Prologue

“No, no! The adventures first, explanations take such dreadful time.” - Lewis Caroll, ‘Alice’s Adventures [etc.]’

         

            After much consideration, contemplation, and a certain impatience in communication with the story... we thought it best to welcome you with background of what reality you're reading about.

            My name was Aaron Xavier. I was born on April 29th, 1344, in Estonia. That was when I learned with my younger brother, Kristopher, the art of monster slaying. And we were good. Absolutely too good. To be honest, so skilled were we in the slaughter of demons quite a many bemoaned our mortality.

Mortality! At the heart of the human condition, the truth of inevitable death.

But it was the legend of ages that unicorn blood and its consumption offered everlasting life. Much similar to the drinking water of youth. Even better, in fact.

We knew not the Pandora's Box soon to be opened.

Perhaps the fear of our mortal condition, perhaps the fear of a God for Whom we fought, and perhaps the fear of monsters succeed a day to get the best of us… Kristopher and I set out to sieze and kill for the precious blood of a unicorn.

Blood that gives immortality. Miraculous healing abilities. And an important understanding of the universe at large. It is so potent that its properties might be passed down from generation to generation and never tarnish its purity.

This of course is a sin of great magnitude. But obviously we have acquired, because I am speaking to you now.

We did not slay the unicorn.

In 1374, the Vampire Queen of Corruption tried to procure our newfound capabilities by claiming Kristopher her prince. It could have been me. But by the time I was incorruptible. Insurmountable and inviable. Already I ruled a throne of hell. And I slaughtered her before she lay one claw upon my brother. What we misunderstood was that should hell choose to seduce a human of viable use, action cannot be reversed without direct Divine Intervention.

We did not receive such Mercy. Perhaps we had met payment, for our treacherous meddling in ways of the eternal.

Kristopher was created vampiric by Eulisses, the Vampire King of Chaos.

Personally, I believe such ruling to be true of Kristopher’s personality.

At this time I had been married. Caroline, my wife, was pregnant before our theft of immortality. And she cared for Kristopher deeply, allowing him home with us despite his newfound vampirism. Perhaps my biggest mistake. My deepest regret. My most poignant of all sorrows. We housed a man thrust into the throes of such grief no human might hope to understand. For the power bestowed upon my brother was consuming him from the inside to the out…

It would culminate in five years of horror.

I started drinking more plentiful (I had always been alcoholic) to numb the pain and calm the nerves. Come time for my child to know the world… Caroline perished by hand of Kristopher. An accident of massive proportions, a tragedy of anger which came to Kristopher much too quickly for his change. My dear wife and child were razed to the ground before my very eyes. Were I not inebriated, perhaps immortality would ceased to have mattered for my heartbreak, pushed to such suicidal extremes the whole of Russia felt my pain.

Carrie became a pontaniak. This is a self-transformed creature arising vengeful from death of a woman in the midst of childbirth. A beautiful glutton seducing parents to be. Feeding upon their flesh in aftermath of tortuous slaughter. I had not the heart nor the resilience to kill her. Neither did Kristopher. We set her free despite the atrocities she would soon commit.

And did not catch sight of her for centuries to come.

Kristopher and I escaped the battles between Russians and Sweeds wreaking havoc at the time. Such death tolls the making of my own rampant aura… We sailed to America from England. Running. Fleeing. From the memories. The knowledge. The devastation. Vowing no such disaster would ever occur by our hands again. We became refugees of the pitiful variety. Such was the wild of America at the time, we found distraction in the making of cultures anew.

This is solely due to the prolific drinking (we alcoholics are clever in the procurement of intoxication). I could not assuage my guilt, I nursed grudge after grudge against Kristopher. I harbored such resentment my only solace was his companionship in the wilderness abounding trials infinite. When he finally reached the acceptance of his vampirism, I became the first heartbeat. Discovering that a person providing such a monster willingly: their essence. Purpose, nature, and soul to a newborn entity of evil, they gain opportunity to tame it.

Thus we now share in life force. The fiend humanized, the evil tempered.

I created, unwittingly, the first living vampire. Not to say a Prince of Chaos is something easily tamed…

If we fast-forward, it is now the twenty-first century. Kristopher is doing whatever it is that Kristopher does. By now, he has consumed his vampire father and succeeded as the next Vampire King of Chaos. I did much more than drink. The world was infected by my aura and I did not care for the consequences.

Within ninety days of Kristopher doing whatever it is that Kristopher does, the world as you currently know it was over. Ended. Obliterated. Demolished.

The population was cut from seven billion to approximately 285,714,285 (if we are generous in our arithmetic’s). And it was on a rapid decline…

Kristopher had revived legions in hell. By sacrifice of his own powerful blood.

Among these vicious armies, my former wife. No longer was she a pontaniak. Carrie as I had known her, she was beautiful as ever. Warm as ever. Human as ever. A true miracle born of the unicorn’s purity in Kristopher's blood. Brought to me in his triumphant embrace. I… was immediately swept away. In the romance, the relief, the love… such incredible feelings of companionship soothed my wounds of apocalypse and wrath.

I took her name in the marriage which followed. Thinking it best we were not associated with the destroyer of worlds... And though the information would come out later on, by then we had created a suitable villain on which to place the blame and thus spare Kristopher hatred should he come to visit us.

Long ago I had vowed never to have children. As an immortal of unicorn purity... such action was sure to damn them to life forever tortured.

Knowing, knowing, that…

We had a bit of a slip up…

On June 5th, 2201, Carrie and I brought Elijah Bones into the world.

And we did not stop with him.