Damned

by Forest Walker

Thak was one thousand and twenty eight years old. He was born into a lowly peasant family during the last stretch of the first age of light. Already anarchy was sweeping through High Alshtar when he was but a squalling infant. Civilization and the old ways attuned to it were being slowly eaten away by the dark tide of human decadence. It was an evil indulgence, cold in its ways yet burning in its hatreds. It was spreading like a loathsome cancer, consuming the very soul of the continent. The light and the fair born were soon surrounded by seas of turmoil, and the fall was as imminent as the ruin of a sand castle to the ever-hungry ocean's lapping claws.

Station in society no longer held any meaning. The strong took what they could, despoiled what they couldn't and the weak cried out to the storm blackened skies for mercy. They found none.

People looked for sources, could find none. As desperation mounted, reasons soon became obsolete. Reasons to kill were no longer necessary, and the harsh lunatic light of insanity was in every eye. No one could remember what had started the wars, some could hardly remember a time when there hadn't been blood on the fields and death in the air.

It was during his fifteenth year that Thak killed for the first time. His father was three years in the grave at the time, killed casually by passing mercenary's for the change in his patch-work pockets. Thak was but a man-child, yet he was the man of the family nonetheless. The fact that his family only consisted of his mother didn't bother him. What occasionally disturbed him was the fact that his father's permanent absence hadn't really affected him in the slightest. He sometimes felt that it should have, but thoughts like this came less and less frequently.

He was cold from the beginning. Thak was the end result of the land's violent contractions, the symbolic son of the tortured earth. He was as mortally wounded as this figurative mother, but this was not yet apparent to him. He simply reaped the benefits of his condition, oblivious to the fact that it would be the end of him as surely as the drugs of an addict will end such a slave's life . His soul was empty. His heart was dead. He reveled in it, was proud of the false strength he saw. That was not all.

Most of the time he viewed the world out of opaque, light brown eyes. Surroundings, events and the passage of time affected him not an iota. Everything was taken in his icy stride, nothing sparked his interest enough to arouse him. He felt no pain, yet there was no pleasure in his life either. Not until the day he was blooded.

His mother was returning home from the town, an hour's journey by foot. They lived in a small stone cottage, isolated from the rest of the world. Its only form of intrusion was the highway which ran east to west, half a mile away from their humble dwelling. His mother enjoyed the peace and quiet, the absence of the outside madness. It helped ease her grief, helped her forget that her other half no longer walked by her side. Thak was indifferent to the isolation. He didn't even bother to learn the town's name, he felt no need to know. Knowledge would soon become important to him. His mind was quick and able, but it drowsed within his frozen, uncaring spirit.

The attack was sudden. It was mindless, stupid. They had no possessions of value, nothing was left. The spirit of it was malicious and bitter in nature. The wandering soldiers simply felt the need to burn others in blood in fire. They were like the insane dogs who, foaming at the mouth, will chew off their own legs when caught in a steel trap. It was horrible to think that in this case the only steel trap was stupidity and mass human dementia. No one seemed to realize that death heaped upon death would not bring forth life. Thak's mother was killed quickly, the first arrow was a clean shot into her heart.

Thak stared at her fallen form with detached, emotionless eyes. Then he knew. Knew that his family was no more, that the responsibility was on him to kill in their name. He viewed it as a chore of sorts, no more pressing then the gathering of fire wood. This distant undercurrent of emotion, uncaring in nature, was about to be smashed. A glacier was about to open, to let loose its awful hoarded power.

There were five soldiers in total, renegades of some petty lord's garrison. They gathered around him in a circle, dropping their swords to the ground as they closed on him. Sneers of contempt were on every face, and under the sneers a naked hunger to inflict hurt. One of them gave a low rumble of delight, and he buried his ham-like fist in Thak's unprotected shoulder. The crunch of bone on bone sounded sharp in the still air as everything slowed down.

