“Wake up, worms!”
Aloram lifted his head from his forearm. His skin felt sticky, and he rolled over onto his side, propping himself up on an elbow. There was a tap tap tapping sound coming from outside the cell to the right, a single note beating quicktime and growing closer. The baton, a dull metal rod in place of the black rubber one he’d come to expect from movies, entered his field of vision and passed across the vertical bars of his cell door.
“Hands out for irons! Wake the fuck up if you want food!”
The guard kept walking, the sound following him to the other side of the cell. Aloram put his forehead back on his arm and closed his eyes, patiently waiting for the subtle fabric of sleep to slip over him again.
“Not hungry?”
Aloram drew a deep inhale. He really didn’t like the fact that he had a roommate.
“No.”
“They only come around once every three days,” Emrys said, amusement tickling the edge of his words.
“And what do you eat, then?”
“I make do.” Though Aloram didn’t see it, he heard the smile in the vampire's voice.
Aloram rolled onto his back and stared up at the blank grey slab of stone above him that was Emrys’s bunk. The rattling sound of the bludgeon against the bars was quickly fading, and Aloram could hear scuffling and rasping from the adjacent rooms, prisoners moving to the edges of their cells and sticking their hands out of the rectangular slit between the bars designed for safely applying manacles to the wrists of the cell’s inhabitants. No one said a word. The guard reached the end of the hall and doubled back, removing a pair of iron bindings from the wall beside each cell as he cuffed wrists, opened doors, and chained prisoners to eye rings set into the corridor wall.
After some time, the prisoners who’d chosen to dine were chained together, hands and ankles shackled, and led out of the corridor in the direction that the guard had come from. Out of the corner of his eye, Aloram watched them as they filed past. Most were skinny, some emaciated, and many old. Among them were a few that looked as if they had some potential: feisty and ferocious. If fed and tended to for several weeks, those few might prove useful, but the majority were closer to wasted corpses than to living beings. Those that did have fight in their eyes had it strong, though—a hardness that spoke of contempt and capability.
Aloram frowned, listening to the last of the shuffling footsteps and clinking chains.
“Where are we?”
Emrys laughed, a high, soft tinkling sound like wind through chimes and morning light piercing crisp air.
“I was wondering when you might ask that. We are in a temple east of Ubi, the capital city of Al-Ul.”
Aloram felt something tickling at him—a near-physical sensation on his temple, like an insect crawling across his skin. He grabbed at it, but when he looked at his fingers, there was nothing.
“What kind of temple?”
“A Daezir temple. Though I suspect that matters little to you. The kind with prisons, torture, and an indefinite stay—that is to say, the priests here do more than pray.”
“Why did you assume I wouldn’t know the capital of Al-Ul?” Aloram tried to say it with confidence and spite, but his mouth couldn’t mimic the cadence with which Emrys said the name, and he felt foolish.
Aloram stood and walked to the bars, testing them with his hands. Emrys was silent, his eyes on Aloram’s back.
“You’re an outworlder,” he said slowly, curious about what the young human’s reaction to his knowing might be.
“Outworlder,” Aloram repeated, hearing how the new word sounded coming from his own mouth, “yes.”
“You are quite the curious little flower,” Emrys said, his eyes absorbing details about Aloram’s body and clothing as he languidly examined his turned back from atop the bunk.
Aloram wrapped his fingers around the cell bars and tried to pull them apart. His forearms bulged, and his body vibrated from the intensity of his effort, but the bars didn’t budge at all. If he’d had his rei… but no. There was something about the bars beyond their composite toughness that resisted him. The engraved runes, intricate lines carved into foreign, blocky symbols, radiated a faint trace of power, almost imperceptible through his collar-stunted senses.
He needed to rid himself of the collar. Letting his hands drop from the bars, Aloram turned to face the cell, taking in the room again. The piss pot in the corner, the window, and the bed. He met Emrys's eyes; the black voids speckled with red flaws disconcerted him, but he quickly got over it. Aloram wanted to say that he wasn’t a flower, wanted to establish some sort of dominance or at least a modicum of respect in the relationship, but as it stood, he felt that, for whatever reason, he was completely at Emrys’s mercy.
The vampire, for that was the closest thing that Aloram could relate him to, didn’t seem at all phased by the collar encircling his own neck. Absently, he wondered how long Emrys had been imprisoned here. Lying atop the higher bunk, the man looked completely at ease, wrapped in his blanket, a slight smile playing across his lips.
The words he spoke last night came back to him: what led to your capture, or are you here voluntarily? Even after only a short acquaintance, Aloram was sure that nothing could be done to the man without his consent. Why, then, did he allow himself to be imprisoned? How could he stomach wearing the collar when it caused Aloram himself so much discomfort? It seemed an impossible task to try to understand Emrys. Aloram was almost certain his cellmate wasn’t human, and besides that, he was from another world than Aloram’s own. His age was a complete mystery, and he acted like no one Aloram had ever met.
