I don’t remember much from before I woke up in that forest almost a century ago.
I was disoriented, cold and wet, surrounded by large pines and in the distance I saw a storm slowly receding across a mountain range.
That was when I noticed him, his eyes glowing a sickly green from within his hood. The clouds parted enough to let the moon illuminate the rest of his face, revealing a warped, sadistic smile full of jagged teeth.
His mouth moved as if to speak, but I heard the foreign, incomprehensible words from all around me, like an echo in a great cavern.
And then there was nothing.
When I came to again, I found myself in a small metal cage, barely tall enough to sit upright. I spent three months in that cramp space, living in my own filth and shivering myself to sleep at night, or at least the nights I was allowed sleep. However few of those I got.
Most days were spent being tormented, sometimes with what seemed like purpose, and other times as a means to take out his frustrations over failures in his research.
There were several occasions where he’d beat me to the point I was certain I wouldn’t wake up again, and every time I would be brought back to life by a sickening, pervasive energy flooding my system.
It felt like being submerged in raw sewage, something vile and repulsive violating every fiber of my being before forcefully bringing me back to consciousness, only for me to experience the same cruelty all over again.
I’m not ashamed to say that there were several times I prayed to not wake up again.
After roughly three months, it had seemed as if he’d had a breakthrough in his research. After draining me to fuel his experiment for the last time, a mirrorlike surface materialized across from him, rippling like liquid.
He walked forward and placed a single finger into the vertical pool, causing another rippling effect, this time settling into the image of a massive tower of cobbled stone.
The pool rippled again, changing to a familiar forest, the tower barely visible in the distance.
His expression was strained in exertion as the pool rippled once more, this time taking almost a minute before settling on the scene of a vast desert stretching as far as the eye could see, two suns adorning its sky.
He let out panting breaths before breaking into crazed laughter and mad exclamations.
That was short-lived, though.
The thing I now understood was a portal, rippled without his touch, the scene not changing, but his robe starting to flap towards the large circular surface.
It quickly developed to the point that even I felt the pull.
He tried to break away, but with every desparate grapple for purchase on the smooth stone floor, he only seemed to slide closer.
He hissed something through gritted teeth and I felt my vision close in as the familiar feeling of being drained to the brink of death hit me.
He finished with a shout and his finger seemed to sink into the solid stone like it was wet cement before it once more solidified, giving him enough purchase to keep from sliding further.
He might even have saved himself, had he lashed down my cage in any way.
Several items all around the lab randomly flew towards the portal as if thrown, my cage among them.
He didn’t see it coming until it was too late. Too sure of himself and his relative safety to keep from admiring the results of his research.
My cage hit him at a curve towards the portal. I like to believe he howled in pain as his bones broke, making him lose his grip, but momentum carried me forward even as the cage abruptly halted because of the impact, knocking me out.
I woke up to a coppery taste in my mouth and the worst headache I’d ever experienced, my body heaving in an attempt to throw up the nonexistent contents of my stomach.
All I could do was close my eyes and lay still, any movement causing waves of agony to rush over my entire body.
But then I heard it.
A pained, unconscious groan, barely 4 feet away from my cage. He laid there, his limbs bent in unnatural ways, all of them broken beyond use, all except for his left leg.
Something in me screamed, roared and howled out, telling me this was the time to act.
Blood trickled down into my eyes as I repositioned myself for a longer reach, but I dared not even blink, the discomfort nothing compared to what I had suffered before.
I grabbed and clawed towards him until finally I caught the hem of his dark blue robe. His pained moans only grew louder as I frantically pulled him towards my cage.
I grabbed the back of his head by the hair, pulling his head through the bars. My heart hammered in my chest so hard I felt as if I could hear it.
I carefully placed my feet against his head pulling it through the narrow bars, but in that moment his eyes shot open, one ruptured and filled with amber sand, but the other glowing a fluorescent emerald and my lungs felt paralyzed, my breath getting stuck in my throat.
I kicked with everything I had left. I used the last vestiges of strength I had left to push. Knowing full well that should I succeed, I would doom myself as well.
But I didn’t care.
He needed to die.
I should have died there, but a passing slave merchant found me, half buried in the sands.
By local laws, my life was forfeit by my own hands. And since he saved me, my life was now legally his to own.
In other words, I was enslaved.
