Embrace The Vampires

Short Stories By Anthony
Group ID: dalinar_the_dark

Dalinar Part I

The awkward appearance of the small ragged form approaching leaves hints of early teen clumsiness. His short steps bring him into view as he pulls back the hood of a tattered ink-black cloak. Dark brown hair falls flat around a child-like face and gray-green eyes. He appears to be no older than sixteen, but something in those eyes suggest an aged, and ambitious look, as though he has seen much more than sixteen years. Though at first glance he seemed a child, his stance and demeanor, the very way he caries himself, disguises a moderately built body, about five foot nine and one-hundred and sixty pounds. He wears tattered and pieced together Shenarian armor, and what was once fine silver, gray and black silk garments, with soft black leather boots.

He was found as a child wandering on the border of the blight at the age of six. During a patrol, a Sheinarian captain discovered him and took him back to Fal Dara. There, the good natured warrior took him into his home, amongst his four other children. For two years he only spoke unintelligible mutterings.

Raised as a Shenarian, he always felt an outsider. His adopted father, Roederic Anshahl, was the only person to ever show him any concern, least that he could remember. He could remember little from earlier than the age of seven, and what he could remember were those things Roederic had told him.

The family he had been adopted into showed him little love, and treated him as less than family. Roederic often had to come to his aid after the less pleasant meetings with his elder brothers Danel and Joseph. He was constantly plotting his revenge, and often succeeded with very cruel manipulations. At twelve, he stole and shredded a journal of his younger sister Taylna, planting it outside Danel's window. He then convinced her it was him, and to aid him humiliating him at school. He used her help to twist even Joseph agains Danel, and eventually led several unwitting students into beating Danel to the point of being bed-ridden for a month. All by convincing them of a nonexistent plot of Danel's, to get them all lost in the blight. Everything he did only served to alienate him further, and eventually be outcast by even his siblings. He was an outsider in the only family he knew, and developed a great love and respect for his father, as he was the only person to care for him at all. Despite that love and respect, he still spent a great deal of time wandering the edges of the blight, drawn to it for some reason, perhaps morbid curiosity. His father constantly reminded and scolded him to avoid such a dangerous place, but he never seemed to befall any harm.

As he grew older he began having nightmares, waking covered in sweat and blood from thrashing into things. The healers all believed it was due to his isolation, as he was an outcast at school, and spent a great deal of his time still wandering the borders of the blight. The dreams would sometimes become strikingly real, and he spend a great deal of thought trying to relate his dreams to life, until he began to believe his dreams would sometimes come true. Unfortunately the reality of his dreams, and the isolation of life, drew him deeper into dreaming, until his dreams became more real to him than reality itself. He drew deeper and deeper into his dreams, and spent more and more time in the blight, until he eventually began skipping his classes and dodging his sword-master.

In one of these dreams of his own private reality, someone came to him promising power beyond his imagination, riches beyond belief, and revenge on everyone who had cast him aside. He had always been ambitious, and these promises only fed that ambition and cruelty. He only had to pay the cost of pledging himself to the Dark Lord. When he woke, he felt a moment of the truth of reality. He felt aggravated and frustrated, that this offer was only a dream, and his revenge would never come.

To work off his frustration, he walked. He started wandering throughout the Fal Dara streets of frozen mud. Wandering through the starts of the morning crowds, the chill brisk air and eerie silence of the streets only served to fuel his distaste for life. He walked a familiar route to the north gate, unaware of the people and shops around him. Lost in his own world within his mind, thinking only of how he might one day turn the tables on the world that seemed to despise him.
In the back of his mind he heard someone call his name. The brush with reality pulled his conscieness to the surface, or enough so that he noticed somone calling to him from a nearby alley.

Stopping, and looking to the figure, cloaked in all black and hiding in the morning shadows, "What is it? Who's there?"

Stepping forward only enough to bring Dalinar's eyes to the figure, "Me?" the form chuckled a bit, "I am the person who can help bring you your revenge."

Dalinar moved into the alley, weary of the intentions of the stranger, but his fury and hatred more that outweighed his fear. "I'm listending stranger." His voice quiet and almost a whiper. Against the chill air and his misty breath, he almost sounded as an adder sizing up a target.

"Come with me," stepping deeper into the shadows of the alley, "serve the Shadow, and serve me." It took little deciding on his part, and almost imidiately aknowledged the offer. "You'll have to prove your loyalty before I can accept any promises.... " the shadowy figure told him. Stopping for a moment at yet another price to pay, "I never trust anyone, how do I know you speak the truth?"

"We are not in your dreams now child," moving closer to him, "this offer does not come lightly..." though still an unrecognisable dark figure, "Kill your father."

The shock at hearing this suggested threw him into a rage of fury. Diving at the figure, only to be picked up by unseen hands and tossed aside thrashing. The turmoil of aggression and repusion, pure hatred and resolve, sent him into a fury of scraming and ranting. Somewhere in a corner of his mind he recognised his ranting as sounding like what he would mumble as a child, though it all sounded like gibberish to his ears. He eventually calmed as he realized that he was bound by something he could faintly sense, but wasn't there, pressing against him. Then he noticed that the figure was laughing, and in a strange burst flooding over him, feeling a rush of bliss and filth for but an instant, he did something he could not explain. That energy burst out from him in pop, he had caused a small shockwave of air, but is was just enough to knock the figure back a little. The shock that he had channeled caused the figure to release the flows of air that bound him. The same shock, though he knew not what he did, caused him to forget his fury.

Trying to ignore the short burst of air, and the sudden surprise, "If you don't shut up, I'll flay you alive." Laughing again, the figure drew menacingly closer, "It's worth the price... I can teach you to harness the One Source.....," growing almost self-riotous, "Beneath the Dark Lord you will be able to achieve anything that your resolve and ambition can take you to. You could command legions, own vast lands and the control over the lives of thousands of people. Power that I cannot begin to describe, as you couldn't even comprehend."

"You ask for too much."

"I'll give you a small token of proof of the power you could hold. Pick a person you want revenge on, and it will be done."

"Danel," his mouth twists in disdain at even thinking of him, "my brother, Danel."

"Very well child... I'll contact you again in a week."

When he woke the following morning, Danel was bed-ridden with some horrible and painful sickness. Dalinar went to see him, and found him racked with spasms of pain, and coughing up blood. For seven days the sickness worsened, and every moment of it, Danel spent moaning and screaming in pain and delirium. For seven days, Dalinar stayed by his bedside. For seven days, he relished the torture of his brother, and plotted the death of the only person who had shown him kindness.