a Camazotz general had worn before he’d gleefully torn out its heart, favoring the heft of solid metal over the more traditional wood and obsidian ones, though he’d blackened the barbs to more closely resemble them. With his enhanced strength, he could wield them effortlessly, shearing muscle and bone with every swing. The mist of blood that arced from freshly gouged wounds fed his appetite.
The mask was crafted in the likeness of a Dragon, forged of that same rare material. Ryū wore no stolen breastplate or traditional Ichcahuipilli padded tunic, for it interfered with his natural flexibility and agility, favoring only a plated hip cloth, bracers, ankle plates, and a tattered black Ruana. His torso was bare, allowing all to see the scars; a testament of the pain he’d endured to become what he was.
Shirudo nodded at his readiness, applying black paint to match the irregular splotches along his pale-grey skin, quite the contrast to his own, which had lost its pale silvery luster and was now a dull copper-red like drying blood.
Ryū left the cavern, to where the others were waiting, armed with spears, blades, and explosives scavenged from the enemy.
None made eye contact, for such was the Couatl way; death was not acknowledged. Ryū was cursed, tainted by the Camazotz and doomed to an eternity as a vampyre. Though faster, stronger, and more resistant to injury than his living kin, the Sun; the giver of light, the symbol of the warm embrace of the World Serpent, now judged him unworthy. In its light his flesh would burn until nothing but a pile of ash remained.
And he would never die...never be given peace and the place beside Akna he so desired. That was the greatest cruelty, for he was a separate thing from the wheel of life and death.
They moved through the plains swiftly silently, shadows amidst a deeper blackness. The jungles and marshes of his homeland had been reduced to desert in the last few centuries by the Cipactli; a barbaric toad race that poisoned the land with their filth, and the foul sorcery of the vampyric Camazotz, their new masters. Masters that would continue to fall to the blades of his slave army. As warriors of the Xiuhcoatl, they had skirted the settlements for years now, raiding where they could, hiding when they couldn’t, always wary of the Camazotz, whose powers often dwarfed even his.
But tonight, they did not hide. They hunted. Soon enough, the enemy outpost became visible on the fading horizon; a small plantation which held no less that twelve of his people as slaves; cattle to the lusts of the Vampyres and the petty cruelties of the Cipactli. Ryū reached the surrounding wall first, and scaled the flat stone surface with no effort, thanks to his extendable nails which could dig into any surface. A natural gift, for his people were skilled climbers suited to the trees which once choked the land.
He could smell a Cipactli above, a slave as much as his people were, but also an enforcer that would raise an alarm given the chance. Just below the lip of the battlement, Ryū tensed, and sprang. As he reached the top, he spun horizontally, all the while drawing his Macuahuitl in a mid-air flourish, shredding its throat apart.
Carrying his momentum, the Vampyre darted through the battlement as his feet touched down, his blades seething with pulses of intense cold or with crackles of electricity that created thin rivulets of steam. There were at least seven guards within the plantation currently, as his fearless scouts had observed, and Ryū knew most would be in the next room at this hour.
He kicked down the reinforced door into the barracks, the metal hinges bending inward on impact with sharp retort. Seven indeed in all. Against the monster he’d become, there was no worry. His men would free the slaves.
Ryū crossed several paces in a single step, disemboweling one of the creatures mid-stride with a backhanded slash, all the while withdrawing two balanced daggers which met the two at the end of the hall, the small weapons buried pommel-deep in their throats. His Macuahuitl surging with Magik, the Vampyre leaped onto a seated toad man, and crosscut its throat, the x-mark spewing vile green blood which splattered his bare chest. The creatures were upon him then, each carrying a wicked iron cleaver.
The Vampyre arched his back as the blades fell upon him, and kicked the post of the seat, knocking him to floor level. He spun his blades in a twisting, spinning flourish, hamstringing the closest brute while forcing the other’s momentum too far out and overbalancing it.
Ryū found his feet in a forward somersault, blades in reverse grip, and ducked under a Cipactli’s arms while slicing outward and upward. The Macuahuitl parted bone, keening with delight as they drank in fresh blood, and the toad man collapsed in a screaming heap, both hands unevenly severed. Ryū fell back into a defensive posture when the next wretch charged with clumsy overhead swings, then outright dodging to avoid a series of more focused two-handed strikes.
The Vampyre ducked and counterattacked, bringing his blades to bear in a double-impaling motion, breaking the guard of the Cipactli as it tried to abort its attack and block, then he delivered a sweeping kick which struck both it and the guard on the left.
As the three of them met on the floor, Ryū removed his mask and sank his fangs into the closest brute, feeding even as he tore out its throat. The remaining toad man struggled to its feet, whimpering, just in time to see Ryū tear off its compatriot’s head.
Ryū hissed and struck the beast with that very head, and his blades met it before the gruesome diversion even landed, cleaving its skull in two.
