A Path to Perdition

“The beast within is not a curse, but a part of oneself that one must accept and control.”

Lucian was a small figure, all alone, walking slowly across the vast barren plain that spread endless and empty under the stark gray winter sky. Eyes downcast, his bearded face looked as cracked and parched as the land itself, leathered skin etched with lines of weariness. Defeat hung round his shoulders, a cloak he couldn’t shake.

The cold wind needled his face and cut through his threadbare coat like a knife, making him draw his shoulders up and pull the worn lapels tighter with a shiver. It was a chill that reached right down into his very bones.

His boots scuffed through the hard dirt, the only sound except for the lonely cry of some bird high above that hung for a moment, forlorn, before fading away once more into dead silence. Nothing alive stirred anywhere across the cold tableau.

He squinted at the horizon where stark, rocky flats stretched unbroken as far as he could see. The monotony made it seem like he hadn’t moved at all; his slow trudge getting no closer to anywhere in this limbo of dust and stone.

Lucian spotted a smudge of darkness breaking the plain far ahead: a small stand of trees. Hope leapt in his chest. He found the strength to move his aching feet a little quicker towards the vision of branches as a sign he wasn’t wandering completely alone here at the end of the world.

He dragged forward in anticipation, but his bursting hope died as he drew close enough to make out just a small cluster of four barren trees. Their twisted branches were black and dead—almost leafless—petrified in time and spiraling up from the dust uselessly instead of extending into a lush haven of forest Lucian so craved.

“Damn it to hell!” he swore aloud. He stood there before the petrified trees, bending beneath emotion and fatigue, with darkness descending toward a night that held no comfort.

Then he saw two paths directly behind the scant stand of timber. Twin tracks heading off into the distance. Two ways to choose from instead of none. Lucian stared, gripped by indecision.

There was no reason to take either path. There was no beckoning light off in the distance setting a clear course. Both lay bleak, dusty, and comfortless in the dying light.

Impulsively he chose the left-hand path, if only because some quiet voice told him the right seemed to lead back somehow in the direction he had come from. Toward what he wasn’t sure, but he knew with certainty he couldn’t retrace his steps across that desolation he crossed already. As hopeless as this place was, the world behind held darker shades.

Lucian followed the chosen road for some minutes, which was no more than twin ruts through the hardpan plain. The thin skeleton trees receded into the past behind him.

Again, he strained to see ahead for any hope, perhaps the rising slope of distant hills that would lead away from this wasteland. But there was nothing. Nobody. Not even memories of home for company.

Then all at once a man stood in his path. Where he came from Lucian could not tell. One instant the road stretched bare, then simply here was the stranger blocking his way, grim-faced and silent. Rocks skittered as Lucian stumbled to a stop.

The apparition wore a long black duster that fell to his ankles, stained from travel but expertly tailored; it seemed from another world here. The man’s age was indeterminate; smooth features on his angular face, yet framed by long, steel-gray hair trailing from under his hat brim.

His eyes arrested Lucian the most: coal black, flashing with depths of cryptic knowledge and pitiless judgment. They pierced Lucian through to and seemed to lay his soul bare there under the fading sky in the middle of Nothing.

Lucian hesitated, gripped by uncertainty about whether to speak or slip past the stranger and press on down his chosen road. He knew somehow that the answers this soul could give were the only ones that mattered now.

“Ah. Who might you be, sir?” Lucian’s voice sounded feeble in the empty vastness.

The stranger’s mouth curled in a half-smile that didn’t reach his cool black eyes. He said nothing but stared Lucian down from under the brim of his hat. His long duster coattails stirred slightly in the rising evening wind as the only movement amid the stillness.

Lucian licked his dry lips feeling his pulse quickening under the assessing gaze. “This road stretches long and lonely,” he managed after the thudding silence. “What brings you here?”

“The crossing of paths is an intersection of destinies,” the stranger intoned, rich voice smooth as velvet yet with jagged edges. “I followed the apportioned road, same as you. The question better asked is: now that I stand before you, to where does your road tend?”

Lucian blinked. “I…I know not where it leads. Only that my feet must carry me away from where I have been.”

The stranger swept his arm across the landscape. “Then did it matter if you bore left or steer right? Regardless the road, the destination remains unchanged.”

Lucian bristled, hunching his shoulders against the needling wind. “There you are mistaken, sir. The crosswords marked a choice. My will remains free — I chose the left-hand way.”

The stranger’s laugh held no mirth. “And so, you shall continue until you reach the end where all men stand. Their fates etched before the first steps are ever walked.”

Anger kindled in Lucian’s chest as he faced the stranger’s accursed words. “My road is my own! It is not for you to speak otherwise—not for me nor any man!”

