Vulpous Hood

The Cursed Seed Series

Prologue -

In the carnal savagery of mans existence, there is nothing so obscene a tale of that of the child born of the union of chimeric manblood and feral beasts. Such a accursed child was conceived when one day a farmer in the deep forests of the barbaric worlds.

A farmer his wife, and their tamed wolf bitch lived deep into the trees, one night the man and his wife heard terrible sounds from outside their dwelling. Viscous snarls and growls that were shrill, crazed, and venomous.

Opening the door it was raining chilling drops from the sky, in the clearness of his lantern light he saw it, his wolf being mounted by a creature neither man nor beast. A fur covered werewolf of the dreaded legends of his people. With rocks and sharp curses he spoke, the monster tore his bloodied beasthood from the wolf, leaving her foaming with crimson sludge.

Leaving into the woods that wolf man never returned to their homestead, but as months past, their wolf became listless having survived the heinous rape. Licking her wounds, her belly swelled of something unnatural, the man and his wife considered cutting the abomination whelp from her womb but as if sensing this she left the home.

Gone for many weeks, they believed she died, till one night they awoke from their beds hearing great howls of agony. Pitiful whimpers brought them to their door in haste, laying before them, the wolf they domesticated was in labor, a bloody, agonizing birth followed, and despite their efforts, the wolf died in her whelping.

The spawn from her loins emerged in blood, viscera, and torn flesh, the babe appeared human, bathed in blood. However it was marked with the accursed chimeric blood, a male babe whose eyes betrayed his insidious nature.

Despite the pleading of the wife who lost hope of having a baby, the man resolved to take the babe into the woods, and slay it with a axe. However so desperate was her desire for a child to suckle her breasts, she did the contemptible and put deadly nightshade into his tea.

Upon his death, she took the babe further into the woods, and had never emerged.

Chapter I - The Stranger In Town

‘There is a stranger in town.’ was the local gossip, it passed from lip to ear more than any contagion known to man.

Whispers became audible murmurs, that continued to proliferate at a almost unnatural degree, to the point the stranger heard it, as soon as he entered the town gates. Open for travelers, he passed by the timid guards who didn’t bother to stop him, despite him carrying blood stained weapons upon his belt.

Wearing a silver felt hood, his black eyes shone with brilliant gold rings, that gave him an inhuman stare that brought fear and dread to the weak willed people the boreal realms of the northern dukedoms. Mountains and hills of stone covered in ancient ice, as the dry cold winds brought the hopelessly of a eternal winter, devoid of prosperity, and a vow of hardships of those who dwell in exile in that desolate landscape.

Where the townspeople dressed in heavy fur garbs, the stranger wore thick leather bound by crimson chainmail links that were covered with a thin furred attire of glimmering silver hair. Thick hide gloves he wore had their fingertips were torn by his long, lethally sharp claws as dark as ebony wood. Lower jaw of the stranger was the only part of his face that was revealed outside the hood, that seemed to be covered by a thick beard of a gloomy gray.

Large yellow fangs came out as daggers and sharp stones, barely covered by his perpetually smiling, swollen, black lips.

Some of the town commented how the fabric of the hood protruded and seemed upturned as if they were an ears of a great wolf. Whatever was this gnarly man’s purpose, the people soon concluded it was a despicable and violent one, as the town priest as he walked by saw he carried a badge of the Lark.

Assassins of sorcery and roughish blade training, their lethality has slain nobility and peasantry alike, akin to the gruesome horrors of the plague, they were well known that have the angel of death follow them closely.

Stopping in his steady, measured walking, the stranger turned to a solitary muck raker, who was gathering up the moist filth into piles to be carried away on wagons. His eyes were on his work, but he stopped when he sensed something looking upon him, when he lifted his eyes he saw the wolfish eyes of a beastal man looking at him with a narrow, fanged filled smile of malicious glee.

‘Greetings my fellow!’ the smile broadened showing more fang-like teeth, as his black lips stretched as his smile reached ear to ear of his hood. ‘I would like some of my questions answered, you will answer them, yes?’ his tongue was heavy with a accent of the savage bloods to the deep east, beyond the realm of mountains.

‘I’ll do as I can sir.’ the muckraker replied, holding his rake handle nervously, as he trembled slightly from fear.

‘Good.’ the hooded man’s smile spread, as if he was a wolfish creature ready to growl. ‘Do you know a man named, Artemis?’ the name came off his tongue as if he were licking a drop of meat juice from a slice of roasting meat.

‘That name I know...’ the muck raker became afraid, as he saw the townspeople more informed about the stranger watched closely, as if he were a pig strapped in a pen with a wolf. ‘...I wouldn’t want to get him into trouble, he done my no harm.’

That made the smile vanish, the eyes widened into a expression glare, as his lips formed into a grimace of terrible, barely constrained rage.

‘You wouldn’t want to be harmed.’ the threat was clear, and spoken with a deliberate malice swarming in the air as if it were a swarm of angry bees.

‘No, pardon me sir. I beg, I met no offense, please—’

‘Just tell me!’ the eyes glowed behind the hood, and the mouth twisted into a luminous display of skin rending fangs.

‘He…he—he lives in the hut against the far wall, near the well, please, don’t—’ the man fell on his knees, falling deep into the mound of dung he collected for removal. Pointing in the direction of the man he sought, betraying what mild loyalty that Artemis had cultivated.