One of his Xiuhcoatl followers emerged from the door he had burst through, and Ryū eyed him, snarling, shivering, the blood frenzy still holding him in sway.
“We have freed our brothers and sisters in chains in the slave’s quarters, but at least one or two are unaccounted for. We await your word to break into the manse.”
Nodding, though the words barely registered, Ryū tongued his fangs and donned his mask, ashamed to be seen in such a state without it. The regret and self-loathing could wait until the task was finished.
They had caught the vampyres unawares, and Ryū would finish the job by defeating the masters of the plantation and stringing them up by their entrails to burn alive in the sun.
Business as usual.
He passed the slaves on the way to the manor proper, all of which bore ragged scars akin to his own, their gazes vacant and cowed from the abuse they’d endured. The Camazotz desired Couatl slaves for the extraction of Remnant, blood drawn exclusively through torture, brutalizing and mutilating his people for sustenance. The missing slaves were likely being tortured at that very moment…
The manor itself, a three-floored wooden affair, was already being prepared for burning, his fellow Xiuhcoatl spreading explosives fortified by the on-hand fertilizer, while a second detachment gathered what they could from the stores of food, destroying what they couldn’t carry. The Xiuhcoatl had survived this long by not daring to seize Camazotz land, only ruining it. If the vampyres ever caught wise of their camp, Ryū and his fellows would be crushed. Most of their people were hidden in the mountains, where it was safe, and the Xiuhcoatl moved positions every week or so.
His fellows blew down the iron door to the undercroft of the Manse with a series of controlled detonations. Before the dust cleared, Ryū was already charging in, Hyosho and Kaminari readied. The long descending stairwell following the hallway ended in a corridor with disturbing similarity to his dream. He gave no pause, eager for more bloodshed.
At the end there was a door; akin to the darkness of his death, but still Ryū was not deterred. He struck the second iron door with his palm, and it rocketed off of its hinges and sailed through rows of thick drapes. When the veils parted, not even the curse of undeath could numb him to what he saw. A female Couatl, no older than twenty seasons, lay half-dissected atop an altar, her lungs poking out of her parted rib-cage. They rose and fell unsteadily...
The two Vampyre looming over her gaped at his entrance, a male and female; the mating pair that lorded over the compound, but recovered quickly and charged him with scalpels and a surgical saw. Camazotz were bipedal, like him, but with rounded faces with pointed ears, mammalian skin as black as oil, hands akin to claws and teeth like needles, flowing grey and black fur from the tops of their heads, and eyes milky white and lidless. The vampyres rushed him, seeking to use their unnatural speed to their advantage, but to their surprise Ryū was able to follow and react to them with the same unnatural grace, as he parried both of their strikes simultaneously, locking their weapons up in the teeth of his swords.
“You are…” one of them hissed, a moment before Ryū caved in its skull with the pommel and slashed its throat for good measure.
“One of you?” Ryū replied, “Never.”
The female tried to flee; perhaps unused to an opponent of equal measure, and Ryū fought the revulsion threatening to overtake him, accepting the rage instead.
“Like you? I am not like you… I am not!” he snarled, hamstringing her, then taking his swords in reverse grip and slamming them between two disks of her spine, paralyzing her. A similar double-strike to the neck broke it as well.
“I’m not like you.” Ryū hissed, though it rang hollow even to him, turning away, and with a contemptuous flick of the wrist, severed her head. He rushed to his kinswoman, and heard her heartbeat, felt her pulse even at five paces. She was still alive, if barely so. Her eyes were glazed, unfocused. If she was even aware of his presence, she didn’t show it. He stood over her, undoing the bindings around her wrists. She was so pale…so pale…
“Forgive me for this, but I must act if you are to live…” Ryū whispered in her ear-slit, as he laid his Macuahuitl across his arm, slicing horizontally in a jagged swipe. His blood, less his own and more the restorative Remnant he’d recently consumed, fell into the gaping hole in her chest, bubbling as it made contact. Her eyes widened in horrified awareness, and she screamed, wheezing and spitting blood, but he held down her hands with his own, not wanting her flailing to interrupt the process.
As he watched, her ribs began to reform themselves around her organs, her heart beating frantically as it was concealed by a protective sheath of tissue. Her muscles re-knit, closing the wound further, and the skin around her chest swelled over that, leaving a smooth surface. In a matter of moments, little remained of the wound but an uneven ridge of bone and a thin, pale scar, and the female was sobbing more than screaming.
That wound he could do nothing for…
“Are there others?” Ryū asked, releasing the female from his hold and into the arms of living Couatl, who could better comfort her.
“There is one other, Sir. He…cannot be helped.” Shirudo stammered as he approached the Vampyre’s flank, “They…burned him”.
Ryū blinked, confused, “Why did they burn him? Remnant cannot be extracted in that way, can it…?”