He staggered as scenes flooded into his mind unbidden: a swollen moon, night woods, blood, torn flesh, the shocked stare of a young girl lifeless on blood-soaked pine needles.

Lucian swayed and gasped. The stranger held Lucian’s arm in an iron-fingered grip and bore his black eyes into him. “Choice is but an illusion. The beast finds its prey regardless. Does it not…Lucian?”

Images screamed through Lucian’s mind as his pulse hammered in ears deafened to the outside world. He wrenched back his arm in panic. He turned to flee but the stranger stood nearer than before, expression alight with awful fascination — of Lucian.

“What are you?” Lucian whispered hoarsely.

The stranger leaned closer. “The better riddle is: what lurks inside you, Lucian?” The name dripped from his lips like honey. “You cannot outrun its hunger.”

Lucian froze as in his mind’s eye the moon hung full over a forest and the scent of earth and fear filled his nostrils. He began to tremble. His teeth started to elongate against his will.

The stranger watched Lucian shake from violent spasms contorting his body. “Does it not feel glorious to unleash your truest self?” His breath fell hot on Lucian’s face, faintly sulfurous.

Lucian could only scream as talons started to erupt from his fingers, his clothing tore, and convulsions slammed him to his knees on the dusty path. There he stared up at where the stranger still stood watching with his eyes burning with hideous delight.

“Is this not a gift? Embrace it.”

Lucian clutched fistfuls of dirt as agony blazed through his veins. His spine crackled. His cabeza pulsated with red rage. More savage visions flooded his mind: the thrill of the hunt, slick hot blood flooding his tongue, soft bellies tearing sweetly beneath ragged claws.

“No!” he screamed through his elongated teeth. “These are not mine!” He coiled in a fetal position, fighting the shifting occurring inside his very cells.

The stranger’s amused grin and monstrous shadow fell over Lucian. “Such delicious fury fills you, my pet. Unleash these glorious desires! Become the reaper; harvest their mewling souls!”

Wicked delight radiated from the dark figure as he circled Lucian’s writhing form. The stranger’s cloak seemed alive, spreading wider like a ravenous maw swallowing all light.

“I cannot…it is vile…” Lucian choked. He stared wildly at his bloody paws as they involuntarily rent furrows in the ground.

“Have you not yearned to seize power owed you?” the stranger purred. “To lay waste the worlds of those who scorned you?” His voice scraped Lucian’s mind like rusted blades. “Embrace destiny’s sweet gift! My dear Lucian, you earned it.”

With immense effort, Lucian raised his bloodshot eyes in appeal. “I beg you…make it stop!” He gagged on sulfurous drool flooding his elongating snout.

The stranger paused his orbit, cocking his head in amusement. “Why plead for mercy from forces woven into your existence?”

Lucian’s marrow froze at the confirmation of otherworldly doom. In a gasping bloom of righteous fury Lucian cried, “I am no monster by choice!”

The stranger threw back his head and his throat rippled with unnatural laughter. The sound battered Lucian deeper into the roiling darkness. As the cold mirth died, the stranger drew himself up terrible and immense, trailing darkness like writhing vipers. Gleaming red eyes stared down at Lucian’s pitiful wolf-form.

“There is no curse but that which all men share, my son,” the horror rumbled, cloven feet scattering dust near Lucian’s muzzle. “All souls harbor this luscious rage—this glorious appetite!” Fanged teeth split his face in gruesome delight. Behind him shadow wings unfurled to block the lifeless sky.

Lucian scrabbled feebly in the dirt. He no longer recognized his own clawed limbs. He felt reason bleeding out as reality came unmoored.

“I have come to free the rightful beast slumbering in every man!” the towering darkness roared, now wreathed in flickering flame. “You shall serve me eternal, soldier of darkness! Unending night now claims you!”

Hideous joy swelled in the burning gaze as it commanded Lucian to slaughter all his memories of peace within himself. To surrender and spawn only butchery until the stars themselves died screaming.

With an immense effort, Lucian gathered the last sparks inside him still defiant.

“You offer only lies…” he howled in a broken lupine shriek. Summoning his final strength, Lucian cried “I reject you!” before invisible forces slammed his distorted body into the dirt at the demon’s flaming feet.

Lucian lay gasping as the wolf receded. Blood and dust coated his tongue. The demon’s roar still reverberated in his mind. He shuddered helplessly in the shadows cast by the towering fiend.

“You pathetic worm!” the demon thundered. “I offer you purpose on destiny’s righteous path, yet, like whimpering livestock, you fail to seize empowerment so freely given!”

The dark figure gripped Lucian by the throat and hauled him overhead. Lucian’s feet spasmed and dangled. Black spots swam across his vision as the fiery eyes bored into his very soul with a promise of agonies without end.

“Please,” Lucian choked out. “I don’t understand.”