‘My thanks fellow.’ the hooded man smiled with a more fiendish delight on his face, as he left the man to eventually breathe out a sigh of relief, at his life being spared.

Words spread faster in town, hearing them the hooded man sped towards the dwelling of Artemis fearing he’d be warned before he reached him, he moved as if he was a wolf up on his hindlegs, giving chase to his prey.

Finding the well, he saw a poorly built shack, made of spare wood and uncut logs, it looked more like a pile of fuel for the fire than a proper shelter. Latching his clawed hands onto the knob, he tore off the rope bound bundle of sticks used as a door, and flung it aside, allowing it to crash onto the ice covered ground.

Going into the insides, he found it was formerly an old smokehouse, that was converted into a dwelling. A familiar scent lingered in the air, that made a drooling foam leak through his lips, he knew he was there, the object of his instinctual frenzy lived there, but it had faded.

Artemis, the name he was following for man years had once again escaped his barely contained fury, though he was closer than he had ever been before, the hunt was nearing its conclusion.

‘He isn’t here anymore.’ a voice told him from the open doorway. A priestly man, wearing the holy vestments of the church, looked at him with fear but the sternness of his faith boldened his heart. ‘Artemis left this town a three nights ago.’

‘Why?’ the question escaped the foaming mouth of the hooded man as a rumbling grounds of near coming explosion.

‘I cannot break that trust, I—’ his words were silenced with sharp claws digging into the back of his neck, with the sharpness of a wasp’s stinger. A strangling grip narrowed his throat, but not enough that he couldn’t speak. The anger from the hooded man was restrained, but just barely, it was clear he was a savage, who wasn’t a stranger to violent acts.

‘Where did he go?!’ the snarl of words, made the priest tremble, he cried out pathetically, as he knew his faith was being tested, and he knew with cruel clarity that he was found wanting.

‘He…he killed a girl, a child…he begged for forgiveness, and—’ the claws dug deeper into his neck, and the priest felt his legs shake violently from the tearing of his flesh, and the blood flowing in a steady stream from his neck wounds.

‘Where did he go!?’ the hooded stranger made it clear, he didn’t want pointless minutia, that didn’t matter to his quest.

‘...north, he said he was going to the refuge high in the mountains. The Guild Of Stone Walls he believed would offer him protection.’ after breaking his vows to keep the secrets of those who asked for forgiveness, the priest was awarded for his treason to God with his neck being released.

Covering his bleeding wounds with his scarf, he whimpered at his weakness, as the hooded stranger left, licking the blood from his claws. Saying nothing more to the priest, the Lark didn’t even spare a glance as he left, he had lost all interest in the town and the priest, his interest lay further up the mountains.

Chapter II - The Whore Daughter

Backlog Lodge was a log cabin that served as a trading post, and tavern that those who sought to climb further up the snow laden mountainside drank away the profits of their prospecting. Gold was buried deep in the ancient mines of the mountain, and was a unclaimed bounty, ready to be claimed by mercenaries of fortune, seeking the lucky strike that will lead to their comfortable retirement.

Run by a large, burly man, and former mountain ranger, Claus Vindaheil, he ran it alone, after his wife ran off with his former business partner. Leaving him a daughter to raise, a jezebel of a girl, who he was blinded to her vices, as she lured men to her bed with lascivious talk, and depraved promises.

Serving drinks to a table of prospectors, her large bodied father watched as she reached down to the table to pick up coins left for a tip, and he saw with flaring anger in his eyes, a dirty covered hand lift up her dress skirt, and feel her buttocks.

She didn’t mind, in fact she encouraged it, with a foxy smile of wantonness to the whispered affections of the affection deprived men. Licking her lips, she indicated by soft words, so quiet her father couldn’t hear that her virtue was for sale, and the coins were in fact not a tip, but payment for a lay in bed.

Before he could penetrate her orifices with his fingers, a bear paw of a hand strangled his neck, the rotted tooth prospector wailed in despair, as he was lifted high in the air. Kicking the empty air beneath him, his fellows at the table watched in wide eyed terror, as they saw his eyes bulge in his sockets, as blood poured down his cheeks.

Letting out one last, gasping cry, his eyes popped out of the sockets, and tangled from the empty sockets, then as if for mercy, his neck was snapped as if he were chicken destined for a cooking pot.

Carrying the lifeless, but still gyrating body in his hands, the mountainous lodge owner carried the body to the front door, and flinging it opened to the blowing winds.

Tossing the body outside without a thought, the lifeless body was thrown over the railings of the stairs leading to the ledge, that was built at top of a sheer cliff face.

A incoming patron moved aside, as the body flew past his head, and vanished in the ivory haze of an incoming ice storm.

Breathing hard, the hatred of what his daughter had done, denied in his adoring mind, he let out a bombastic cry of anger and soul pained loss, before he calmed huffing loudly. Looking down at the hooded stranger, he moved aside, and allowed the man to enter, though he noticed his eyes didn’t seem entirely human.

Breathing hard, he had regained enough air in his lungs to question his newest patron.

‘Who are you stranger? I don’t believe I’ve seen you before.’ Claus was suspicious of the man, as he had a familiar badge, that he couldn’t remember but knew it meant he was a killer.

‘You certain, people often forget me.’ the hooded stranger replied wryly, showing off a wolfish smile.

