Vernacular

I was not always an Alchemist. I was not always a Rogue.

I was not even always Aluraune; just as I steal the blood of those filled with life, so did I steal one more thing, more precious then lifeblood: A name.

It is an odd thing, the way a name works. A carefully arranged assortment of letters, combining to become a pronounceable word--a word without definition, because the definition does not achieve completion until the end of that names lifespan. In a sense, it is like a minute formula, one whose purpose and recorded conclusion can never truly be recorded by yourself. It is a study left to those who come after, to retell your life to those who care to listen, to those who will learn from it, and to those who will seek to continue its legacy. A little part of history made by the moment.

That is, unless you acquire a newer one.

My original name is not lost to me--I remember it on every whisper of a memory associated with it. However, it is something I still try to disassociate myself from, and, that being said, I shall not utter it here. Who knows, it may work in much the same way that calling a bound daemon by its rightful name grants the caller some form of power over it. Maybe it is such a fear that keeps me from putting it to record anywhere. If it comes at all, that is a story for some other century.

At any rate.

This second beginning to my new life came a very long time after I had been Turned. Since that first day, I had attempted to continue living a semblance of a normal life; I kept to the crowd of the gentry, charmed the beautiful young women from a distance, and, under cover of cloaks and capes, even continued to lay with them. Of course, only one of us awoke upon sunrise, but I could not be expected to abstain from all of my new tastes.

It was during one of my many travels through Italy--sometime during the political strain that resulted from a particular Italian poet with a particular Infernal vision being driven from his native country--that I happened upon a convening of the minds, not unlike the Cafe Philos' popular to the region of Paris. It was in just such a meeting, while passionately expounding upon the topic of political obligations, that I noticed a fellow in the corner of the meeting grounds, sitting cross-legged atop the ancient low wall that served as a makeshift bench. He watched the crowd of intellectuals silently, never placing in a word, though never diverting his attention away from them. However, going by the wide berth the others gave the man, I deduced he must be a usual fixture at the scene. I quietly inquired on such with one of my fellow men, and, in a whisper, he validated my suspicions.

"Yes, yes, that is his place. He showed up about a week ago, signore. The only man he ever talked to was one who made the mistake of attempting to drag him into a conversation--that man was half drunk, in his defense, but we make it a point to leave men to their thoughts until they choose otherwise, just as a precaution. We did not get a good look at what occurred between them, but the stranger grabbed out man by the shirt collar and drew him in, whispering something to his face. By that time--whatever was said--he had already wet himself, and the Stranger through him aside with unbelievable ease. He never came back. Now, we just leave him to his thoughts--maybe one day, he will come out of his own will and speak to us; I, for one, Signore, would love to hear what he has to say." The conversation went back to normal, but I continued to watch the man, and it was then I realized, he was not watching the crowd--he was watching me, No further invitation was needed. I politely bowed my head to my companions, stood, and walked away, outside the perimeter of the discussions--and the man followed. After reaching a safe distance, he spoke up.

"Why do you inquire about me, in my own home, sir? Why not ask me yourself?"

I scoffed, then still somewhat naive to the ability of my words. "From what those men tell me, you do not make it too easy to approach you with even a hello, my friend; at any rate, you are here now, and you have peaked my curiosity."

"How so? I have done nothing but sit."

"You were watching me."

"I watch everyone; why else does a man who does not drink at a gathering sit?"

"Sir, at least fifteen--and yes, I counted--other men came and went during the duration of my stay, and you never once gave them as much as a blink. If you believe I hold some sort of wealth, you are mistaken; these robes are only meant to appear wealthy. I have nothing to me that a person such as you could possibly--"

"Your eyes."

It was then I blinked, slightly taken aback. My eyes? Could he mean...?

And then, as if on cue,

"Yes, I know what you are; no man or woman alive that I have ever seen in my three centuries of wandering has ever looked out at me with eyes such as yours; that faint tinge of red, the depth and age behind them, and something else--something I have not yet placed."

"Three centuries...?"

It was the man's turn to scoff; it was then that I caught the deep citrine yellow of his eyes--eyes that stared back at me with an age larger than my own--and filled with more pain and cynicism I ever allowed myself to feel.

"Let us drop the pretenses. We are both monsters; that is something as apparent as the robes we shelter ourselves within. The only question left, is, do either one of us stand to gain anything from becoming moreso?"

At this point, I was thoroughly confused. The men in the forum seemed miles away, and all I could see were those burning yellow eyes; the eyes of a man ravaged by more than whatever withered his flesh.

He was at my throat in a flash, almost quicker than I could perceive; I was not fearful, only stunned. I knew for a fact that he was not of my Kind, and yet, here he was, displaying traits far beyond even the most honed human warrior, with an ebony dagger to my throat, and those eyes searching my own. The sun had begun to set already, and the eager intellectuals a world over had dispersed; they were alone, with only the sound of monstrosities clashing. We simply breathed. Then, wordlessly, he pricked the base of my throat, and allowed the droplet to run down the groove of his blade, watching it carefully, as a scientist would an experiment.

