Before – Homeworld, Millennia Ago, After the Burn #4
A sound ripped from her, part snarl and part scream, driven by rage she couldn’t contain. Yet, the hunger didn’t ease. It churned deeper, more demanding than before. She panted hard, lips slick with blood, and glared down at the hollowed corpse beneath her.
It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.
She dropped to her hands and knees, the wet ground sucking at her palms as she crawled forward.
Blood and mud smeared her riding skirt as she climbed over the vampire’s body and settled on its chest, knees digging into the icy flesh.
Leaning down, she took its head in her hands, palms firm against bone and matted hair.
The face, slack and ruined, was still streaked with the blood it had drawn from her.
Rynna’s vision tinted red at the sight, and bone cracked beneath her grip. The skull fractured, splintered, and collapsed. Blood and brain matter spilled through her fingers in a slow, wet crush. Watching the mess ooze between her knuckles, her breath came in short, ragged bursts.
Slowly, she lifted her hands and turned them in the low light, watching how the gore caught and glistened along her skin. She brought them closer, inch by inch, until they hovered before her face.
Then, without hesitation, she slipped her fingers into her mouth.
Her lips sealed around them, her tongue sweeping every crevice, tasting every drop.
She sucked the remnants clean, savoring the slick texture and iron tang, until her hands were spotless.
Then, she pulled them free and stared down at the wreckage beneath her.
The skull was flattened, the face unrecognizable.
Thought didn’t form. No question. No weighing of right or wrong. Her body simply moved before awareness could catch up, driven by something deeper—older—drowning out everything else.
Dropping forward, face-first into the mess, her hands gathered the pulp and bone to consume what was left, one bite at a time. Swallow by swallow, slurp by slurp.
She didn’t stop until there was nothing left.
When the feeding ended, she lurched back from the corpse, limbs trembling and unsteady.
Blood clung to her skin, thick and tacky, smeared across her chin, chest, and thighs.
She staggered through the remnants, slipping in congealed filth, as if putting space between them might erase the vileness of what she’d just done.
The sounds hit her next.
Muffled gasps and shuddering sobs. It was a chorus of fear rising from behind walls and windows, from those who had watched through cracks and curtains, hidden but helpless. Their cries, fractured with disgust, hammered against her ears.
No! What had she done? Consuming the monster’s heart and power, taking it into herself.
She dropped to her knees and jammed her fingers into her mouth.
Her nails, razors now, tore into her throat as she forced them down, desperate to purge the taste, the texture, the memory of blood and brain and sinew. But the substance clung. It refused to release its hold. Nothing came up.
Her stomach rolled, and inside her, something shifted.
It moved—not sentient, not quite, but alive in the way mold is alive, in the way plague dances between bodies. It threaded through her gut and wound around her heart, pulsing up behind her eyes before settling in her skull.
And it wanted blood. It wanted life. It wanted to spread.
She staggered upright and reeled back at the realization. Whatever had made the monster into a vampire now lived inside her, wriggling through her veins. There was no voice, but its purpose pounded inside her bones.
Her teeth ground as her vision narrowed and every muscle braced to strike, to tear, to burn.
She hadn’t asked for this.
That thing had used her, violated her body, warped it, and tried to make it in its own image. It had corrupted her without her consent, rewriting the essence of what she was.
She turned back to the mangled corpse, shoulders trembling. A sob tore loose as she stepped forward, her legs unsteady, as if the ground beneath her had turned uneven and uncertain.
“Death isn’t good enough for you!” she hissed. “Why did I let you do that, you fucking monster!”
Her rage turned inward.
“You should’ve known better. You should’ve been ready. You shouldn’t have even been here, thinking you were untouchable, you stupid, arrogant bitch!”
Snarling, she crossed the space between them and raised her wrist to her mouth.
Something—instinct or hunger, it didn’t matter which—guided her hand.
Her fangs tore through flesh, and blood spilled freely.
Beginning at the corpse’s head, she bathed it. Her blood soaked through tangled hair, down ruined features, pooling in the hollowed chest. She moved methodically, painting every inch of the monster’s form in red.
Only when it was done did she lift her wrist to her mouth.
She licked the wound, tasting the blood in measured strokes, and when she pulled her arm back, the skin had already sealed, smooth and unbroken.