‘Yes, I am quite certain. I cannot say you ever been in here before.’ as Claus politely interrogated the newcomer, the prospectors took booth on the far end of the lodge, away from the owner and his depraved daughter, who looked at the stranger with eyes of a succubus.

‘I am called Vulpous Hood, by those who insist on know my name.’ the hooded stranger answered almost mockingly.

The lodge owner wouldn’t been rougher but noticed many bladed weapons hung from the stranger’s belt, and it was clear by the old blood stains, they had taken lives. Taking a seat at a table, Vulpous was immediately served with a pitcher of frothy beer by Claus’s daughter, who was quite taken by the stranger’s rugged looks, and excitingly fearsome appearance.

Claus was larger man than the stranger, and would’ve throttled the man for what he deceived himself into believing was a man trying to lure his daughter in depravity.

However his only weapon was a heavy cudgel behind the bar, and despite his height and bulk, he saw the intertwining muscle bulged swelling in the stranger’s body.

‘Vulpous, I am not a man to trifle with.’ Claus warned to the hooded man’s sneering amusement. ‘If you cause any trouble here, or—’ he looked at his daughter who rolled her eyes and left the table, ‘—violate the sanctity of my home, you will join the man you saw me throw into the abyss just outside.’

‘If you insist.’ Vulpous didn’t allow the warning to get a moments pause, to allow it to settle into the mood in the lodge. Drinking the beer offered, he looked to the daughter who gave him seductive looks from behind the bar.

‘I insist!’ the lodge owner returned to his place behind the bar, where he glared at his daughter, then sent her to bed with a stern point to her bedroom down a hallway. Reluctantly she left, but looked at Vulpous with a wanting look, from her eyes she showed the quality of her soul.

A poor quality sadly, one of a viscous slut, demanding more attention of men, even at their peril, misleading them to their death at her father’s brutal hands. Her deception would make her meat taste all the better, as Vulpous decided to allow the bitch to come to him, then when she straddles him, he’ll sink in his teeth.

***

A storm blew fiercely outside, a howling wind carried high into the atmosphere, making it feel as if ghosts haunted that night. The prospectors slept in a room on the ground floor, the lodge owner returned to his own bedroom, next to his daughters, who still was detained in her room under lock and key—a key she could pick with a pin she used in her hair.

Sandy blonde, green eyes, she was a object of not fully ripe, southern beauty of women who had a natural tan, and a boyish dotting of freckles on her face. Smiling at her cleverness, she overhead her father telling the hooded man to take a room up stairs, where the wind blowed the hardest, and far from the warmth of the hearth fire.

Sneaking through the creaky floorboards, she came to the stairs, and with grace ascended them, as if she were a princess going to meet her prince. Prancing about in her frilly nightshirt, she wore it to seduce men, who she left to the brutality of her father’s vengeance. It was a game she believed she invented, a cruel, sadistic game that often would have her with child.

In order to prevent her father finding out, she’d drink concentrated alcohol, and force out the still growing unborn child from her womb. Then hiding it in a bundle of dirty cloth, would toss it over the cliff, as her father had done with many men who touched her as a lover.

Licking her lips, she wondered if her father will find out this time, and wondered if the stranger would kill him in the fight, that made her groin pulsate and become slick with arousal. So depraved she was, having inherited her mothers whorish nature, she had become spoiled and malicious from her father’s refusal to let her court boys.

Despite starting early in her romantic conquests, her father showed no mercy to boys of the nearby village. She recalled watching him lift those young boys in the air, his hands around their necks, strangling them till their teeth shattered from clenching them too tight, and their eyes bursting out in gushes of blood.

Throwing them into caves to be discovered by the beasts of the mountain, she felt no remorse for her fatal seductions, instead it awakened a passion for death and love. Soon after the first death she provoked, she lost her virtue by a passerby, and lied to her father about it being a violent rape that tore up her delicate parts.

Leaving her with a local medicine women, who treated her and cared for her, as her father hunted him down. At night alone, she’d tease her erogenous body parts with delicate touches imagining the carnage her father would inflict on the man. Upon returning she saw a coldness in her father’s eyes, a coldness towards all the men of the world, who’d dared to even look lustfully at his daughter.

At that she knew, that she had seduced her father into her wicked ways of love and death. One day, she may mount her father after getting him drugged, and in his stupor act as if he had violated her, if she carried a child from that incestuous union, all the better, more talons she could use to enrapture his heart.

Coming to the door of the hooded man, she didn’t know, she opened it, with a quietness of a mouse’s footsteps, and then felt her heart skip a beat, the eyes of Vulpous were on her in the darkness of the room.

Turning up the brightness of his lamp, the man still wearing his hood in bed, but nothing else looked at her, with a look she didn’t recognize, it wasn’t lust, it was more pity. A look she remember seeing in her father’s eyes as he murdered that first boy, but had long gone from his expressions.

‘Evening sir.’ she cooed softly as if she were a innocent baby bird.

Vulpous said nothing, the fur blankets he covered his body with were flat on his body, showing his large masculine frame, and powerfully large muscular build. No man, not even her father had such a body, and she wanted it to enrapture her form, and squeeze it tightly as it penetrated her still maturing innards.

‘It is cold this evening sir, would you mind if I stayed with you for warmth?’ the invitation was slyly put to her mind.

