Before moving on, we cut down all four of the crucified men and gave them a proper burial.
As we performed this grisly task, I couldn't help but be reminded of the creature that had made me a vampire. A ruthless fiend, he had crucified some of the Gray Stone People, our Neanderthal neighbors to the south, placing them in our path when we went in search of the monster's lair. I suppose it was meant to frighten us away, those crucified figures. Bodies contorted in agony. Guts torn out and hanging. And they did frighten us. But I did not let my fear rule me, not then, when I was a mortal man, and I certainly wasn't going to let fear turn me away now.
My maker.
I did not know his name. I have never learned his name. I know only that he was a Foul One. The Foul Ones were a clan from the icy regions to the north of our tribal lands. Filthy, degenerate creatures, they seemed more animal than man to us. They sharpened their teeth into fearsome fangs and adorned their bodies with the bones of the men and women they devoured. My people battled the depraved cannibals for generations. I am fairly certain that was the tribe that had produced my brutal maker, or one very like it.
I can still see him swooping down upon me in the moonlight, his feathered cloak spread out to resemble the wings of a carrion bird, eyes burning in their sockets like hot coals. He held me captive in a charnel pit, forced the Living Blood upon me, meaning to enslave me. But the Blood made me a powerful Eternal, and I destroyed my maker shortly after.
Just as I meant to destroy the God King.
They were very much alike, Khronos and my maker. Brutal and cunning. Insatiable and pitiless. There was a pleasing symmetry to this. My life had come full circle.
I do not think I'll ever know why fate sees fit to cast me in the roll of savior. I've never fancied myself a warrior, much less a great one. I am more of a lover, I think. And a father. I'd much rather be entertaining some grandchild by the hearth, or easing my cock into the well-rounded backside of a lover—male or female, it matters not to me-- than wage war on my fellow man, regardless how just that battle might be. I do not understand why any man would rather fight than fuck.
Perhaps they are just really bad at fucking.
Khronos held some rather strange ideas when it came to sex. The culture he hailed from had been an exceptionally brutal one. Born at the advent of the last glacial maximum, the world he grew up in had been particularly poor, with little food and long, hard, unforgiving winters. His people had eaten the flesh of their dead, hunted and ate their Neanderthal neighbors. They did not even name their children their first year of life. The infant mortality rate at that time was just too terrible.
Their lives were hard. Only the strongest, the most cunning and cruel, could survive in such an unforgiving environment, and their customs towards sex were just as inhumane. Rape and the brutalization of their women was a common thing. The men often murdered their sexual rivals. Not a single aspect of his culture had been soft or forgiving in any way. And it had made a monster of him.
Violence aroused him because he was raised in an environment in which violence was necessary to the procreative act. Every competitor he killed improved his chances of mating and successfully rearing his young. He brutalized his mates for the very same reason. But times had changed. He was a dangerous anachronism now. If his influence were allowed to spread any further, mankind would become trapped in a hopeless death-spiral of self-parasitism. I had seen it. I had seen it in his Blood. I had seen it in his soul.
He had to be put down.
Now.
While there was still a chance of stopping him.