Soul Crafter

Prologue Sometime in the 1800’s, England.        Victor walked along the damp cobblestone street, which shone in the moonlight. He was flanked by tall buildings, empty shops, and silent houses whose residents were most surely asleep by now, as it was past two in the morning.      Except for the random passerby every five or ten minutes, there was no one around. This made it easier for him to carry the large wooden coffin on his shoulder as discreetly as possible. Anyone who saw him carrying something so huge would naturally assume that the long, rectangular box must be empty. This couldn’t be farther from the truth.      The coffin, if anything, would have been quite heavy for even the most well-built of mortals.  No one else would be able to carry something so big as if it were a mere feather. For him, the coffin on his shoulder, supported by his pale hand, was so light he could easily throw it over one of the houses he passed by. But, he would not do that, he needed the body inside for something else.      Victor heard footsteps up ahead and saw a staggering old man appear, clumsily hobbling along the street with the help of his walking stick. He could smell the man’s inebriation even from the distance of where he walked. The man briefly eyed Victor, his eyes squinting, making his grey, wiry sideburns look more pronounced against his sullen face.      Victor looked into the man’s eyes, expressionless. He knew that the man before him, drunk as he was, would not find anything odd about what Victor was doing. As far as Victor was concerned, he appeared like an undertaker in his pitch-black garb. The old man gave him an uncertain glare for a moment, then continued on his way, hobbling down the narrow street with his cane.      Out of the corner of his eye, Victor examined the old man— his wrinkles, his inability to walk correctly, and his predominantly grey and white hair, streaked with some brown. Victor knew he himself would never attain such an appearance. He knew he would always have his long, near waist-length black hair, and his alabaster skin would never wrinkle.      Victor stopped when he arrived at his destination—a dead end with an unassuming wooden door which had no doorknob and nothing more etched in it than three wavy lines. Victor brought his finger to his lips and bit down, drawing a single drop of blood. As he did so, the wound he had just created sealed itself up again instantly.      “My name is Victor; I am here to travel to the Hidden Mountains,” Victor whispered to the drop of blood. He then gently rubbed his finger against the wavy lines on the door, smearing it inside the lines’ shallow indentations.      He waited.      Nothing happened for several seconds, but then, suddenly, his blood on the door began to glow red. A handle appeared where, before, there was none.      Victor knew that for any ordinary mortal, this door would not have opened. In fact, they would barely even be able to register the door’s existence at all. When not looking at it, they would forget about it altogether.      Victor pulled open the door and stepped into the pitch blackness within.      For several long minutes, he was simply standing in a dark room. He noticed that even his superior eyesight could not make out any defining objects. He recognized the place all too well. It was the bardo of worlds, also called the in-between by some. Victor thought about the other worlds, other planes, and even hidden places on Earth he had visited, and each time, he had to pass through the darkness. Each time, the darkness manifested something completely different from within. This time, he wondered what he’d be confronted with.      Finally, a faint glow formed in front of him, and from the darkness, a path was illuminated. A dirt path, nothing more. Victor could not see any other landscape, not even any grass on either side of the path. Simply pitch darkness surrounded him, and yet he could easily see himself and the path. Victor began to slowly walk down the path. Only about fifteen feet was visible before the rest faded into darkness. Walking along the path, surrounded by the total absence of light, reminded him of what it felt like to be in a cave deep underground, with nothing but a torch.      Of course, he would not have needed a torch to see. But here, the darkness surrounding him, was not hiding anything. It was simply the absence of anything visible.      Victor walked on until, finally, he saw something up ahead— a shimmery blue light. He moved closer until he was standing in front of its source. It swirled in front of him like water with sunlight reflecting off of the surface. He stared at the phenomenon until he could see it. It was another world. He saw clipped, stuttering images of mountains, trees, rivers, and lakes. He knew that he had come to the right place.      Victor attempted to reach inside of the shimmering portal. As soon as his hand touched it, a lightning bolt erupted from the portal and zapped his hand. The pain was so sharp that Victor quickly backed up, cradling his hand. He looked down at his burnt hand, which was healing before his eyes, leaving a thin layer of soot.      