"Interesting..." he mumbled, all vehemence seemingly gone.

I do not know if I was more offended at the time, or confused, but I certainly was not going to stand dumbfounded and be toyed with. I pulled away, shifting my feet into a defensive position and reaching for my own blades, until I realized he had not moved, still observing the dark ruby drop.

"Put those away, boy, there is no need for that; I apologize for the forwardness of my actions, but I am aware of how fickle and face your People can be--I just had to ensure I had the right monster."

My hands fell listlessly at my side, and, with nothing else to say, I waited.

He then proceeded to cut his own flesh with the very same tip, although I could clearly see a second blade tucked away at his hip. Then, tipping the glade, he allowed the two drops to run together, but upon contact, something unusual--even to me--occurred: His drop began to glow. It looked like some unholy chemical reaction taking place upon a mythical black field, and I found myself walking closer, unable to look away. Neither could he, I noticed, but, his gaze was not one of wonder--it was one of pain.

"Interesting." He whispered, almost brokenly, and lethargically tucked the blade away in his robes. I realized how close I had moved, and took a polite step back. He was no longer looking at me, however, but at the moon, and it was then that I saw the single tear rolling down his worn face, and even the tear seemed to glow with some strange light. He began to speak to himself, and I could not help but listen, as if to a story.

"So, it is done then; there is no compatibility with any living or un-living thing on this mound of earth and elements. I am finished; the final study has been completed, and it was as I feared. Utter incompatibility. It is time to pass the mantle; you are the perfect candidate."

He now spoke to me, and I immediately became attentive, no longer wary, but deeply curious.

"Tell me, boy, do you know anything of Alchemy?"

In all of my travels, I had only heard stories, and I told him as much. He smiled--a very knowing smile--and said, some of that scientists' pride in his voice again. "Well, I can assure you, it is not all fairytales..."

And the things he told me, to this day, I cannot put to paper.

After this--discussion--which spanned the outdoors to his meager bedroom-cum-library, he got down to the base of his question.

"So, you may ask, with all this knowledge in your mind now, and these tomes at your fingertips, what are you to do with it? You could always simply leave, take what I have told you and begin some esoteric quest of your own across the ages. Or, you could allow time to sink it in a bit deeper, and become a wretch as the madness of its implications barrage you. You could leave and do nothing, go back to whatever travels you happened to be on, or, you could accept the terms I can give you, and become something even more than you are now."

I sat in silence for a long time after that, staring into the candle on his cluttered desk. It was rife with papers and worn out volumes, each of them displaying some arcane symbol or another, all unbearably seductive to my enhanced sense of curiosity. Being what I was, I was always inexplicably drawn to the forbidden, or Forgotten.

After all, I was already Damned--what more could I possibly do to fall any farther?

"What are your terms, old man?"

"Simple: Kill me."

It took just as long to register as everything else that night; he said it as if it was just another result come upon in his studies. Kill me. After the story he had told me of his life as an Alchemist, his losses, and the steady progression to Monster he had followed, after all the aspirations he had shared, the achievements he had made, the things he had seen--this was how he chose to move on?

"But...you are an Immortal! You may not be as my Kind is, but we share that much in common, surely! How do you propose I did that, even if I did accept! And why, why would you want to? And--"

"I am tired!" he shouted, drowning out any further questions. I could not bring myself to challenge his tone, and immediately quieted, eyes rapt on him. Those citrine eyes were looking out towards the moon again, and what appeared there was something that belied aeons of regret and lost things.

"I am tired, boy; tired of travelling, of seeing--of running. When you have lived as long as I have--which someday, you will--you may or may not say the same thing, but, this man is tired. I have not slept since the last night I slept with my wife, all that time ago. I have not loved a woman since I sent that same wife away, right from my desk, eyes not on hers, but my beakers. I willingly accepted this, brought it upon myself, knowing I would never be able to reverse it--but I want out. I want out, boy! I told you my story--every last minute detail, of every character in my life! I cannot even remember the name of the place I dwelt in, or what country it now lies beneath. I was a young man then, and, at the time, I could accept the reality of becoming a monster, of living as one, but now--now I realized something. I have aged. I am not like you, an Immortal ever appearing as you did the day you became what you are. That is not what happened to me. I do not know how, or why--maybe a deterioration of the chemicals of the Elixir--but I am aging, and that, I know, will never end. The age will not bring me to death, but it is like a mountain--time built me up, and wore me down, but you can never really tell how long a mountain has been, and will be, because even when it is reduced to the dirt beneath it, that dirt, in all its energy and atoms and elements, is still the very same mountain--no longer proud, or tall, or strong, but the same rocks and brown and earth that it had been for centuries! Can you not understand!" His voice was shrill now, and the tears were coming harder, and now, I could see, definitely, that they had some inner glow to him--maybe some fraction of that stuff he had taken in all that time ago. But it was not the time for conjectures.

