Metamorphosis

By Alex Bowe
 

      Raziel lay sleeping in his private chambers deep within the Sarafan stronghold. It was almost dawn; normally he would already be awake, perhaps planning the next raid with his cohorts. The previous day, however, had been more strenuous than usual. The villages that he and his Sarafan brothers raided had been almost teeming with the unholy fiends that plagued Nosgoth, resulting in much more fighting than the warrior-priests were accustomed to. Nevertheless, the human crusaders emerged victorious as always. 
      A sudden loud knock on the thick, oaken door roused Raziel from his dreams: Vorador, one of the oldest and most feared vampires, had been laughing at him, holding up a mirror in which Raziel saw himself reflected as a blue, emaciated, wraith-like demon with burning eyes, cloven hands and feet, and tattered remnants of what must have once been powerful wings.
      The cold voice of Malek snapped Raziel out of his reverie. “Raziel, get up!” the leader of the Sarafan Order and Guardian of the Pillar of Conflict rasped. “You are late getting up this morning; the vampires aren’t going to eradicate themselves, are they?” Raziel listened to the armored boots stomp away down the hall to the chambers of the other five knights. 
      He leapt out of bed with surprising alacrity, even for a man as tough and fit as he. Raziel had seen his prey move thus many times; but then, they were vampires. He, however, was only human. After stretching his lean, powerful muscles, Raziel turned to pour himself a drink from the pitcher of water by his bed. As he raised the cup – fashioned from a vampire’s skull, of course – some unconscious part of his sharp mind was for some reason repulsed and terrified by the water. It was almost as if Raziel’s entire being was screaming at him to throw it as far away as he could. “Nonsense,” he thought. “It’s only water. What do I have to fear from a little drink? Vampires are hurt by water’s touch, not humans.” He chuckled at himself.
      Just when Raziel was about to take a sip from the cup, a door slammed down the hall, startling him. He flinched, causing a drop to jump up out of the cup and down onto his foot. Suddenly he felt as if someone had touched his foot with a red-hot brand. He almost roared with pain. Raziel hurled the goblet at the far wall of his room – he did not see it shatter into tiny fragments - and looked down at his injury. Carefully examining the two large claws that made up his foot, he realized that something was wrong with them. He frowned, trying to see what was different about them. For one thing, they seemed unnaturally cold to the touch of his cloven hands. Then Raziel froze, realizing what was wrong. His feet and hands were cloven. His skin was ice-cold. Water burned him like acid. Not wanting to believe it, but at the same time knowing exactly what had happened to him, he ran to the full-length mirror to confirm what he feared. Instead of the tanned, muscular youth he saw every morning, the mirror showed Raziel a gaunt and extremely pallid figure with fierce yellow eyes. His face would have paled had it not already been so white. Raziel, second in command of the Sarafan Order dedicated to purging the earth of the undead menace, had mysteriously transformed into the very creature he so despised. He gaped in shock at his hard, inhuman body. 
      Finally tearing his gaze from the reflection of the chiseled marble statue he had become, Raziel attempted to strap on his burnished armor but found it extremely difficult to manipulate the buckles and straps with his new three-fingered hands. In his frustration, he shook the steel breastplate in one hand as if he was throttling someone, cursing it and crushing it in his grip. He looked at it in amazement to see that the hard plate had been reduced to a shapeless mass of crumpled metal; Raziel did not know his own preternatural strength.  Laughing to himself softly, the fledgling vampire tried to bend the mangled object back into its proper shape but got nowhere. After several minutes, he gave up and put on a leather cuirass in place of his ruined armor. 
       When Raziel thought himself sufficiently equipped for whatever battles he would face that day, he looked at his stunning reflection one last time before leaving the room, allowing himself to admire it just a little. He walked over to the closed bedroom door, a little taken aback at first by the sharp clicking caused by his feet (maybe or perhaps talons; he wasn’t quite sure what kind of foot they were) hitting the cold stone floor - almost as cold as his own undead skin. He pushed at the door with one claw… and gaped as the entire thing toppled out into the hall with a loud crash that echoed down the long hall in either direction. Raziel smiled, finding it somewhat amusing that his strange new body was so immensely strong that it did not merely push the door open but shoved the entire thing straight out of the wall. Abruptly the grin vanished from his face and was replaced by a self-reproaching frown; he was not supposed to be enjoying the horrible metamorphosis he had undergone. 
      Raziel stepped across the newly ruined threshold and turned on his heel to walk down the hall but jolted to a halt when he saw the beams of sunlight coming in through the stained glass windows. He began to panic, not knowing what to do. How long did it take fledglings to gain immunity to the lethal rays of the sun? Oh, that’s right: about a century, give or take a few years. Raziel’s heart sunk as he realized that there was no chance in hell he would walk down that hall and arrive at the other end alive. No, not alive… unalive, maybe? He didn’t know. Raziel’s smooth brow wrinkled in frustration. This new vampiric body was confusing and frightening to his naïve human mind. 
      Raziel was still trying to decide what course of action he should take when he heard a footstep behind him followed by a short gasp. He whirled to see who it was, instinctively crouching and baring his sharp fangs like an animal. His enhanced preternatural eyes saw a trembling servant at the far end of the hallway pressing his back up against the wall as if he were trying to pass right through it and into safety. Raziel silently cursed his clumsy mistake; the poor wretch standing before him quaking with fear must have heard the crash caused by the door and come to see what was the matter. This hapless fool now endangered Raziel; if allowed to live, he would surely cause every man and woman in the building to rise up against the unholy enemy that had somehow managed to infiltrate their stronghold. 
       The terrified man opened his mouth to raise the hue and cry. Raziel did the first thing that came to mind: he raised his right hand and willed horrible things to happen to his prey – and they did. The Sarafan-turned-vampire watched in awe as the wretched human was slammed up against the wall as if hurled by a powerful unseen entity. Seeing that he had not quite eliminated all risk, Raziel again turned his will on the man and laughed evilly as his victim burst into flame, dying instantly. All Sarafan are well aware of the formidable and varied Dark Gifts that vampires may come to possess in time, telekinesis and pyrokinesis being only two of them. 
      Raziel was actually enjoying this in spite of himself; it felt good to terrorize the despicably weak humans. He opened his mouth to feed on the corpse, giddy with anticipation. He had seen this done more than once. He willed the dead man’s blood to arc out of the carcass and into his own mouth, revealing his lengthened canines in a depraved sort of half-smile as he watched the red stream begin to flow through the air in his direction. 
      His meal was interrupted, however, when his brother Turel, second to Raziel and third to Malek, emerged from his bedroom and froze at the sight of this vampire that bore an uncanny resemblance to his elder brother. Instantly he roused the remaining Sarafan generals. “Dumah! Rahab! Zephon! Melchiah! Vampire in the hall! Come to arms at once!” Turel roared, raising his halberd. Within seconds, each lieutenant had burst out from his chambers with weapon in hand. Raziel was about to protest, but with a sinking feeling of impending death he realized that they were every bit as fanatical as he had been; nothing could stand between a true Sarafan adept and a vampire. 
      Grimly the doomed former general turned to face them, determined not to go down without a fight worthy of a Sarafan warrior. He finally knew what it felt like to be a vampire about to be slaughtered by the heartless crusaders. Yes, murdered – the genocide against vampires was immoral and unconscionable. As his former comrades’ blades impaled and hacked his undead body to pieces, Raziel recognized that humans like the Sarafan were perhaps more of a plague on vampires than the other way around.
 

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