The initial thing that he experienced was that blood was in his mouth. Copper and decay.
The second one was the pain, a hollow, pulling soreness in his bones, a shakiness and weakness of his limbs, which was not so much sickness as a vacuum where the universe had excavated him out and left him there.
The third was the voice, keen and dashing with a disdain so powerful that it could not be touched by any human being.
And still you breathe, your highness? A sign of your obstinacy, and not, I think, of your value.
Akira's eyes fluttered open. The world was brought in by a movie of fever-sweat. He was in a cavernous bedchamber, though the superfluency had been a phantom. Dress velvet hangings and dust upon the dresser and a cold and lifeless fireplace, apparently years of years old. The odour of antique incense and a more intimate smell of illness were in the air.
He was overshadowed by a man, with the worn garments of a court physician. Master Corvin. His features were an imitation of professional worry that did not go all the way down to his eyes.
He had a fever over, said Corvin, and did not even attempt to conceal his disappointment. "A pity. The kingdom might have been draining the resources your... maintenance... drained it.
Akira was overwhelmed by memories that were not his although they were. Kageyama Akira. Third Son to the kingdom of Veridia. The diseased, powerless, magical, unwholesome, costly to a kingdom already bled to death by a decade of plague, invasions by monstrous creatures, and the unconcerns of the gods, the Cursed Prince was born. His father, king, was a sadistic man; his elder brothers, vultures that had a dying corpse.
Akira, he, was the simplest to get rid of.
I need... water... I need it, I need it... his throat was sore.
Corvin sniffed. "I'll have a servant bring some. Eventually." He went away without a word and the heavy oak door closed with a final sound.
Akira was left alone and pushed himself on the bed with his muscles protesting. This wasn't right. And this sick, broken body... it was a cage. Some far-off screaming section of him recalled weight. Recollected making stars and shaping the evolution. Recollected an infidelity, a descent into nothingness.
The Warden of Evolution. The title emerged out of his broken soul. Then the other memory, the memory which had provoked this reawakening, a frenzied, outlawed union in some godless laboratory, a stolen piece of a universal programme, the Feast Protocol, hacked together with a mortal soul that was expiring.
There is a system to recycle the creation that became property of a prince to recycle.
All at once, pangs of starvation in his stomach, unlike the disease. This was an abysmal, cosmic nothingness, a hole which must be filled. He gazed over to the tray at his bedside. A slice of hard bread, a bowl of poor thick grub. Scraps.
The hunger recoiled from it. This wasn't food. Not for what he was becoming.
Something was going on out there that caught his eye. Shouts. The clang of steel. Something wrong, a roar of bestiality.
He used the bedpost to make his way to the window and was staggering. It looked into a lower courtyard, which once was a training ground, and is now a triage. A group of the city guard were wrestling with a... thing. It had been a wolf once, but now it was an ugly bizarre piece of matted hair, exposed bone, gleaming like obsidian, and pulsating, violet tumours which oozled with acidic discharge. A Plague-Hound was a beast that was spawned by a scourge that was consuming the world.
The guards were losing. Their swords slid off the mutated hide of the creature. One was too slow; a barbed, lashing tentacle, which, in lieu of the tail of the monster, encircled his leg, and with a horrible crunch he was drawn into its jaws. The cracking of bones was damp and deathly.
The other guards failed, their spirits broken.
Akira's hunger screamed. It wasn't repulsed. It was enthralled. The monster, the mutant... it was the food of the devil to the empty in him.
A desperate, mad notion, the spawning of a god, came to him. He wouldn't die in this bed. He would not be a prince of rags.
He had stumblingly, half-frowned his way down a back staircase out into the tumultuous courtyard. The smell of blood, ozone and rot filled the air. The other guards were retreating, and their captain was shouting orders to which no one was attending.
The Plague-Hound saw Akira. Its several, milk-white eyes stared at the new feeble victim. It disregarded the armed guards, rushed, a dreadful, terrible scuttle of incongruous members.
Time seemed to slow. Akira defended himself and his heart beat wildly at his weak ribs. He had no weapon. No strength. Just a dying body and a hungry ghost within him.
When the monster sprung, with its mouth open enough to cut off his head, Akira did the one thing he could. He did not put his hands up to defend. He pushed them forward, but not to push, embracing them.
Devour, devour, devour, he said, not with his mouth, but with his soul.
A crimson seal, as of a broken and bloody sun, flashed to existence upon his chest, just showing through his skimpy tunic. The color of new blood was tendrils of energy that came out of his palms. they were not concrete, but they existed. They met the beast in mid-air.
There was no impact. There was only... absorption.
The cry of the Plague-Hound was a gurgled out shout. Its shape was starting to melt away, not to ashes, but to streams of sparkling bloody light that were vacuumed into the hands of Akira. He experienced a flash of ripped, bloody energy rushing through his system. Pain and pleasure were tormenting. His cells shrieked with being ripped to pieces and stitched back together. His bones were breaking and resetting, firmer. The permanent, exhausting feeble nature had gone, and a throbbing, dangerous strength had taken its place.
It was over in seconds. At the place of a monster there was nothing.
Akira was panting, his body shaking due to a different reason. He felt... solid. He was real, as he had never been before since he had awakened. He looked at his hands. They no longer were pale and skeletal. A thin coat of body sweat and blood that was not his had coated them, the flesh stretched tight across the corded muscle.
The guards gazed, as they called to book in an expression of horror and awe.
But Akira did not pay much attention to them. Since there was no sound that had been made in the silence of the death of the beast, a new sound commenced.
A whisper.
It was weak, and desperate and intermingling bestial anger and bewilderment.
It was emerging out of his own mind.
he had fed upon the flesh and strength and very spirit of the beast. And parts of its consciousness had arrived to play. The Devour and Rule Protocol was connected to the internet. He had made his first step out of prince to predator.
He raised his eyes out of his hands, and his new, crimson eyes gave the frightened stare of the guard captain. The man retreated, his sword driving on the cobblestones.
Akira permitted a very gradual, incisive smile to brush his lips. The initial experience of power had always been the sweetest. And he was so really, really hungry.
The history of the Eater Emperor was commenced.