Waiting, silence stretched around her, pressing against her ears, heavy with the weight of what was coming.
Rynna’s fingers flexed at her side, and she watched as the corpse twitched beneath her.
Bone fragments began to shift, clicking and grinding together. One by one, they found each other. Splinters reformed, and fractures sealed. The skeleton reassembled itself as though guided by invisible hands, each segment slotting into place like a puzzle too well-practiced to fail.
Flesh came next.
Blood and fluids gushed in reverse, flowing back into torn cavities, reoccupying veins and organs with mechanical obedience. The viscera realigned, congealed patches smoothing out as if time itself had unraveled and played backwards at her feet.
Rynna didn’t blink. She couldn’t look away.
Skin finally blossomed over the vampire’s frame, spreading in smooth waves, fresh and unmarred. Her mouth snapped shut. Her eyes inflated, lids fluttering before sealing tight. What had been pieces now lay whole again, reborn in a grotesque, inverted choreography of death.
Rynna stepped forward, boots squelching in the blood-slick mud. Without ceremony, she leaned over the newly restored figure and spat directly onto its face.
The vampire flinched. Her brow furrowed in disgust, and a hand shot up, fingers scrubbing at the moisture with a startled grimace.
Then her eyes opened, landing on Rynna. The screech that followed ripped through the air, shrill and human in a way that meant nothing now.
Rynna frowned, planting her feet wide as she placed her hands on her hips.
“You are mine,” she said, her voice flat. “Nod that you understand.”
The other started to nod—just barely—then froze.
“My name is Ankhira.” Her eyes sharpened. “And I am Queen of this land.”
“I don’t give a fuck who you are or who you were.” Rynna sniffed. “From this moment on, you are mine.” Her voice rang with command. “Do you understand?”
Ankhira’s expression wavered before the shock receded.
“You are nobody. I am Queen of these lands, Mother of Vampires.” She regained her feet, spine drawn tall, chin tilting upward. “You will kneel, now, servant!”
Rynna laughed, and the queen barely blinked before Rynna struck, her hand connecting with Ankhira’s face in a brutal crack.
The queen’s body whipped sideways, lifted clean off her feet, and slammed into a half-collapsed merchant stall on the other end of the square. Wood splintered and canvas tore before the wreckage swallowed her whole.
“You are only what I allow or desire you to be.” Rynna let her hand fall to her side.
Then she moved. The distance between them vanished, and her fingers tangled in Ankhira’s hair. With a yank, she hauled the woman from the wreckage like dead weight.
“Show me you understand.” Rynna tightened her grip and forced Ankhira’s head up, jerking her face level with her own.
For a moment, Ankhira just hung there, rasping, half-suspended from Rynna’s hand. Then, her face changed. Her body shuddered, and panic dawned in her eyes, spreading like a stain.
She saw the truth. The blood that had made her strong now answered to another.
“You may have been the Mother, bitch.” Rynna released her with a flick of her wrist, letting Ankhira drop. “But I am now Queen. You will kneel, obey, and know the taste of pain.”
For a moment, Ankhira resisted the command, her entire body tensing with refusal. One breath. Two. Four. Five. Six. Then—defeat.
Ankhira bent at the waist, her limbs stiff and jerky.
“Now, go and ready a bed for me.” Rynna’s eyes lifted to the ridge above the city, where the estate loomed in shadowed silence.
Ankhira’s jaw worked as if she could refuse, before her feet lurched on their own, each step up the hill dragging behind it the weight of resistance, crushed beneath the pull of compulsion. Her spine arched, straining against the force, but her body kept climbing—obedient.
Rynna watched until the other ducked into the shadows and was gone.
She swallowed, and the city remained quiet.
But behind shuttered windows and broken stalls, hearts still thudded.
Fear clung to the air, sharp enough to taste.
And blood hummed beneath every hidden breast around her.
She could hear it. Smell it. It coiled under her senses, heady and electric.
Her hands shook at her sides, the queen’s blood still buzzing through her veins.
Rynna blinked hard, and the scent of life threatened to devour her. There were so many of them.
She staggered back. It was too much. Her lungs refused to work; she couldn’t think. The part of her that had bent Ankhira to her knees now brayed within her, ravenous for more.
