Vermilion
2126 Words
The red moon, full, and bloody, and perhaps the dwellers of the depths, and the nocturnal sky itself are the only witnesses of the crime.
The high towers, the walls, the castles, the cities. Exquisite works of art, Gothic architecture, everything fall. All is reduced to rubble in instants as the land trembles in agony, swallowing centuries of history and the dreams of an entire civilization. A tragedy.
The kingdom of the vampire lords and all their legacy is lost between the dark tides of the chaotic and enraged ocean. The continental island of Rakh disappears from the face of Oria.
Gods could have prevented it, but they don't care. Why would they?
As the last remains of the island disappear, the magical circles in front of the armored knight fade as he watches the results of his spell from the edge of his golden ship which, seen from beneath, resembles the head of a spear with two sharp wings. It's flying three kilometers above the water, and it's as big as a big yacht.
The spell is over.
The job is done.
It cost, but at least it's done.
The purple-blue fire glowing in the eyes of the knight gets extinguished and they return to their normal brown, a beautiful autumn brown. His power sleeps once more as his gaze abandons the place where the island was minutes ago and meets the eyes of the invisible watcher, the intruder, the only witness fool enough to reveal their presence.
The eyes of the knight remain the same, no purple-blue glow is seen, nor a change in the magic fields, but the watcher knows that those brown eyes burning as twin stars have detected an intruder.
The watcher panics and tries to step back from those eyes, pretending to escape, to hide anywhere, but it's too late, the eyes can see through the watcher and they won't let their prey escape.
The wicked powers of the knight grasp the desperate heart of the intruder and burn their mind and their very soul. The watcher can't believe that this is happening. It's just an instant, a few seconds, but it becomes the entire eternity for the watcher, and as result, their mind is shattered into pieces, their memories are broken and they become insane. Then the necromancer casts another spell that the watcher can't recognize and they try to scream as the spell destroys the watcher, erases them from the very existence, slowly, with cruelty, with just a stare of his overwhelming eyes, the coldest stare of all.
"NOO!"
Damon screams, terrorized, like a child, opening his eyes while destroying his chambers. It was just a dream.
He recognizes his chambers as the rubble falls on his face. He is still in his castle, still in exile, in Io. It was just a nightmare.
He blinks, trying to make sure he's not asleep anymore, panicking because he can’t remember his dream and yet he knows it was something horrible. He sees his hand, both of them, they are slender, nothing more than skin and bones. Breathing hurts, and he is thirsty, anxious, but neither his hunger nor his pain compares to the unexistent blade he feels in his chest, the hurting, the taste of the loss of something priceless.
What… is this? He thinks with his hand on his chest, trying to ease the pain of his heart.
After one hour failing to recall the nightmare, he leaves his chambers and gets focused on the important thing: his hunger.
He needs food.
It's midnight…
The red moon is high, full, and bloody, its sinister light is always a bad omen. The legend goes that it’s the heart of a dead god left in the sky by the phantasm of chaos that killed him. The wind howls… Something dark lurks in the shadows, something truly hungry.
A woman dreams of his lover finally with her in the bed, with his kisses and hugs, with his passion and his tenderness, but her lover died because of disease two years ago.
She opens her eyes, scared of the nightmare, and finds the window open and the red moonlight outside making her believe she is hell. She hears someone screaming, but it abruptly ends. She doesn’t think anything bad. Nothing bad ever happens there. They have five hundred soldiers ready to battle all the time, after all.
The room becomes colder, even after she closes the window and she feels something behind her, something cold and dangerous; fear grasps her heart which is pumping without control. She is paralyzed because she knows that there’s something horrible behind her, something lethal, and she feels its insidious presence, she can feel its breathing on the back of her neck. It’s there, and her very soul is telling run, but she can’t.
One minute, or the whole time passes and nothing happens, she is not eaten, nothing hurts her.
She allows herself to feel relieved, gathers all her bravery, and turns around.
The thing is… there’s nothing.
She sighs.
I’m a... it was just a thing of the night and the dream, she thinks and returns to bed.
She sighs again in the bed.
Tomorrow is going to be a long day, she thinks. She doesn’t feel like sleeping anymore and sighs again. Her heart rate and breathing become regular once more.
"Stupid night," she lets out.
The cold breeze reaches her cheeks, then stops, then again. She closes her eyes with all her strength.
The window is closed...
Scream, scream, she tries to scream, but her vocal cords don't answer; run, she tries to escape, but her muscles are paralyzed. It's not because of fear this time.
The cold thing is on top of her.
She didn't want to but she opens her eyes and sees red holes of emptiness and voraciousness, despite the dark. A tear rolls down her cheek and gets mixed with the vocal fluids of the beast as she prays one last time. Neither heaven nor the gods come to save her. Why would they?
