Published at 14th of October 2023 4:51 pm

Chapter 2 Skewer

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The ghoul was confused. His mind wasn’t properly coordinating with his body, making every action seem jerky and delayed. What drove him now was instinct. As soon as he received the command of the woman, he felt an unbearable hunger and a strong desire to kill, but there was no living prey here.

This violent impulse had to be let loose. He couldn’t touch this woman—there was no question of that. His slowed consciousness did not consider her either as food or as an outlet for his hatred.

The ghoul walked around the woman and went outside. It was dim, as this valley steeped in the eternal shadow of the colossal mountains above. The sliver of blue above him marked the time as day.

But the lack of light didn’t matter to the ghoul, whose yellow eyes resembled those of a nocturnal predator. Looking around, he saw there was nothing of interest nearby other than a overgrown and ill-kept path running off into the distance. Despite its central location, this solitary hut nestled under the large stone was one of the most isolated places in the entire valley. Weeds and barren earth stretched out for over a mile in each direction.

He set foot upon the path and made his way forward. His movements were a simple shuffle, the bare minimum to keep him moving forward. As he walked, his faint grasp on his identity slipped further and further away. This new vessel the soul found himself in seemed unable to maintain any thoughts that went beyond the location of his next meal.

He was hatred. He was hunger. With each step down that dirt path, reason vanished until all that was left was the Ghoul.

He traveled until the sky above began to shine a dull red. The road was no longer just dirt, now its surface was comprised of smooth river pebbles. He blinked and sluggishly looked around, finding himself in the outskirts of a tiny village.

He stepped forward, sparing no glances towards the dilapidated homes standing on either side. He was focused on the smell that carried on the faint wind. He smelled others like him, but also traces of something more delicious. There were sounds in the distance, so he began to follow them, believing it to be the source of that tantalizing scent.

Focused on his destination, he missed it when a figure slumped out of a hut behind him and approached. The Ghoul was taken off-guard as a pair of hands suddenly grasped his shoulders. With a growl and a sickening crunch, a chunk of flesh was ripped out of his neck. He staggered as the weight of the unknown assailant pressed down on him. After a violent struggle failed to throw it off, he changed strategies.

The Ghoul fell over backwards onto the attacker, forcing it to release its hold on him. He rolled over and got to his feet, only to see another like himself—a ghoul.

It was the corpse of an old man. It possessed a tall frame and was well-built for its age. In life, it may have been a venerable elder… but death did not treat it kindly. This second undead had dark, splotchy discolorations on its skin, and it was bloated, as if it had been submerged underwater for days. Both eyes were missing from their sockets, and its lips had been torn away to reveal ghastly yellow teeth that had clenched within them a piece of gray meat, which it swallowed with a grotesque slurping noise.

The Ghoul spared no time, lunging forward to strike. Blind as it was, his enemy didn’t even know it was being attacked until his jaws were latched onto its throat. A struggle commenced. The bloated ghoul hammered on him, throwing wild, powerful punches that split the Ghoul’s flesh. His ribs cracked, but the Ghoul was like a machine, powering through the blows. At last, he crushed its windpipe, ripping out its throat.

The unfortunate ghoul was not yet finished, however. Even though it couldn’t move its head or even stand, its undead body granted it no peace. It crawled along on the ground, its nearly decapitated head dragging to the side, held onto the torso only by its spine.

The Ghoul stomped down on the crawler’s exposed cervical vertebrae, snapping it and sending the old ghoul to its eternal rest.

He looked down on the now unmoving corpse. If he was affected in any way by the sudden clash that nearly spelled his end, there was no sign of it. What appeared on his impassionate visage was a dim yet seething fire, flickering within the deepest parts of his eyes.

Then, he was reminded of his hunger.

[Level increased] x 2

Strength + 1

Agility + 1

You have received the title: <Cannibal>

The Ghoul stood up from the remains of his grisly meal, reddish-brown blood painting his lips. He felt reinvigorated, and though the terrible wounds from the battle remained, they were like a distant memory.

Despite this victory, his urge to kill hadn’t lessened. Ignoring the awful scene at his feet, he continued down the path, towards a denser cluster of buildings, where he had heard the sounds from earlier.

Upon arriving at the center of the village, the Ghoul paused. The street had changed from pebbles to cobblestones, causing his footsteps to echo against the nearby walls. He stopped moving and listened.

From a house nearby, a tumult suddenly broke out. The sound of wood splintering came from within. Then, someone screamed:

“Ahhhh! Viru! Viru! Chal nev!”

The person pleaded for mercy for a few moments more, but sounds of intimate violence followed this. The screams continuing for some time, and then there was silence.

The unfortunate inhabitant had gone quiet, though whether it was voluntarily or because they had their throat ripped out, the Ghoul neither knew nor cared. As he closed in, he heard a sound like that of meat getting ripped off the bone.

