Fragmented Afterthoughts Chapter Six:
The Heart of Midnight

Chapter Six:
The Heart Of Midnight

The Great Master swept down his halls furiously, cloak flowing behind him as he moved impatiently
further into his keep. Tapestries on the walls, containing bloody pictures being re-animated by the magic of
the place, kept still until he had passed them; nobody dared to bother him when he was in such a mood. Not
even the inanimate.

He would kill every last one of them.

His cold eyes, hidden by the ever-present hood which he wore, surveyed his keep, rather vexed. His
deciphels should have been back by now, the little snake-men which he had all rights to call his minions.
They had set out on a mission to be spies into the underground lair of the Team Rocket site. He wanted all
information possible on them now, as he had lost to them last time he had fought. It further annoyed him to
bring up such a memory, and the cold air about him caused the stones on the walls to glaze with a slight
layer of frost.

He would kill every last one of them.

Bringing his hurried pace to a halt and entering a main room, namely the entrance room to his small
castle, he paused and waited for his deciphels to return. Assuming a regal position on a stone chair, he rested
upon it breifly. Though this rest should have been comforting, it would be nothing like the one he so yearned
for; that of death. In some ways, he confused even himself; all his minions would soon be growing out of the
stage of being too young to understand their Master's ways, and soon they would be able to handle
themselves. Soon they would learn the truth.

He would kill every last one of them.

It wasn't that he didn't want them to follow in his footsteps; he was merely afraid that they would
someday overcome im and then they would be the rulers of his land and soon, the entire world on which they
lived. But that was not his present concern. He was not undead, so why should he want for the lifeless
existence it gave? Despite rumours and talk behind his back, he was not at all what they assumed him to be; a
lycanthrope, a vampire, one of the living undead... he preferred to keep it that way. Let his little ones be left
in mystery their whole lives. Then they would not be able to protect themselves against him when his wrath
finally bore down upon them. And then, smiting the few beings who were left, he, by himself, would rule
supreme. Anyone left would die a horribly painful and long-endured death.

He would kill every last one of them.

Resting his head against one of his hands brought up to his cheekbone, he found himself staring at
the main set of doors which led into his keep. What had been taking the snake-men so long? Whatever it
was, it only caused him to be further irked by their tardiness.

He would kill every last one of them.

Finally, not long from that point, a hissing sound, like gravel upon gravel, emerged from the front
of the castle. Had he had a heart, it would have beat, but the Great Master only wanted his information, and
nothing more. Moments later, the door opened, and a small, copper-brown head poked out of the opening,
looking towards the Master and freezing with fear. The head was neither serpentine nor human, but a
warped version of both; the snout turned outwards, yet it had a mouth, and it's eyes were set further to either
side than to the middle, as a serpent's should be. That head was soon followed by a gray-green one, and then
a rather pretty shade of brown-blue.

"Sssir," the first one started, moving forward and out of the doorway. It's torso was erected upon a
serpentine body as well, though it had two arms and hands, though only two fingers and an opposable thumb
outstretched from the hand. There were no legs, or anything remotely like legs; just the twisting, coiling
lower half of a snake.

"You are late," the Master said, his deep voice harsh and oppressing as he glared at them, tiny
points of gold-red light dancing from his eyes.

"Ah, yesss," the serpent said. "Myssself and my brothersss, you sssee, we were nearly dissscovered,
and we wisshed not to-"

"SILENCE!" the Great One thundered. "You returned late!" He allowed himself to calm down
partially before continuing. "Your oath to me was to fufill my whims as you were directed, and, of thusfar,
you have failed to do so with a passion." The Master turned his eyes on the gray-green serpent. "Nahari.
Surely you have something to say to your master," he said, then rested them on the brown-blue one,
frowning. "Or you, Kiri."

Kiri and Nahari both looked incredibly embarassed by their tardiness, but said nothing. The main
snake-man, Polsara, continued. "We were afraid they would ssspot usss, O Great One, may your name
caussse pessstilence."

