Last Life Part 1: Homecoming

Blood Call

Verres

Hushed whispers buzzed in the air, aimless flies over a broken carcass. I knew that nobody near spoke, and yet the sounds would not stop. Perhaps the voices were in my mind, lost transmissions between people and their devices or hopeless calls from one beast to another. It made sense... Detecting a fresh conscience in their erratic wake, they've come for me, thronging to my thoughts and confusing them with their own. Desperation drove their existence.

But whatever they were, I could hardly manage to care. I had always heard them, though they were far quieter in the forests where the beasts lay dumb and silent. It is good not to care about these things, for they can only drive one insane.

"I've lost him... Please..."

"-help me-help-"

"Kill them."

"... no more... all gone..."

They were soft, flitting by like moths only to drop suddenly into silence. As they typically were, nothing more than quiet pleas to be heard. But here, there was one, an incessant drone that ever so slowly grew louder.

"A god killer shall rise...

"Come to meet him, hail him...

"He will unite this land...

"The beast nobility will fall...

"Our Prince will be the King...

"End the Last Life."

It was as if several different voices, both infected beast and man, came to sing together this low incantation. Over and over again, different voices, different words but the same message. The Prince will break the Beast states, he will unite the lands, and then finally become King.

King of what though? If he so chooses to kill us all, he will be ruler of nothing other than dust.

Yet the enchanting call would not end its haunting. When I finally fell into sleep, it left me disturbed, my dreams were fragmented and distorted with fear. Dread crawled up like an ache through my bones, burning through my flesh and choking me with feverish throes. I couldn't ignore their plea, their cry, their command, it was all to tempting.

The moon shone dully, its light muddied by fat midnight clouds that rolled slowly through the sky. I could smell their blood, the blood of the humans, long before it was shed by the claws of war. It was sweet, almost fragrant, just as the words promised. No.

I was fighting my own body, old programming reviving it's forgotten objectives long rewritten by my own motives. On its own, my body picked itself up, and now I was a prisoner and all that I could do was beg. Don't kill the humans-don't kill them!

Past the human encampment I strode, past the plaza, past the gates, and past the flatland beyond. To nowhere that I knew. Only to where their signal was at its greatest and most powerful.

For hours I had walked... Into dusk... Into midnight... And into the carmine dawn. City lights like fire and alarm sirens like demon cries, hell had risen up from the ground and grown outwards into a citadel.

And it was there they welcomed me.

Goodbye Saul.

**Author's note: worry not! More shall be published soon... (School has been a great inhibiting factor to my writing output... Patience shall be well rewarded) I love y'alls for reading this far!