He set the coffin down on the dirt path and lifted the lid. It revealed a freshly killed, human male. His white shirt was drenched in blood, which had clearly trickled down from two tiny puncture wounds on his neck. His eyes were still half open. There were coagulated chunks of blood caught in his brown beard. Victor had chosen to take his life as a favor to society, and to the animal world. Not that he cared greatly about people in general, but he did not like the idea of someone like him existing.      Victor had found him— the now dead, lifeless corpse before him— regularly hurting dogs, cats, and even birds for his own amusement. These animals happened to be the pets of the dead man’s neighbors. Sometimes he could smell the blood from the damage the man had done, and he’d look to find a badly hurt animal, if not a dead one. Victor himself was not against killing anything, but he would not stand for killing animals for the sheer pleasure of it.      He roughly pulled the man’s body out of the coffin and set him in front of the shimmering portal. With his hands, he opened the mouth, barely noticing the stiffness of the man’s jaw. Victor was neither bothered by touching a dead man, nor was he bothered by putting his fingers in his mouth to prop it open. He had no reason to fear because there was nothing about the corpse that could hurt him or make him ill in any way. He knew that for mortals it would be a different story— they’d likely get sick.      He’d seen it before, after all. Civilized human men exposed to corpses, to death, retching from the sight and smell.      Victor pulled out a coin from his vest pocket. It was about the size of a quarter but made of gold. Both sides of the coin were completely smooth and shiny like a mirror. He gingerly placed the coin inside the man’s mouth. Victor put his hands under the man’s bearded chin and shut his mouth. Victor stood up, and waited, staring intently at the man’s body, an expression of mild contempt and disgust coloring his face.      He had never done this before, and so he had no idea what to expect. He crossed his arms and furrowed his brows, expectantly staring into the shimmery blue portal.      At last, something happened. The shimmering faded away and the portal became as clear as a window. Victor could more clearly see a lush pine forest. He stepped through the portal, dragging the body behind him. Going through the portal made him momentarily dizzy. It had been a very long time since Victor had experienced anything close to dizziness. He’d forgotten what that felt like and was intrigued to feel it again. His black shoes met a pile of pine needles.      He surveyed the landscape around him—pine trees, bushes, some occasional grass here and there. In between the pine trees were tall flowering trees he’d never seen before. Each had large, bulbous flowers as big as a human head. One tree had pink flowers, another had yellow, another orange. The way they looked reminded him of a mixture between a hibiscus and a magnolia.      The air smelled fresh and cool. He could see by the way the ground sloped unevenly that he was on the side of a mountain.  He dragged the body along the ground, briefly looking back to make sure the portal was still there; it was, clear as it had been when he went through it, only this time he saw the darkness, and the dirt path he had walked.      He found a bushy area and hid the body there, as he knew he would need it later to return home. If he got stuck here, he had no idea how long it would take for someone to find him. He was not certain how often anyone traveled here. The only reason that he himself was there was completely unconventional.        No one had ever thought to, or even had the power to, do what he planned before; he was sure.      Now, it was time for him to find what he came for. He walked through the forest until he arrived at a sharp cliff side. He looked around at the magnificent view of the forest below, rippling up and down on rolling hills along the side of the mountains. The higher peaks were just behind the smaller ones. They shot far up, nearly to the sky, tipped in white snow. From the decreasing intensity of the sunshine, Victor guessed it was probably nearing sunset. He couldn’t see the sun, which was hidden behind a massive hill, but he could smell the plants around him preparing to sleep.      He continued on his trek, running so fast it almost seemed he was teleporting, leaving dark wisps in his wake that seemed like black, translucent fire. He stopped in his tracks when he felt the presence of what he was looking for. He was placed just in front of a small, clear stream, near the base of the mountain. There was almost no light now, but that worked out just fine for Victor. As soon as the sun went down, he’d be able to find his quarry. He saw a source of light other than the sun out of the corner of his eye, and he looked to the side to see where it was coming from.      It was one of those flowering trees. This one had purple flowers and was giving off a subtle glow.      They must emit a light at night, Victor guessed.      