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If they are to view us as dogs, let us be hunting hounds!
This selection of writing was retrieved through unsaintly means from one of the many flesh repositories of one of those distant and curious breeds of Sarkics. -Annotation by Sir Penderghast
Köpiokörä1
As transcribed by the Wandering Scribe Utelias.
The Villisükuä2, Our Wild Kin, come in many forms, having lost themselves to the wildest urges of the Flesh.
But they are to be respected, I think, for their very Will shaped them into what they are today. Delve into the truths of the Marrow Histories3 with me and learn of our freed brethren.
A number of peoples came together to become we who are Nälkä, each snared in bondage by the dread Daeva to serve in some manner or another. For most hard labor, or as ritual components, some… were but food, fattened and ripened for the harshest beings they cavorted with, the meat savored not as blessed gift but a simple transaction.
The Köpiokörä's ancestors were gifted with the ability to touch minds and sniff out deceit. The Daeva used them to hunt down dissidence, treating them little better than a common dog.
Do not think this won them special treatment or that, at first, they were accepted with open arms. In time, though, they chose to embody a deeper truth.
"If they are to view us as dogs, let us be hunting hounds!"
The human form is curious, battered, and beaten into shape by the careless crucible of time. The Marrow shows us this: adaptation is the great equalizer of life.
We were formed to be pursuit predators, advancing on flighty prey, our Will to keep moving greater than their fearful minds could grasp until they would collapse, weakened and writhing, for us to claim.
Such truths of form are fine for hunting prey like deer or antelope, and while most turned to the outer world to augment their hunting capabilities, our oldest of old traditions speak of the magic of voice and form that many took up to slay their preferred prey.
Decked in the flesh of beasts, ever so brief, a work tied to our Source, one reason among many the Unseeing took us to be monstrous. Indeed, some kindred to the West are enamored with the rite, melding the form of man with the blood and fang of wolf and bear, and other beasts besides. Keen hunters, mighty in their Will, yet the change will not last. Too caring of the… ‘polite society’ that surrounds them.4
Yet, for the Daeva, gifted of horrid spellcraft stolen and innate, dread beings that they were and are, more was needed to be an effective predator—a lasting change.
Respect our kin for giving so much to prove their Will could outmatch the tyrants. Their augmented lihakut'ak5 graced them with might even they could not have hoped to know. But such is the truth of intertwining thread with thread, so shows the Marrow.
A cunning predator for cunning prey.
So when the rebellion began in earnest, the Köpiokörä had already begun to test the bounds of their Will, preparing the beast within.
The risk evidenced by all Villisükuä, to shape oneself utterly, risks forgetting one's Humanity forever.
Those who clung to their Will should be lauded, but all, for their great sacrifice, should be respected.
Of course, the Daeva had their own guardians, constructs of bark, grass, and mud, whom they had crafted for their purpose or stolen from other civilizations they ravaged. The most dangerous were towering titans of bark-encased bone and blood, animated by declarations in their foul tongue.
But the Köpiokörä had ever been listening, learning, feeling out the magics the Daeva relied so heavily upon.
They would become hunting hounds, but more than that, they would become assassins, mindful predators.
So when the day came for the Ozi̮rmok's6 people to rise and throw off their chains, the Köpiokörä were already in place. The change was sudden, the process mapped and constructed through months of hidden and careful study, learning the ways of the flesh. Those daring few who risked the early change lasted only a handful of moments before their bodies failed them, but with each loss, knowledge to make it work, to make it last, was gained. However, only through the Klavigar of Whispers would they eventually find success.
The Marrow has shown me their first hunt in great and glorious detail.
Swift as jackals and as quiet as leopards, they traced their way through the crawlways and crooked alleys they had been forced to walk their entire lives.
Their foreclaws retained the dexterity to open doors and pry open windows, gifting themselves the clinging touch of lizards and spiders to mount walls with ease. With their former masters distracted by the greater battle raging from the Adytum's vast slave pit, their silent steps went unnoticed. To see the power of Ion and his Klavigar's7 at work, even at a distance, was near enough to make me forget the true reason for my entreaty of the Marrow. But I returned to the Hunt.