Despite all that, Emrys was his only resource. If he wanted to escape, to learn about this world, to become powerful, then he would have to form a relationship with this creature. For whatever reason, Emrys seemed interested in him. Perhaps Aloram could use that to his advantage.
“You seem to know quite a lot about me. You’re right; I’m not from here. I’m from Earth, a planet in the Milky Way, if you know of it.” Aloram had no idea what this creature may or may not know, but keeping secrets from him seemed both foolish and impossible. Perhaps by divulging some useless information, he could gain Emrys’s trust.
Emrys’s eyes gleamed, and his smile turned hungry. Earth! There hasn’t been an outworlder from Earth in how many years? Three thousand? Four? The wheels are certainly turning, then. What a wonderfully unexpected shifting of the tides. And to think he’s arrived to me, of all people. Is this of their planning, or a mistake? How the fates have smiled upon me; finally, in my old age, I’m to have some excitement once again.
“It is of my nature to know things. I’ve heard of your homeworld, though not for many, many years. Do you know, then, little human, where you are?”
Aloram closed his eyes for a long moment, stifling the part of him that wanted to leap at Emrys and tear out his throat with his fingers, then opened them once more and exhaled a slow, deep breath.
“No. Yesterday, or at least I think it was yesterday, I awoke in a cave, then emerged in a tundra. Shortly after, I was attacked from behind and taken here.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
There was more to it than that, of course, but he didn’t feel like sharing. Emrys seemed more than capable of putting together the pieces for himself anyway, and he didn’t know what advantages he could be giving away by sharing more information than he needed to. Lying, however, seemed like a death wish with this one. He hated having to be careful, and the circumstances of the relationship served only to stoke the fire inside his belly—the ambition to learn about his new world and become ungovernable within it.
“You omit much, but your caution speaks well of your competence,” Emrys said, his voice more serious but the smile still evident on his pale, angular face. Aloram’s stomach clenched, and he felt a flush creep over his cheeks. Anger roiled in his breast, and he fought to contain it.
Clenching his jaw, Aloram rubbed the collar around his neck with his hand. “Do you know how to get this off? I hate it.”
Emrys laughed, then, in a single graceful motion, twisted in the bed and swung his legs over the edge. He took a deep breath. “You have awakened your rei, then. Rare for a human, but I suppose being an outworlder, it’s only natural. The collars are the only way these halfwit pretend necromancers can keep their stock in check. For all their inadequacies, this is possibly the one area in which they’ve earned my respect. Their mastery of the runic arts is fairly adequate, though still nothing short of infantile in the grand scheme of things. For mortals, they do well enough.”
Aloram just stared at the vampire as he traced a finger across his own collar, frowning down at it as if he were a master examining his student’s inadequate handiwork.
“So can you get it off of me?”
Emrys looked up at him and smiled.
“Of course!”
Aloram breathed a sigh of relief. The thought of wearing the collar for even a minute longer chafed at him like a coarse shirt against badly scraped and sunburned skin.
“But I won’t. That is your task. You, Aloram, are an outworlder. I won’t tell you what I am, not yet. But you need me, and you know it. You present an extremely entertaining cluster of possibilities for me, young human, and I intend to enjoy your exploits to my fullest amusement. You know my name, and that is much more of a privilege than you realize. To give you all the answers would be a waste of a beautiful opportunity.” Emrys slid from the bed, alighting on the stone floor of the cell without a sound, his bare feet touching the stone in slow motion. He stood in front of Aloram, several inches shorter than he was, but with a presence that filled the whole room. “I will help you. But you will make the decisions, and we will fail or succeed on your own intuition and merit. This is my offer.”
Emrys beamed, the red flecks in his eyes shining with a sinister joy and wry amusement, and outstretched his hand. Whatever Emrys was and whatever his plans were for him, he was right, and Aloram was forced to acknowledge it. He was completely in the dark, and any offer for assistance or information was too valuable to pass up, regardless of the strings attached. Aloram shook his hand, a gesture that seemed to give the vampire vast pleasure.
“Okay. Then where do I start?”
“Where indeed? Your rei is being blocked. You’re too weak to break the bars. You’ve lost all of your possessions but one…”
Aloram thought of the backpack, his cloak, and the medallion. What did he have left? Lifting his hand to his face, Aloram examined the two-pronged circlet of dull silver. Twisting it on his finger, he could feel what must be runes engraved on the inside. There was an immense power stored inside the ring, that he could feel even through the muddied senses of his collar-altered state, but he didn’t know how to access it.
Besides the ring, the cell and his belongings were incredibly spare. He could make out the same runes carved into the bars set into the window, so that offered no solution. Looking beyond his cell, the hallway was bare and empty aside from the torch that burned on the wall despite the daylight pouring in from the window. There were no guards that he could see, and listening for voices or footsteps revealed nothing. It seemed as if everyone in the adjacent cells had left for the meal call.