He silently leaped over the stream and ran closer to the source of the presence he felt. As he ran, he began to smell it—almost indistinguishable from the pine forest itself, except for one minor detail: it had blood.      Victor quietly approached a dark clearing, and there he saw what he was after. Atop a huge boulder lay an elderly feminine form. He stealthily approached and saw that she had long hair that shone silver in the now moonlit sky. Victor hadn’t realized the sun had set. The moonlight was a lot brighter than what he was used to, so he looked up. There, in the sky, he saw not one, but two moons, both full. He’d never seen such a sight before. Victor returned his gaze to the woman before him, noticing now that the trees surrounding the small clearing were intermingled with gently glowing flowers. He made a mental note to memorize the landscape and the moons so that he could paint it all later.      He continued to move, but the snapping of a twig beneath his foot gave away his position. The elderly woman weakly turned and looked up at him, with wide, frightful golden eyes. Victor was but a few feet from her. He noted she was sparsely dressed in foliage. Even elderly, there was something graceful and beautiful about her.      She was a mountain sprite. Most supernatural beings knew mountain sprites knew how to govern all things about a mountainous area. They could turn anything in their favor so long as they were on the right terrain, even stop avalanches and other such mountainous disasters. The heart of a sprite beats with love for the Earth.      “Hello,” he said in a gentle, deep voice, careful not to scare her more than he was likely about to.      He watched as the elderly sprite lifted herself up with her arms and sat on her knees, staring into the deep, blue eyes of the man before her. She seemed somewhat fearless yet reserved in her demeanor.      “What do you want?” the woman’s voice was aged, soft.      Ah, so it is true that sprites can speak any language. Victor mused to himself. It was yet another thing he had read during his studies of sprites. This was his first time meeting one, so he was not sure what was fact or fiction. His eyes also moved to her pointed ears and he smiled slightly.      Victor thought it interesting that she wasn’t more afraid of him, though he supposed it probably had something to do with where she lived. The place was mostly hidden and protected, with few noteworthy dangers besides the local wildlife. It was a sanctuary, after all— one of many sanctuaries for beings like her.      Victor stepped closer, “I’ve come to offer you a trade,” he said ominously. Her skin looked almost pale grey and glowed ever so slightly in the moonlight.      The sprite looked at him, confusion coloring her face.      “What could you possibly have to offer me?” she asked skeptically.      “I know that you have come here to die; I know that your time is near. So, if you have a wish, if there is anything you may want, I shall grant it in return for something of yours,” Victor explained. Little did the sprite know that on another level, Victor was reading her— he was deciphering her life and all of the experiences she carried with her.      The sprite eyed him suspiciously.      “There is nothing that I want.”      Victor looked down and tongued one of his fangs. He had hoped she would wish to be younger, to live longer. He could do that. But since she did not offer up any such desires, he would have to use what he found out about her.      “There is. You want your daughter to have children,” Victor said matter-of-factly.      The sprite’s eyes widened. “How could you possibly know of this?”      Victor slowly stepped back, telling her, “Don’t be afraid of what you see.”      He looked into her eyes, and the elderly sprite watched as his deep blue eyes suddenly turned bright red, and the whites of his eyes became a dark shade of grey. “Vampire!” the sprite breathed, and weakly began to crawl off of her boulder.      He was glad that she knew what he was— this meant that she possibly had a faint idea of what he was capable of. Victor was able to see into the past of nearly every life he came across. Their experiences, wishes, and dreams all hung around their aura like an unfinished book, waiting for the next chapter to be written. He knew exactly what had happened to her, and he knew that she had a daughter who longed for a child. He knew that this elderly sprite wished dearly for her bloodline to continue.      “I told you not to be afraid of what you see,” Victor reminded her.      The weak sprite stopped attempting to escape from where she lay on her boulder. She instinctively wanted to run away, but knew that in her condition, she would not get far.  She eyed him, unsure what to say.      “I can give your daughter the ability to bear healthy children. I can give her the ability to have as many as she wishes,” Victor stated.      “And what is it that you want in return, vampire?” the sprite asked warily.      Victor raised his eyebrows and calmly looked around him before answering,“A piece of your soul.”      