The Köpiokörä had sacrificed their eyes, capable of easy blinding or destruction at the Daeva's hands, for the heat-seeking senses of serpents. Sensitive spines crafted from the flesh of the sea allowed them to feel minute shifts in the air of a room, pinpointing their prey.
The most drastic change came in the reshaping of their roots of sensation and ichorous veins threading them so minutely through their bodies that they became beyond the grasp of Daevic magic. This is a work of lihakut'ak that I falter to imagine in our current age.8
The Marrow would show me the Whisperer's hand in their change in time, but I will admit to my utter rapturous shock at it enabled me to watch this change.
From how they shaped their defense, I turn to how they shaped their armaments.
Jaws augmented and distended by the threads of crocodile, hound, and strange serpents of the deep.
Claws drawn from the simple house cat, augmented with the hunter eagle's talons, and the metal teeth of the humble shrew.
But their greatest and most curious weapon was in their very breath.
By intermingling and molding their lungs with their bowels, they were granted the breath of birds, allowing them to breathe in and out at the same time. Within their altered guts, a poison billows, crafted of knowledge drawn from the minds of the hated Daeva—a truly corrosive brew.
Not caustic against the flesh, but the mind. The toxin belched forward from their bellows-like lungs started a slow confusion, and with each breath tasted, more and more of the mind would melt away while drawing the breather towards the source. This was secondary, however, to the main goal, to rob the Daeva of their magics.9
Magic is but an extension of one's Will, or soul, and what empowers and shapes the soul is memory.
To snatch away memory wounds the soul, cracks the Will, and what were Daeva but rancid souls puppeting forms not their own. Parasites whose connections needed particular blades to cut.
This was to be that blade. A hatchet to part control from the soul and allow the magic to run wild and feral, just as willing to bite the hand that cast it as to do as asked.
Weakening their defenses for when the befuddled masters stumbled toward the awaiting Köpiokörä
It was then they would strike, their great jaws shearing jugulars and crushing skulls, savoring the master's blood as it filled their heaving gullets, alchemical processes taking what was necessary to continue the toxin's growth, the rest, blessed flesh-though of beings so blighted as Daeva puppets, ferried to their kin, to be crafted into weapons by the newborn Karcists.
Of course, this weapon was of little use against the Will-less things the Daeva had raised as their tools, as mentioned above. The Kaarnaraakoja10, the Ruohokansan11, and the Kävellähometta12 to put a name to a few. The latter were truly of little danger to the Köpiokörä, swift and cunning as they were.
The Kaarnaraakoja, though, with their thick armor and mighty limbs, it would take blunter and sturdier beasts than they to take one down, even while working in concert. Few would be far from the battle at the heart of Adytum. But those kept as guardians would be the greatest threat awaiting them. Their oldest gifts would help them here.
Their open minds. Plunging into the weakened brains of the blighted Masters, they drew the commands and, in perfect mimicry, spoke them, setting the Kaarnaraakoja to confusion as their voices battled the Masters.
It is unfortunate, then, that with the Daeva gone, the nature they gifted themselves turned their Hunger on kin.
Nightmares they became, of enemies we never sought. Hunting the dark wood of Europe, and the sands of the South. Drew ire where once could be understanding.
Do not take me as a cynic, for there is beauty in the change. But I have met the beasts myself as my Elders demanded. The tale is short but must be shared.
In my wanderings, I had stumbled upon an enclave of our people about the figment where Asia becomes Europe. They were wary at first, but when I showed them the gift, they saw me welcomed like an old friend. But a single karcist led the flock, resting within the bowels of truly humble kiraak13, he revealed to me a story of woe.
They had been trapped by a pack of beasts that spoke their tongue and held no fear of flame nor the gift. Food had grown scarce, the karcist giving of his own flesh to keep the flock whole. The number of the monsters had winnowed with trap and pitchfork, but one remained—the greatest of them.
I offered to help, the taste of the Marrow still fresh on my tongue, my curiosity burning, I sought to understand if they were truly of our kin. If they were something else drawn from the touch of Vultaas14, Daeva, or otherwise then my own talons would meet them. He thought me a fool, and I can not disagree. I was young then, fresh-faced, and my robes were freshly molded.
I quickly came upon a cave marked with all manner of viscera, scattered bone, and rotting flesh piled about the entrance. The red muck marred the entrance, beaten flat by the claw prints. To see them in person and not the exultant dream of the Marrow filled me with more excitement than caution.
