Insert standard disclaimer about Escaflowne and the characters from the series not being my creation, and being used without permission. I'm fond of short, introspective works involving the characters of the series, and this is no exception to that. It was a the second Escaflowne fanfic I wrote, following Final Peace, though I lost the original draft and rewrote it using the same basic idea a few years ago (2002, I believe.) Posted here for your reading pleasure.

As always, comments are welcomed, and constructive criticism is especially valued.

Eater of Souls
A Tenkuu no Escaflowne/Vision of Escaflowne fanfic featuring Zongii
By Jeremy Bunyard

This place reeks of piss and vomit, of unwashed bodies covered in the cologne of stale beer. It is a place where the poor, the forgotten, the failures can come to drown their sorrows. Here they can, for a little while, find the oblivion that cowardice keeps them from making permanent. This place is as much of a home as one such as I can have. I should move on soon - I should have moved on more than a week ago, when the questions started, but I'm tired of constantly moving. I don't care about the consequences. I haven't for a long while now, but a lifetime of habit dies far more slowly than a brother run through by cold steel. And, in truth, I am drawn to this place. It suits me. We complement each other nicely, each fulfilling the other's desire for self-destruction.

Tonight, I sit with my back to the wall in my usual place, the one that I have held for a month now. It lets me watch them all. Some, I watch visit this place for a short time before they find that they can leave. I don't care about them, though. They don't know what I know, have seen only a glimpse of the miserable fate that awaits before they closed their eyes again. It is the regulars, those who have suffered as I have suffered, that hold my interest. One in particular, right now. The young man with the enchanting voice. A bard, perhaps. I don't know, and haven't bothered to find out. Why bother, when I will soon know him more intimately than any mere words can possibly convey. He was probably beautiful once, my bard, but hunger has thinned him too much, dulled his features so that they no longer shine. Still, his voice stirred feelings in me that I had thought already dulled beyond notice that first night he appeared, just a little over a week ago. It was a bittersweet poem he recited, and I could feel myself drawn into it as he told it, hoping along with its hero that success would be found, that he would win the glory and love he deserved. But it was not to be. The hero died, alone and unmourned, everything he believed in lost at the end. Hope, of all things. The ending was a fitting reminder of the price of such foolishness. He is the first that I might have chosen even in the old days, if neither of us had fallen from grace. But we have both been cursed by a similarly cruel fate.

I decide, abruptly, that I will approach him. Tonight, right now. No more waiting. He is different from the others, and I don't want to lure him to me when we are both too dulled by drink to experience the full sensation of what will come. I stride over to his table, where he sits alone - he refused to sing again after that first poem, no matter how much the others might beg or threaten, and within a few days he was left to the same space as I, or anyone else, might have. I do not ask him to sing, to recite. No, I understand him too well for that. I appeal to a different level of vanity, one that no bard can resist, no matter the depths to which he has plummeted. I tell him what his voice did to me, what it made me feel. I let him see a taste of what it has done to me. As his cloudy blue eyes look up to meet mine, I see a flicker that was not in them before. "Walk with me?" I ask him. He nods without a word.

We leave the bar, walking arm-in-arm through narrow streets covered with trash and shit, both animal and human. The thugs that make their lair here know they needn't bother with us. Even to them, we are beneath notice, with nothing to steal and no skill to be exploited. Just scenery. We come at last to a park - little more than a public garden, really, but the hedges are tall, and allow a measure of privacy. We stop, and he turns to look to look at me.

The need in his eyes a tangible thing; there is a gaping hole somewhere deep and critical within him, and he grasps for me with the wild desperation of a drowning man struggling against the undertow. My arms slide around his neck, one hand twining in hair that was once as soft as silk, now, like us, but a shadow of what it had been. He presses close against me, and I can feel the rise and fall of his chest against mine, feel the heat of his body warming me. My bard's lips find mine, fierce and feral, and I cannot help but respond to him.

Fear. They are always terrified when they realize what I am and what is happening to them. My bard is no different, but his attempt at escape comes far too late. Our bodies are pressed to each other, our lips locked. His eyes are wide and rolling, like a horse being run down by a pack of wolves, as I rip away his memories, his abilities, his very essence. My form ripples and wavers, and he sees my true shape for a short time before I begin to take on his. He tries to scream, but I swallow that along with everything else that makes him who he is. It is a rush, different from the others I have fed on of late in that there is the hint of a feast in his essence before the emptiness slams into me, fights to consume me even as it is consumed. I fall to my knees, dropping the shell that is all that remains of his original self.

