Chapter 11

In a large forest that spread over several miles on end, there was one, small clearing, in the midst of countless closely packed trees. This clearing, was the only place where the sun could reach, in many miles. In this clearing, where the sun shone, there were two charred black bodies, holding each other in a tight embrace, seeming as if they had no other care in the whole wide world, as they were burned to ashes.

As the sun shone on the two charred bodies, they continuously burned, until finally, the bright sun started descending to the far horizon. As time passed, it crouched lower and lower, the light being slowly overtaken by shadows, until finally, the two charred lovers were once more enshrined in darkness. But, even as they were covered in a veil of shadows, they sat unchanged, as the moon rose higher and higher into the sky, throwing its rays unto their darkened bodies, illuminating them.

However, finally, as the moon reached its peak, and began its descending course, there was a change in the two sun hallowed lovers. The slightest movement happened in the body of the larger lover, and the dusty ashes fell from his body, revealing a naked male, with dark brown hair, pale skin that reflected the shallow lights of the moon, and crimson eyes that radiated a fierce hunger in them.

Finally, the eyes of the sun hallowed lover opened and fell upon the last charred body. Another slight movement happened in the depressed man, and that slight movement stirred the charred body of his lover, causing it to collapse and blow away in the wind, covering the entire forest in the slightest with ashes. As the ashes flew away, Ulfvaldr reached up with his hands, unwilling to give her up, but the ashes of his deceased lover were already beyond reach. Thus, he shed two, blood red tears, and watched Tola fly away, as he said his final goodbyes.

“Why did you have to die? Why did you go to the humans?” He finally asked, speaking his first words ever since he left the, now desolate village. He let his eyes wander in the direction of the old village once more, but all that accomplished was to increase his anger; his hate, even further. Then, once more, his eyes wandered to where the ashes first spread, but they had already long disappeared, spread in the wind.

“I promise you Tola, I will avenge you. I will make the entire human race pay for your death. I’ll kill them. ALL OF THEM!” He screamed from the top of his lungs, with all his might, sending shivers through any living being in a very large circumference. That day a deep, far rooted hatred had been born for the humans, in the one being that should never have been angered. That day was the one that started a very dark age for the human race, threatening its entire population.

As the words had left his mouth, and resounded throughout the world, he fell to his back, taking the moon into his eyes. Like that, he observed the movement of the moon, all the way until it descended back into the horizon, and the sun started to rise. Once more the sun rose, sending its holy rays unto the prone body of Ulfvaldr, once more burning his body alive, causing excruciating pain. But even then, he still didn’t make a single sound, or single noise. He simply observed the rising sun, all the way until his eyes had been turned to ashes, and everything turned black once more.

As thus, the sun continued to burn the body of Ulfvaldr, all the way until it had reached the peak of the skies, and returned down the horizon, only to be replaced by the moon. Then, Ulfvaldr’s body slowly started recovering, until the burned ashes fell from his body once more, once more revealing the naked body of Ulfvaldr. And once more, his eyes opened, revealing empty crimson eyes.

“Why didn’t I die?” He wondered,

“Frozen once, impaled in the heart once, burned twice, still alive,” he said aloud. Another hour passed, before he finally stood up once more. This time, he turned in the direction where the cave he once called home was. One step at a time, he walked towards the cave, completely naked.

A while later, he finally arrived at the mountain range, and another moment, and he stood below the cliff, looking up, towards the cave. The cave looked the same as it always had. Elevated a few meters above ground, and as hard to reach as always. Ulfvaldr, however, simply jumped up there in one leap, and easily landed on one foot, then walked in as if nothing happened.

The cave was completely empty for living beings, as it often was at night, when the bats hunted. Slowly, he walked towards one lone corner in the cave, where his clothes were kept. He took his clothes and stared at them for a while; these clothes were the last thing he had to remind him of Tola. Tola had made them herself, but now it was the only clothes Ulfvaldr had. Thus, he wore them.

With his new outfit, he walked back towards the entrance. Before stepping out, he took one last look at empty cave; this place gave him so many memories; too many. This is the place he had spent the most time with Tola. He could even smell her faint scent, even though it had been over a year since they first left the cave. Smelling the familiar scent, his eyes teared up once more, before he finally turned around, and left the cave.

As the cave got further and further away in his background, Ulfvaldr made his way towards the nearest village he knew of. He walked in a steady pace, not being too slow, while also not hurrying. When the sun rose again, he found himself shelter, and the moon replaced it, he continued, until later, the next night, he arrived outside the village. This village was similar to the other one; a circular wall surrounding it.

