II.i

Historians would later call the next period of N-ta's life the precursor to the Bronze Age. She witnessed many of her friends at Boshamta grow old and die, with Wukong lasting the longest. His exploits would later become Chinese legend. The magical city grew into a world all its own, with the main city becoming the only entrance to the normal world. All across the Earth, the long-lived cavewoman and her allies lived and worked in secret, ensuring Rethif and his minions never took a firm hold on the world. With populations of normal humans ebbing and flowing here and there, all the corners of the world became sites to visit and keep track of. The normal humans had finally developed weapons of metal, and the wars that followed outdid the body count of the village skirmishes of N-ta's birth time as easily as a man outpacing a child.

The mystical energies that coursed within N-ta grew by leaps and bounds. Now she could do spells only dreamt of before. Changing her shape was nothing; now she could also change the shape and powers of others. When her parents had worried that she would become like a god had apparently been well-founded.

Her energy also drew the attention of magical creatures the world over. Ghouls now could sense her no matter their location. Every so often, she would have to kill one of the long-limbed, slender, ash white creatures.

The area that would someday become China saw wars the way most areas saw sunrises. As soldiers with their bronze weapons skewered and slashed at each other, she would blend in, taking the form of some local, and heal the wounded. Food became the most common cause for war. Water often posed a problem, as floods would contaminate lakes and push people to desperation.

N-ta became known by many names during her time in ancient China. Traveling the countryside and healing the wounded and dying from the countless wars that left fields covered in bodies gave her the nickname of the 'Wandering Sage' and the 'Walking Healer.' She wore many different faces across the decades and mastered the art of disappearing into the shadows when necessary. Seldom did she act towards the leaders in conflicts, because figuring out who was right was a daunting task when rumors were more frequent than truth.

After learning everything she could from ancient China at the time, she traveled towards what would become India one day. The mystics and spiritualists of the time were primitive, and a lot of what they preached was nonsense, but she picked up what she could, and added it to her repertoire.

One day, her allies called her back to Boshamta, and she gathered with them in the temple at the center of the city.

"Voshil," she said, approaching the middle-aged man in the robe at the front of the circle. "What's happened since I was gone?"

He bowed his head. "N-ta," he respectfully greeted. "The simple fact is we've got a lead on how Rethif's cults were turning people into ghouls."

She pumped her fist. "Finally!" she cheered. "His men have been evasive bugs, haven't they?"

A woman in a tunic and animal hide pants approached. "They change locations every few months," she said.

"Botha!" N-ta greeted, shaking her hand. "I didn't know you came back from far west!"

She raised her eyebrows. "Wow," Botha replied. "You have been gone awhile. I came back from that last year." She drifted back to topic. "Your information that's come back from the East has been very helpful. We found a pattern based on the data. Simply put, they use local conflicts to mask their presence. Who notices a few missing people when entire villages are wiped out in conflicts over food and water?"

N-ta nodded. "I'm ready," she said. "Whatever you want me to do, I'll do."

"Good," Voshil stated. "Sleep here tonight, and we'll get ready to go out the first thing tomorrow morning."

She ate in the communal square, where young men and women mingled with the old around the fires and stoves to cook the meals. A luscious smell hit her nose, and she looked over to the large pot where an exotic soup from a faraway land simmered as two large wooden spoons stirred it.

"The food's ready!" a graying woman in a multi-colored dress with bronze-ish skin declared. Everyone lined up, grabbing a plate and bowl and their dinner got delivered to them.

A great many people crowded around N-ta, sitting at her table.

"It's a great honor to meet you," a young woman, brown skin, reddish tinges in her black hair, and a scar running down the side of her nose. "Nakti." She stuck out her hand.

"And you," N-ta greeted.

"Is it true you founded this place?" A rotund-yet-muscular young man said, staff tied to his back. "I learned about you in school."

"Yeah," N-ta confirmed. "That must have been…" Her mind drifted a moment as she struggled to count the time. "…goodness, at least two thousand years ago?" She shook her head. "No, three at least."