Pain. It is always painful, feeding on the broken and the worthless. I become them, add their emptiness to my own. Like the crew of a hovership, out of supplies over the ocean, trying in futility to drink seawater rather than die of thirst. It is completely, utterly fitting. Born to live in war and to die in war. But what did I do to deserve this horrible fate? Why couldn't it have been his sword that pierced my chest, instead? Why?

It is three weeks before He comes. The one who will change my life. The Dragon. I have fed only twice in that time, but was careless in hiding the bodies, and they were found. The village hunts for me, and I wait for them to find me. I'm so very, very weak now. This body was ill when I claimed it, being eaten away from the inside, and I am not strong enough any longer to simply cast it off like the tattered hide it is. I am not certain I would even if I were able. The sooner it destroys itself, the sooner the pain of my guilt will be gone. I decide to choose someone strong tonight. To be struck down by my final meal, if you will.

I sit in my usual place, watching the crowd, searching for the right one. I can feel him even before he enters the bar. His essence would be stand out among the strongest of men, among these dregs it is a beacon, bright and fierce and more intoxicating than the strongest drug. An essence like his could sustain me for months, possibly years, when I was at full strength. As I am now, it would destroy me, yet it draws me as a moth to flame. I am on my feet and stumbling toward him before I am aware of it, my hands reaching for him, getting caught up in the black cloak that surrounds the man like armor to keep the filth of this place from touching him. I can barely think, and it makes me dizzy when he turns to regard me with those piercing violet eyes of his. The mark of a tear beneath his eye catches my notice more even than the nobility of his features, the oddness of his pale blue hair. A symbol of sadness, of pain. And where is the scorn, the revulsion that his eyes should hold?

"Walk with me?" His voice is low and soft, commanding and compelling without actually demanding. I nod mutely, shuffling along after him as he leaves the bar. The vermin draw back as he walks the streets, not daring to approach. Only when we reach the park, and privacy, does he speak again. "I have been watching you."

"Watching…me?" I stammer. I can't understand why someone like him would bother with someone like me. My head is thick with the sensation of him. Even were I not ready to die, I would have no choice. The moth's wings are aflame, and he plummets out of control toward the candle. My form wavers as I reach up to draw his face down to mine. What I could not do by choice comes naturally when it is time to feed. My fingers tighten, my arms tense in expectation of the inevitable resistance. He can see what I am before I have begun to feed. But please, oh please, just a taste before he strikes me down!

"Take what you need," I hear him tell me. My eyes find his, and there is no fear, no hatred. He sees me for what I am, and he accepts it. He offers himself to me, not because he wishes to die, but because of my need. It amazes and terrifies me at the same time. I stare into those eyes of his, draw his lips closer to mine.

He does not assist, but neither does he struggle. Visions of him begin to dance in my mind, more real, more potent than my own thoughts despite being only the aromas wafting to me before I truly can feast. I cry out as a wave of cold lashes at me like a blizzard, a sense of sadness and loss so vast that it fills my vision with whiteness. I cannot see, I cannot feel anything else. Then, as I start to inhale more deeply, I feel aa warmth, no, a fire, and it's burning me! Determination, purpose, unshakeable in its intensity, and I cannot bear it. Too much, too much! The part of me that is still dimly aware of itself pushes him away, and as I draw back I can see more clearly the essence that I was lost in. His soul is a great winged dragon of animate ice, but with a heart of the hottest flame.

They should not be able to exist, they should destroy each other, but somehow they do not. I collapse to my knees, overwhelmed by him, painfully aware how empty I am in comparison.

"Born to live in war and to die in war. But why should you be condemned to such a fate?" He extends his arm, holding out his hand to me. It is a monstrosity of steel and cable that is joined to the flesh at his shoulder. This man has suffered, I know that, even if his essence became too much for me before I could see how. But his suffering did not break him, it made him stronger. "Take control of your fate. Join me, and we will change not only the sadness in your own, but in the fate of Gaea herself."

It is impossible, of course. It has to be. How could anyone change the fate of an entire world? But when he says it, I feel something within myself respond. He believes, with absolute certainty, that he can do what he says, and I have seen what he is.

I am not certain that I dare to believe that he can succeed, but there is a small part of me that does. He offers, not the flickering hope of a poem, but something stronger. Something worth dying for. Something, perhaps, even worth living for. I cannot help myself, I reach up to take his hand…