The Malavide

With what seemed like the last of the glow from the burning house behind him he saw a short, stooped but somehow graceful figure step from behind a clump of Joshua trees. The man was dressed strangely, in a short coat and breeches instead of the normal toga or flowing robes.

He had light colored hair and a pale face. As the moonlight took over the man stepped closer, and Thonos wondered as he drew his knife whether this was one of the bandits.

He put that thought aside almost immediately. Whatever this man was, he had not come to kill Thonos. He spread his arms out, and his old, lined face gazed solemnly at the grief stricken man.

"Do you want the ones that did this, Thonos?" the old man asked. "I tried to stop them - I killed three of them, but there were to many, and trained well as soldiers. Your friend killed one, which is better than most could have done. I can show you where they are, though" the old man said. "I can show you where they are, and I can give you the power to kill them and their kind. We can both go through them with not much problem now."

Thonos looked up at the old man out of wide, dead eyes. His soul, his heart was swallowed by the darkness that had first overtaken him when he saw his friend lying in the road. That darkness demanded sacrifice of heart, sacrifice of soul and happiness. That darkness demanded of Thonos everything.

"I will do anything," Thonos said, and his fate was sealed.

ahk'Tabur, the oldest of the Malavide, ahk'Tabur, who had been old almost beyond reckoning when the idea of Greece was still not founded, stepped forward through the darkness; he stepped forward to tear apart and rebuild. He would do as he had said; he would allow Thonos to find and kill those that had taken his family, them and those like them. He had not told Thonos everything yet, and he would not for years to come.

He stepped forward, and ripped from Thonos the thin shred of humanity.

He stepped forward, and another Malavide was born; and thereafter Thonos would never know what it was like to walk uncertainly in the dark.