Slowly, he walked towards the entrance to the gate, taking a single step at a time,

“I’ll kill everyone in this village, then I will continue to the next village, and the next, until I find her,” he said lowly, before he finally entered the village. In the middle of the village, there was a large bonfire going on, and there were festivities abound. Children, women and men were dancing and having fun. Some men and women were even being intimate with each other, and no one seemed to notice as Ulfvaldr walked into their midst.

At least not until he grabbed a child by the neck, and doused him in fire, making sure he burned well and good, before throwing the screaming child into a building. It was only then that they noticed, and the screams ensued. The women screamed in fright, while the men grabbed their knives and spears, and charged ahead.

As one man thrust his spear towards Ulfvaldr, he simply grabbed the man, doused him in fire, then threw him into another building. In only a few moments, four different villagers had been doused in fire, and thrown into four different buildings. As the buildings burst into the fire, several more men charged at Ulfvaldr.

Two men thrust their spears at the same time, one in front, the other from behind, Ulfvaldr simply stepped to the side, grabbed their spears and thrust them into each other. The two men looked at each other in disbelief as they were impaled, before they fell to the ground. Blood leaked out of their wounds, as one man swung his knife at Ulfvaldr’s back. As the knife drew nearer and nearer, Ulfvaldr grabbed the man’s arm, then kicked to the side, into the abdomen of another charging warrior. The unlucky warrior was sent flying and puked up a mouthful of blood. Meanwhile, Ulfvaldr stabbed the knife wielder into the abdomen, and threw him at another charging warrior, who immediately collapsed under the barrage.

One after the other, sometimes several at a time, they attacked Ulfvaldr with all they had, but no matter how hard they tried, they never even managed to touch him. For every swing of a knife or club, they lost an arm. For every thrust of a spear, they got impaled by an arm. And while these foolish villagers were being slaughtered in their own home, Ulfvaldr had a splendiferous feast, composed solely of blood.

For every other fool that attacked him, he would grab him by the neck, and sink his fangs into his throat. Almost every time he did this, another fool would see it as an opportunity and attack. However, without fail, it would always end up in that person’s death.

And like that, fifteen minutes passed. After only fifteen minutes, the entire village was soaked in blood, and burned to a crisp. In only fifteen minutes, Ulfvaldr had killed well over sixty souls, and enjoyed a sumptuous feast. As Ulfvaldr left the village, he left it full of both rotting and burned corpses. Without mistake, if anyone was to enter this village, they would be utterly abhorred, and might even puke their midday lunch up. That was the aftermath of Ulfvaldr’s rage on humanity, and that, was the beginning of humanity’s plight.

After leaving the village in its desolate state, he immediately continued towards the next village, with the exact same goal in mind. Utter annihilation. He wouldn’t rest until there wasn’t a single human being left on this earth. But with the steady pace, at which he walked, it took him an entire two days before he came upon the next village. This village didn’t have any walls surrounding it, and was left completely in the open. There were only a couple of huts; it was a small village. Maybe only a dozen people lived there, at most.

Thus, he walked towards the small cluster of buildings. There was no one outside at this time of the night, so he directly entered one of the buildings. Inside the building, there were three people. Two adults, and one infant. Of the two adults, the female didn’t look much older than Ulfvaldr did, and the man looked like he had aged a few more years. Silently, Ulfvaldr walked over to the three humans. The man and woman both slept side by side, with the young infant in between them. It seemed young, the infant. It couldn’t have been long since it was born.

“So young, yet so close to death’s door. That is the price to be payed, for being a human,” Ulfvaldr said, without waking them up. Ulfvaldr knelt down, and got closer to the naked woman, who was only covered by a fur blanket. He removed the blanket slightly, revealing her beautiful, tanned neck. As he felt the hunger swell up inside his depths, he neared closer, until his lips almost touched her neck. With a decisive motion, he opened his mouth, revealing the two, white fangs, and let them sink into the woman’s flesh. As the fangs penetrated her neck, slicing her artery, the blood immediately started flowing into his mouth. As he tasted the plentiful blood, he closed his eyes in pure ecstatic bliss.

Only a few moments passed, and the woman was already bled dry. She never even realized what happened to her. As he retracted his fangs from the, now dead girl, his eyes wandered over to the infant. As the infant entered his eyes, he felt a sudden urge; he had never tasted the blood of an infant before, so he grabbed the child without hesitation.