I don’t remember them breaking me out of the cage, but I was told much later that it was extremely difficult. Jor’Gan the slaver had been practically salivating at the thought of owning someone who required such sturdy confines to hold.
A false assumption he would later take out on me.
I don’t remember much from after that, only images and sounds as I drifted in and out of consciousness.
Jor’Gan wasted no time bringing me to a healer upon reaching a city and after learning that the local clergy couldn’t heal my wounds, he was practically singing, but quickly made sure to double up on my irons.
A healer commonly has to overwhelm an unwilling patient’s system to heal them, something invasive but sometimes necessary. But they could only do so if their own powers exceeded that of their target.
Jor’Gan interpreted the priests’ words as to mean I was too powerful for them to forcefully heal, and therefore, an even more valuable slave.
Sadly, that wasn’t the case. It wasn’t that I refused to be healed. In fact, I would have done anything to make the pain go away at this point.
But as I would later come to learn, my body was inherently resistant to any energy that attempted to alter it, with very few exceptions. Luckily, Jor’gan wasn’t the quitting type.
If a priest wasn’t going to work, he would go to the other end of the spectrum.
The local alchemist coalition.
They weren’t overly interested to begin with. An elixir to heal would be costly, but a commonplace creation.
It wasn’t until Jor’Gan fed it to me in front of them, demonstrating its ineffectiveness, that they became intrigued.
I spent the following day and night being force fed all manner of potions and concoctions, half of which I was almost certain were entirely poisonous with no intended medicinal effects.
But they were way past saving my life at this point. Far too high on fumes and fascinated with my apparent immunity to the lethal and restorative alike.
It wasn’t until a young chemist brought in a middling brew meant as a cheap alternative to potions, it’s effects less forcefully healing and more giving the body what it naturally needed to heal.
The young apprentice was almost mocked out of the room. If it hadn’t been for his mentor asking what harm it could do to try it.
The tonic was a mix of extremely pure energy, cleansed of all intent accidentally by the boy, along with several extremely dense nutritional and caloric compounds.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
For all intents and purposes, it was a magical protein shake.
But it worked.
Jor’Gan returned the next day to find me cautiously moving around. Attempting to scratch at the brand in the middle of my shoulder blades.
He was ecstatic… Until the Senior Alchemist told him their theory about my condition.
The beatings were superficial, in part because I doubt Jor’Gan could bring himself to undo the work he’d paid them for.
Determined to make his money back, I was quickly put to work; he made sure I tried as many professions as possible while looking for any cheap slaves with a telepathic trait, all in the sunk-cost hopes that he could somehow recoup some of his losses.
Finally, he did. I was placed in a metal shop, forging building supplies, of all things.
I would judge ores and keep the fires at even temperatures, cleaning and fixing anything I was allowed to while learning the basics of the craft.
Sometimes, I dream of what might have been had I stayed there, earning my freedom, growing old. But alas, that was not to be.
I didn’t know it at the time, but the ways connecting worlds had shifted, making the world I was on a strategic foothold for the legions’ advance. The city of Aballon becoming a launching point for the legions’ various scout and logistic divisions, one of which were The Huntsmen.
Never one to pass up an opportunity to ingratiate himself with anyone of higher status than himself, Jor’Gan offered me as one of several servants to the logistics division.
I can’t say I hated it, I think, partly because of what I’d experienced before. Comparatively, the Legion wasn’t that bad. You did as you were told and got fed enough to keep you full. You didn’t get beat unless you went out of your way to screw up.
The solitary head smith even took me under his wing and taught me the more intricate parts of his craft, although I was never officially taken on as an apprentice.
The days passed quickly then, and I lost track of time, spending my days and nights by the smithy.
Years later, I got a chance to look through the records from the legions’ advance through that sector of the materium. If the dates were to be believed, then I spent over half a decade working in that smithy.
But, all good things must sadly come to an end, and as the Legion prepared to push further into Empire territory, any non-essential workers and slaves were to be conscripted into a fighting force or face execution, by the order of the chief strategists proxy.
I was transferred to the huntsman, a scout division at the time… They were good people… Mostly.
The huntsman were a thousand people from a hundred worlds, a misfit island of broken toys.
Heh, I fit right in.
Decades passed though, and the huntsmen changed.
Once upon a time, they had gotten their moniker for being a company of hunters in charge of procuring supplies and hunting wild game to supplement rations for the rest of the army, but as time passed, their expertise showed through in other areas.
