7 Who are they?

Red eyes gradually opened within a dark space, more appropriately from within what resembles a large coffin of basalt. Inside laid a handsome man with dimly glowing crimson eyes, straight black hair and the aura of a king. He layed upon a layer of blue fur, to remind him of the blue leopard he hunted on that fateful day.

He looked up to the short ceiling of his compact bed. It became a preference of his over the decades to prefer dark and compact spaces to sleep in, culminating in this box of basalt with only a few inches of freedom in any direction. The darkness seemed to soothe him over time and this odd bed was a fruit of it.

Using his mind, the lid slid off on its own and gently levitated to the ground. The Lord of the Night stood up and exited it, walking towards a wooden door dimly lit by his faintly glowing crimson pupils. He pulled a handle and opened the door, facing him with a long hallway, lit by floating wisps of flame.

Over the millennium living in this palace, he had much time to study and document his power. The creatures he modified, his servants did most of the work for him so he had plenty of time to experiment with things beyond neccesity. One of which were these floating wisps, a third as bright as a light bulb and positioned several meters from one another, maintained solely by him even in sleep.

He walked towards the kitchen, opening its ornate door to enter a large room with wooden floors, several rows of stone counters and a host of thirteen wisps. Ravel turned left and headed towards the counter that fused to the western side of the room, finding three baskets.

The first basket contained an assortment of fragant and freshly picked herbs. The second basket contained fine and powdered salt. As for the third one it was half sunken in blood and filled with freshly harvested intenstines and chunks of flesh.

Ravel breathed the scent of all three ingredients, inspecting them with his heightened sense of smell. He looked for the kitchen's large, clay pot and prepared a fire in the kitchen with firewood, igniting it with magic. He placed the clay pot on top of the fire, supported by a pair of cement rods.

He went to the other end of the room to acquire water, as this room was built around a well. Oddly, there was more water than there used to be and it tasted saltier. He noted to add less salt because of this and collected the water. 

He poured all the water on the large pot, a short hiss from the heat. Then, he scooped some salt with his hand and gently sprinkled it on the warming water. Herbs followed after and the fresh meat was last.

He molded the meat into a sphere, trapping much of the blood at the center and then tore it apart into smaller, chunkier pieces. He poured all the contents of the bloody basket and licked the blood from his hands, enjoying its taste. He had to commend his pets, they collect the best meat for him.

He cooked a bloody meat broth in the exact same way as he always did, following his senses and his memories of his mother's cooking. He remembered how she used to cook for him, just like how he is cooking for himself, in front of the primitive stove. While he waits for it to finish, he thinks of his mother and where she would be right now, for countless seasons have passed since she last talked to him in his dreams.

Once the broth finished, he ate in the kitchen and finished. He detected something at the edge of his senses. Normally, he would ignore it as a passing animal or a beast being hunted down by his pets, but there was something unusual about it, enough to prompt him to investigate.

He left his palace and its tall, thick stone walls, following the increasingly humanoid figure at the end of his senses. The early morning fog covered much of the forest, thanks to the colder temperatures of the mountains nearby. After a short walk, moving through the mist without any complications, he had found the source of disturbance.

His eyes widened with shock at what he was seeing and the ancient directive of his mother rang in his head, "You will leave and find yourself a wife, and she will bear children for you. She will resemble much like your mother." He gazed upon a naked human woman, her right ankle bleeding and her left leg trapped by a vine.

It seemed that the mists caused her to trip and entangle herself. But the most intriguing part was not that she resembled him and his mother and not like the animals he had seen so far, but the fact that she is naked. He had never seen what a woman without her clothes looked like, even in those questionable times when something about his mother suddenly seemed so attractive.

She suddenly seemed so enchanting and a fiery passion suddenly ignited within him, as if an instinctual urge to gaze and touch those forbidden parts. The struggling human did not notice him, distracted as she called for help in an unknown language. As he approached her, urges began to emerge within him, it felt like sorcery of the highest order and her vulnerable state was like an enchantress beckoning him to take advantage.

As the degree of her wounds and the blood flowing down became apparent, a second urge appeared and it amplified the first. He had his morning meal but both the exotic being and the calling of her blood awakened a gluttonous fiend within him. He was merely behind a single shrub at this point, ready to pounce and be guided by his urges.

Foreign, lawless thoughts began to creep into his mind, a chaotic swirl of pleasure sweeped forth from his growing girth. His mother had taught him of its function to impregnate but she did not teach him its restraint, leaving it to him.

The pleasure seems good to him, to satisfy whatever it asked of him. But, his mother had said that it was only for his wife, but of no particular reason beyond her command. He weighed his options as she continued to struggle and attempted to break free.

The sound of an ignited blaze roared as it burnt vine to ash, then becoming silent as the wind. The woman felt no heat as an apparent miracle had freed her from the vine. His girth gradually shrunk as she left in the opposite direction, fading as she vanished into the greenery.

Though he held back from tasting what lust had to offer, he was still curious of her kind. He returned to his palace and awaited till dusk, then taking flight, following the scent of her blood from hours before.

From the night sky, he saw a group of huts in the forest below. He swoops down and silently lands on a tree branch, observing this village from the treetops. 

A cluster of twenty huts densely populated a compact clearing in the forest. His enhanced sight allowed him to identify adobe, the same material that covered the floor of his mother's house. 

The village centered around a large bonfire, with seven humans, clothed in fur and leather skinning the corpse of a few deer, with others sharpening wooden spears or moulding pottery. Twelve others were present in the village, either inside these huts or nearby.

The Lord of the Night wondered if these beings, who looked so similar to his mother were of his kind. She didn't mention them beyond seeking a wife though, making them great mysteries to him.

He decided against simply appearing, lacking a way to understand or speak their language. So, he decided to come and watch them each night, to hear their words and their actions, to know how they speak. 

As for this night, he stared and carefully listened to the village till midnight, when his stomach growled its request to him. He left and ate his fill of broth, before sleeping in his unorthodox bed, waking up at nightfall on the next day to continue his watch over the village.

Seasons pass and the village welcomed childbirth, a strange phenomena for the Lord of the Night. From the canopy he watched as a mother struggled and screamed in pain, her face paling in pain as a wet child was pushed out of the womb.

The villagers helped her deliver and prepared food for her once she did. It was an ordeal of fifteen minutes, before a crying child emerged, blanketed in fur. The mother was provided water in a clay pot and meat to restore her energy. He watched as she ate and collapsed afterwards, completely exhausted from birthing a child.

He was fascinated by this, and he asked himself, was he born that way too? In his year of observing the village, he could say at least that he was a unique case. None of them showed any of the powers he had, especially not regeneration or flight. Their canines were too short compared to him, and their eyes didn't dimly glow.

By now, he had roughly understood how to speak their language but he still did not come into the village. This was the first time, but he felt that his image mattered, mattered on how they saw him and this drove him to abstain from appearing. 

However, it seems that it would be they who would appear to him. On one of the days of watching the village, Daevel saw the woman from far earlier, the naked one who was trapped by vines. She came to the village one day, now clothed in leather and fur.

But her coming was not one of good tidings, she asked the village to give her some of their harvests to pay for the village's protection tithe. The village quickly understood and gave her the tithe they had prepared from two days prior. She brought them into the forest, where a few men with spears helped her carry them to the north of the forest.

There, he found a village ten times larger and twenty times as vast.