However, as he raised the child, and was about to sink his fangs into her, the father woke up. First he was groggy, but it didn’t take long until he noticed the cold body of his mate; she was much paler than ever before, and there were two bloodied holes in her neck. He started shaking her, not even noticed Ulfvaldr in front of him, but he quickly noticed that something was missing; his child wasn’t beside him. Immediately, he started looking around franticly, trying to find his daughter. It was only then that he noticed the tall figure, illuminated by the moonlight flowing in through the open doorway.

It was only then that he noticed his young child in the man’s grasp. Immediately, he jumped up, his hand tightened into a fist, as he was about to hit the stranger with all his might, However, that all changed the moment the stranger easily caught his fist in mid-air, and easily stepped towards him, and grabbed him by the neck. The young man finally started to fear, as this mysterious intruder easily lifted him off the ground, and started squeezing his neck to the point where he couldn’t breathe.

For the entire duration of the strangulation, Ulfvaldr kept eye contact with the man. As the man observed the eyes of his murderer, he didn’t see any hints of anger or maliciousness; he only saw annoyance, and coldness, it made him shiver to the deepest depths of his bones. And then, he finally started to fade away, as the asphyxiation slowly killed him. Finally, as his eyes closed; there sounded a loud crack, and the body fell to the ground.

By this point, the child had already awakened, and on her expression was neither fear, nor sadness. The child was completely careless, even as Ulfvaldr neared closer to its neck, and bared his fangs. The child simply didn’t even show a single strand of fear; it was only simplistic, innocent purity. Just before he was about to sink his fangs into her neck, he stopped. He pulled his face back, and looked at the child. The child gave an innocent laugh, and tried to reach for his face, as she saw his crimson eyes.

Then, for a reason he would never be able to understand, he left the hut, with the young infant in his arms. He didn’t kill the child, but held it with rough care, as he walked towards the fading bonfire, and grabbed a torch. Then, as he still held the child, he walked towards one hut after the other, and set fire to all them, killing all the inhabitants. But, in the end, he never hurt a hair on child, and even left with her. He didn’t even know her name, and he even killed the young child’s parents, but he still chose to leave with her in his arms.

Thus, he left behind yet another desolated village, yet this time he brought out a survivor. As he walked away, he looked at the child in his arms, who had already fallen asleep. Ulfvaldr truly couldn’t understand himself. He couldn’t fathom whatever it was that had urged him to take the child with him. It was simply unprecedented. He already held a deep hatred for humans, but something about this little child made him feel different; not for humans in general, just this one child.

The child was covered in a simple purity; it wasn’t tainted by the wickedness of humanity. It was a blank slate. It was then that he decided to really take the child with him, and protect her; raise her. Thus, he went deep into the forest, so deep that no one would ever wander there, for fear of the more primal predators. So deep that the roof of the forest wouldn’t let a single strand of sunlight in.

And when he finally found a forest that large, and managed to get that deep, he found himself a nice spot. There was a tiny little clearing, letting the smallest river flow through. When he got to that little clearing, he found himself a nice little spot, where he placed the little child, covered in a bundle of furs. Then, as the child rested nicely on the ground, he got to work. Of course, as he now had a child to take care of, he couldn’t just wander around constantly; he needed a new home. However, the old cave of his past was off limits, so he had decided to build himself a new home, deep in the forests where no one would disturb them.

Thus, he started felling tree after tree, until the once small clearing was just a bit larger. Then, he started placing the felled trees down, forming them into a wall, and tying them into place using whatever material he could get. Finally, after a few hours of work, he a had himself a little hut, complete with a roof. However, he still had several trees left, and the foliage left from them. These trees weren’t of the thick kind, and the thickest were barely a forearm in width.

That’s why he decided to tie them to the other, still living trees, making the frame of a roof above his clearing. As that was finished, he placed foliage on top of it, completely covering the clearing, and enshrouding it in total darkness. As it was now, he wouldn’t need to fear the rays of the sun while he slept.

And just as he finished, the sun did, in fact, rise. He also felt a bit tired, so he went to where he placed the little child, and grabbed her once more, and headed inside his brand new abode. The inside of the hut was pretty bare, as he hadn’t had the opportunity to make any kind of furniture. But it wasn’t like he wasn’t used to sleeping on the ground, so he simply lied down, and let the child sleep on top of his chest.