Thak looked down at his mangled left shoulder. The action seemed to take a lifetime. Slowly, he came to understand that he had been hurt. The pain was beginning to sing in his shoulder, it smoldered like wet wood. Emotions began to slowly swirl in him as he contemplated dreamily what had happened. A million miles away yet only two feet distant the beefy soldier balled up his large fist. Thak noticed this out of the corner of his eye, saw it happen in slow motion. Someone had touched him, left a mark. Invaded his privacy and disturbed his cold, lucid peace of mind.

The big soldier swung again, aiming for his intended victim's chest. Thak easily side stepped the blow with a natural grace. It was blindingly fast, a motion beautiful in its precise speed. The fact that it also seemed to be done almost absent mindedly on Thak's part slightly phased the soldier.

Thak's emotions were quickening. His mind was submerging into a red rage, and the glacier which had inhibited him from action was cracking, melting under the intense heat. He slowly bowed his head as he silently shook off his cloak of coldness. That part of his life was over.

Through his thick brown hair, a gleam could be seen. The soldiers laughed and stepped forward in anticipation, sure that the boy was resigned to his fate, his pain too acute to bear.

Thak's head snapped up abruptly. His eyes were blazing with an unholy fire, all the more terrifying for their complete sanity and clarity.

His right hand snapped forward, whip-like into the large soldier's throat. A slight sigh signaled his passage from the world, windpipe caved in.

The other soldiers immediately dove for Thak with a concerted roar, after staring for a split second at their fallen comrade. That half second proved to be fatal. Thak weaved in and out of punches, kicks and clumsy grasping hands. He took a fierce pride in his superiority, tasted his ability and found it to be sweet. Then he gave into his need, a need he suddenly realized and acknowledged.

His hard, oddly delicate fists began to flicker. Pressure points were caressed and pain was dealt out in red waves. Then Thak jack-knifed his whole body in a round house kick, breaking another soldiers neck with a dry snap. The rest was over very quickly as, for the first and last time in his life, Thak lost control of his killing urge. This is not to say that he did not enjoy it. Quite the opposite, the grimaces he saw on the pain twisted faces that day brought him his first draught of ecstasy. The loss of control was shown in the quick deaths he gave out. That deadly little dance could have gone on for hours, until the soldiers dropped dead of exhaustion. Thak felt their pain, drank it in. He desired more, and for the first time he found a course in his life. He wished to be a soldier, a leader of armies. He wanted to inflict pain on many, but unlike everyone else (or so he thought) he had a reason for it. It fueled him, gave him purpose and pleasure. Mostly, however, it was a dark seductive pleasure. Thak wished to give pain so that he would feel pleasure, and he wished to desperately for the knowledge of how to do this. He learned quickly during the dark times.

Thak killed untold thousands. It was but three years later that he threw down a mercenary prince and took his place. He unleashed his acquired army on his own land, always at the head and always in the thick of the fighting, killing the most and killing quickest. His career came to an end in his twenty eighth year, the year his humanity also came to an end. He finally plunged the entire continent into a singularly titanic, mad war of total human genocide. Everything was ending, and Thak was twisting with raw pleasure at the pain he saw around him. On the field of battle all were the same to him, women men and children all fell to his hands. Their screams were his delight, his bliss filled face was the last thing many ever saw. The balance in the energy plane of High Alshtar was shifting. Thak was about to end all life on the planet, and this did not please the Daemons of the nether plane. This shift in balance allowed them to once more roam free in the universe, but if human life were to end they would have no slaves, no objects to torment and no practical purpose. Thak was worse than most Daemons in that he cared not. The Elder Daemon CREED put an end to this.

Thak was stripped of his humanity and soul, cursed to life unending until he could find and obtain the highest of the emotions of light: love. He has reverted to his coldness again, and has no hope at all of ever being able to resume his life. The world turns, but Thak doesn't turn with it. He has been shown all that he has inflicted, and he has come to burn with his damnation.