"This does not please me," The Lord said, standing up and unnerving the serpent-man to say
anything further. He thoughtfully turned his back on them as they drew nearer, and thought a moment.

The serpents had their way, The Great One knew. One always told the truth, one always told lies,
and the third one would speak in nothing but riddles and give neither a false nor true lead. It would have
been no hard task to figure out which was which normally, but they would always shift their personalities to
further confuse him, and it was hard, often, to tell which was which, for they shifted in neither pattern nor
any other type of lead. Putting a hand carefully at his chin, trying to phrase his questions so that they couldn't
be avoided any way, whether it was the neutral, good, or bad serpent speaking.

"And you are saying to me that you would have been caught had they seen you? What would they
do to you? Torture you?" The Great One turned to them again, his eyes glinting maliciously. "They are not
so cruel. And if they were, it would be no hard thing to find another race of creature suited to the task, ones
that did not tickle my patientce such as you."

This was in part true. The snakes had dutifully served him over the course of over a year or so, and
it would be hard to replace them, though they did irk him so by their trading of positions. It was a common
thought of his whether or not the snakes did it deliberately to annoy him, or whether this was truly the way
they were. Even at this point, he knew not their race, and could not easily find any others like them.

Nahiri spoke first, his green-tinted skin gleaming by torchlight as he slithered forward, undulating
unpleasantly. "They might have," he said quietly, his lisp of his race coming clearly through on even his non-
"s" words. Licking his scaled lips, he continued. "And in sssuch, they would have taken no information. Or
would they have? Could they have, my Great Lord, may your name caussse fear beyond belief?"

The Lord Of Soon To Be considered this, and made a note that Nahiri would be the one giving the
neutral information this day. "You, then, Kiri. Tell me why you are so late. And tell me what happened in
that place."

Kiri looked first to Polsara before speaking to his master. "We are late due to the enourmousss
tunnelsss that are usssed to get in to the keep, O Lord Of All, may your name caussse plague."

The Great Being frowned, but not visibly, as his serpents shrank once more, to their original size of
little more than a foot big. Polsara nodded assent to what Kiri had said, but Nahiri only sat and looked down
at the floor, averting his eyes from The Lord's view.

"And then what?" he asked, his anger only growing stronger, and he felt the first waves of pain that
came with his power surging through his body.

Kiri evidently noticed the change, for he backed up slightly, undulating his coils in a sinister way as
he looked down at them. "We found out nothing, Sssire." He winced, cowering, and held his claws up at his
face.

The Lord feigned sorrow at this news, and shook his head. "A pity," he said, stepping back over to
the throne and sitting down on it, staring down at the floor.

Kiri was nearly beyond himself with relief when he had seen his Lord sit down, it was obvious to
tell it the way he relaxed. But it was not for long.

"Nahiri and Kiri. Come here." The Master said nothing further, only glared at them as he once again
stood up, the fire in his eyes growing stronger to only Polsara's view. The other two snake-men were
drawing themselves slowly forward, wincing with every curve of stone underneath them. It seemed almost
eminent they would be punished for not gaining any information.

Nahiri opened his mouth, hissing hurriedly, "Sssire, pleassse, do not lasssh usss again! 'Twasss
painful enough lassst time! Sssire, I beg of you-"

"Hush, shhh," The Great One said, as if comforting some quailing child. "I will not lash you."

Kiri gave a wail of distress. "Sssurely The Massster hasss sssomething elssse more deviousss
planned, Nahiri! You fool, you musssn't have reminded him-!"

He, too, was cut short by The Ultimate Being. Polsara remained quiet in the background, silently
surveying what his two brothers would suffer for lying. It was he, in fact, who had been the one witholding
the true information.

The Master stepped over to where the snake-men were, and smiled down at them. The moonlight
glistened off of what couldn't be described fairly as a tooth, but something resembling such. "Come now, I'm
not going to punish you. Just giving you a last chance to answer me correctly."