Soon they became a regiment of scouts, meant to pave the way for the legions advance, by any means necessary, often being charged with hunting down roaming beasts who preyed on the legions regulars.
If it roamed, they would stalk it.
If it nested, they would drive it out.
If it ran, they would hunt it down.
It wasn’t long after this point that I was transferred to the squadron trailing behind the forward force.
I’d like to tell myself that my actions and tactics weren’t what led to their downfall, but deep down I know that to be untrue.
I saw their hunts, and it reminded me of modern warfare, of wars fought by insurgents and rebels. And I saw the regulars of the Legion and Empire, lined up in columns, fighting wars on schedules with commanders and generals who had never even seen the front lines much less noticed the destruction it wrought on any unfortunate people unlucky enough to be in its path.
I saw the mountains of bodies strewn across battlefields as we passed, left to rot and fester, Necrophagic creatures of chaos multiplying and eventually overrunning any towns spared.
It took years for me to work up the courage and authority to actually implement my strategies, but when I did, it repulsed not just our enemies, but our allies as well, but they couldn’t deny its effectiveness.
Uncaring leaders throwing millions of lives away because of incompetence or indifference could no longer trounce around the theater of battle unharmed. We would slip behind enemy lines and conduct surgical strikes meant to demoralize and disorganize.
Breaking an army of millions by killing a few thousands.
In hindsight, I should have realized. You don’t fight a war for over a thousand years without enemies becoming friends, and friends becoming enemies.
The Aristocracy on either side weren’t enemies, simply rivals, now with a common fear.
A stalemate was reached as the ways shifted, closing off the legions’ unmitigated advance, leading to a time of relative peace.
For several years we were based out of a single location left to our own devices, growing our numbers and honing our skills, roaming further and further away, often cleaning up the hellscape left behind by the war.
We did good… But some didn’t like that.
After almost five decades of fighting, I had risen to the top, along with many of the friends I’d made along the way sitting around me, the ones we’d lost along the way weighing heavy on our shoulders.
One of the many sanctions placed on the huntsman was the rule forbidding us from choosing our own commanders. So we didn’t have a name, we didn’t even have a rank. All we had was one of thirteen seats.
We were the unofficial leaders of what had now become a corps. Each chair at the height of their brigade. Merit ruled here, whether it be in politics, crafts, strategy or power.
We were creating something truly special, and we all knew it. We all wanted to protect it and nurture it. We were helping people for a change.
Many of those who had been marred by the war in ways that could not be so easily healed found solace in the fact that their skills could now be used to save lives, and not just in the pursuit of killing ever greater numbers in meaningless confrontations.
I wish I’d known then what I know now.
***
I turned away from the railing and walked back towards the luxurious lounge, with Katya sitting attentively, listening to my story.
“Maybe if I had realized what they were doing sooner, I could have stopped it.” I said as I sat down on the couch opposite hers, a low table between us with a glass of liquor and a now almost empty bottle.
“Why are you telling me all this?” Katya asked, as if coaxing me to continue.
“Natasha pushed me earlier, and I didn’t like what I saw of myself. I guess it’s turned me reflective, and now I wonder if I’m just repeating the cycle once more. With all of you.” I said, looking up and locking eyes with her.
She sat quietly, staring into my eyes for what felt like an eternity, before snorting a laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she responded and downed her glass in one go.
“We all repeat cycles, but we improve, we better ourselves… At least those of us who want to be better.” She argued while refilling both our glasses.
“Katya, if we do this, it won’t just be a skirmish any longer, it’ll be a war.”
“Aleks. Would you like to know why most supernaturals clean up any mess they come across, even if it is not of their own making? Why we all try so hard to keep the secret?” Katya asked, leaning back leisurely, clearly hammered.
“I’m as sober as the day I was born, boy.” She stated sharply.
“Now, the reason is that long ago an accord was struck, between Sanguinares, Sentire, Therianthrope, Witches and many others you probably haven’t even heard of.” She smirked as she noticed my interest in what else was out there I hadn’t heard about.
“Now the reason for this accord might be obvious, but I’ll give you a hint of when the first talks began. In the twelfth century AD, an immortal scholar of the eastern clans attended a midnight demonstration of a truly marvelous creation, a reloadable handheld cannon capable of hitting distant targets with something that was back then described as accuracy.” She laughed at the notion of something not being able to hit more accurately than a crossbow, but continued.
