first meeting; who was wary of him and his new ways), Shaitan put what he had learned to use. The wise one died in agony, and Shaitan took his place.
The tribe was small, its people ugly of form and countenance, its caverns smoky and full of stenches. Shaitan quickly became disenchanted. He would instruct these people in ... oh, in diverse ways, but their capacity for learning was small. He would open their eyes, take away their childlike innocence and replace it with ... what? Again he was not sure, except that he desired to impose his will. But to what end? Existence with the sub-men was severely limited and limiting.
Shaitan was full of vice. He had a man's passions, lusts, desires; and all enhanced, multiplied by the developing thing within him. He detested the trog women, yet gathered together a harem of all their ripest. When an enraged young male protested the theft of his prospective mate, Shaitan castrated him and made him the eunuch overseer of his carnal chambers. When a group of trogs rose up against him to kill him, he hid in a cave where he trembled and sweated ... and his sweat formed a mist that hid him from view and frightened his vengeful enemies away. They ran off to other tribes, spreading Shaitan's legend abroad.
He practised arts which were instinct in him, for he knew that he was corrupt in all his parts. And bleeding himself with ticks, he used them to contaminate the storehouses of the trogs until their food seethed with his evil. More of the sub-men ran off, while yet they were unblemished. As for those who stayed: they were sick now in mind and body and called Shaitan master, and followed in his footsteps. Of all Wamphyri thralls, they were the first.
Shaitan planted seed in his women and several brought forth. Such offspring as were produced were hideous, scarlet-eyed, shrieking . .. and hungry. They suckled blood from their mothers' paps and grew too fast. And their own mothers smothered them, all but one which Shaitan ate ... Until finally he had had enough of the cave-dwellers, for he knew that there was flesh in this world other than the lowly flesh of trogs.
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
And always his parasite guided him, living on his blood as he lived on the blood of others. It was a very subtle symbiosis, however, so that except in Shaitan's darkest dreams and certain rare waking moments, he believed he was the sole author of his affairs and master of his own will and destiny. But ... he could never be sure. And from that time forward the question of free will, self-determination, and all connected theories of integrity of spirit, became matters of vast importance to Shaitan, even assuming dimensions of obsession in him. In him, and in all subsequent vampires ...
Shaitan remembered how, in his first meeting with the trogs, they had likened him to men on the other side of the barrier mountains. Now (having almost forgotten the irritation of the sun's golden rays, and with only one way to test for a recurrence of the problem), he determined the conquest of Sunside. But it would be subtle, as were all his works. First he would approach the Sunsiders as a friend, and later as their master. Thus it would be as it had been with the trogs.
So thought Shaitan ...
Leaving his trog thralls behind to fend for themselves, he climbed the mountains diagonally, heading east as always. He climbed at sunup but was shielded from the sun by the wall of the mountains. Still the sky's brightness troubled him and the light hurt his vampire eyes, so that he wondered if all of this world's creatures were photophobic, himself included. But high over the tree-line and into the peaks, he saw great birds soaring on high, which were not bothered by the sun. They were birds of prey, kites, which scoured the land for food in the last rays of the sun. Also, there were great shaggy goats in the peaks, which had no fear of the light, and likewise small creatures in the coarse grasses and heather.
Shaitan shrugged. Well, he would put his theories to the test soon enough; indeed, he might even impose his will upon the sun! (At which the spore-grown vampire inside him shrank down and was small, for in this matter Shaitan was too wilful and his vampire could neither guide nor control