‘Sleep with your father.’ Vulpous suggested, leaning back onto his bed.

‘He is not affectionate as some men.’ she countered, as she entered the room without invitation and closed the door behind her. ‘Surely a man as you could use me—’

‘I would use you.’ Vulpous interrupted a sharpness coming to his smiling face, that scared her, but made her drip with excitement.

‘Sir…you scare me.’ she said gasping from her near exhilaration of the body.

‘I do more than that, far more. If you come onto my bed, I’ll show you no mercy. No pleas or cries will save you from me, I will eat you and you’ll know the ravages of the tender affections of a creature being neither beast nor man.’

The invitation was a clear warning, a invitation to something she feared she regret, but she trusted in her father’s strength, one cry and he’d come for her, and slay the brute. The thought of those glowing golden eyes excited her, and made her whimper with lust. On a thoughtless spurge of action, she came onto his bed, and the moment she felt the stillness of a second after her haste, she began to think she should leave, as a dread came over her as a shivering shroud.

As if she were touched by the fingers of the angel of death, before she could leave, a hand grabbed her, and pulled her close. To a mouth that covered hers in a piercing, gnawing kiss, that drew blood, spit, terror, and excitement in one penetration of a solid tongue thrust and waggle of their two organs.

She felt claws tear at her night gown, and dig into her flesh, drawing blood, she was scared, not man was rough like this to her, the pain wasn’t exciting her, it hurt her. She tried to scream but she felt a sharpness close into her mouth, and something was chomped from her, as blood filled her mouth.

The man had bit off her tongue, and had swallowed it, as he pinned her under his body in one flip of their bodies, and after ripping away the frail veil protecting her groin, he penetrated her with the agony of expanding fullness.

Her eyes went wide, as the kiss broke, and she knew her insides were fully, and utterly robbed of any immaturity and ability to carry children, her velvet flesh was utterly destroyed.

***

A gurgling shriek echoed in the halls of the lodge, as every occupant awoke to the terrible screams of a girl, join in wild harmony with wolf growls and howls.

Awakening as if from a tub filled with icy water, Claus knew something happened to his daughter, the only thing he had left to love. Rushing form his bed, he didn’t bother to dress appropriately, grabbing the cudgel he had brought to his bedside, he bounded out, and driven by instincts and subconscious knowledge hurried to the stairs to the upstairs.

The prospects went to the hall to see what was happening, the sleep gone from their eyes, as their sights were transfixed to the upstairs where the screams continued, with the sounds of violence, akin to a animal being skinned alive.

The wetness of blood, the cracking of bones, and the tearing of flesh was familiar to them to some degree, and it scared them terribly, even more so as the large lodge owner rushed up the doors.

With one slam of the cudgel he forced open the door, and what he saw made his stomach boil with the urge to puke. Legs torn off and consumed, one arm missing form a bleeding bone socket, the missing arm, being swallowed by the hooded man, as his daughters entrails were enraptured around his firm genitals.

The length, and jagged flesh of Vulpous’s manhood had ripped her insides out through her groin, and tied around it, as it forced itself deeper pulling more of the insides out, only to be stuffed back in, with force.

Watching this brought a sorrow unmatched to Claus, as tears cascaded from his eyes, as his face turned blood red, and a rage filled him, as his mutilated daughter twitch on the stranger’s lap, as her dying eyes looked upon her father.

What rage and pain poured from his eyes brought her no excitement, she felt cold, despite the heat that enraptured her, and the last thing she saw was a enlarge maw, encasing her head, and biting down as if she were a fruit. With one bite she was consumed into the stomach of the hooded man, whose fangs glistened with her blood, as her headless, nearly limbless torso went numb, as it fell from his still erect, beastly manhood.

Roaring out in pain for his loss, the father lunged at Vulpous the cudgel raised height to bring down with the might of Thor’s hammer. Only for it to be smacked out of his hands, as if he were as weak as a impudent child, then he was floored by one blood covered fist, that punched him with such force it broke a row of teeth.

Falling down, grief, and fear overcame Claus, as he looked with disgust, despair, and hatred at the man who violated and devoured his daughter.

Vulpous discarded the bloody remains from his body, allowing them to fall lifeless onto the floor, before he used the beds blankets and coverings to wipe off as much of the girl’s blood as possible.

‘Vicious bitch was warned, I’d eat her I told her.’ Vulpous words, inspired anger in Claus who stood up to strike at the hooded man, but once again he was proved impudent by a punch that broke his nose.

Blood and snot flowed down his face, as the lodge owner, a former ranger, and a imposing terror of lustful men, had been made humbled and fearful.

‘My daughter…why?...why?’ he tried to remember her face, but the only thing he could see in his mind’s eye was the sight of her head being devoured by the stranger, who overpowered him with the simplest of strikes.

‘She offered herself to me, as I know she did with other men.’ his words, made Claus try to speak up to defend his daughter but he was shouted down by thunderous bolt of harsh truth. ‘You knew she was a whore! A tempter of men! I imagine she led you to kill many men she bedded willingly! You deluded, craven creature!’ those words stabbed into Claus’s ego as if they were daggers meant for the heart of a emperor.

