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Introduction

Sometime near the end of the 10th Century, a wealthy gentleman, whose name
is now lost to history and need not concern the readers, abandoned house
and fortune for the love of a wild eyed country girl. His family, the
owners of vast lands from the east, disinherited him. But with the aid of
providence and the support of the country girl's family he was able to
establish the Passing Goose, a crossroads tavern in the outsquirts of the
town.

The east was expanding by the close of the 10th Century, and business
boomed for the Passing Goose with all of the pilgrims and travelers
crossing into the thriving western towns. The tavern had good fame for
hearty spirits, suculent venison and partridge, and a graceful, wild eyed
hostess. It soon came to be that a visit to any town, be it east or west,
was not complete without a visit to the Passing Goose. And the disinherited
gentleman was very happy, and never thought of dark things.

When the 11th Century dawned, though, the gentleman's wild eyed wife died,
the victim of a senseless brawl at the tavern. The entire town mourned her
passing, and news of her death circled for days. A few pilgrims stoped by
the Passing Goose to leave flowers beneath the wall that still bore the
stain of the beautiful wife's blood, spreading outwards as if in the shape
of a rose.

But as the months drew on, fewer people stoped by, and the tavern fell on
hard times. The disinherited gentleman strived his hardest to salvage his
business, but following the death of his wife, he had succumbed to heavy
drinking. He would engage in long bouts that would leave him unable to walk
and limp and useless in the arms of the dockside prostitutes he frequented.

He had been returning home one dark night, drunk and listless, when he
toppled off from the old town bridge. Bundled in heavy winter coats, his
splash had been a muted, easily dismissed affair. Too drunk to move his
arms or swim, he had gone under quickly, his moans buried in the ice and
slush. His body, frozen and stiff, had dawned by the sewage rails, covered
by refuse and stripped of all valuable possesions by street urchins. Naked
and heavy, they had pulled him up from the water, to be buried at the town
church the next day.

Existing records mark his burial date as January 6th, 1018, and his burial
place as the Convent of the Sisters of Our Lady of the Sacred Veil.

January 6th, 1028 11:27pm

It was a cold night, the snow lying packed and undisturbed by the
roadsides, coloring the landscape a shimmering, blinding white. Piercing
winds blew in from the north, bitting at the skin, numbing the senses. A
preternatural silence hung in the air, cutting to the bone with its uneasy
stillness. Nobody in his right mind would be walking outside in such
weather. Nevertheless, there was.

With a curse, rising from his throat like a growl, he tried to wrap his
miserable cloak about him. The winds found their way through every crack
nonetheless, chilling him. He stoped in the road for a moment, hugging his
shoulders, doubling over as a fit of violent shivering overtook him. He
tried to curse again, but he couldn't work out the words. His lips stung,
and he knew they must be cracked. He had to find some shelter soon, or he'd
freeze to death.

Darting a wearied look to the side, he felt sharp pangs of hope warm his
heart. There, standing by the far side of the road, lay a ramshackle house.
Its windows were boarded up crudely, most of the glass panes having
shattered over time. The door had been bent in, allowing him easy entry. He
could see the splinters had been capped off and around by thick icycles.
But a shelter was a shelter, no matter how dilapidated. Murmuring a prayer
of thanks to his saint, he trodged towards it, hoping that he could find
some loose boards to build a fire with.

As he stepped through the door, he fumbled through his coat pockets for his
box of matches. His hands shook incontrolably as he tried to light one, and
it seemed as if he would never get the flame going. Disgusted, he threw
away his third damaged match and pulled out a new one. He was about to drag
it over the ignition strip when he heard a sound, he could not tell from
where, rise up in his ears. It was like a low growl, but no animal he knew
of made such a sound. It sent shivers up his back, causing him to drop his
box of matches. Taking a few steps backwards, he darted hurried looks into
the corners of the room. Thick darkness met his gaze, thick and intangible,
rising up almost palpably before his eyes.

OhGodOhGodOhGodOhGod

The growling came again, above him, answered by the groan of the rafters.
The scittering of many fingernails rushing over wood flooded the silence
for a minute, seeming to flutter across his temples and lodge at his heart.
Pressing his back against the wall, gropping for the door, he prayed they
were only rats, nothing but rats. With a choked cry of relief, his hand
alighted on the cold, metal handle of the door. He wrapped his fingers
around it.