“Silence!” the demon bellowed, spraying viscera. “You do understand. Yet, you cling to frail notions of innocence! We both saw the truth. We both smelled the blood-drunk euphoria! The wolf is your very nature!”

He flung Lucian away. Slamming down like a ragdoll, Lucian fought not to sink into oblivion’s embrace. Struggling upright, he locked his trembling gaze on the demon. Behind the dark figure, hints of dawn seeped unnoticed across the plain.

The demon paused while the rage shifted to a cunning smile. He dabbed black blood from his mutilated features with one sable-taloned hand.

“Perhaps a spark remains unwilling to ignite, but the fire will rage sure enough.” He gestured at Lucian with a long, jagged finger. “My seeds are planted well; the crop will yield a bountiful harvest on the appointed moon. These hands will gladly reap it.”

Lucian shuddered, looking down at his hands still caked in drying gore. The demon’s ancient blood seared where it flecked Lucian’s own skin.

“I will resist,” Lucian croaked. “You will not win my soul.”

The needle-tooth smile only widened. “We shall see, won’t we? How long can this fragile shell of a man constrain the beast once it senses blood on the night’s wind?”

With that he spun, wing furling as he strode down the path away from the rising dawn. At the crest of a small ridge, he halted. Without turning, his parting words drifted back.

“Souls I empower are ever bound to my unholy coven. You cannot flee destiny’s current, even should you struggle.” His whisper echoed with relentless certainty. “Inevitably, you will drown…”

The demon traced a symbol of forked, flaming branches in the air. As he disappeared along the shadowed road, mocking laughter trailed behind him until silence reigned absolute once more.

Lucian huddled alone as meager light filtered across the dismal plain. No warmth touched him.

Glancing down in rising horror, Lucian realized the demon’s blood still speckled his skin; it seared deeper by the moment. Already the first glowing lines of the demon’s mark etched their claim.

Frantically Lucian scratched and rubbed but the symbols only flared brighter. The glowing roots of damnation pulsed in time with his own heartbeat…thump THUMP. Thump THUMP. Despair overtook him.

The demon’s words haunted him with absolution: Lucian would never be the same again. The wolf lurked inside now, waiting, and its infernal master held the cursed chains.

Dawn covered the barren land with harsh lines of light instead of solace. He stared down where blood — the demon’s, his own, others long forgotten — speckled his rigid hands. The glowing mark beneath pulsed in time with the doom inexorably inside him.

You cannot flee destiny. All paths now wound tortuously toward that singular truth: the weakening cage bars of Lucian’s humanity; the rising snarls of the beast behind them. His will alone was no longer enough.

Perhaps, it had never been.

Shame and anger kindled hotter than the sear of the glowing runes across his skin. His jaw tightened against the anguished cry building in his throat. The emerging memories of the visceral thrill of blood filling his maw, the electric surge as bones splintered in his grip, betrayed even now part of Lucian that relished that ultimate power. A power whose infernal door had been flung wide by chance at this crossroads, or perhaps there had only ever been a straight and certain road leading to the stranger’s knowing grin.

Lucian rocked on his knees. In the dirt, the path drifted as if only an illusion. For a moment, the distorted features of the demon leered back at Lucian from the twisting earth. With a gasp he clenched his eyes shut but still glimpsed the hot coals and a rictus sneer whispering from the darkness:

You remain bound to me, flesh of my making.

“No!” Lucian screamed into the howling void inside him. He rent fistfuls of hair, ripping free strands by the roots. “It was not my choice!”

But the werewolf answered with a guttural baying in Lucian’s mind, freed by distress: Our pact was entered willingly in blood…now I demand due payment of flesh and bone!

Lucian’s breath hitched in wracking sobs.

“I did no wrong…I will do no wrong…” Lucian whimpered to the uncaring land. Long-buried memories floated nearer, the effects of foreign thirsts once indulged without hesitation in morally vacant moments of a life aligned to drift directionless.

Lucian’s fingernails raked red furrows down his face and snarled words spit through blood-flecked lips: “I didn’t want this!”

Yet man always welcomes power offered. The beast’s guttural rejoinder echoed from the hollows of Lucian’s skull.

With a soul-ravaged cry Lucian seized up a sharp stone. His muscles bunched as he slammed it down with sudden fury. Again and again, the unforgiving strikes fell. Lucian’s skin split against rigid knuckles now erupting with coarse hair. The stone’s jagged impacts shattered the ground as the land heaved and rolled.

Until, at last, Lucian knelt breathless and broken under a sky stained crimson by the now dying light. He raised his face beseechingly toward the thin light, yearning for some answers other than those now etched by fire into his transformed flesh.

No redemption would be offered. The only reply awaited on the frigid air: The lingering stench of brimstone and echoes of demonic laughter chasing away the dawn.