‘I pitied her.’ Vulpous growled, as he felt her insides melt away in his guts. ‘I’ll finish her outside, don’t think I’ll sleep much after that.’ Snatching the bloodied body of the girl after he dressed, he looked down, with golden eyes glowing with a predator’s power. ‘Should you ever sire another, be wary the mother isn’t a malicious bitch! They had a tendency to breed more of the same.’

Carrying out the lifeless body, Claus cried loudly into his hands, as he mourned the daughter he failed to reform, her life lived in vanity, and his own self deceiving acts of violence to give reality to his delusions.

‘One day, I’ll kill you! You monster! You freak!’ finding the courage for rage, he called out, but he cringed and wept into his hands, when Vulpous came back into the room to challenge the Claus’s words with his intimidating stare.

Accepting victory over the man’s weakness, he continued to eat the remains of the girl, chewing them down with his powerful jaws, as the prospectors watched with stunned horror as he finished cannibalizing the remains, and without a word watched him leave out into the storm.

The wind burst open the door, after Vulpous undid the lock, and without hesitation he went out into the blare of flying snow, leaving the furious chill to put out the hearth fire that heated the lodge. Leaving the men within to try and comprehend the heinous horror they bore witness to, and wonder why such a thing could occur?

In truth Vulpous didn’t do what he did for pure sadism, a sense of justice, or vengeance. It was a mixture of hunger, lust, and a promise to only inflict his lethal desires on girls he could smell were sinful creatures of carnal desires.

Killing and eating them was not just to feed himself with fresh meat, he killed animals of prey for that, what he did was more for self preservation. Since he was conceived by his father in similar violent passions, offspring of that bloodline are fated by instincts to tract down their progenitor and to murder them with brutality.

Since he was old enough to be aware of a man’s desire, Vulpous hunted his father, in earnest after his adoptive mother died. Left alone, he scoured the realms searching for him, joining many causes, selling his services to nobility, and to meet those ends, made vows of brotherhood with the Larks.

Through that fraternity of mystical assassins, he learned where to find his father, the werewolf Artemis, whose scent he could then smell in the winds of the storm. Licking his lips, he forgot the taste of the young whore, and started to salivate at the taste of his father’s blood.

If he knew of Vulpous’s conception he couldn’t devoured the wolf bitch to guard his future, that lapse of caution would cost him so dearly, as all werewolves who dared to continue their lineage. It is the curse of Odin placed on all those afflicted with lycanthropy, no matter who the mother is, a child born will be male, and will desire to consume the heart of their father.

Trudging through the storm, his strong frame was unhindered by the winds, as he continued to scale the mountain, the distant silhouette of the Stone Walls Refuge were visible on the distant ridge.

By morning if he continued through the storm, he will be at its gates, and despite the resistance there, he will purge his lifelong obsession.

Chapter III - The Guardian At The Gate

Standing firmly in place, his boots deep in the rising snow, Vulpous refused to move from that spot, before the gates of the mountain refuge. Arriving with the dawn, he was rebuked by the guards who stood before the sealed, iron gates, but their attempts to force him away, resulted in their swift decapitations with a curved dagger on his hand.

The captain of the guards standing on the tall battlements of the refuge, that was covered in layers of slick ice, he called out to the stranger, as he saw his subordinates headless bodies bleed onto the ivory snow.

‘Ho there!’ the guard captain shouted from his perch. ‘Why did you slaughter my men, you beastly cretin!’ his spoken words seemed to retreat back into his throat as the hooded stranger lifted his golden eyes, to stare at the captain.

‘I am Vulpous Hood! A Lark, I sought to take no other lives but one, but your men forced me to retaliate in kind.’ all trace of sarcastic glee was forced into menacing anger. As he bared his teeth as a wolf would to a hunter who failed to strike him with a arrow from his bow.

‘We cannot allow anyone within these walls to be slaughtered.’ the captain answered, despite the fear of the monstrous man standing before his gates. It was a growing fear in his mind, that the Lark could easily infiltrate the hold, but was bound by some kind of foreign code of honor to give fair warning.

‘You can, the only restriction is something you impose on yourselves to draw in slaves to work the mines under your refuge.’ Vulpous spoke a fierce truth that wounded the guard captain, despite locking away that barbed reality in his mind, it was pulled free, tearing through the psychic barriers he fortified to keep that hidden. Those who stand guard at the refuge were part of the Blue Order, a knighthood of guardians who offered refuge in far apart havens in savage lands, away from the security of kingly laws and the comfort of civilization.

What labor they extracted from desperate people was necessary to fund their efforts, but the profit he admitted in his brief moments of honest self-reflection were spent greedily on unknightly matters.

‘How can you know of such things? If it were true, wouldn’t that be spoken only in the most secretive of manners?’ the guard hoped to throw off Vulpous with an accusation of deceit, as he began to wonder how he could know of such protected secrets of their order.

‘You are knights with no shame as long as your sins are shrouded with righteous veils of charity. Slavery persists in these lands, whether the law keepers are here or not it seems.’ a vile accusation from Vulpous made the winter pale guard’s face flushed with anger. Despite his desire to purge the Lark from the front of the gates, he was reticent from sending out a contingent of men to move in, since he lacked veteran manpower.

Most of the knights left on a crusade in some pagan den, so he was left with squares too young to wield a proper weapon, or too old to face a Lark. The rest were simpletons such as the men who guarded the gate, a simple job that resulted in their swift demise.