A shiver ran through him, as if someone had dropped cold water down his
back. The handle shouldn't be so warm, not so firm and pulsing with life. A
scream rose in his throat, but he never had a chance to utter it before he
felt the raking of claws, thin and cruel, race across his stomach. He
heard, more than felt, his thick blood spatter into the wall and the sleeve
of his coat. Red needles of pain shot into his brain, a sickening pulse
lodging into his throat.

Through a haze of pain, he looked up into two bright yellow orbs, which
narrowed in cruel pleasure. He would have screamed again, but the pain in
his stomach would not let him. He watched, helpless, as the two orbs roved
over him, the claws digging into his stomach tightening as he was lifted
off the ground. In his pulsating pain, he could not tell whether he had
been moved from his place, or simply lifted for inspection. All his
thoughts scattered in white flashes rising from his belly. The room seemed
to be spinning around him. He could feel something moving inside of him,
flicking over his bloody, gored organs, then climbing upwards into his rib
cage. He heard tearing sounds, followed by sharp rushes of pain, then the
sickening sound of jaws chewing. The next moment, there was a heavy
preassure on his chest, and the ground was rushing up to meet him.

He lay there for what seemed like the longest time, crumpled, broken, and
bleeding. He felt felt the rush of a whistling wind come from above him,
and in the next instance somebody, or something, was standing beside him,
poking at him with its foot. whatever it was wore boots. He heard himself
groan, the sound accompanied by a low laugh, which rose higher and higher
till it made the rafters ring. It was not a human laugh, but high-pitched
and feral in quality, freezing his blood. Panic, a helpless, maddening
panic, was rising in his throat, choking his heart.

He heard a faint whisper of rustling fabric, and then there was a breath at
his ears, causing him to shudder. He tried to pull away, but found that he
could not. The pain it caused was too great. He closed his eyes tightly,
feeling as the breath slowly became lips, then a voice, low and mocking,
whispering to him.

"You're frozen stiff, man. Your stomach has been the worst thing I've eaten
in some time."

The words scarcely died away in his ears before he felt himself being
lifted. His lucidity was beginning to abandon him, and could no longer make
out anything around him, only movement, as if he were the pivotal point in
a spinning world. He could feel nothing, see nothing. He knew he was dying,
but the shock of how he had met his death took any fear he would have had
away from him. He spared one, fleeting thought to the thing that had killed
him, wondering what it was, where it had come from. He had a vague notion
of some sort of comotion going on in the northern regions. People spoke
about an Azel and a Rauresu, but he had never paid much attention. Maybe he
should have. But maybe it wouldn't have matered.

"You're a lot cuter than I expected," came the voice again. But it died
away quickly, his senses closing faster than he could realize, till he was
enveloped in darkness. In soothing, forgiving darkness.

3:12am

The fire was begining to die out, the few, worm eaten pieces of wood he had
fed into it cracking and smoldering. With a sigh of disgust, he poked at it
with a stick, stirring up a few, weakling flames that died down as quickly
as they sprang to life. With a curse, he abandoned the miserable fire to
itself, rising to go to the door. Outside, darkness still enveloped the
land, the stillness of the undisturbed snow making it seem as if he stood
at the mouth of some strange desert, where the sands were white and
glittered in a feeble attempt at echoing the night stars.

He looked up at those stars now, his thoughts drifting over a million inane
ideas. Stars are stupid. Stars are pretty. I did not think that. Stupid
balls of gas. He shook his head, trying to clear it of his ridiculous
thoughts. Strifling down a yawn, he leaned back against the dilapidated
posts of the door. His stomach hurt. It was empty save for the frozen
entrails of that man he had attacked earlier, and they had left a vile
taste in his mouth. He spat at the snow, drawing his hand over his mouth
afterwards. He knew there was no other food to be found in this place.
Everything was either burrowing underground, or freezing to death, and
therefore inedible. He liked his meat raw, and he wasn't about to cook it
just to warm up the hide.