I examined the flesh a moment more, fingers tracing the breaks and tears, but found no signs of true consumption. This further solidified my fool hopes. A chance to connect with one of the Wild Kin, I am not sure why such certainty possessed me so. The Marrow had shown their madness, but perhaps I believed I was possessed of a spark others did not possess. I should have paid closer attention to the bones. Scatterings of human that I could tell, but a town of the Unseeing was not far.
Why then, young fool, was our folk in the village so afraid? Too excited by a chance of discovery, of connection with a legend.
But I would learn.
They have forgotten the taste of family.
As I have mentioned, their breath is both lure and trap, and while our workings are nothing akin to the Daeva’s, it still takes memory. If I needed to defend myself, my memory would need to be kept hale.
But I had prepared.
Taking my water skin, freshly filled from a spring near the village’s heart, I set to work upon it and myself. I set it about my neck and woke the dead flesh, molding it to mine, then, leaving deep into the ancestral memory of my blood and bone, I opened gills and took a careful gasp.
It worked well enough, and to make sure I sealed my nose and mouth with a careful touch. If the Köpiokörä awaited me, I hoped that through thought and flesh, I could make them know me. Foolish hope, perhaps, but I was less willing to see any working of our people as a threat back then.
With little time before the water staled, I darted within the cave.
I was intrigued by what I found. Curving claw marks, splattered gore, and more rotting flesh piles—there was almost a pattern, almost meaning to the mess. I convinced myself I was seeing art, for where else would a being given the Wild splay their claws across the wall again and again?
My eyes fell on a collection of tiny prints, more human than I expected. Touching the markings revealed a taste—human, beast, and something more—a dozen essences mingling into one pattern.
My own voice bouncing down the walls of the cave towards me confirmed it.
I had found them.
I turned, shifting my eyes to drink in the dark as easy as the light and there, head cocked at me akin to the hounds they near resembled was a Köpiokörä.
Those in my Marrow-driven dreams had been larger. This one was leaner, smaller, no bigger than a common pǟlnalka15.
It stepped towards me, jaw hanging wide, steps cautious. Perhaps my scent held it at bay. I kept my mind open, seeking to project all I knew of them, all I knew of our joint heritage, onto it. I knew it had been born without knowledge of our people, of its origin, but memory lies in the blood as much as the mind, so proves the Marrow.
It faltered, observing me, and it then spoke not in my voice but the voice of my mentor.
“ Nälkä forever, no matter how far they have scattered. We share.”
She had said it often, affirming our people’s joint origin, the bonds in our bones drawing us all back to lost Adytum.
Recognition, I thought. In truth a predator finding its proper bait. I approached it, it knelt, and I did what I was sure would bond us. I offered my flesh, as I had done with the elder the very night before and all kin in my journey before or after this day. So the Marrow teaches.
It bit down eagerly, and at first, I exalted in the pain. We are a people of hunger, to feed to readily surely meant a bond would form.
But I mistook greed for connection. It did not stop when I attempted to draw back. It latched on and drew my arm in deeper, drawing it in, and something became clear to me in that instant as the pain worsened.
The Köpiokörä had made a great sacrifice, but I hadn’t truly felt its depth. They knew hunger, but they had lost what it meant to be satiated. They took in so little, and as I watched, it shredded my hand, but it did not swallow.
There was no connection. It had truly been lost to the Wild. The Will overtaken.
I wrenched out of its maw, my blood painting us both, and it set upon me in full.
“Share,” it barked again.
It was so eager to end me, teeth gnashing, claws tearing, but it had grown used to addled prey. I made my wound my weapon, and even as a hollowness filled me, I struck back.
As lost as this being had become, we were still kin.
But I would not let its maw send me to a hungrier one.
Those first Köpiokörä had divested themselves of mind and heart, spreading it through their entire form, as I mentioned before. Their skin had been reinforced as well, but I felt the flesh within its hungry throat wet and tearable as any I had known.
I urged my mangled stump to grow and meld, bone and chitin sharpening and serrating, a saw that I dug deep. I heaved, and the creature released me, screaming in the voices of all it had slain, the tongue of our people heavy on its fanged lips. Flattening the bone into a weighty sledge, I brought it down like a headman's axe as the Wild-maddened thing lashed about.