The sprite froze for a moment, considering what the vampire before her had just said. In exchange for a piece of her soul, he would give his barren daughter the ability to bear a child. Victor eyed her as she thought about his offer. He could easily tell that she, and probably most sprites, was quite intelligent, weighing the value of his offer against her soul.      “What happens if you take a piece of my soul?”       He smiled. He had been waiting for her to ask that.      “You will be fine. It will not actually take anything away from you permanently. The piece I take will be tiny, and it will eventually restore itself,” Victor explained, demonstrating to her the small amount of her soul he would be taking between his thumb and index finger. To her, it seemed like such a small amount it did not worry her that much.                 “A small piece of my soul for the continuation of my bloodline,” she said aloud, mainly to herself. She looked up at the sky and pondered. She frowned as a feeling of bittersweet sadness came over her. After a long moment, she asked, “Will it hurt?” Victor calmly looked into her golden eyes and answered her as compassionately as he could.      “A bit, yes,” he said. How much it hurt depended on so many factors. Certain species and races hurt more than others. He wasn’t sure how her kind would fare. “If you somehow, unconsciously or not, hold back, it could make it even more painful than it needs to be.”      “Will it kill me?”      “It shouldn’t,” he said. Though, he wasn’t entirely sure if she would survive the process.      The sprite narrowed her eyes at him.      “Because of your age, there is a chance you might not survive,” Victor offered solemnly.      The sprite slowly nodded.      “If you ensure that my bloodline lives on— not just for the next generation, but for each generation after that for as long as possible— then yes, you can have a piece of my… soul,” she said the last word as if it was something that should not be said. The sprite knew that her soul would continue to exist, this was not the end of her for all time— but something about offering up even a tiny piece of who she was felt… blasphemous.      Victor approached her and held out his hand for her to take. The sprite hesitated, then tentatively took his hand, and he helped her down off of the boulder. Victor hadn’t really listened intently to her before. Her heart was beating very slowly, slower than it should, and her organs were also quite sluggish.      “I’ve not got much time left, so I might as well do something to help my family,” the elderly woman said, her weak voice quivering.      “You’ll need to lay down for this.” He helped her back down on the ground and slowly lowered her onto her back. “Whatever you see, don’t be alarmed, and don’t move,” he said to her, mirroring his previous warning he’d given her when he’d revealed that he was a vampire. She nodded, looking up at him from where she lay. He stood above her, hovering his hands over her. At first, nothing happened. Then the wind slowly began to pick up, and the sprite felt the energy all around her moving and rising. She felt something was coming.      Victor’s irises changed back to red. Not just red— glowing red. His whites became dark— almost pitch black. The sprite’s eyes widened in fear, but she heeded his earlier warning, and did not move. Somehow, impossibly, everything became darker. The two moons in the sky were still out, shining brightly, but the light was barely touching them now. A dark aura emanated from Victor, dulling any sources of light around him. Darkness came from his eyes, and with that, the sprite below him began to tremble in terror, but still she did not move.      Above her body, his hands, now clawed, released dark spheres, and the wind around them picked up. The trees rustled louder and louder. Victor’s long, black hair whipped around his face and he opened his mouth, revealing his long fangs.       Victor let out a deep, inhuman yell— a demonic roar escaped his mouth, and the sprite below him could not help herself. She screamed in terror and covered her eyes with her hands.      He knew that there was a possibility she would react like this. But he was now too focused to think too deeply about it— before he had begun, he had hoped she would not find him as terrifying as most did. He had hoped that since she was, in her own way, a supernatural being, that she would be forgiving of his true nature. Alas, he was mistaken. Her body and mind reacted the way most did: horror, terror, paralysis.      There was a small part of him that wished he did not inspire such fear.      The black spheres from his hands began to pull a shimmery white light out from the center of her chest. She continued to scream as every last bit of light was removed until she lost consciousness. The nebulous white light floated above her, then moved and formed the shape of her body like an umbrella of light opening above her. The black orbs under Victor’s hands dissipated, and the wind came to a halt.      