In any social system, the most valuable resource is human capital. Aloram had never been in prison before, nor had he staged an escape. But his father had been a master manipulator, and Aloram’s education in bending people to his will had begun well before he’d ever been inducted into school. But he had nothing to offer the inmates—no token of trust to get them on his side. His only connection, his only source of leverage, was Emrys.
“So you won’t solve the problems for me. But if I’m to do anything worth your attention, then I need to learn about this world. You know that. If you weren’t willing to help me at all, then you wouldn’t have said anything.”
Emrys smiled and nodded.
“What is the collar, and how is it blocking my rei?”
Emrys gave a short nod, satisfied.
“Excellent. Not a terrible place to start, though I thought you’d be more interested in your captor. If you left the cave, then you must’ve defeated the researcher who lives there. And to have accomplished that, you must be rather powerful for a human. How did it feel having your newfound strength brushed aside like so much filth from a street corner?”
Before he knew what he was doing, Aloram’s fist flew through the air faster than it’d ever moved in his life, leaping from his side to Emrys’s jaw in a fraction of a second. If it’d been a boxing match, the commentators would’ve been shocked to speechlessness by the speed and fluidity of the punch. But Emrys simply laughed and tilted his head back, avoiding the blow. Then, as nonchalantly as if he were sweeping away a bit of dirt with his foot, he swept Aloram’s legs out from under him, using the momentum of his punch to send his body tumbling to the hard stone of the cell’s floor.
Aloram’s head thudded against the stone and bounced once, a high ringing invading his ears. The smell of acrid piss filled his nostrils, and he jerked his head away from the stream of urine that ran from the chamber pot, rising to his hands and knees. He coughed, then glared up at Emrys, who stood examining the long nails on his right hand, smiling down at Aloram.
He stood.
Neither man said anything for a long moment, then Aloram crossed his arms.
“Tell me about Rei. And the collar.”
“Are you done with your little fit, then?”
Aloram breathed heavily, drawing a breath in, then letting it out.
“You said yourself that you wish to stay near me. To observe me and follow me in my journey. To help me.” He met Emrys’s eye, his look hard and uncompromising. The ever-present amusement in Emrys’s gaze seemed to flicker for just an instant, then returned. “Know this. If I live long enough, there will come a day when I will be stronger than you. I am human, but I am not weak. I will become more than human here. More than you.” The tension in the small cell was palpable, a sheet near to tearing. Aloram didn’t drop his gaze, his face a hard slab of stony, withering promise.
Finally, Emrys laughed.
“Good! Very good! You might be an entertaining investment after all. You have no idea how long I’ve waited for such a one as you to come traipsing into my life.”
Emrys swept his right hand to his waist and bent forward at the hips, his upper body and head dipping towards the ground, his left arm bent behind his back in a formal bow that Aloram had only ever seen from British butlers in old movies.
“I will teach you, then, and stand beside you. I will show you of this world, and you will show me what you’ll make of it.” This time, instead of extending a hand, Emrys stood and pricked the tip of right index finger with the long nail of his left. “To a long and prosperous partnership,” he said.
A spot of blood began to rise from the skin, and he nodded at Aloram’s own hand, which he extended. Emrys pricked his finger as well, blood immediately rising to the surface of his skin.
“Don’t fear; this is tradition,” he said, then placed his bleeding finger over Aloram’s closed lips.
He hesitated, but only for a moment, before placing his own pierced finger over Emrys’s mouth. Emrys drew his hand down, painting blood over Aloram’s philtrum, lips, and chin, then lowering his hand to his side. Aloram did the same to Emrys, then the vampire licked his lips, tasting the human’s blood.
Aloram did the same. Instead of iron, it tasted of honeysuckle, cinnamon, and fresh apples. It was sweet and intoxicating, the blood forming a fine film over his tongue and quickly dissolving as it mingled with his saliva and slid down his throat. He swallowed and began to convulse, his vision blurring and growing brighter. Soon, he was on the floor, spasming, his arms and legs twitching and constricting in violent, uncontrollable motion. His mind was a rollercoaster, his thoughts a manic, nonsensical jumble. The only thing he was truly conscious of as he lay on the floor, flopping like a landed fish, was Emrys’s high, tinkling laugh.
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PROVERBS OF DREAD GOD
In the dark, in a place, in a room, lit by candles, an altar. Stone pedestal. Pages of a book whisper as they turn, crisp sounds in the bookish dark. Stuffy air, quiet breaths. Fingers delicately placed on fragile paper. Prayer; reads: “Proverbs of Dread God,” an inscription beneath charcoal strokes. Black lines, black red eyes, cruelty. Husband and father, progenitor, world ender. A cautionary tale. A sharp intake of breath, a cough, a hurried scuffling backward. Feet bare on bare stone, throat constricts, fire dims, flames in candles cower. From the book, black red, a low thunder, distant growl. It is the mark of life to suffer, but it is the mark of the human creature to delight in suffering. So speaks the Dread God.