This was the first time he could remember feeling so close to a human, except for Tola. But this was different. He didn’t feel any lust towards this child; only pure curiosity. He wanted to see what she would grow up into; if she would be any different from the other humans. And thus, he fell into a deep sleep, as the sun rose in the horizon.

However, that didn’t last long, as he was suddenly awakened by the fierce cry of an infant! First, he tried to ignore it and continue sleeping, but after an entire hour of constant weeping and bawling, Ulfvaldr finally gave up on his dream of getting a good day’s rest, and sat up, grabbed the child’s body, lifted it up to his face level, and kindly asked,

“WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!” in the kindest, most sympathetic, most amiable tone possible. However, much to his surprise, the child didn’t actually stop crying, but only started weeping even louder, as if the kind words actually scared it, instead of calming the infant down. In the face of a crying infant, the vanquisher, the slaughterer of man, the plight of humanity, Ulfvaldr, wasn’t quite sure what to do.

In the face of this new calamity, he started lifting the child up and down, side to side, and even caressed its head and back, doing everything he could ever remember seeing anyone do to a baby, to calm her down. But she only continued crying. But then, as if he was struck by a sudden insight, a revelation; a truth of the universe! He had an idea.

“Maybe she’s hungry,” he thought aloud, looking into the closed eyes of the crying baby.

“Infants need milk right? I can hardly get any human milk, without subjecting her to the cruelty of humanity, though. I wonder if animal milk is fine?” He continued wondering aloud, as if the child needed to hear him, in case he needed to be stopped before he did something regrettable. However, the child didn’t understand speech, so she wasn’t quite able to help him in the matter. Thus, he set his mind on getting an animal, capable of producing milk, and left the hut after laying the crying child back to sleep.

However, as he left the hut, another worry struck him; what if a predator came into the hut, and ate the child? With a sigh, he walked back into the hut, and grabbed the child, before leaving again. But then, once more, as he left the hut, and headed towards the end of the clearing, he was met with yet another problem. It was daytime. The roof above the clearing had made him forget that it was, in fact, still morning. But he still needed to get the child some food, so he was quite perplexed.

But it didn’t take him too long to come up with another idea. Once more, he put the child back into the hut, before climbing up a tree, to find himself a hiding spot. He wanted to stay up there, until he could spot a milk bearing animal. And it seemed like he was in luck, as after only five hours of waiting, a large black animal, with large horns appeared. He recognised this animal. Tola used to call it an Auroch*, and they were often hunted for meat. He didn’t know how its milk production was, but judging from the utters on its belly, it at least possessed the ability.

*Aurochs are an early subspecies of the modern cow. They are said to have first appeared around 2 million years ago, and were first domesticated around 9,000 years ago. They went extinct in Poland, in the year 1627. And their huge.

As he spotted the Auroch, he quickly glanced around him, trying to find any penetrating sun rays, before he quickly, but sneakily charged at the cow. It was really big, about two meters tall, and it must have weighed at least a thousand kilos. But even a thousand kilos were doable by Ulfvaldr. As the Auroch noticed him, it tried to run away, but before it could, Ulfvaldr had already grabbed it by its horns and turned it around, felling it to the ground.

Then, he simply dragged it towards the hut, but even he had to admit that it was rather heavy. He still managed to quickly get it to the hut, though. But then, he was presented with another problem. He had to stop it from escaping. He wasn’t quite sure how to do that. He guessed that he could tie it down with a rope, but he doubted the Auroch wouldn’t be able to break the robe. But then, as he thought back to those old villages, he had an idea.

With his plan in mind, he started tearing tree after tree down, all while making sure that the Auroch didn’t escape, which was quite a task. After he finished, he started piercing the sharp ands of the trees into the ground, forming a thick and durable fence, where he could keep the Auroch. But even then, he reckoned that it would be able to break through. So, he simply fell even more trees, which he placed as supports behind the wall. After he was finally finished, the sun had already long set, when he walked into the hut, with a wooden cup of milk in his hand.

However, the child wasn’t crying. She simply lied in her little bed, her eyes barely opened, and looking generally weak. As Ulfvaldr saw this, he panicked and quickly rushed over to her side. Luckily for him, he could hear that her heart was still beating, albeit slowly. He immediately made the child drink the milk, which she quickly gulped down, even though it tasted differently than what she was used to.

As she drank the milk, she seemed to calm down, and slowly got better. And when the cup was empty, she fell asleep.

“I guess it wasn’t such a good idea to make her wait an entire day,” Ulfvaldr admitted, before sitting down in a relieved position. But he felt weird. He had actually gotten worried for the child.