As I waited for word from my brother Melchiah, I began to feel somewhat nostalgic about my relatively new unlife in Kain's vampire dynasty.  I had had such private thoughts on this matter many, many times, yet now it was coming time to join my creator's empire to the fullest. I had little time to waste. Although I had been resurrected and set as a lieutenant in the same fashion as they, I felt strangely distant, unconnected, to the four brothers I knew. Aside from their advancing years and considerable "changes" I lacked something they shared. For better or worse, my four elder brothers shared some deep, unspoken bond with one another. Though Zephon and Melchiah loathed each other, even they shared some deep, secret pact, that trancended any form of brotherhood I could acheive with them. I could neither mimic nor understand it, and so I could only yearn for it.

            From my brother and close ally Melchiah I had learned Kain's reasoning behind returning me from death in the here and now. With the ancient decimation of the firstborn Raziel's clan at his own hands and Dumah's at those of the humans, it was assumed that our lord had found it necessary to create a surrogate lieutenant. I am Jotun, the last of Lord Kain's Gifted Ones. Though for the most part humanity had been enslaved during the first two thousand years of Lord Kains rule, our Lord, for whatever reason, had chosen to leave Willendorf unharmed. Kain seemed reluctant in particular to harm the city's capital, the great citadel, in any way. None of the brothers had known why, but Kain's word was not to be questioned. In time, however, the humans grew bolder, and marched northward to the castle of the proud Dumah.

         Dumah had been expected to wipe the humans out, and apparantly had failed, throwing the empire into confusion for a time. The human armies took refuge in the great cathedral at Avernus, whose worshippers had constructed a great network of pipes and bells tuned to blast a great cacaphony of sound, one that would shatter the mind of any vampire nearby. Zephon had been the first to take action, and scaled the outer walls of Avernus' cathedral with his armies, undetected by the cathedral's guards. Zephon broke through the highest window and destroyed the cathedral's weapons and inhabitants, claiming it as his own.  None but Rahab was truly equipped to destroy the human kingdoms, and Rahab was allowed to destroy the greater portion of Willendorf but left the citadel untouched. The human uprisings had ended, but the damage had been done. The Dumahim could no longer be counted among the living clans of Nosgoth. And so I and my Jotunim were to take their place, and ensure no more 'uprisings' were ever again to arise.

          My thoughts drifted as I stared at my reflection in the small pond of blood I had created in the 'throne room' of my home, the ruined mansion of the long-dead Vorador, a name spoke with admiration, amusement, and even a touch of sadness, by the master. Vorador had loved his kind. My thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of two of Rahab's children, carrying a wide-eyed girl they had gagged and bound-with a thick mass of dried blood no less. Creative. Rahab and Melchiah were the two lieutenants I had bothered to keep good terms with-these Rahabim had been courteous enough to obey a custom no longer enforced, which was that any prey caught must be brought to the lord of the land it had been caught in. If the lord gave permission, the cattle was yours, if not, it was their own. The Rahabim's approach was heralded by the blind screeching of my own clan, the Jotunim. An adult Rahabim and a fledgeling carried the girl in- Rahab's children always seemed to have that arrangement, the pairing of one old, one young. They knelt before me, awaiting my answer to their silent question. In the past I'd killed and fed as brutally and often as possible-lately I liked to play with my food. I might kill her if I got bored but dead or alive the Rahabim would have her blood. I felt generous, they had more than earned it. But they'd have to wait.

         I stepped out of my blood-pond, my six spindly limbs following one after another. Though not to their extent, I had certainly changed with my brothers. A sunken monstrosity, my once-human form now seemed like a centaur's, a vampire-dragon whose four thin legs supported the upper torso, where my arms and chest and neck had all grown longer in the change. I cannot fathom why evolution had taken this form to me. I looked closely at the girl's face-those unseeing eyes, so beautiful. Beauty, a rare thing in humans of Nosgoth, yet she showed no fear but the shallow, quick breaths, wondering when she would die. "Humans" I said aloud. I had forgotten what they were like. 
         "Tell me, why do they hate us so? This whole empire is an act of revenge, for the crimes humanity has committed. Surely you must know why you choose to bring it upon yourself." 
         She could only state that vampires were unnatural. Hah! my own veiw on such a narrow-minded statement was that the natural should be left in nature- civilization was built upon more than petty instincts of lust and domination. Animals required meat and luxury, both to indulge and hide in. Gods required blood and souls. Vampires were the higher form, the thing that cleansed the disease, unlike humans, who only spread it.
          Although I knew this was not what the girl wished to hear, I saw understanding, even a reluctant admission in her.  Some humans it seemed were not so stupid, worthless cows-they were only taught to be. Misguided and lied
to since their very birth for lack of any other view. I had pondered this once in Zephon's lair, his worshippers knew the truth.

          The girl had described vampires as a 'mockery of creation'.  Creation? What is the act of creating?  Do humans create? As cattle's excrement is the creation of a bull, so do men create and are created. But destruction-the extermination of such filth, that is the act of a god.
          "Is it love you fear so, vampire? Is it life that you so envy in us that you must condemn every creature to suffer in your misery? Free yourself, fr--" I'd heard enough. Pounding a hand over her throat, I could smell her blood as I choked the life out of her, Her gagging, wheezing cries spraying me with a warm, thick red, a refreshing change from the thin and stagnant blood of the emaciated cattle in Vorador's basement. I sighed...some of my children had not yet tasted human blood, reduced to draining stray Dumahim..I was tempted to feed on her for myself, but I had promised her blood to the Rahabim. Looking into her dark, pained eyes, I felt a pang of compassion and snapped her neck, a kinder death than what the Rahabim were sure to offer. I held my screeching Jotunim back as the Rahabim returned to claim their prize. As they plodded away with her, their webbed feet slapping wetly on the stone floor, snapping their powerful jaws at my swarms of children, I said a silent goodbye to the girl. Thank you dear, for a little taste of the past for me...It helps me feel a little safer in the present.