Only one possible warrior in the barracks could defeat the Lark, and in his mind he imagined it done quite efficiently.

‘Sir Vulpous—’ he called out from over the battlements. ‘—my orders are clear, I cannot permit you within these walls for such a purpose without challenge—’ he saw the hooded Lark shift his weight as if he meant to make a swift move. ‘—that is why I hereby challenge you.’ his words caught the attention of Vulpous whose golden eyes looked intrigued by the proffer.

‘What do you propose man?’ the hooded man was eager to enter the refuge, and put his task to and end, but he didn’t want to cause chaos within, and allow his prey to escape.

‘I propose that you face one of our guardians in a duel. If he wins you must depart these walls and never return.’ the head guard hesitated to speak the rest of the deal, but memories of the guardian’s strength of arms bolstered his confidence in the bet. ‘If you win we will permit you entry to enact whatever bloodletting you have in mind.’

Thinking over the bargain in the briefest moments of thought Vulpous ever had experienced, he answered back ‘Send out your guardian!’

To that the head guard sent for the Knight Of The Blue Blade.

***

The Blue Order had many heroes in their ranks, most are dead, those that are still alive are living legends of their time. Praised as champions of virtue and might, they slay evil doers, and bring sucker to the meek and hopeless.

Roused from his bedchambers, the Sir Roth shifted in his bed, bringing tumbling down a pile of naked women, he used as blankets for his sleeping body. Each one a desperate woman he had giving special privileges and foods in exchange for their virtue and chastity.

‘Gods curse you squire, why bother me this early in the day.’ the Knight splashed cold water on his face from a basin, before drying it off with a discarded gown from one of his concubine.

‘It is going on late morning Sir.’ the young squire stated, which earned him a hard slap on the face by his mentor. Drawing blood from his nose and a black bruise would form on his face by the end of the day, not the most terrible of blemishes he earned from talking back, but it hurt as if he was kicked by a mule.

‘I don’t care for that mouth. Many other men would be honored to serve in my shadow.’ His long tangle of dark blonde hair covered his dark blue eyes, but a sinister glare peaked through the seams. ‘What brings your smart mouth here?’ the words were spoken in a harsh tone as if spoken by a nasty drunk.

‘Its the captain of the guards Sir, there is a Lark at the gate, he wants to challenge you to enter here.’ the young man was well apprised of the situation, so he could convey with appropriate severity the need of his master’s sword.

‘Brain addled fool.’ the knight cursed the captain. ‘He can’t handle one of those murder clowns from that dead guild?’ his accusation was a sharp indictment of all concerned. ‘When I lop off that harlequins head, I’ll have the captain demoted to emptying my piss jar.’ Pointing his manhood at the overflowing jar of his urine by the bed side, he topped it off by at last several pints of beer he drank the night before.

Not hungover in the slightest, his body was that of a herculean bloodline of true warriors from beyond the known north. The original conquerors of the civilized lands, the Mord Khans. Half-giant men who mated with the most voluptuous women to produce heirs of ill tempers and great strength. They are Lords and Kings, and the most brutal are the knights who serve one of the great noble houses of the realm.

The Blue Order was the knighthood serving the Cerulean Crows, a noble house of great fame and reputation. Despite the merciless attitudes of their knights, they are seen as saviors of the lesser men of the world. Putting on his helmet, and armor, he reached for the rack bolted to the wall above his bed. A sapphire scabbard with a blue hilted sword inside hung from there, which he took up and strapped to his back.

Giving a blessing by the giants of his homeland, the blue steel it was made from, was said to be the best metal to craft swords from, as they are light to the wielder but dangerously sharp when made into a blade.

Unfathomably rare, only five swords were ever recorded in the royal historical tomes, the last one that hasn’t been lost is now wielded by Sir Roth, Soft Curse. A long, broadsword, that its wielder can hold with only one hand, its sharpness never dulled once, and can hack down a group of foes with one swing.

Pulling it free from the scabbard, Soft Curse sparkled in the light, as if it were a field of ice, a blinding ivory stung the squires eye.

‘One day boy, I may allow you to carry my sword.’ he told his squire, who used his sleeve to stop the open bleeding from his nose. Putting it back in its sheath, he tramped his boots across the floor, as he headed towards the gate, to dispatch the impudent intruder, and return to his bed of opium addled women.

Following his masters steps, the squire had contempt for the knight, but didn’t dare waste the possible opportunities of prestige and high pay as a reward for faithful service to the arrogant prick.

***

Vulpous allowed time for the knight to show for the duel, he examined his daggers, dirks, and short swords at his belt, each one well used in bloodletting. So many had died with each one, and the scent of the kills still stayed on them, since he never cleaned away the blood, instead he burned them into the metal, so he could always whiff the scent of those he killed with them. Not every one of his kills were done with his blade, but enough that their blade had been permanently stained in a pattern of charred obsidian, and a dark crimson.

Before impatience forced him to infiltrate the refuge, the gates opened, and standing there as they swung open was a half-giant dressed in a full suit of blue armor. Wearing the crest of a blue crow on a field of white on his tabard, he strode towards him, with imposing size and strength. A boy followed the deep footprints he made in the snow, as the gates closed behind him, and the guard captain showed himself again on the battlements his face smiling broadly with a assumption of predestined victory.

