B00GIEpunk

Australian-born Romani wraith vtuber. Specialises in horror narration and voice acting, occasionally plays games or does live music production. Frequent guest on other people's streams.

Once long ago, in a time when myths and legends were merely rumours and word-of-mouth, a child was born in a small fishing village on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea. His name is unknown - lost to the mists of time and history, like so many countless others.

He grew to adulthood in the fullness of time, gaining a love of the stories and tales his parents and elders would tell - whether they were simple stories to entertain the children, or more sophisticated tales that gave hints about deeper concepts beyond life in a simple fishing village. The man eventually married and raised two fine, healthy daughters, who in turn eventually took husbands of their own and brought grandchildren into the world. He fished and cared for his family, he told stories and entertained the village children, and for many long years he was content. He became an elder of the village, and was loved and respected by all. His hair grew long and his beard became gray, but his heart was young and full with love. Life was good.

One day in the sixtieth year of his life, the elder came back from the beach after a fine day's fishing to find his village in flames. Raiders! He ran to the longhouse where he lived with his extended family, to find nothing but a smouldering, blood-splashed ruin. His head swam and his vision blurred into a red haze as he saw what was left of his wife, his daughters, his grandchildren . . . violated. Slaughtered. Torn apart as though by wild beasts. The heads of his sons-in-law, severed from their bodies and spitted upon pikes.

Consumed by grief and rage, he didn't even notice the two men walking up behind him and laughing - then the iron hilt of a crude sword smashed into the back of his head, and everything went dark.

When the elder regained his senses, he found himself on the back of a cart, bound hand and foot along with three of the younger men from his village, being taken through an unfamiliar forest. A large keep squatted in the distance, low and menacing. They had been taken far north from their destroyed village, deep into lands controlled by the Kurgans - a savage warrior tribe who had followed the mighty Volga River south from their homeland, seeeking conquest.

The captors dragged their four prisoners unceremoniously before their master, the lord of the keep - an ugly, brutish specimen who ruled by violence and savagery rather than exemplary leadership. The three younger men were dismissed with a wave of the lord's hand, and dragged out of the keep to whatever fate awaited them. But the smoldering embers of rage in the eyes of the elder amused the lord. On a whim, he told the elder that the rest of his days would be spent telling stories to entertain the lord's children - an unruly mob of ill-favoured striplings born from the lord's wives, servants, slaves, and any other woman unfortunate enough to catch his oily eye.

And thus the days passed - telling tales for the amusement of a pack of puling, ungrateful brats and their yawning attendants. The elder, now known only as 'the storyteller' (for there were none left alive, save himself, that knew the name his parents had bestowed upon him) told his tales in a blank voice, reciting the words from the depths of the shrivelled, blackened heart that had died along with his family.

Many were the times the storyteller contemplated simply taking his own life and joining his family, so he could be free of these foul people who were like a cancer in his heart.

And yet . . . and yet the rage that had burned in him continued to smoulder, biding its' time. He would tell the younger of the lord's children simple, harmless bedtime stories to quiet their dreams and give them peaceful sleep, while he turned his attention to the eldest child of the lord - a pampered, vain man who was every bit his father's son. No bedtime stories for this little lordling, oh no. The sins of the father would be visited upon the son, and repaid a thousand-fold.

In the dead of night when the keep lay silent, the storyteller would make his way into the lordling's chamber and whisper into his ear as he slept. Night after night, in a hissing voice filled with spite, he filled the lordling's sleeping hours with untold terrors and unspeakable nightmares.

The change in the young man was subtle at first - he would appear tired in the mornings and listless through the day. As time passed, the lordling became more and more cowed, eyes constantly darting, jumping at shadows. Nervous twitches and tics would run rampant across his body, and he developed a stammer - only slight at first, but becoming more and more pronounced each day. Meanwhile, the storyteller waited for the perfect moment.

At last that moment came. After three months of nursing and nurturing the lordling's terrified paranoia, the time was right. On a night when the moon hid its face from the world as though it knew what was about to happen, the storyteller crept silently into the lordling's chamber one final time. He told the lordling a tale he had woven about horrifying demons and devils that wore the faces of children to lure their siblings and parents to a gruesome and grisly end. As always, the storyteller poured every ounce of his fury and hatred into the words he whispered, but this time . . . this time his words held the tingle of a newly-awakened power within him - power fuelled by pure rage, honed razor-sharp by dark malice.