He continued, voice hoarse, indifferent to the tears that filled the grooves on his wizened face.

"I am becoming a monster day by day, something beyond my actions and deeds and words, something beyond what I feel; in no time at all, I will become a monster I can see in the mirror, something others can see, something that simply should not be, the result of everything I have made, and broken, and stolen, and killed, and hated, and been; and then, I will be dust, but a dust, I know, that will still be, as if that dust that was once the mountain had until the end of Time itself to contemplate the mountain it had once been, but unable to weep. I will never cease to exist if I allow myself to go on in any other manner than what I shall propose to you; I will become that sentient dust, and forever exist to remember my own existence; it was a mistake, all of it. It was a fruitless achievement, I see that now. I have surpassed the age where I feel I can blame this on some instability of my mind. It is something else entirely. It is what a god must experience when it simply refuses to be god anymore, some morbid and perverse anti-apotheosis. I am done, finished, and you have presented me with the last hope I can possibly have to ensure it ends that way. Please--if you do this one thing for me, then all my knowledge, all I was, and am, and could have been, my books, my works, my memories--they will all be yours. Even my name."

My eyes widened at this last bit, but I was speechless. A name? I have never drank a name before.

There was a long silence, and I thought he had worn himself into a stupor, until, finally, he spoke once more.

"If for none of these things I have told you, if for nothing else, kill me because it is in your nature to do so; kill me, because that is how you live. Kill me as a monster, if not as a man.

The indignation...!

"Sir--Alurayne--I am not as much a monster as to kill without reason! I kill to survive! I--"

"Yes! You kill to survive! Tell me, boy, that if you left here, tonight, without doing as I asked--would you think of me again? Would these eyes torment whatever existence you choose to carry out? Would you honestly be able to survive after hearing the second to last page of this story--this name, this ancient record--without seeing the last-page conclusion? Wouldn't your survival be so much easier if you lessened a single burdening memory? Tell me I am wrong, boy, tell me!"

I could say nothing.

I felt as nothing.

A new name would solve everything, though.

And so I asked him how it was to be done.

We went outdoors, and he calmly explained to me the process as we went.

"I noticed, as our blood came into contact, that a strange reaction occurred. At first, I thought it was only the typical glow that I expect upon contact--as I am sure you saw--but after a few moments, I noticed something unexpected: My blood was being disassembled. It was not the symbiotic response I had been looking for, but a counter-reaction--a reversal of what I had done. It was like returning a pile of ashes to the complete sheet of paper it had once been, something they say is impossible--the destructive nature of your blood, unbound by the physics of this world, over-rode the mechanics of my own, and disassembled it: It overcame my Immortality. If a larger amount were to pierce my body, into my veins, and move along the predetermined courses that my circulatory system still maintains, then I would be deconstructed in moments. It would be the ultimate act of Alchemy--not only achieving Immortality, but reversing it! I would--I mean, you would, sir, be talked about for ages! And...it would also be the ultimate act of mercy. So, what is your decision?"

He did not allow much time for contemplation. Then again, was there really so much to think about?

He drew his ebony sword--a seemingly fit companion to the old man's dagger--and drew the tip down the length of my leg, letting my preciously guarded blood run down its length--all for a man I had just met.

But felt I had had a lifetime to understand.

There were no more words exchanged--just a look of serene peace in Alurayne the Alchemist's eyes as the sword broke through his heart. Rather than the gasp I expected, I heard a sigh--one of relief.

"It hurts..." he whispered, a shaky smile taking his features, "By the gods, it hurts."

And then he was gone.

All I had left of the man was a pile of old, worn clothing--likely as tired as the man they had belonged to. They, then, deserved a final resting place, among the moonlight, wreathed in the sounds of the Italian peninsula. I dug a deep burial site with the work of both my blades--fitting, that they work until the very end of this life they took. Thoughtfully, I lay all his attire at the bottom, beginning to think to myself on what he had said.

Would this madness someday overtake me?

Would I, one day, as I traveled to my heart's content, be struck with the feeling that time was only so interesting before it became a repetition? Would I seek out some means of death as well, but lack a companion who would help me through it? Would it even be a conscious thought, or would I one day find myself using the information imparted to me to bring about some form of destruction or another upon myself?

Would the beauty I had struggled so hard to obtain one day simply leave me?

These were thoughts for another time, though; surely, there must be something to everything he had been given, especially the name.

Alurayne.

Despite his very nature, something bothered him down to his core about assuming another's name in such an indifferent way. True, he had taken more blood than he could recall, but that blood had been nameless; there were no discernible memories to that substance. But this...this was different. This was a name, which had been attached to a body, a soul, and a pair of citrine-yellow eyes...

Fuuny, how changing a single letter can completely upheave the meaning of a word. Ware, remove an e, becomes War, Sire--a king of kings--becomes destructive when an F appears in lieu of an S. And a bygone Alchemist is reborn into a new life, with new loves and fears, all with the drop of a Y.

Aluraune.

But I remember my other names.

Oh yes.

I do.