Everything was still and quiet. Victor bent down over the sprite’s unconscious body and examined the white, glowing form above her. With his index and his thumb, he reached into the floating body of light and pulled out a tiny bit of the sprite’s soul, nestled between his clawed fingers. He reached into his vest a pulled out a small crystal bottle which had various symbols etched into it. Victor uncorked it and gently placed the tiny pearl-sized piece of soul into the bottle and returned it to his vest pocket.      Victor then placed one hand above the ethereal soul body hovering above her, and slowly pushed it back inside of her until she and her soul fused together once again. Victor looked down at her, waiting for her to regain consciousness.      He listened to her heart, which was still beating, albeit slowly. He sat down beside her and crossed his legs, waiting for her to wake up.      Victor’s lips pursed, remembering the first time he had tried to perform the soul extraction ritual. He did not manage to will the soul in place, and it simply floated away and vanished. He had needlessly killed someone. He was no stranger to death, but he did not enjoy killing innocents that still had their whole life ahead of them.      He waited, silent and still until the sprite’s eyes weakly fluttered open. Victor watched her as she stared up at the night sky, the moonlight illuminating her glowing pale grey skin. Victor had long since retracted his claws, and his eyes were back to blue. She looked at Victor, groggy, uncertain.      “What happened?” the sprite asked.      “It’s done.”      “Good,” the sprite said weakly. “And my daughter shall have children?”      “Yes, as promised, your bloodline will live on.”      The sprite smiled at him, her eyes watering, her breathing shallow. Victor looked at her and tried not to reveal his inner turmoil. He could tell what was going to happen by the way her insides sounded.      “By the way, why did you want a piece of my soul?” the sprite asked weakly, barely able to hold her eyes open.      Victor grinned.      “That’s a secret. Maybe you’ll find out someday,” his voice was almost a whisper.      The sprite let out a weak cough.      “I don’t think so,” she replied, and returned to gazing up at the moons.      Victor slowly began to sit up, but the sprite put her hand on his to stop him.      “Stay, please,” she said. Victor was surprised. She had been screaming out of fear of him not long ago. He figured she’d want to be in peace, as far away from him as possible.      Victor obliged and sat back down beside her.      She smiled at him, and then returned her eyes to the sky. He looked up at them with her.      “Do you have a name?” Victor asked. He didn’t really care what it was, but he felt the need to say something to her. He also knew what she might answer.      “I have no name,” the sprite answered plainly.      Victor knew she would say that. The only reason Victor had a name was because he used to be human.      After all, Victor thought, that is what vampires are; humans who became something other. Two beings in one. The sprite beside him, however, was pure, and has only ever been a sprite, through and through.       “Will you tell my daughter I love her?” the sprite asked after a long stretch of comfortable silence.      “Of course,” Victor replied. It would be easy for him to find her daughter and tell her. They had a similar scent. Victor knew there was nothing he could do now. He knew she had come to this area of the pine forest to die, so even wishing for her to remain alive was not realistic.      The sprite grabbed hold of Victor’s hand and squeezed. He looked down at her as she closed her eyes. Her chest quietly convulsed as her throat let out a long rattle. She continued convulsing for several long minutes, and then, her eyes shot open and she went still.      Her eyes stared up at the sky, empty and unblinking. Her hand still held on to his in a vice-like grip. Victor listened for her heart.      It had stopped.      The blood in her veins had stopped flowing. Victor looked down at her with a forlorn expression.      Creaaak!      Victor heard the sound of thin, moving wood— a branch perhaps, but it was coming from below where the sprite lay. He then watched, curious as he saw wooden branches erupt from the middle of the sprite’s body. He then saw branches slowly grow from her shoulders, from out of her neck and forehead. There were even small, thin branches shooting out of her nose and eyebrows. The branches were becoming thicker and thicker, longer and longer and so, as quickly as he could, Victor removed himself from the grasp of her stiff hand. He stood up and backed away, watching as her whole body erupted in pale wooden sticks, branches, and roots. The branches began to combine and swirl, more and more coming out of her body.      The branches got bigger and bigger and went up farther and farther until he was looking at a massive tree trunk. The top of the tree trunk grew yet more branches of various sizes. He watched as leaves popped out of the branches, covering the wood with green foliage. And then, flower buds began to appear and slowly open before his eyes. These flowers were huge, bulbous and glowed white. With one last glance at the tree, Victor smiled and made his way back to the human world. After all, he still had many more soul pieces to collect in order to complete his masterpiece.