Head parted from neck, rolling about the ground, and still it screamed, but it was a sputtering sound. The body staggered and struck, mad with pain and the hunger it never satisfied, and I slid back, staring at the jellied blood that clung to my shifted arm bones.
It quieted eventually, slumping to the ground in a heap, the gnashing head stilling last. Nothing in the Marrow said it would return, but I was wary and saddened being forced to cast this lost member of our flock to the hateful void beyond. Though it was likely that the Vultaas had already claimed them, will-weakened and Wild as they had become.
I knelt beside the body, knowing what was demanded of me now. To honor them, a taste before I burnt the body, but their breath still hung in the air.
I carved a sliver away, the flesh already cold and far softer than I expected. I slipped it into a pouch and reached for my flint when I heard it.
The mewling of babes.
The village had not mentioned missing infants; all the Köpiokörä had attacked were far older.
My water was quickly growing stale, but I had to find them.
And I did.
In a nest of fur, flesh, and filth lay seven babes, pale of skin and red of eye; they looked no different than any babe I had ever seen.16
I knelt and reached out, and one of the babes grasped my fingers. Their essence became plain to me. They were Köpiokörä, and yet they weren’t. The flesh was malleable, fresh.
The Marrow's visions are not perfect. Things can slip. I had seen their rise in Adytum, their months of excruciating trial and error. However, it had not shown me what became of their children. Indeed, I had thought they had forsaken that part of themselves as well.
It was then I made another fool decision.
I set the corpse of their apparent mother aflame and ferried them away, crafting bundles from my cloak and set on a path back to the village. The elder treated me at the gate, surprise written about his eyes, growing deeper as I recounted what I had found.
The village awakened around me as the infants began squalling. Dozens of questions asked, and I had but one answer to give them.
They were our kin. The village had lost many; could these children not be raised amongst them?
They hesitated. Why had the beast not devoured them? I replied with honesty.
Their hesitancy grew to dismissal, and I began to wonder of the fate of the babes when the karcist reached towards one of the infants. I saw it in his eyes; he felt it too. I spoke truth. The monster, too, had been of the people, one lost in the Wild.
The young, though, ever have a chance to grow beyond what is expected of them. Back amongst the people, able to learn the taste of family, the truth of the Ozi̮rmok, could we not give them that chance?
Regardless of anything, they were babes in the wilderness, sure to perish without care.
The karcist spoke, and his flock listened. Grandmothers, fathers, and others who had lost family to the elder Köpiokörä's mad maw stepped forth and took the bundled infants from me.
The first drink an infant not of our people is oft milk. For the Nälkä, it is the blood of the parent, no matter the clan I had come across at that point. I watched as these new caretakers opened their veins to the infants. They drank so readily, I should have been wary.
But I believed I was in the right. That I observed the reforging of lost bonds. After informing the karcist of the changes to expect, I took my leave of them and slipped through the veins of Ion back to Marrow’s Home to spread my “truth”: the Köpiokörä had returned to the people after so long apart.
As I have said… I was a foolish youth. But before I left, I remembered the flesh of the elder within my cloak. I drew it out and tasted it to hold the memory. It tasted of nothing. That alone should have made clear the folly to come.
It would only be years later that I would learn how deep my folly had been. I returned to the region near the village at the behest of my elder, seeking information on a beast not of our workings. Some pale and alien thing lurking in the mountains, but that is for another time.
I thought I would stop in and see what had become of the village and its wards since my departure.
My hope for a warm welcome died when the moaning gasps of a dying kiraak caught my ears.
I emerged from the woods into ruin. Limbs and organs littered the ground and adorned barbs of wood as if a vast shrike had come to call.
Blood had turned the dirt road threading through the village to a tugging muck. My first thought went to the Unseeing, or another enemy of our people. I became enraged.
But then that too hollowed out of me, as resting on the steps of the kiraak was the karcist, murmuring a lullaby to it as it expired. His stomach was split open, organs steaming against the chill air, and his face was a ruin of chewed flesh. Yet… he breathed.
He flinched at my touch, but as I began to thread him back together, he recognized me.
And he cursed me.
He told me of what had occurred, his tone mournful and disdaining.