When Damon recovers his consciousness he finds himself in a burning building and after a few instants, he recalls one of the guards calling the mayor. He is in the mayor's house, covered in blood, in front of the mirror, smiling, satisfied.
Tall, he has a fair complexion, androgynous face, crimson pupils, long curly mane of silver, and an athletic body with muscles defined but not massive. He looks like a prince from a fairy tale, well, technically he is a prince.
His lips seem to be begging for a kiss and anyone who would look at him would end charmed by his bewitching beauty.
He is back to normal, their blood was powerful enough to restore him. He is surrounded by countless corpses.
“Thank you,” he says, summoning some clothing with his magic and then he turns into a red mist that flies under the red moon, from house to house, returning to his castle. He hasn't killed all of them.
Screams fill the night, a symphony of horror and agony that he controls with mastery, the voices of his instruments, his victims, his food. He feasts on the city and the city burns with the hopes and dreams of its women, its men, its children… and all its dwellers.
No survivors are left in the path of Damon Vermilion.
Ten thousand souls have lost their lives tonight.
When the sun rises, the luxurious red carriage of black horses without a driver arrives at the abandoned castle, hidden in the depths of the black forest. There is no road to the castle, but the spectral vehicle doesn’t need a road at all. It travels through the forest to hide the nature and the power of its only tripulant. However, it didn’t fulfill its purpose, not completely.
There is a figure waiting on the road.
The visitor is a male humanoid made of spring and autumn leaves, roots, and soil, with crystalline eyes made of water, horns as the branches of the trees, and a beautiful female face.
The grim atmosphere of the forest and the castle seems to step back from the visitor's presence, unable to reach them.
“Peace. I’ve come in peace, crimson prince.” the visitor announces with the voice of a male as the branches of the trees move and create an artificial shadow to cover the carriage from the scarce sunlight. There’s only silence for a few seconds until the doors of the vehicle open.
“I don’t need anything from you, forest god,” cold and hostile, like the wind in winter, the voice of the prince comes out of the carriage, freezing and killing the newborn life that the forest god has created around him. “Speak and explain to me why you are here.”
“I’m here to thank you for cleaning the city,” the entity says, with the voice of a female this time. “And to make sure that this place has a sentry.”
“I needed to recover my powers,” the vampire explains.
“I know,” the entity says. “Summon me the next time you need a recharge…”
The leaves on his body get dry, the branches, the roots, the soil turns into something wet and rotten, and the water in his eyes is polluted.
“Summon me…” says the entity, with the voice of a child. The beauty in its face has twisted into something horrendous, and its body trembles, suffering, until it loses all colors, and turns into something black, black sand, and falls, unable to stay there for more time.
Damon leaves the vehicle after the god is gone.
“It affected you more than before,” he whispers, glancing at the remains of the avatar and second later at his sinister castle, sinister even for him.
The castle seems to be laughing at him, like a gargantuan being with its jaws open, welcoming the prince. Damon smirks and enters.
He lives there for a reason.
As he enters, the rotten curtains and the worn-out floors, the broken pillars, the walls, and roofs are restored. It is as if time itself is going backward. When he reaches the end of the room a throne is waiting. His throne.
The castle has returned to its ancient glory, it is as beautiful and magnificent as it was three hundred years ago when he raised it from the nothingness. Such is the vastity of his power. Such is the might of the vampire lords of the house of Vermilion.
The throne vanishes, revealing the hidden doors to the prison.
His hand trembles, his face contorts into an expression of disgust at his doubt, at his own fear, and he grabs one hand with the other and forces himself to touch the cold material of the doors.
The doors are cold, and nothing more than that, ordinary one could say, only that they are made of steel nonexistent in Oria, divine steel forged by the will of a god, unbreakable and beyond time, the only thing that prevents the end of the world. Damon summons his power, and as he made two hundred years ago he stays in front of the doors as chains with sharp edges appear from them. The chains imprison him, slashing his clothes, penetrating his skin, but not a single drop of his blood is spilled because there are no wounds. The door is feeding on his magic, and he loses his consciousness.
When Damon wakes up he is standing in front of the throne, his powers are drastically diminished, but his body remains unaltered. He is hungry again and he recalls the words of the avatar, but he won’t call for its aid. There is so much at stake that he doesn’t dare to weaken the forest god even more. He often wonders if this is the reason why his father banished him, knowing that his older brother would have done a better job, but the first prince is destined to rule all the vampires.
“Is this my purpose, father?” Damon whispers, sitting on his throne.
Three hundred kilometers southwest when the sun sets, the broken corpse raises, its wounds heal, the ashes return to bone and muscle, and skin. One hundred thousand souls. One hundred thousand servants, roar, awakened to a twisted non-life, non-death existence. They are hungry.
“Hunt, my minions...” Damon whispers
- Writer