He was about to give in to his desire to yawn when he heard a groan come
from inside the house. A grin spread across his lips, and he pushed himself
away from the doorway, walking to where the sounds came from. He squated
down and reached out to pat the man's head.

"About time."

He saw the man start up and try to move away from him, only to double over
in pain and grasp at his stomach. His misery was evident in every line of
his body, but soon, as soon as the man realized that he was moving,
actually alive, and touching what appeared to be bandages, surprise began
to register in his eyes. A disconcerted surprise, one that could not grasp
anything, and was probably not even trying to. Leaning back against the
wall, the thing that had attacked him grinned to itself, delighting in the
man's actions as he looked first at himself, then at his surroundings, and,
finally, in its direction.

The man tried to move his lips, striving to form words. The thing watching
him allowed him to muddle at it for a couple of minutes before it bared its
teeth at it, noting with satisfaction as the man shrank back, trembling. He
seemed about to cry, and his companion snorted.

"Ke. You're not gonna start crying on me, are ya? And shut that mouth of
yours, something'll crawl in, fester in there, and you'll die."

The man wrapped his arms tightly around his stomach, shivering as he
watched the creature with a mixture of terror and curiousity. It looked
like a man, just like any other man. But this man had pointed ears, which
he reached up to scratch at, much like a dog would, with one curved, clawed
hand. His other hand, the left one, seemed to be perfectly human, but his
eyes were none a human would have, and his teeth were much too sharp, fangs
showing when he grinned. This seemingly half-beast man was watching him
quietly, and it seemed to the man that he too was curious.

"W-what do you want f-from me...?"

His companion snorted again, picking at its teeth with a fingernail from
its right hand. The man swallowed and repeated his question, this time more
clearly. The beast across from him did not seem intent on hurting him, its
body was too releaxed. Besides, hadn't it said he did not taste good?
Perhaps he had a chance to escape from his nightmare situation. He was
cetainly trying his chance.

"I'm not gonna do anything with you," the beast said, eyes closed in
annoyance as it tried to pick out a piece of meat stuck between its lower
canines. Its, no his, eyes fluttered open, and he smiled at the man
cowering away from him.

"But you might do something for me. If you want to live, my friend."

The man set his lips in a thin line, believing he had found his chance with
this beast. He tried to hold its eyes, praying to God, His Holy Mother, the
Angels, and every saint he knew of that none of the paralizing fear he felt
showed in his eyes. He supposed God had chosen to be particularly
benevolent with him that night, because the thing seemed satsified with
what he saw in his eyes.

"What do you want?" he asked. "I'll do anything. Just don't kill me."

The beast man grinned, spitting at the ashes of the dead fire at his right.
"I already said I wasn't going to hurt you, little man. Now listen."

Leaning towards him, the beast put its hands over the man's shoulders,
drawing him close in a conspirational whisper. The man tried not to shudder
or pull away, sitting rock still under the thing's pungent aroma of flesh
and frost. It placed its clawed hand over his neck, and he could feel his
pulse begin to throb.

"I want you to kill somebody for me."

The man blinked, taken aback. "K-kill somebody...? But can't you--"

The claw tightened around his neck. "You're not listening, my friend. I
need you to kill for me because I am under an obligation to not do so. Not
this one man I want dead. So you will do it for me."

With each one of his last words, the beast tightened his grip on the man's
neck, its nails digging into the skin. When he finally released him, the
man doubled over, gasping for breath. The thing watched it for a moment,
rising to stand above it. It smiled.

"You will start tomorrow. I don't expect you to do it in one day."

Looking up at it, the man narrowed his eyes. "But how will I kill him?" he
asked, for in his desire to live, he could not even give one thought to
taking another man's life. His companion merely smiled again at his
question, fangs showing in the dim moonlight.

"You'll see when you meet him. His name is Roderick, and he bears the mark
of Azel. But you will kill him for me, you little, precious human. You will
kill Roderick."

January 7th, 1028 9:50am

Coming Soon--

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Ok. For all of those who are here reading. First of all, thanks, eh?
Second. Well, my dear university's keeping me very busy, so I'm not sure
how fast I'll be able to HTML this up into the page. I'll try my best to go
swiftly, though. Bear with me-- Kanda kanda!