Allure

Thousands of years ago, the world was in peace. There were no monsters lurking in the blackened curtains of darkness, and the only way to die was to do so at your own hands. We were immortal, ever-living, a species so strong and so vast that nothing could tear us down.

But we were strong because of the light. The light that shone from the moon, from the sun. It filled us and gave us an energy stronger than any food could ever bring, and it left us needless but powerful beyond words. We were replicas of life; the threads of life had become embodied in us and we grew with the beacon of that sheltered, growing life inside of us. We developed, we thrived. Life expanded and we became one. All because of the light. The light renewed us, made us whole. It was our saviour.

But then it was gone. The sun and the moon were stolen, and we began to transform. The lack of light sucked the life out of us; the darkness reached into our bodies with blackened hands and pulled and pulled until we were empty. Our life began depleting. We grew and we aged at a rate more rapid than we had even known. We needed it back. People were dying, which was something that we had never been threatened with before. We were holding hands with death, and it embraced us with a touch so surreal that many of us fell into its arms.

A young, brave man realised what had happened. His name was Greuceanu, and he had only been born a mere hundred and fifty years earlier. He had spent his lifetime shouting stories of unworldly creatures, but our ignorance had left us blinded. We were so certain of our own strength that we labelled him with insanity and allowed it to eat at his skin, until he was no longer one of us. But still he claimed and he shouted and he warned. And still we turned away with eyes blacker than the light that we grew off of.

But then we were dying, and it was terrifying. Far, far more terrifying than the thought of living forever. And all the while this man who had been rendered insane and incapable was working to save us, to bring the light back again, to fill us and consume us and bring us back to life. Ever lasting life. We were thirsty for it. We were thirsty for something we had always taken for granted.

In darkness he ventured. He grew and he aged and he transformed but he never stopped. He walked past cities warped by terror and through mountains littered with dead bodies, the bodies of those who had chosen to end their life rather than live in a world of weakness. He kept going through the cold, through the burden of his mortality and his need for resolution. He kept going until he found.

He knew the creatures at once. They were Zmei; greedy, soulless creatures that we had thought to be a myth and a legend. Their throats were illuminated with a light so vibrant that he was almost blinded, but he stood there with diligence and courage and he looked them in the blood-red eyes.

They were tall and demon-like, shaped like a human but with skin as black as coal. They snarled at him as he walked towards them, tongues crimson like the colour of blood flickering across their aged, drying lips. They were powerful. They were powerful both because they had existed since the creation of Earth, the first world, and because they had stood and thrived through the destroying of that sanctity and the rebuilding of civilisation as it now was. But they were infinitely immortal, and Greuceanu was destined to die.

The smaller one, recognisably female from the rounded curves of her deathly body, stepped forward with a silvery light blindly illuminating the area surrounding them. “You are after your light,” she snarled in a wispy voice, the texture of rocks grinding against a river floor. “You should not have come here.”

He watched her with steady eyes and a heart clenching with the fist of fear. He fought for us with a voice of stone. “I am. We are dying without it. I see our salvation in your throats.”

Red eyes flickered with a black flame and the undeniable alliance of hatred. “You have destroyed what is left of this disgusting world through your arrogance and your negligence. Why should we give you what you want when all you deserve is the clutch of the Reaper? What would you have for us in return?”

The answer was obvious and unspoken. Nothing. We could give them nothing. We were damned but we were yearning. We deserved death but craved life with filthy hearts bloodied by conceit and pride. What excuse could we give for those deserving of death? What could we say for those selfishly longing for never-ending life?

The rest of the legend was untold. All that was recalled was a blinding red light, the colour of the Zmei’s eyes, illuminating the area in which a frail, mangled body of a gallant man was found. Some say that by the time he was found he had been blackened with death, and some say that he was surrounded in blood as dark as the light that had eclipsed the sky. But all knew that days later, the body of Greuceanu had disappeared.

And the next day when we left out houses, the sun was glowing brilliantly in the sky. But we took it for granted. Because with the returning of our light, our immortality, our saviour, came a new way to die.

And many, many of us did.