Please, read it and tell me what you think. Suggestions are welcome.
Rise of the No Life King
His country was on fire. The flames rose high up into the sky, turning it a deep, dark red. Embers flitted through the air like butterflies on burning wings. If it had been any other country, he would have though it a beautiful sight. But this was his county. This was his homeland.
He could smell the reek of burning houses and fresh gore, the sulfur of cannon fire, the conflagrations of tent and bridge and horseflesh. The scent of death. The scent of war. It was a putrid stench, but he'd grown used to it, over the years. He'd razed many villages during his war against the Turks.
Now he'd lost his war. Now it was his villages that were being razed.
The Turks dragged him through their make-shift camp, bare-backed, locked in a pillory. Their soldiers mocked him, laughed at him, spat at him, pelted him with rocks and stones. Refusing to look down, he saw them. He saw every one of them. He saw their fluttering banners, the Star and the Crescent. He saw the splashes of blood on the legs of their horses. He saw the shimmer of the firelight on their scimitars and chain mail. He saw their pointed helmets. He saw the the beautiful and mutilated young heads, faces, bodies. He saw the Sultan's janissaries, who had been recruited from the various Christian nations the Turks had conquered and occupied. He saw their stone-cold faces. He would not look away. He was humiliated, but he would not give them the satisfaction of knowing it. They dragged him to their execution block. His people's mangled corpses were hanging from the trees on either side, swinging back and forth, saturating the earth with their blood. His escorts tossed him roughly, callously onto the ground. The executioner was a big, hairy, sweaty man. His chest was bare and his head was covered by a black bag. He held his axe as if it were a toy. His favorite toy.
The executioner regarded the prisoner keenly. He was lanky, but well-muscled, and wore a golden cross around his neck. His long dark hair and hawkish features were typical of the Romanian nobility. So, this was Vlad the Impaler? The executioner had heard much about this man and had expected something different. Something more impressive. He snorted and said, "Ölmeye hazırmısın, Kazıklı Bey?" Are you ready to die, Impaling Prince?
Vlad didn't hear him. All he could hear were the agonized cries of his countrymen. He'd spent his entire life protecting Christianity from the Muslim Turks. He'd told his men that everyone had to fight in God's name, that God did not hear their prayers, but saw their actions, and that sooner or later, God would come down, and bring with Him the New Jerusalem. And fight they did. They fought in God's name, and they died in God's name. They were sacrificed. He had sacrificed them, and he would sacrifice every one of them in order to bring down the New Jerusalem. Now they were dead. All of them. Now he was going to die, too.
He had failed. He had failed to bring down the New Jerusalem. He'd fought in God's name, he'd sacrificed his men in order to achieve his dream, and God had looked the other way. God had betrayed him.
The executioner raised his axe. He grunted with the effort. Vlad knew the end was near. He wanted to close his eyes, but he resisted. Instead, he looked out at the devastated landscape, his scorched and beseiged homeland. He looked at the blood that had pooled up around him, the blood of his men, the blood of his people. Their agonized cries were beginning to fade. Suddenly, he heard a voice. It was calling out to him, speaking to him from the back of his mind. It was his own voice, and yet it was not. "Drink the blood," it said. "Drink the blood and live forever."
Vlad did not have time to consider his options. He had to make a decision, and he had to make it now. The man in him was telling him that this whole situation was a part of God's plan for him, that he should just resign and accept his fate. But there was something else in him now, something that did not want to resign. Something that felt betrayed. Something that wanted revenge. Something that wanted revenge against God. It was growing quickly, feeding off of his outrage. Before he knew it, it had swallowed him whole.
Slowly, deliberately, Vlad leaned forward, stuck out his tongue, and began lapping up the blood from the ground. He'd tasted the salty copper tang of blood before, but this time it was different. Somehow, it was sweet. Sweeter than anything he'd ever tasted before. Along with the new taste came a new sensation. He could feel the blood sliding down his throat, slipping into his stomach, permeating his organs, settling into his each and every cell. It felt so fulfilling. It was as if he was drinking life itself, as if he had taken life itself into his body, as if life itself was warming him, strengthening him. It was unlike anything he'd ever felt before.
Swiftly, the executioner brought his axe down. Vlad could feel it on the back of his neck.
That was the last thing he would remember.
He sat now in the Turkish camp, the bodies of his enemies, mutilated and bloodless, lying all about him. He wasn't sure what had happened to them. He could only assume it had been him. The smell of their rotting flesh did not bother him, though. He was too preoccupied with his new "gifts". He sat staring at the pile of smoldering ashes that had been the Turks' campfire. His vision had been greatly enhanced. The glow from the ashes seemed impossibly bright and kissed by rainbow colors. Indeed, he saw each and every thing around him more sharply and in more detail than he ever had before, all of it imbued with a startling depth of color and texture.
It was beautiful. Truly beautiful.
Vlad was no longer human. He was a strigoi, a vampire. His body was no longer living, and thus he could not die, but neither was he dead. He was somewhere incomprehensibly inbetween. In this state, he was immortal. In this state, he could go on age after age after age, feasting on the blood of the living. All he needed, all he would ever need, was blood. Blood was the currency with which he purchased his own eternity. It didn't seem like that bad a deal.
He'd sacrificed his humanity to become something that was both more and less than human. That was the first step, his first step in achieving revenge against God.
What was the next step?
He thought long and hard about that. First, he decided, he would have to establish his supremacy. As a man, he'd been a prince. He'd been a ruler of a principality. He'd had a court. He'd had subjects. Now, as a vampire, he had nothing. He had no authority and no power. He would have to change that.
Vlad was no longer human, and thus the human world was no longer his concern. It was too torn, anyway. It was too divided. East and West, Muslims and Christians. He did not understand how Christianity could possibly survive when its greatest defenders were fighting amongst themselves, even in the West. While Jerusalem was weeping for aid, the Roman Catholic Church was preoccupied with vain, internal struggle. Vlad himself was anxiously anticipating the end of Paul II’s reign, for he was quite an unworthy successor of Pius II, whom, despite their quarrels, had proved to be a man of strong character and possessive of chameleonic tactics useful for someone in his position. In all likeliness, he thought, the beauty of his young deacons distracted Paul II from more important matters.
That was not the world Vlad wanted to rule. But that was only one world. There was another world that lay beneath it. This was the world to which he now belonged. This was the world he would rule. Eventually, when the time was right, he would make his bid for the human world. But, for now, the underworld would do just fine.
Grasping his sword firmly in his hand, he stood up. He had to move on. He would have to begin his journey on foot.
The next step, he decided, was to acquire a horse with which he could traverse the European continent.
Vlad was no longer human, so he also decided to abandon his human name in favor of a more appropriate one. Fortunately for him, he already had such a name. When he was a man, it had meant "Son of the Dragon" and had denoted his membership in the Order of the Dragon. However, his enemies had used an alternate translation to give the name a whole new meaning. It was this meaning that would now serve his purpose. From this day forward, he would be known as Dracula, "Son of the Devil".
With these things in mind, he set off to the nearest village. It was there that his journey would begin.