The two brothers looked at each other. Surely they couldn't do such; it was not a routine which
they followed by their constant switching of roles in truth and fakery. It was, indeed, an oath that their race
must make, and seeing as how there were so make snake-people born into a family, it was each three snakes
that were paired up to do such. But of course, The Being knew nothing of this.

"We cannot," Nahiri said hoarsely, and closed his eyes in defeat. "Pleassse, Sssire, do not harm
usss! We will make ammendsss-!"

Nahiri was cut short as a large boot was slammed down onto his spine, and he flailed wildly for a
moment before collapsing, dead. His eyes rolled up in his head, and a yellow, sap-like blood oozed from his
back, where charcoal-grey bone stuck out of it. His ribcage, too, had been crushed, and there had been a
sickening sound as it had crunched under The Master's boot.

Polsara and Kiri stared at their fallen brother, but made no sound. They were lucky it had not been
them who had suffered the anger of their Master.

"Go. Now. And you will make do for what has happened here. You will be able to serve me just as
well, if not more efficiently in the future. GO!" The Lord bellowed at the snakes, and they hissed with fright,
sliding for the hall into which they could escape.

Looking down upon the mess that was Nahiri, The Almighty One wiped his boot disgustedly on the
snake-man's scales, watching as the body leaked still more fluid onto his stones. It really wasn't a problem at
all. Now there would only be two to decipher from, and there would always be one who would tell the truth.
But, oh, such a waste of good scales.

The Master sighed, or emulated such a motion, as he lacked lungs with which to produce such a
sound. But it was nonetheless a point of him being exasperated. The lights in his eyes died down somewhat,
and he kicked the corpse of the snake as he walked down into the hall opposite from which he had originally
come.

Climbing stairs, passing many bedrooms, and heading up to one of the utmost highest turrets, The
Dark One stopped, collecting his wits about him, looking around. It was a foolish thing for the snakes to
have no recorded any information. Stepping out and up, The Sire found himself staring up at the moon. It
shone brightly down upon him, the stars around it gleaming with inner beauty. But such matters were not
important.

The reason he was so hard-pressed to find information about the base was because of it's
inhabitants. The damned little fools had hidden themselves away numerous times, and seemed to multiply
more quickly than the corpses that The Being could find to raise from the graves of towns and cities. They
seemed not to care about what happened to the dead; the townsfolk only cared long enough to bury them,
bid farewells, and never look back again.

Which was a mistake.

Had they bothered to look, all the graves would have shown as empty; no more corpses littered the
underground, as they had all been raised as an army to serve The Lord. He had a great many lycanthropes
about him, as he did the living undead, but few amoung these were what he most desired to sneak in and kill
the base's inhabitants.

Vampires.

The foolish little ants at the base had thought all the newcomers only slightly out of the norm, pale
skin not giving them away in the least. It was only amusing now that the great one had the powers and
means to get inside. All he needed was the right vampires, the right moment to strike...

He was snapped out of his thoughts by a throaty sound, one that sounded like a rubbing of rocks
together, or, to the living's horror, bones.

A skeleton had shuffled up to his Master, wearing armour that had been long since gone, perhaps
maybe since the 14th century. It hung loosely on his yellow, scabrous bones, showing all that was inside. A
fleshless skull stared out at The Lord from inside a helmet, the visor raised so that tiny red pnpricks of light
could be seen from inside of it. It stared at The Lord as if some part of it's human essescance remained,
though it's individuality kept through past the afterlife.

"Uhhhrrrr.." the quiet creaking of bones spoke to The Sire. Though the skeleton would have been
able to talk, it had been apparently disabled in some war before The Great One had found it. It's lower jaw
was gone, and only the top row of teeth were visible through the helmet as well. It hardly mattered, since
this distinguished it apart from the other hundred or so skeletons that served The Grand Being.