They marveled, staring with open mouths and wide eyes at her. Someone asked the obvious question.

"What's it like," a pale-skinned redheaded man asked, "to live forever?"

"There's good and bad," she explained. "On one hand, I've survived wounds that would immediately kill a normal person." She lifted part of her tunic, revealing a scar that was five months old and would be gone altogether by seven. "Pierced right through by a war beast. Gored." She pointed where the entry wound would have been, except that had vanished already.

Someone let out an impressed whistle.

"The bad news is," she continued, "that I get to see everyone I care about die." She took a drink. This drink, wine, had a taste she had difficulty placing. It tasted bad, but it was the kind of bad she could get behind.

"You fought the Great Evil Mage, Rethif," Nakti stated.

N-ta almost scoffed, before realizing that, to the young woman, Rethif was ancient history. "Well," the ancient former cavewoman explained, "I was younger back then. I'd only been alive for a few hundred years. I wandered to a village in the mountains where I lived for a long time. Rethif was a local villager. I accompanied several of the village's warriors on an expedition to slay a ghoul that was dangerously close. Rethif took the risk of tasting some of my blood. He could have died or turned into a ghoul. By chance, he gained power like mine." She gave a deadly serious look. "I got very lucky. Don't take the risk. The countless ghouls we've had to face are a sign of how unlucky most people are."

They all seemed to agree.

"What about the goblins that used to be common?"

"They're hard to come by," N-ta said, answering Nakti's question. "They used to be a common pest, but they can't just feed off any blood. It has to be alive, and it has to be of certain creatures. Men have gotten better at avoiding their magic."

After their conversation, she spent the next few hours teaching them the magic she'd learned while away. Her power had grown considerably over the centuries, but the one thing she found more important than that, was how dramatically Boshamta had changed. As magic became more complex, with new mages coming up every day and developing magical energy into newer forms of power, the magical city that had originally just been a valley between two mountains had grown. No longer could one walk from one end to another in a day's time. Furthermore, ordinary men and women, if they trekked to the valley where it had originated on Earth, they'd see only an empty valley with trees and wildlife. The magical city had migrated to another dimension, with entrances to Earth at the locations of its former valley ends.

She had her house, the stone building with intricate decorations she'd conjured. It had its own water supply and furnishings, provided by magic, and she rested on her bed as the magical world's evening sky rose. There were now buildings floating in the sky, with stairs hovering, leading up to the entrance. Rivers of water flowed up into the sky to supply buildings in the air with fresh water.

N-ta slept, dreaming, as the cool air gave her a sense of ease.

She woke up long before the sun, as the greater magic in this place enhanced her mind. She awoke, strolling out into the common area, and saw that a few others were up as well, gathering weapons and magical objects, as well as preparing bundles of supplies.

"You came back at just the right time," an elderly woman said, wrapping containers of healing potion in rope and placing them side by side in wearable packs. "The top mages didn't want to go into battle without you."

"Keeping track of Rethif's gangs is a long task," N-ta replied. "I'm just glad we're going to be putting an end to this."

An hour later, a war party of no less than thirty set off through a series of portals for a fateful battle with Rethif's men. They crossed miles of terrain and, as they got closer, started dodging and prematurely setting off traps. N-ta's expertise meant they caught several lookouts before they could signal their compatriots.

N-ta signaled and the group stopped. "Hold back your magic," she said. "They're waiting for us. We're going to be attacked in a bit."

Voshil did a double take. "How?" he demanded. "We've been careful!"

N-ta's eyes widened.

She launched backward and threw a barrier overhead. Thousands of energy spikes shattered in midair. "Not careful enough," a woman in an elaborate tunic and pants cried, a veil over her head, and a necklace of fine jewelry about her neck. "You followed exactly the path we expected."

"Who are you?"

"Ha," the woman laughed, dismissing N-ta's question. "As if you'll need to know!"

