First Emperor of Haiti

Deep in the underground chamber, the thing smiled. It had been down there for a long time. Sometimes, it sure felt like it had been there forever. It smiled at itself. Surely it hadn't been there forever. Just a really long time. It didn't much care for this new underground prison in which it dwelled. It really preferred the ancient one beneath the Palace. Of course, the Palace crumbled beneath the awesome forces unleashed by the Quake. It smiled even more as it thought of the Quake. Whoever said there is opportunity in disaster was absolutely right...

For three glorious days it had wandered through the remnants of the Capital, stalking from ruin to ruin. And it fed on all those it found. Men and women alike. And their blood replenished it. It felt better than it had in centuries. It had been astonished as to how much the world had changed in just a couple hundred years. The humans had all of these amazing machines now. Strange metallic wonders. Things it could never have imagined. For all the good it did them. In the end, nature defeated their machines just like it defeated them. It laughed, knowing nature could never defeat it. For it was above and beyond nature. Beyond life and beyond death. It knew the glorious state of being Undead.

Yet it knew that immortality and invincibility were not one and the same. For the cursed humans captured it again, and once more trapped it underground. It screamed in rage, howling at the injustice of it. None of these humans would have a homeland if it weren't the deal they made with it, so long ago. That's why it hated the whole lot of them. Humans were a hypocritical race, but the dark-skinned inhabitants of this cursed island were the worst of all. Their ancestors bargained with it for their freedom, so long ago. They brought it from the depths of Africa, to fight the accursed Europeans who held them in bondage. Had it known they would prove so ungrateful, it never would have left its homeland of Dahomey to protect these imbeciles.

At least in Dahomey the humans had known respect for the Gods of Old. They offered it piteous sacrifices to appease its eternal hunger. And the blood of the victims, mostly prisoners of war or vile criminals, gave it strength. Ah, what amazing powers the blood of humans had granted it. Once, it had enough strength to bend steel with its hands. Enough strength to lift a horse clear above its head and hurl it twenty feet through the air. The strength of a beast the likes of which the world hadn't seen in ages. It shuddered with pleasure as it remembered the speed which once was its very own to command. It could run so fast even those tiny balls of metal fired from the pistols of the Europeans could never touch it. Not that they could destroy it if they tried. Its skin was tough, too tough for bullets, blades or even flames to penetrate. Elephant skin was cotton by comparison.

Yeah, it was a formidable creature once. God-like. It had lived since before the time of the Pharaohs. It was old enough to remember the Black Pharaohs which once ruled over the Land of Egypt. They came from nearby Nubia, the Land of Gold. A magnificent African kingdom whose people also prayed to its kind. Oh yes. It remembered the Nubians fondly. They respected the Old Ways. In times of war, they summoned it to unleash hell upon their enemies. It had an advantage no army ever had. It was always outnumbered, always outgunned, for lack of a better term. However, it could not die. Even if it took eternity, it would stalk entire armies and slaughter them to the last man no matter how long it took. Yes, those were the days.

One of its most glorious campaigns was the lengthy war waged by the African slaves brought to that island in the Caribbean by the Europeans. It had gorged itself full of European blood as it stalked across plains, fields and valleys. It didn't differentiate between the African slaves who summoned it from the depths of the motherland and the pale-skinned ones who enslaved them. To it, blood was blood. The blood of African slaves tasted just as sweet as that of the European men and women who enslaved them. Of course, the shamans among the Africans had known how to control it. Or at least affect it in some way. Oh, yes. Even after being forcibly brought to the Caribbean by the brutal Europeans, they hadn't forgotten the ways of their people. And they had known how to control it in some way. Old methods, which some unwise fool would call magic. It smiled. Did magic really exist? It sometimes pondered that. There were ancient ways of harnessing the power lying within the elements, and communicating with ancient beasts like itself. Ways so old that those who discovered them anew thought them to be magic.

Many men and women had sought it over the centuries. Kings and queens, as well as commoners. It had journeyed the earth and seen much of it, from the plains of Europe to the African savannah and the vast lands of the Americas, which it knew by other names of course. Distance meant nothing to it, which was called the Sacred Beast by so many throughout time. Those who sought it often sought to discover the source of its immortality. It laughed in their faces when queried on the subject. It had been around for untold thousands of years. Or perhaps tens of thousands of years. It remembered a time when the humans looked a bit different than they did now. They were more brutish, and actually harder to slay. How funny. Today's humans were easier to kill, even with their technology and their terrible weapons. The brutish humans of the old days had been formidable hunters, and fought fiercely. They had lived in an environment teeming with monsters, from cats with gigantic teeth to woolly mammoths. It remembered those days fondly, though it couldn't tell you how long it had been. Time mattered very little to it, for it was immortal.

It thought of all those times it had come close to death. Hurled inside a volcano by the assembled warriors of a primitive tribe in a forgotten land. Hacked to pieces by men and women wielding blades made of a metal which man in his madness had forgotten even existed. Very few weapons could pierce its hide, which was tougher than steel. Oh, yeah. It once thought itself gone, alright. However, it healed. Even after being melted down by the awesome heat of the volcano, it somehow put itself back together. That day, it learned that it could transfer its essence inside a new host. Ah, the supreme irony of it. It transferred its consciousness within the body of the man who killed it. And eventually, that man's body was transformed until it became a suitable vessel for it. Only after being killed could it move to a new body. And it always moved to the nearest body. The process was completely involuntary. Something inside simply would not let it die. Something which was beyond flesh and blood.

The last time it had died, it went inside the body of the man within whom it lived now. That man had been a magnificent warrior. Tall, dark-skinned, proud and strong. A former slave on the island of Saint Domingue, he rose up and became a military leader which led the African rebels to absolute victory over the European forces. And in doing so, became the founder and First Emperor of that island nation. Of course, that was before the Great One was betrayed by the very people he had saved. It had been new within the man's body, not yet in full control of its powers. It went through a period of immaturity as it inhabited every new host body after being killed. The Great One was betrayed, and got hacked to pieces and buried. It had taken nearly all of its power to revive its new host. For moving onto another would have been ill-advised. Dying took a lot out of it. Yes, it had dwelled within that man since. The man's soul was long since gone. What remained was a creature of inhuman strength and speed, one all too familiar with the ways of eternity.

The body which it inhabited had grown magnificent over the course of two hundred years. It never aged, and it possessed the strength of twenty men and the speed of a gazelle. And like all the others, it hungered for human blood, its only source of nourishment. Yes, it lived within a magnificent host. Too bad it would soon be time to move on. It couldn't remain trapped in this prison forever. It most definitely wouldn't. When the handler came to feed it, it did the unthinkable. It willed itself to die. The handler, a tall, dark-skinned young man in his early twenties, rushed into the room. Too late did he realize his mistake. For as soon as its body crumbled into ash, it willed its consciousness into the handler's body. There was a brief struggle, and it expelled the man's soul. The body died, and was reanimated by its titanic will. Fresh power flowed through the new body, endowing it with amazing strength and speed. It stepped out into the sun.

For centuries, many thought its kind loathed to walk in the sun. It laughed at the notion that the sun could kill it, recalling how it hunted men and women in the sun-drenched plains of Africa since time immemorial. Day or night, all that mattered was the hunt. As it stalked out of its prison, it saw a young woman. The handler's mate. Its first victim in ages. It drained the woman, then disposed of the body. Then it stepped out into the street. Everywhere it looked it saw them. These sons and daughters of the African motherland living in this island nation in the Caribbean. It smiled at them, knowing interesting times were upon them. For the Emperor had returned.