Lanek struggled against the influence of what he had mistakenly considered HIS weapon. In the midst of his struggle, he felt hands grab his head and forcibly turn him toward a hazy black shadow. The only features of the shadow figure were red orbs for eyes dripping blood down the creature’s face and how thin it was. While Lanek could not see actual bones, he could see the outline of ribs underneath the shadow.
[Etheric Presence] pushed against the creature, but was ineffectual. In a fit of inspiration brought about by desperation, Lanek dismissed Kazuma. Seconds later, a white and gray shape slammed into the shadow, sending it staggering away from Lanek. Kazuma stood between Lanek and the shadow, growling in rage.
However, despite Kazuma’s interference, Lanek still found himself unable to move. If he hadn’t pulled Kazuma into his soul, he would have been completely helpless. He was ecstatic that his guess that this wasn’t happening in the physical world had been correct.
MINE. MINE. MINE.
The shadow growled as it prowled around Lanek, getting blocked repeatedly by the angry cat. With a hateful hiss, the shadow lunged forward and swung its arm at Kazuma. The cat was unprepared for the speed with which the shadow moved and was slammed into the ground. Kazuma whined in pain but couldn’t rise to his feet as the shadow held him in place, its hand expanding over the cat’s body in a growing pool of darkness that formed a sort of cocoon.
MINE.
Lanek shuddered at the shadow’s new tone. It had cooed that last word. Not growled or shouted. Cooed.
He could feel the shadow’s sense of triumph as it gripped his throat with its deathly cold hand. It knew it was the master here. It dominated this space and would not be denied.
Lanek could feel the shadow on his throat shift, tendrils of shadow-stuff working up from the hand, slipping into his mouth, nose, and ears. He screamed at the invasion of his body, of his soul. He watched as the tendrils neared his eyes… but stopped. Familiar whispers had begun all around him and he wasn’t the only one that heard them this time.
The shadow before him moved its head as if trying to track the source of the whispers, becoming more frantic and jerky in its movements as the whispers grew louder. The space around Lanek and his assailant darkened until only a small sliver of red light remained, outlining the shadow. The shadow released him, falling back and staring at the star-speckled void that had overwhelmed its domain.
From his knees, Lanek forced himself to look at the shadow. The whispers demanded it.
Witness.
When his eyes fell upon the shadow, the whispers repeated their refrain.
Witness.
And he did.
Within the creature’s chest a red orb glowed, an orb that had not been visible to him before now. Knowing what the whispers wanted, Lanek lurched forward, driving his hand into the shadow. He seized the orb, ignoring the creature’s pained shriek.
As with the crypt stalker, the voices urged him to consume the light. He brought the soul to his mouth preparing to bite into it but paused. The shadow was no longer shrieking at him, it simply watched him. Instead of pain or anger, he felt resignation and fear pulse from the creature.
This was not what he had expected from the almost feral creature that had pulled him into this place. Hesitantly, he pulled the soul orb away from his face and pushed [Etheric Presence] at it, wondering if it would be able to tell him something now.
In a burst of pale blue light, the shadows around the creature dissipated. In the shadow’s place was a creature that towered over Lanek and was clearly starving. Its skin was a sickly yellow and pulled taut over its bones with patches of coarse fur. The thing’s face bore a beast-like snout complete with a maw of razor sharp teeth. Four large fangs jutted from its mouth, two from the lower jaw and two from the upper. Pointed ears lay flat against its skull.
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The creature’s hands and feet both featured three long digits tipped in wickedly sharp claws. Leathery flaps that may have once been wings stretched along the back of the beast’s arms and along its shoulders.
The creature continued to look at Lanek in silence, an almost pleading look in its eyes. He pushed [Etheric Presence] even harder, focusing it entirely on the beast, drowning out the whispers and reached out to the creature’s mind. What are you?
The beast recoiled in surprise at the voice in its mind, before pushing images into Lanek’s mind. Lanek found himself in a room covered in arcane symbols and guarded by soldiers in elaborate armor. In the center of the room, resting in the middle of a circle of writhing runes lay two stone tables. Atop one of the tables was a man pleading with his captors, struggling against his restraints. On the other table rested the weapon Lanek now possessed, Sanguineus.