She threw a fireball that the former cavewoman redirected with a wave of magical water. The fireball signaled the mysterious woman's allies to attack the Boshamta group. A hundred men and women emerged from the surrounding area, from behind rocks and trees, and out of thick grass. Blades and staves of magic and power clashed, and every kind of offensive and defensive spell emerged. Using a duplication spell, N-ta's forces were able to equal their attackers. N-ta pushed ahead of the crowd of enemies and took on the mysterious woman head-on.

The woman enhanced her speed of blows with magic, throwing punches and kicks barely dodged. N-ta knocked these fists aside, just barely turning out of the way of the kicks. "You're damn good," she said. "it's a shame you serve someone who uses people as tools!"

A ball of ice got deflected. The mysterious woman shot her palm out and a spike of solid rock materialized, and N-ta dodged. The former cavewoman blasted a knee into her opponent as she got too close and delivered an enhanced uppercut that took her foe clean off her feet. "You're so clueless it isn't even funny," the woman said, recovering and landing on her feet. Her head covering had come off. A head of chestnut hair fell, and her bronze skin and red eyes gave her a beauty that stood in contrast to her inner ugliness.

Out of the shadows, another four women emerged, each of which bore a strong resemblance to the woman in front of them. "We got what we came for," another said.

N-ta wondered what they meant but cursed her inattentiveness as they shot into a circle around her.

"N-ta!" Voshil shouted, as the women threw up an ensnarement spell and vines of pure power wrapped around her.

With a series of shouts, the women disappeared into thin air. Not moments later, the massive army of assailants vanished into portals, leaving the Boshamta army scratching their heads and frantically trying to trace the paths of magical energy.

***

N-ta awoke in a magical circle. The damp air and smell of salt told of a cavern. Torches lit by stinking oil kept the shadows dancing on the walls. The crackle of flame occasionally gave way to the sound of water dripping from the ceiling. The women who ensnared her stood guard, their magic sigils on the ground, preventing her from escape. She pushed her power out, straining against the barrier. The women visibly strained, and one developed a nosebleed, but they held as soon as their allies came to boost them.

"It's no use struggling."

Her blood ran cold at the warped, crackly voice corrupted by evil energies. She stopped her struggle and looked up.

Breath caught in her throat.

A mass of purplish-red mist circled in the air. In it she saw the faces of demonic presences, skulls adorned with spikes of all kinds. At the front, she saw a very familiar face. When she could speak, her voice was hardly above a whisper, as she had to force words out.

"Rethif…by the gods…" she uttered. "What did you do?"

A chorus of ghastly laughs came from many of the skull-faces. Rethif coughed a horrible noise, and they silenced. "What did I do?" he demanded. "When I was defeated, killed, thrown aside like waste, where do you think I ended up? Clawing my way out of the Underworld wasn't easy."

"You were turning people into ghouls to discover how to enhance your own power!" she insisted. "You deserve to be in the depths!"

"Thanks to you," one of the women said, "he's bound to demons and will never be able to be human again!"

"His suffering is eternal!" yelled another.

"Good!" N-ta shouted. "It's what he deserves!"

"If I must suffer," Rethif spoke, his voice overlapping with demonic cries just beneath the surface, "so will you."

The women began chanting and the magic circle began to spin. N-ta put up her defenses but the barrier would not be stopped. The walls closed in on her, squeezing her together. When it felt as though her bones would break, her body began to be converted into light. Feeling left her arms and legs as red swirls of light shot out of where her limbs used to be. She saw the light floating like a mist and collapsing into a small jewel set into a golden necklace. With mounting horror, she saw their plan.

"None who wield my power against my will will know peace!"

And with those words, she disappeared into the gemstone.

"Now, children," Rethif spoke, "Don the gemstone and wield her power to our ends!"

The eldest of the women lifted the gold necklace and placed the band around her neck, letting the stone hang in front of her upper chest. Her body overflowed with magic, the aura pouring out of her as she felt incredible waves of mystical energy all around and within. The incredible rush of N-ta's memories passed into her mind.

"So much power," the woman cried. "How did our magics contain her?"

"Much of my demonic energy is spent," Rethif stated. "I must go into hibernation and restore my power."