The lordling woke screaming. Leaping from his sweat-soaked bower and pushing the storyteller to the floor, he ran to the keep's scullery and armed himself with a cleaver - a flat piece of iron with its' edge dulled from cutting through meat to prepare the lord's victuals. He then ran to the bedchambers of his ill-gotten brothers and sisters, and did the only thing he could - to stop the devils, to save his father, to save his people . . .

But the lordling's screams had awoken the keep. As the horrified lord and his staff and attendants came upon the giggling, blood-splashed lordling, guards had been dispatched to the lordling's bedchamber, where they found the storyteller on the floor, breathing heavily. He was dragged by the scruff of the neck to where everyone had congregated, because what was a slave doing in the bedchamber of their lord's son?

As both guards and captive beheld the scene, and understanding blossomed like a drop of blood in a pool of water . . . the storyteller began to laugh. Quietly at first, then louder, great wheezing bellows of laughter shaking the storyteller's frame. The lordling, mistaking the storyteller's horrible joy, laughed as well. "Yes!" he proclaimed. "You knew, storyteller! You knew the truth! And you chose me to carry that knowledge to save us all! These vile fiends would have slaughtered us all, eaten our flesh, drank our blood, crunched our bones! Your stories gave me the knowledge of what hides behind the veil of the world! And I have used that knowledge to deliver us from evil!" Madness danced in the lordling's eyes.

The lord simply drew a dagger from his belt, walked to his son, and drove it into the boy's heart as he embraced him, his eyes flat and dull. Then he turned his gaze to the storyteller.

"What have you done, old man?" the lord asked in a low, dangerous growl.

The storyteller's laughter mocked him.

"The blood of my people called for a reckoning, and now blood is paid. You took everything from me, and now . . . now I've taken everything from you. The scales have been balanced. Do what you will."

The punishment the storyteller earned for his crime would become a dark tale told by parents in the night to frighten their children into obedience.

Shorn and naked, the storyteller was bound hand and foot to a crude cross, and his limbs were beaten with iron clubs until every bone was shattered. His eyes were torn out. His nostrils were split. His fingers, thumbs and toes were cut off, one by one. Slashes were cut into his chest and salted. The word 'чорт' was branded into his belly. Finally, the lord ordered him wrapped in a filthy shroud and buried alive.

In the days that it took for the storyteller to die, he simply recited the stories he knew by heart, over and over, whisper-slurring the words through a shattered jaw and torn lips. The words comforted him, helping him forget his agony as his life faded.

Finally, the storyteller's body surrendered to the inevitable. The slurred whispering faded into silence, and the storytelller breathed his last.

But as any good storyteller knows, there's a power in words. The power that the storyteller had tapped into to fuel his revenge came from the only weapon he had at his disposal - words. And now that power wrapped itself around the soul of the storyteller, lifting it from the decrepit wreckage of flesh that lay rapidly cooling on the floor of the cave it had been sealed into. Words, tales, legends, myths, and stories - so many countless stories - flowed into the spirit of the storyteller, growing, expanding, making that spirit large enough to contain a galaxy of words.

The spirit of the storyteller glanced down at the desecrated flesh of its' former host. The shroud would suffice to contain the words until their time had come, and by pure force of will it was remade into a cowled robe that covered the spirit and gave it a human shape.

Memories of a life rushed through the spirit's consciousness - he was dead, as were his family and people. Those responsible had paid the price. The scales were balanced.

The memories raced through the consciousness of the storyteller's spirit, growing brighter and brighter, until they finally ignited within him like a sun. The spirit opened its newly formed eyes - a pair of eternally-burning coals, lit by the fire of a lifetime of memories. It opened its' mouth to reveal the same fire within, and in a deep, booming voice that resonated across the gulfs of time, said simply:

I CAN WORK WITH THIS.

The spirit disappeared from the world of humans, becoming B00GIEpunk - the unseen chronicler of the darkness of humanity's collective heart.

After all, even terrors in the night need one who will give them a voice.