He watched in morbid curiosity as a robed figure approached the pleading man with a large vial. The figure snapped a few words that Lanek could not understand. The bound man went eerily still and opened his mouth. However docile he appeared, Lanek could see his eyes frantically darting around the room. The man’s eyes bulged as the contents of the large vial were poured down his throat.
The blood, for that is what it had to be, triggered changes in the bound man. Fangs extended from his gums and his eyes turned red. The vampire bucked against its bindings, snarling at the robed figures. Suddenly, the vampire’s eyes turned wild and fearful. For the first time since the vision began, Lanek was able to understand what was said.
“What have you done to me?!” the vampire screamed at his captors. The vampire’s flesh rippled and its limbs contorted.
“Not this, never this…” the vampire whispered as his eyes went dull. Mere seconds later, the robed figure placed its hand over the vampire’s chest and began chanting, its voice increasing in volume with every word. The vampire’s body thrashed and twitched rapidly before promptly going limp. The robed figure clenched its hand into a fist and raised it above its head.
From the body’s eyes and mouth, two different colored mists rose into the air, one blue and the other red. The red mist took the form of the vampire while the blue mist took the form of a large glowing wolf wrapped in chains.
As he looked upon the wolf, Lanek felt a surge of outrage from the depths of his soul, but it wasn’t coming from him. It was coming from Kazuma.
The two mists began to merge, twisting into a single grotesque shape, the creature Lanek had discovered underneath the shadows. With another motion of its fist, the robed figure gestured at the chain whip on the nearby table.
The monstrous figure was forcibly drawn into the whip, causing the metal to glow briefly. The robed figure gestured to one of the armored figures guarding him to pick up the whip.
The scene changed to a canyon littered with the bodies of fallen soldiers. Those still alive backed away from an encroaching horde of shrieking beasts. The scene shifted to the front line of the battle where a lone figure in tattered armor wielded Sanguineus, each strike causing another monster to fall and buying time for the retreating soldiers.
Devastating wounds slowed the warrior, but still he fought on. However, even with his courage and weapon, he could not stand forever before the horde. Eventually, he succumbed to his wounds and Lanek finally saw what he had been fighting. Gaunts.
Abruptly, the vision ended and Lanek found himself looking at the monstrous figure, at Sanguineus itself. It simply stared at him, as if waiting for death.
“I’m so sorry… they corrupted you. Both of you.” Lanek whispered. “They had no right.”
Lanek trembled as the whispers told him to look deeper. That’s when he understood. There was a reason they used the creatures that they did.
The vampire’s spirit was supposed to enable Sanguineus to steal a foe’s vitality and heal its wielder. Enslaving a being like that was bad enough, even if it was a vampire. The wolf though, that sickened Lanek to his core.
The wolf had been a frost wolf, a bonded companion to one of the robed figures. It had trusted these “people” and they had sacrificed it, perverted its bond of loyalty to force the weapon they were trying to create to be subservient. To enslave it and the vampire even after death.
Rage boiled up within Lanek at such an abuse of trust. Lanek had always loved animals and very few things in the world could make him hate as much as he did when he heard of cases of animal abuse. On top of that, these foul people had decided that their own experiment was worth both the betrayal of the trusting wolf and enslavement of two sentient beings.
He didn’t even know if the vampire had been evil. Maybe vampires in this world had the capacity to be as good or evil as any other sentient creature. Regardless, Lanek’s very soul rebelled at the perversion of the vampire, its transformation from a sentient creature to a hungering monstrosity.
Finally, the rage within Lanek ignited, a torrent of energy bursting from within him. Within that torrent, another presence joined him, ancient and powerful.
“THEY. HAD. NO. RIGHT!” he screamed into the star-speckled darkness around him. And something answered.
A booming voice thundered from all around Lanek as spectral trees took shape in the area around him.
NO. THEY DID NOT.
This was followed by a quiet whisper that seemed to echo from the void all around him.
Agreed.