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First, there were heavy footsteps on the creaky wooden floorboards and then a couple of grunts, immediately followed by a solid thud. The creature’s head tilted and twisted on its neck, bringing its featureless paper-white face around as if to peer at the sodden bundle that had been dropped to the floor of the old abandoned hunting cabin it was currently using to house those who worked for it. A moment later, its body followed its head in turning to let it properly take in the scene before it.
The servants who had fished the wet heap out of the frozen river were shivering noticeably –their teeth chattered behind the masks they wore and their bodies shook in automated efforts to retain some form of warmth– but despite their blatant and clearly-shared desire to retreat and tend to their human needs, pervasive fear of the creature’s whims kept them rooted to the spot.
It reached out with a dark tentacle for the pile of soaked cloth, wrapping the tip of its appendage securely around what it knew to be a wrist, and pulled up. The haphazard bundle unravelled, revealing itself to be the body of a young man, his skin already turning a shade of blue-grey.
If the creature were capable of doing so, it would have frowned; this one was not supposed to be dead upon arrival. Its displeasure released a short wave of white noise into the minds of its servants and they cringed, hands flying up to press firmly against their heads, but it stopped almost as quickly as it had begun.
Pulling the body nearer to its face, the creature studied it closely, searching for the tell-tale signs of lingering life. After a full minute of nothing meeting its inspection, the grip of its tentacle tightened in further displeasure. Standing on either side of the door, it noticed the servants’ heads turn to each other in an unspoken question before returning to their proper stances as another pair of tentacles sprouted out of its back and slithered closer to them. Satisfied that the potential for disobedience had been curbed before it could truly get started, the creature’s attention returned to the corpse in its grasp.
A few seconds of tense silence passed, then the creature drew back from the limp body and tilted its head sharply to one side. From underneath the thin hospital scrubs and dirty lab coat, normal colour was returning to his skin. The creature released the young man’s wrist, letting the body fall to the floor with a wet thump; it waited for another moment before reaching out once more –this time with a thin hand– for the wrist it had just released, using one sharp nail to scratch a simple symbol into the tender flesh of the underside.
When the young man’s chest spasmed and a low groan issued from his throat, the creature withdrew once more to stand straight and tall. It reached out with its power to the servants in the room and planted thoughts of warmth and dryness into their minds, while simultaneously sending for another to come with tools to tend to the slowly waking man on the floor.
From under a sodden curtain of dark hair, his eyes finally opened and turned up to meet the creature’s face. They widened, and it watched in detached curiosity as the newcomer tried to work his body to scramble away from its looming form, without much success. The creature didn’t move, other than to subtly tilt its head once more to prove to him that it was very much real, and it was pleased when such a revelation didn’t seem to be more than the young man could handle –in fact, his eyes narrowed into a harsh glare.
The other servant that the creature had summoned arrived, carrying a small bundle of threadbare cloth; the new face –masked though it was– drew his attention away from the creature, and his glare was quickly muddied by confusion when the servant placed the pile on the floor near him, earning only a muffled snort and minute shrug in response.
A tentacle slithered over to one of the young man’s ankles, wrapping tightly around it and tugging on his leg while the servant moved out of its way. A hoarse shout left his throat as he was pulled across the floor to the creature’s feet, turning into an audible snarl as he resumed his heated glare. Unfazed by the act of defiance, it tapped the underside of one of its wrists before pointing a long finger directly at the mark on the man’s own; it repeated the actions twice, then it reached for the drenched newcomer’s thoughts to impose its message more thoroughly.
Flesh and bone and blood, owned.
Heart and mind and soul, owned.
Past and present and future, owned.
The creature didn’t wait for the young man’s reaction or for any response, gathering its power and teleporting away from the building, knowing that its servants would be more than capable of taking care of the rest. Another servant to add to its growing roster, and at least it had managed to fully claim one from that bloodline.
Now, it could focus on other matters. Important matters, like hunting… Ignorant humans did so love to venture into the creature’s boundless territory, after all.