"Ah. Garag. You seem to have come in on my thinking again. Is that because you have no brain in
that hollow skull of yours?" The Lord asked rheotorically, smiling evilly and looking back up to the moon.

"Uhhrrrr," Garag said, and the shifting of dust that rose in the air told The Master that the skeleton
had nodded, releasing a small amount of dust from where his spine and head connected.

Skeletons were partly magical, partly just good luck. In this world, however, and unknown to most,
it was magic that kept the damned things together. And indeed, they were damned, as they were forced
forever to walk the earth, the temptation of the eternal sleep in front of them, but always out of reach. It was
nearly impossible for the skeletons to sleep again. But their magic... ah, what wonder!

A transluscent webbing formed over the joints, and that kept them together. Normally, when a
skeleton would be able to talk, it would be due to pushing air past the webbing. But also, there was no air to
push with, so how was this possible? It was all part of the enchantment of the creatures.

Howsoever, The Great One was in no mood to be amused by the simplicity of the magic on the
skeletons. He would have continued pondering this subject had he not heard another soft noise behind him.
Unblinkingly, he stated calmly, "Dark Eve, vampire."

Only half-aware of the being behind him, The Lord turned his thoughts back to the sky and the
headquarters. Yet, a snarling arose from behind him as a hand roughly grabbed onto his shoulder, trying to
spin him around to face the nosferatsu in question. Annoyed, The Sire waved it off with a short burt of
psychic energy, and, for good measure, pushed the owner of the arm back as well.

"What're you tryin' to do?" the vampire behind him asked, snarling once again. It finally occured he
woud have to turn to face and deal with his little one. Sighing and rotating on the balls of his feet, The Great
Being turned to look at his dark child, his spawn.

The creature angrily glared at him, tossing his head casually to remove a strand of brown hair from
between his eyes. Dark, brooding eyes peered out from a macabre face, and the dark red fabric of his
vampire's trenchcoat glistened with blood in the moon. The Lord Of Soon To Be glared at him, and he felt
the creature shy not one inch away from his elder.

"What bothers you so, Zaerenz? You are usually hunting at this point in time. Why have you come
back so early?"

Zaerenz glared at his predessescor, and spoke once again in a voice heavily laden with a Welsh
accent. "D'you think I haven't been out there already tonite?" Here he motioned towards his trenchcoat. "I've
been rather successful in my huntind grounds, 'Da', but in all good ways I mean to say you're takin' your
damned sweet time in gettin' on with your plans. I've just back from the base isself, an' I've just got to say
that they're down one member."

Zaerenz licked his lips, giving a satisfactory look to the skeleton who had now turned to face him.
Motioning to the skeleton and moving his gloved hand up to his mouth, Zaerenz stage-whispered, "D'you
think you kin get rid of 'im? Gives me the creeps." Straightening up, he smiled cockily at his elder, crossing
arms and tilting his head. "C'mon, 'Da'. You've nothin' to say for yourself?"

The Dark Lord frowned upon this type of behaviour. It was true that this may have been one of his
best and most trusted servants, but the young vampire irked him in a way that he felt unnessescary. Which,
knowing the boy, it was. "I know you've been out tonite, and for the Goddess's sake, wipe your mouth. Not
only is that disgusting, it's frowned upon by society. You want to go swaggering around with blood on your
face?"


The skeleton thought nothing of this, and simply continued to stand there and stare at the two
fleshed beings.

The Sire snarled to himself, and continued maliciously. "I would normally congratulate you on a
successful mission to kill someone from the headquarters, but what exactly did you do with the body? Please
tell me you didn't leave it there for them to find."

The vampire's grin faded, and he turned, scrubbing vigorously at his mouth. When he turned back
around, he looked sideways to the ground and put a hand behind his head, at his neck and smiled sheepishly.
"Well, not exaclt,y I... thought mebbe some o' the others woulda taken care of it."