“He was fond of taking notes while experiencing events, as to capture the essence of the event, and had spent a significant amount of his immortal existence dedicating himself to his craft. I read this account, translated of course, I was far younger then and had yet to work my way through the current languages and dialects, not to mention something so… Before my time.” She kicked off her heels and curled her feet up under her, truly starting to freak me out.
“Well, with the doomsday apocalyptic ramblings you’ve been pouring on me tonight, excuse me for taking the edge off. Now where was I?” she asked, looking lost for a moment
“Ah yes. He described a weapon unlike the firelance, cannon or rocket, something that was accurate, and deadly, not just to humans, but to us as well. You see, he foresaw what this weapon one day lead to, how it could turn us all from predators into prey. Of course, he was laughed at and mocked for centuries, but then the first matchlock pistol was invented, and people started changing their tune.”
“And then, in the fifteenth century, the first breach-loading matchlock revolver was invented… It didn’t take long for some industrious weapon smith to cast silver rounds for it. That really put the fear of god in them. By the time I was born in… Well, never mind that bit. In any case, by the time I was around, firearms were commonly owned by the masses. Wars of preposterous scale were being fought, and we old monsters hid away in fear.” Her expression no longer jovial, but serious, almost fatalistic.
“The last century has been a race against technology, even with all our natural gifts, we’re still falling behind, relics of an old world that hid away over half a millennium ago.” She said sadly.
“So, yes, it worries me when you tell me that soon nightmarish creatures are gonna manifest in our world and that people will develop powers beyond our current comprehension. What lessens my worries significantly, however, is that we have the world’s only Titan on our side. Someone who has seen what’s to come, someone who can aide an protect us.” She finished, wobbly getting to her feet.
“Oh hush, I’m perfectly fine.” She chided as she walked unsteadily around the table towards me.
I stood up and came face to face with her.
Katya downed the rest of the glass in her hand, for the first time seeming genuinely nervous
“So, how do we do this? I mean, what do I do?”
“Just relax. It’s gonna be a handshake, and that’s it.”
“So we’ll shake on it?” Katya asked with a hint of mirth. “How pedestrian,”
“Your wills are linked. Your entire clan, every member who considers themselves part of the collective, will be affected by this. No pressure though.” I teased.
“No pressure,” Katya mimicked with a snort.
I reached out, and we joined hands.
“I Aleks’Andros Titanos, thirteenth chair of the Bloodied Huntsmen, Mad Roamer and Wayward Wanderer, hereby offer this vow to the Clan of The Eve. To your cherished ones, I shall become a bastion, protective and everlasting, shielding them from harm. But to those who wish you harm, I shall hold no mercy, give no ground. I will cry havoc and let slip my dogs of war and they shall know only terror before the dark consumes them.”
Katya flinched as the energy passing through us increased with every word, until suddenly her eyes turned a glossy white, her features sharpening to an unnatural degree as her cheekbones protruded beyond the limits of what could be considered even remotely human.
Her voice chimed like glass breaking repeatedly.
“I Katya Romanov Nikoleve, Progenitor and Matriarch of the Clan of The Eve, Line Breaker and Matron of The Night, swear upon my line our eternal allegiance to you. We shall be the hearth of your return, the sanctuary of your rest. From us, you shall never know betrayal, until The Eve is no more.”
Energy arced between us, charring carpets while a wild gale rampaged through our surroundings.
As the crimson energy traveled from my own hand to Katya’s, it turned an icy white before returning, completing the circuit.
And then, as if it had never happened, the energy dissipated, and the chaos ceased.
Katya huffed to catch her breath as her eyes and face returned to normal.
I turned over my left forearm to show the faint white marking of our oath. Seeing my actions, she hesitantly did the same to reveal an identical but faintly crimson marking.
“It is done.” I said with a sense of finality.
“What now?” She asked, determined and sobered.
“Now…. Now we forge a bastion to protect and safeguard those we cherish, and then I will hunt. As only a Huntsman can.”
I won’t hold back anymore, fear me or hate me, but I will lay waste to all enemies who seek to harm us, for that is my path. There were many seats, craftsmen, warriors, assassins, strategists… But the thirteenth was always one of attrition.