He entered the house and was met with the aftermath of a struggle. The kitchen and communal area near the entrance of the house was in disarray. Pots were strewn about and the already sparse wooden furniture was all but destroyed. The single door in the house that led to a separate sleeping area was broken and swinging on its hinges. Inside, he saw two female ghouls, missing large chunks of flesh themselves, stooped over and tearing into a woman’s body. Bloody meat entered their ravenous gullets as they gorged themselves. When the Ghoul entered the doorway, they slowed and eventually came to a stop, staring at him blankly. When he took a step inside, they dropped the woman and stood, dinner forgotten.

The Ghoul, sluggishness gone from his body, fell upon them. He pounced on the ghoul to the left before it had a chance to rise completely. Like the last one, he went for the throat, managing to tear a piece of it out just before the momentum of his tackle sent the ghoul flying into a large ceramic urn, which shattered and spilled its contents—preserved vegetables—out onto the floor. The enemy on his right had now fully risen, and it lunged at the Ghoul, biting his shoulder and clawing at his eyes. He nearly fell over, but by supporting himself on the wall, barely managed to remain standing. As the hands approached his face, he snapped, catching two of the claw-like fingers in his mouth and severing them. There was no spray of blood, but a dark, viscous liquid seeped from the injury.

He spat out the digits to free up his mouth. Then, he tried to push the ghoul away, but he couldn’t maneuver his arm around in this tight space.

The first ghoul was stirring atop the ceramic fragments that littered the floor. The fight was becoming disadvantageous and the Ghoul knew it, though he couldn’t put the feeling into conscious thought. He turned, ramming the shoulder-chewing ghoul into the wall, which caused the frame of the entire house to shudder. The ghoul fell off, leaving a few of its teeth behind.

As he took a step towards it to try and finish it off, he stumbled over something: a metal skewer. It appeared to have fallen from the lifeless fingers of the woman who lived here, who had picked up the makeshift weapon in a last desperate attempt to defend herself.

He held up the skewer, and his forehead began to burn with a searing fire, the first true pain he’d felt since being put into this body. The suddenness of it shocked the Ghoul into clarity. The gears of his mind, ignored and forgotten, began to turn once more.

The Ghoul was surrounded; there were too many angles here to defend from. He moved towards the doorway to the kitchen, attempting to maneuver so that he only had one angle to defend from. Before he could reach it, a fragment of pottery cracked behind him. He whirled, finding one of them closing in. The second one wasn’t far behind.

He lifted the skewer—and whether through luck or something else at play—he lunged, affixing it through the eye socket of the nearest one. It pierced deeply, exiting through the rear of the female ghoul’s skull without much resistance. It was quite sharp.

The Ghoul pulled the skewer free, and his enemy crumpled to the floor. He turned to face the next one.

The second ghoul was too close now for him to rear back and stab it. Unless…

Shlck

Unless it ran into the skewer itself. The female ghoul’s dull eyes widened when it looked down to see a metal pole protruding from its chest. Mindlessly, it had impaled itself. This wasn’t enough to stop it, however, and it still tried to claw at the Ghoul. Thanks to the skewer keeping it at a distance, it couldn’t get a solid hit in.

The Ghoul felt something as he held the handle of his makeshift weapon. He ignored the female ghoul’s glancing blows, and his dull eyes glazed over as he looked to the distance, beyond the ghoul he was stabbing, beyond the walls of the house and even beyond the mountains enclosing this valley of death.

It felt like a memory from long ago. It wasn’t a memory of a person or an event, but a sensation he could feel in his arms and legs—an electrical current, a path running throughout his body. It told him what to do.

He leaned back and kicked at the ghoul, sending it staggering back and off of the skewer. Nearly stumbling himself, he righted by placing his back to a wall. Then, he crouched and lunged up, making the most of his limited space and driving the skewer up through its jaw. It flailed about for a few seconds, but the flailing soon turned to twitches. When the Ghoul gave another push, his final enemy fell limply to the floor, coming to rest upon a blood-soaked straw mat so neatly that, if not for the carnage surrounding it, it would appear to be sleeping.

[Level increased] x 3

Dexterity +2

Ichor +1

He exited the house after tasting only a little of his victims. This time, the taste wasn’t quite as fulfilling as he thought it could have been. The murdered woman began stirring before he left, but he ignored her.

There was something else within him now. An eagerness that his dull brain couldn’t fully understand. Lifting his nose to the air, the ghoul scented dozens of other undead in his vicinity. As he moved through the village, he saw some chewing on carcasses, others who idled and did nothing, and even more who fought with one-other like he had.

He disregarded them all, moving through the village until he reached the opposite side, where he could faintly discern traces of humans who had fled this place only hours ago. With his skewer in one hand, the Ghoul memorized the scent and began to track them.

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