The Lord started trembling with rage as a wave of pain swept through him, and his red eyes flashed
angrily. "You WHAT..?" he hissed through clenched teeth.

Zaerenz looked up, placing both hands back over his chest and sneering at his Master. "Oh please,
'Da', I think that someone oughtta have gotten to it by now. and if they find it, they find it. S'no big deal. I
mean, really, I just have to say-"

Not the first one that day, Zaerenz was cut short by his elder seizing him up by the neck and
shaking him furiously, his other hand at his side and Zaerenz simply lay there. There was little need for him
to breathe, though it was still something that helped to keep vampires active, so he glared at his elder from
over The Sire's arm, which had shown little through the grey cloak that kept him so secret. The arm was
black as midnight, and red, like snakes, entwined down it to the hand itself, which was also covered in grey
cloth.

"You ignorant, stupid, annoying, damned little boy! How dare you! You didn't take care of it at
ALL?! I WILL MAKE YOU SUF-"

The Dark Lord let go as his whole body shook, and his body was slowly engulfed in a dark light
that eminated cold. Zaerenz dropped, landing neatly on booted feet as he rubbed his neck tenderly, watching
his father with a grim, frightened expression. The Master held his head, and then he raised his head, the
flames in his eyes growing larger. The skeleton reflected nothing but the same battle fever from his master's
eyes, and he stood at attention, loosely relaxed because of his bony form.

Zaerenz looked solemnly to the form of his elder, blinking down at it as it slowly stood up, using
the skeleton as a balancer. The vampire's pale skin shone in the moonlight, now counter-acting the dried
blood on his trenchcoat. The dark light around The Great One's body slowly faded, as did the coal-fire in his
eyes, and he glared at his little one as he stood importantly tall above him. "Go. Get rid of the corpse, and
take care of your damned buisness at that base. If I ever catch you looking like you have been right now, let
me just say that I will make your undead little life an incredibly unpleasant existence. Go. Now."

Zaerenz shook that same strand of hair from between his eyes once more, looking at his elder
blandly. "As you wish," he growled gutterally, and slunk off, trenchcoat flaps trailing behind him with an air
of annoyance.

The Sire looked at his servant, and the skeleton felt annoyance emenate from his master.
"Uhhhhhhhhhhhrrrrrrrr..." he grinded, trying valiantly to reassure him that this was merely a slight
annoyance, that things would go his way, but The Dark One only shook his head, motioning with a hand for
Garag to follow him down, back into the castle.

As they wound down the stairs leading to the main hall once more, The Great Being thought
carefully of what had just happened. That vampire of his was going to create more trouble, no matter what
he did to prevent that fact.

"Uhhhrrr..." Garag started once more, but The Sire frowned up at him, which the skeleton's evil
eyes saw into the cloak for.

"Do not worry, my good friend. I killed you so long ago for one reason, and that was to make sure
you never spoke again," The Dark Lord sad, smiling back up at his minion evilly. "Come now. I will make
sure that these stupid creatures will die. All humans are destined to, as are the stupid creatures thay have
mutated with. Surely no breed of the two can stop me."

"Uhhhhhhhrrr.."

"No. No, they can't," The Ultimate Being said, smiling even moreso now, triumphantly thinking of
his plans as they approached the throne. Skeletons were clambering to his side even now, their bones rattling
macabrely as they rushed to aide their master. Lichs crawled out of the darkness, dressed in fine, yet tattered,
robes, along with the lycanthropes, dragging assorted oversized limbs along with them. Beside these
creatures followed the Dark One's pride, his little ones, all with blank looks on heir faces, those of the
undead, and those who lived only to serve their master.

"And I will kill every last one of them," The Heart Of Midnight said, his voice echoing through the hall as he
laughed insanely, drawing his creatures to him. As they kept pouring from the halls, the echos of his
laughter, accompanied by the grinding of bone, kept the madman safely in his domain of insanity.

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