Fuck. She swallowed hard. I have to get out of here.
She spun, legs already flexing to run. But movement caught at the edge of her vision.
One of the doors burst open, and a blacksmith thundered out, hammer raised high. “Begon demon!” he thundered.
Her nails dug into her palms. She wanted to warn him. To run. To stop. But her lips parted, and only the Hunger answered.
Motion blurred.
And when her mind cleared again, she stood more or less where she had been—near the shattered remains of the center square—but nothing else remained the same.
Sweat clung to her brow. She lifted a hand to wipe it away, but her fingers came back red. She stared at them, eyes opening and closing.
Then she looked down.
No.
Blood soaked her from head to ankles. It dripped from her chin, clung to her fingers, and pooled in the creases of her boots. Each step squelched thickly, soles sinking into crimson puddles. Around her, devastation stretched in every direction.
Doors had been ripped from their hinges and flung like kindling. Merchant stalls lay fractured, their frames splintered and scattered. Blood and viscera painted every surface.
She gasped, heart pounding. The upper half of a woman dangled from a shattered window frame. Her lower body lay discarded below, torn meat from bone.
A choked sob rattled from Rynna’s lungs. She moved, legs numb, toward the nearest building. The threshold gave way, revealing a scene from a nightmare—limbs, torsos, blood, and bones strewn in anarchic chaos. No structure. No mercy.
She checked another house.
Then another.
Each one worse than the last.
Every building was a slaughterhouse.
The Hunger had taken more than blood. It had demolished restraint. Identity. Sanity.
She staggered to the final structure—the farthest from the square, the only one untouched.
A sound reached her ears. Soft crying.
Relief hit so hard it buckled her knees.
“Thank the gods,” she whispered.
A soft pounding joined the crying—muffled and urgent, wood against wood. Someone was trapped somewhere beneath the wreckage.
She ran toward the sound, picking her way through debris.
It led her to a half-standing house at the edge of the square, its structure sagging where it had taken the brunt of the destruction.
Circling around the back, a heavy beam—splintered and dark with soot—had fallen from the neighboring house and pinned shut the doors of a root cellar.
The voices came from below.
She moved to the beam, dropping into a low squat. Her shoulder braced beneath the weight, and she shoved upward.
To her surprise, the beam rolled free.
“Huh,” she muttered. “Must not have been as heavy as it looked.”
Bending over, she pulled open one of the cellar doors.
Inside, light crept in, pale and hesitant, revealing a huddle of small bodies tucked against the far wall.
There were six, maybe seven, children. The oldest looked no more than ten.
And a tiny girl held a baby in her arms, her body wrapped around it.
Her green eyes fixed on Rynna, unblinking.
“Are you going to eat us, too?” The words landed like a slap.
“What?” Rynna’s voice cracked. “No. I’m not going to eat you. I want to help you get out. You were trapped.”
“You’re a monster!” the girl sobbed, tears welling in her eyes. “Get out of here!”
Rynna recoiled, hands lifting.
“No,” she said. But her voice sounded empty.
The words carved into her—truth wrapped in a child’s scream.
And the Hunger stirred in response.
It rose with the shame, a dark swell against her ribs.
“No!” she cried out, doubling over. Her hands clenched at her stomach as if she could tear it free, rip the demon out before it found more to consume.
“Leave us alone!” the girl shouted this time.
Rynna looked down into the cellar, heart pounding, mouth dry. She didn’t trust herself to stay another second. If she did, she knew—absolutely knew—she would do to those children what she’d done to the rest.
“No.” The Hunger nearly brought her to her knees, but her will was harder.
She forced her gaze away from the little ones, every muscle protesting the shift. Her body resisted, still leaning toward the dark below, but she wrenched her focus upward toward the hill and the estate waiting above.
Springing forward, the ground fell away beneath her as her body was lifted by instinct and power. The wind tore past her face, then stone met her boots with a brutal jolt as she landed on the steps outside the looming doors.
She stared up at it, her body still shaking from restraint, when a quiet, corrosive question cackled through her mind.
The next time the Hunger came, how long would it take her to come back?
Would she come back at all?
And if she didn’t, would she even care?Top of Form
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