‘This is Sir Roth, legendary hero of the Order Of Blue, the Knight Who Wields The Blue Blade. Behold and be in wonder of his might—’ as if to bolster the captain’s words, the knight drew forth Soft Curse, and held it in the sunlight, as it glowed with brilliant light./ ‘—his glory is the stuff of modern legends. I offer you a chance to retreat Lark, leave here and you shall be spared his might.’

Vulpous didn’t move away, his stance chance however, he crouch down low, as if he were a predator of the wilds who was threatened by another, larger predator. Like a wolf does to a bear, he took a challenging posture, and snarled as he barred his teeth, clearly he wasn’t backing down from the threat.

‘Foolish fool! Do you not recognize your fate? By one swing of this sword, and you will be no more. Cast into the oblivion of the underworld!’ the knight’s words carried no sense of dread to the Lark. It was as if he was speaking to a feral beast, who knew only to communicate in barks and growls.

The squire who witnessed this shook his head in embarrassment for his master, his bluster was nothing he hadn’t heard before, if Sir Roth wasn’t so efficient in dozens he killed in every battle. One thing he noticed however, the man he faced off with wasn’t afraid. A look of awe and fear was always on the faces, and despair was in their eyes when facing the towering blue armored knight.

Whoever this hooded man was, wasn’t afraid, he was cautious, but when he drew a crimson dagger from his belt, the boy knew he intended not to fight the knight without fear but with the intention to win. Before the boy can turn his head to look at his mentor, a streak of bright blue swept across the air, nearly striking him with the backswing. Backing away, the squire watched as the sword slashed across the snow, slicing off the first layer of snow.

A leap in the air, saved the hooded man, whose black lips drooled as he continued a steady rhythmic growl.

Not flustered by the agile dodge, Sir Roth charged forward, and brought his sword overhead, and struck it towards the Lark, who dove into the snow and buried into the deep piles as if he were a rabbit. Borrowing through the snow, he vanished into the deep ivory piles, as the blade came slamming down where he once stood.

A chink in the knight’s confidence showed as clear as a black spot on the sun. For the first time, Sir Roth hesitated, he had lost track of the agile man, and wasn’t sure where he was under the snow. Truth there was rumbles of snow showing where he dug, but he went so deep that any trace of his tunneling vanished in the surface, he could be anywhere on the field of white.

Slashing at the snow where the trail ended, he probed around with his sword, as if he were trying to beat a fish with a pole while its swimming in a pool of murky water. No matter where he slid his sword, he couldn’t feel his blade’s edge come into contact with any living flesh. Even if he was wearing a full suit of armor, the blue steel would slice through the inferior metal as easily as other blades would cut up fruit.

Walking deeper into the snow drift, he felt himself becoming more submerged in the chilled flakes, with each step he went deeper by another foot. Till he was shoulders deep in it, still he searched, the duel becoming more of a vain hunt for the elusive Lark, even the guard captain’s confidence was cooled by the confusing display.

Continuing his search, Sir Roth stopped when he felt his foot come to the edge of a cliff, that was hidden by the snow mound. Looking around he was disheartened to see how much he had left to search, and finally his temper flared and he roared out, ‘Come and face me coward!’

The challenge echoed in the mountain air, carried for miles, as he breathed hard from the lung power he exhausted with that insult. Before he had his fill of breathing, something he felt stir behind behind, before he could turn fully around to face it, he was tackled by a sturdy body.

Without much effort it impacted his armored form with enough force to send him slipping over the cliff edge. Slick with ice and snow, the decline was steady, but inevitable as Sir Roth flailed about trying to grab hold onto anything, his last sight before he plummeted were two golden eyes glaring at him from within a pile of snow.

Feeling nothing beneath his feet, the knight let out a blood chilling wail of despair, so shrill is might’ve been mistaken for a woman’s. Falling down, the half-giant still clutching Soft Curse, Sir Roth fell over a hundred feet off the sheer drop, and landed on rough stone below.

The fall killed him, and Vulpous watched his decline till he saw the blue form hit the bottom, and a pool of crimson formed around the broken body. Returning to the gate, he replaced the dagger he drew to its place on his belt, he was a little saddened he wouldn’t be reminiscing the scent of the knight’s blood on one of his blades, but a more savory prey awaited within the refuge.

Arriving at the gates, the Lark paid no heed to the squire boy, who looked upon him with marvelling wonder, astounded that his master was slain so easily by the stranger. Fear kept him from speaking to him, but he admired the skill he witnessed, and wished he had such a skillful man as his mentor.

‘Open the gate.’ Vulpous demanded, and to that the guard captain had no choice but to keep his word. He had no others within that could stop the Lark, and didn’t want to risk his open life, gesturing for the men at the gatehouse, the gates soon opened, and he entered. As soon as he passed through he immediate sniffed the air as would a curious beast, and a glimmer of glee came to his eyes, as his yellow fangs were on full display in a fiendish smile, as drool dripped from his maw.

His father was within those walls.

Chapter IV - Angel Of Death

Languishing in filth and sickness, Artemis picked at his festering wounds, as large clumps of his formerly dense body hair fell out, revealing pus filled sores. Draining them hurt more than the linger numbness, so he kept quite, and instead tried to eat the sour soup he was brought to eat in his room.