"My lord!" A younger one of the women said. "We will not fail you!"

The demonic entity that once was Rethif vanished, his power spent helping them contain N-ta for the spell.

"Now, my troops," the woman bearing the necklace cried, "you shall help me in my conquest!"

One man pointed.

"Nyaah!"

The woman wielding N-ta's power looked just in time to see a hand reaching for the band of the necklace. She incinerated her sister without hesitation. "This power is mine!" she cried. "I am the eldest!"

"Be damned if you will," her sister cried, lunging.

What followed was a bloody fight that left all dead except one. As the eldest sister had only N-ta's memories but no actual expertise, converting what she could remember into action was delayed. Through much effort, her would-be army slayed her and then turned on each other, spilling blood and slitting throats over possession of the necklace. After limbs littered the cave, and corpses sank into pools of water, a wounded acolyte picked up the necklace and draped the band around his neck. His wounds healed with a hiss, and he laughed in delight at his newfound power.

He wandered out of the cave and portaled his way to the nearest city. He wanted to go to Boshamta but it eluded him at every turn. N-ta's curse, it seemed, had sealed any wielder of her power off from accessing the magical city.

First, the man arrived in Egypt, where, boasting of his newfound power, he declared himself to be the human form of a god. Using power, he enslaved the city. None of their warriors could oppose him, and within days, he had complete control of one of the capitals of the world. He took delight in never sleeping, using her vast restorative magic to recuperate his mind even as he did his activities. He would hover off the ground, looking down on his subjects. Any activity he didn't like was wiped from the face of the Earth with any destructive spell he felt like using. Enemy armies found lightning, fires, and whirlwinds tearing them asunder before they approached too close.

In his decades of life, in which he did not age, he took however many women he felt like. He lost count. Any who displeased him or refused to obey his commands were punished, often with death. One day, he fell in love, and he took his new wife to bed.

"My dear," he spoke, "I will share my power with you, and we will always be together!"

The woman, a peasant weaver, nodded and wept as she lay next to him. "I look forward to our days together!"

This, it turned out, was a lie.

He limited his power so as not to harm her as they made love. Without enhancement, as he cared for her, unlike the others, he eventually became tired. She felt him become sluggish and lean to his side, finishing. "That…was heavenly…"

His eyelids drooped.

She reached out like a snake and snatched the necklace from his neck. He instantly snapped awake and shot forward, angry spittle dripping from his clenched teeth. Before he could reach her, she reached under the bed and pulled a knife, jamming it into his neck and rolling off the bed.

"Die, you bastard!" she shouted, throwing the necklace on. As soon as she became aware of the power, she stuck her arm out, and a huge wave of fire incinerated the man, bed and all.

Using disguising magic, she easily snuck out of the city. She washed herself in the Nile before disappearing into the horizon. His guards would find his charred corpse hours later. Within three days, the city would be invaded. Without N-ta's magic protecting the city, enemy armies, long kept from the riches of Egypt's capital, besieged the city and each other.

The woman drifted north to the area that would become known as Greece, and her name would be misinterpreted as "Hera."

With the gem dangling from her neck, Hera reigned as a goddess over entire swaths of land, and some tens of thousands of people. Stories of her and the followers she gave powers to passed down through the ages and became the basis of the Greek legends.

As time wore on, however, the greed and lust for power that her fellow "gods" felt became a poison seed that eventually bore fruit. The Gods went to war against each other, each convinced the power was theirs for the taking. Blood spilled across the terrain. Mountains were leveled by magic of immense power. At the end, entire cities were wiped from the face of the Earth.

Ares survived the battle and smuggled the gem out of the area that would become Greece. Unfortunately for him, a wounded Hades followed him and the two fought. A snowy village in the northwest suffered their battle.

One day, a wandering merchant, searching the wreckage for treasure to sell, found the gem.

Free me…

He recoiled the moment his hand touched the gem. It landed in the snow.