The Köpiokörä children had grown swiftly, far faster than the others, but they seemed no different from the others at first. They were playful, joyous, and boundlessly curious, as all children are. They marveled at the movement of butterflies as eagerly as his working and grand stories of Adytum.
But then things began to change. They grew stronger, faster, and complained of hunger far more than other children.
People began to forget little things, losing track of time, which had been the central focus before. He had remembered my warnings and taken precautions, but he had hoped to teach the children how to control their gifts. They had been eager to try, and for a short time, it had worked.
Even at their young age, they proved to be some of the best hunters the village had seen, beloved of the community and loving of all in turn. Some even wanted to learn the lihakut’ak. His tone became softer here; one had shown more promise than the others. Her eager and amazed smile as she bent her flesh for the first time, just a finger, but a promising start.
But he said that memory was now tainted by that look of fear in her deadening eyes as her head tumbled free of her neck.
They had all sickened, shunning the light and tearing at their skin, crying out as the pain consumed them. He tried and repeated those words thrice to give them relief and heal their ailments. But his skill was not stronger than the natural lihakut’ak in their blood. So he and their adoptive parents could only watch as they vomited up their organs and chewed off their skin.
Even when they had taken the grown form of the Köpiokörä, they remained docile and kind at first, still eager to help, sing the prayers, and chase the butterflies.
But it didn’t last. They lost themselves as those around them lost their memory more and more each day. Even he had been affected, not realizing all he had forgotten in the constant companionship of his altered apprentice.
He came to clarity when the killing began. His flock screamed for aid as the wolves I had placed amongst them readily tore them asunder. He tried to fight them, but he had been a teacher and a healer, not some. He looked at me angrily with his healed eyes, “Warrior-Monk.”
I asked how he had survived. He smiled then, tears in his eyes, melancholy thickening his voice.
“She did.”
The girl who had taken to the craft had become the largest of her siblings, the calmest, and in the end the most vicious, but in defense of him and others. But even then, she had been alone against five, and all that remained when the slaughter was done was her dragging him, mewling like a babe, and muttering for the first time in her own voice: “Sorry.”
I looked about for signs of the horror I had released upon my people, enraged with my own blind hope, my refusal to recognize the Vultaas in them as my deceased kin had.
But the Köpiokörä had scattered, what remained of their essences waning, except one.
I traced it to a home on the edge of the village and within I found a nest, warm to the touch, adorned similarly to it’s mother’s in the cave so many years ago, yet with baubles and bits gathered from here in the village.
Central was a worn doll in the shape of the Klavigar Orok, soaked through with the tang of blood and the salt of tears. I brought it before the karcist, and he acknowledged it was his apprentice’s, how tightly she had clutched it to her and prayed for strength as the change ate through her.
He did not believe much of her remained if she willingly left this favored item behind.
It was then I finally spoke, offering my apologies and what he wished of me.
“I wish nothing more from you. I am bereft for your gifts, ‘scholar’. What I need are hands to do the work.”
I remained silent through the trial that came, gathering the bodies, honoring what remained, and tasting their scorn and despair, a flavor that lingers with me still, keeping me honest and cautious.
Once the work was done, I turned to the karcist, seeking to offer to ferry him from this place, but he turned from me and set the dead kiraak aflame, savoring one last bite. Without a word, he stalked past me and vanished into the woods, leaving me with nothing but ash and shame.
I know not what became of him or the cuckoos I had set within his village. I hear constant tales of beasts akin to the Köpiokörä, other Villisükuä, in my travels. I seek to observe them, within Marrow and without, to learn if they, too, have been lost to the Wild fully.
I wonder after the girl, in the dawn of her talents as a karcist, and what, if anything, could have become of her. I visit the village whenever I can, and there are signs something still calls it home, but whatever that might be shies from my presence, though I have heard our hymns whispered on the winds.17
In the end, I say that the fate and existence of the Köpiokörä should be a lesson, of the sacrifices that were necessary to win us our freedom, of where the gift we carry can bring us, and most importantly, that a balance of flesh and will must ever be attained.
Lest we too seek to become lost amongst the Wild.
We are all Children of the Flesh.
Juo Luuydintä
Katso Totuus
Ylistys Ozi̮rmok18