Within the asylum, wing of the refuge, he was kept, along with the other freaks of nature and afflicted of great, incurable sicknesses. The Gods forsaken them, so they were left to suffer from declining health, till the angel of death came and brought them their final relief.

Light filtered in through a narrow slit in the wall, that let in cold air, and some traces of snow. On the wind that blew into his bleak cell, he could smell a scent that he felt had been chasing him for many years of his life. Every since he first smelled it, his vigor and strength had declined, resulting him becoming the emaciated wretch that he currently was, unable to control his bowel movements, his crimson waste stained the floors.

Breathing became a wheezing chore, and he couldn’t stand the touch of light, he was being drained of all that was him, by some hex placed upon his head, for some crime he committed against the Gods. Whatever he was he couldn’t remember, too many nights when he fully became the beast his reason and caution faded. Not long ago he devoured a little girl in a town south of his self imposed prison.

The priest offered him salvation in exchange for resigning himself into the care of the Blue Order, who provided him shelter and food till death came for him, he felt it in his inside. Something had crawled into him, and was eating away at his vitality, whatever life he had left was bleeding away with each bowel contractions that forced more of his putrefied life’s blood.

Another painful evacuation resulted in a overwhelming stench to fill the stagnant air of the barren chamber, it bubbled with stomach acids and rancid liver bile.

Coughing up black phlegm with bits of his lungs, the once hateful werewolf was made weak by some kind of terrible curse. Shielding his eyes and crying in pain, he was suddenly enveloped by direct sunlight. Blinding his sensitive, milky eyes, he let out a shrillness, that ceased when the door was closed partly to block out the sun.

‘Who are you?!’ he asked, as he watched a dark figure move to the opposite corner of his cell. ‘What is it, that you want?!’ half-blinded by the sudden daylight he could only see golden eyes glowing in the shadows. In a moment of insane clarity, he believed he was meeting with the angel of death, the savior of his intolerable existence. ‘I know…who you are? And…I…want it…please…kill me…end me…make the pain…go away…’

Whimpering as a sick hound would, the once formidable mankiller Artemis was humbled by a body that was wasting away, and by pain akin to feeling your organs melting, yet you didn’t die. With a shrill howl of pain, he felt a skin scalding heat purge itself from his backside, and a pool of black bloody waste spread across the floor, as he splashed around in a puddle of his foulness.

‘Can’t you…see?!—’ with a baby scream, he felt a pint of blood forcing its way out of both his shriveled manhood, and its corroding rectal cavity that had eaten away to become a large spindle of blackening flesh. A steady flow of cough inducing fluid dripped from him, and he felt embarrassed to being seen in such a state. ‘—you have to kill me! Otherwise…I’ll…I’ll—’ the evil he had formed in his insides expunged itself, in a agonizing purge, as if his plead for forgiveness caused a metamorphosis to cleanse his withering form.

Whether curse or divine judgement, he couldn’t stand it anymore, and reached out to feel the touch of death’s finger.

‘I…want it to stop…’ he couldn’t keep his voice from quivering with such pitiable agony. Then he saw the golden eyes start to move, not towards him, but away, as the blinding light returned, and as he shrank from it, he heard a loud banging sound, and darkness returned.

Crying out in despair he couldn’t see the eyes of angel of death, and any hope of a swift end gone as well. ‘Kill me!’ he kept crying out, in desperation, as he lacked the strength to end his own, he felt another expulsion of evil and his legs burned with the hellish heat coming out of his smoldering bowels. Feeling as if Hell resided in his innards, he was left alone, unable to lift himself up, he fell to the floor, soaked in his own bloody waste, as speech was robbed from him, by the pure agony of his continued existence.

Epilogue -

Vulpous Hood left the refuge, feeling no desire to fulfill his destiny of parricide. Instead he left the gate without a word, he didn’t care what they did to his father, what was left was a moment of pondering, what was their to do?

Focusing on such self indulgent obsession had robbed him of ambition, and brought a depressing epiphany to his mind so focused on carnage and death—he had no plans beyond the death of his father. Nothing else seemed to matter to him, standing at the edge of a cliff, he breathed in deep, and let out a anguished howl into the icy mountainside. It echoed for leagues away, ending in silence, except for the gentle blowing of the wind.

Deciding it was best to take ambitions as short indulges to begin with, Vulpous decided his first plan would be to descend the mountain. The cold bothered him, and he started to crave a warmer climate of the western lands. With eager swiftness he descended the mountain.

Future Tense -

For time of the Grey King’s birth he had visions of the future, in these sights into what will one day come, he saw the jasper ships from across the sea, bringing a doom upon the realm of civilized man.

Led by the vile sorcerer and devil worshiper who will inevitably end the King’s life, and plunge his realm in a centuries long despair. In these vision he saw a great dungeon, a malefic structure of great peril, the crèche of evil, The Blood Christ Insidium.

There new salvation may be found, but not by a hero of renown, or a champion of virtue, but someone who is neither man nor beast. Whose eyes are blazing gold, and who through cruelty and savagery will bring peace to the west as prophesized by the King’s dreams.

On the coast of rocks during a great tempest, where Gods clash in the heavens will the sorcery King go to the circle of evil, overlooking the sea, and there the fate of all things will be decided. Whether the world succumbs to a era of utter darkness, or rises from the ruins of defeat.

This will be decided in a tale thereafter known as the Conquest Of The Bloody Christ Insidium.