He saw a swirling mass of red mist within. A face, twisted in agony, slammed repeatedly against the walls of the gem. He could tell its power increased by the minute. He pulled a spare wooden box from his pack and closed the necklace within. Later, on a ship bound for the northern lands, he sold the box in exchange for a free meal and some coin.

"It's a beautiful thing," the man said. "Enchanted, it is, but beautiful."

"Thank you, sir," the merchant said, accepting the coins. "I never got your name."

The old man scratched his beard. "Name's Odin," he said.

The man's story would end in fire and death. Later generations would turn the devastating battle into a myth known as Ragnarök.

At various points, over several millennia, the gem would change hands, grant its enormous power to whoever wore it, and inevitably their struggles would end in tragedy and bloodshed.

The entire time, N-ta suffered in agony as her power increased inexorably. The bit of goblin's blood she'd tasted all those years ago, continued to absorb her human essence and pump out magical power many times magnified. Without a body, she couldn't feel anything except the agony of her magic drained off to power whoever wore her prison. Over time, however, her need to sustain her essence gave rise to a need for the wearer to draw upon human magical essence.

And thus, the vampire was born.

A curse had been created and passed down. Historians never knew of the origin for certain, only that many centuries later, a man named Vlad would become the most well-known myth of the vampire.

***

"My lord!" A young boy brought the corpse of the beast up to the altar. "We've killed the last of the vampires!"

The elderly priest shook his head, though he adored the child's optimism. "No, boy, just the last we know of, for now." He stared at the jewelry box in his possession. "What we have here, though, is the source of all our problems." He set the jewelry box in the center of the altar, the blood of the vampires forming a magical circle. "We must destroy the gem or more of these foul creatures shall be born."

"How?"

The priest looked over at the young man who asked the question. "Simple," he replied. "This scroll I have contains ancient magic much older than our entire order."

The boy signaled for his compatriots to approach. "Form a circle!" he ordered.

"All our magics must converge at the same time!" the priest commanded.

They extended their hands and drew blood from palms. "Open the seal," they chanted, in a language long forgotten by the world. "Break the barrier containing the spirit."

The bloody circle began to glow with an eerie purple light. The overcast evening sky parted revealing a brilliant white moon overhead. They continued to chant.

"It's working, boys! Keep going!"

With a final shout, a beam of white light shot down from the moon and the ornate wooden jewelry box exploded into splinters. The gem hovered in midair, ensnared by the purple light emerging from the circle.

"ERRAAAAGHHHH!"

A great cry of agony and effort shook the ground. The gem cracked and split apart, the sound like a tree blasted by lightning. A great red misty light shot out of the gem, swirled around overhead, before converging on two of the oxen brought by the men. The beasts gave a cry before being reduced to a skeleton.

"Great Gods above!" cried one boy. "It's the Great Evil One!"

The mist collapsed to the ground in front of them and congealed into the form of a woman, lanky and skin the color of ash. As the vital essence of the consumed cattle entered her, her flesh darkened to mud brown, and her gaunt face and limbs filled out somewhat.

She felt her face and extended her arms to the sky in triumph. She gave a yell in a language they could not understand.

"Who are you, creature?" the priest asked.

In a blink of an eye, faster than a flash of lightning, she had her hand on the priest's head.

"Pardon me," she said, her language bearing an accent unlike any they'd heard before. "I've been trapped for almost two thousand years, and I'm very tired."

The priest had seen some of her memories in the moment she touched him. "By the Gods," he swore, "you're older than the oldest stories we have!"

"Food," she beckoned.

"Boys! Get her some of our food!"

Within minutes, she had piles of dried meats and bread in front of her, as well as vegetables she didn't recognize. She ate them all with little concern for appearances. They brought her clay pots full of water and she drank greedily.

"She's one of the Ancient Ones?" a young man asked.

"I was born long before people carried iron weapons as you do," N-ta answered.

They stared in disbelief at her.

The priest approached, concern in his eyes. "In any case, your power has given rise to creatures that suck the blood out of their victims, and turn them into monsters as well."

N-ta stared at him, intensity radiating off her. "I know," she said. "I saw your memories. It seems I came back to the world at the worst time."