There's a place where runs an ancient vein, deep under the mountains. It pumps obsidian black ichor through its otherworldly cavern in a rhythm not known to this universe. To find it, you must know it's there. To see it is to know horrors not meant for mortal eyes. To hear it is to split the eardrum as well as the mind. And still, it pumps.
The legends say it's the central artery of a long-dead dragon, its bones composing the mountain above. Nothing so mundane would dare take root in so sacred--and cursed--a place. No, the vein is something unimaginably worse.
I was born at the foot of this mountain, in a tiny village wiped off the map by some forgotten war. When their thrall to the vein began, it demanded of them regular sacrifices of life and love. This they did--for centuries, so it is said. It was during one dismal, frigid winter that my young body was lain upon the altar, my undernourished form given up as an offering to the thing that dwelt beneath the rock.
Despite my small stature and fragile constitution, it sensed in me a will, my soul's demand to endure despite the impossible odds. Whether it felt pity, pride, or some emotion incomprehensible to the human mind, I cannot say. I only know that it took a different tack, and rather than annihilate my body, it revitalized me. It asked of me a rather different sacrifice: an eternity of servitude to its desires.
What it wanted, it could scarcely explain in human language. But in my head it would places images--great and terrible vistas, piles of corpses, cities aflame, deep pits obscuring astonishing horrors, fleshy tendrils arising from the sea, wrapping, claiming, destroying. All I could understand was that it assumed my obedience. When I was shown a face, accompanying it would be a peculiar sensation: a deep, dreadful loathing; or an affection so profound, I would weep for hours before being able to compose myself.
I grasped, then, that it was commanding me to slay some and defend others. Why? Why, why? It did not and could not use words. I have, in my eons, attempted to teach it even the most basic rudiments of human language. It cannot learn or, more likely, it refuses to. Why would it debase its fantastic, forbidden knowledge with the pathetic atrophy of ape grunts? My lot was to obey, and obey I did.
To those I protected, I was a saint. A savior. Sometimes, a messiah. To those fated to feel my blade across their throats, I became a fearful shadow. They put names upon me to diminish my mystery, reduce my menace. They called me the Ancient, the Terrible, the Dweller in the Mountain, the Vein's Torment. In time, I coined my own appellation: the Carpathian. I was not the mountains themselves, but they were kin to me by now. If I could be their will given form, then that would suffice.
My realm of responsibility was small at first, limited by geography and technology. I had power, but only of a sort. I had neither flight nor translocation. The one domain over which I had mastery was time. I could, at my leisure, revisit any point in my life-line. Make a small tweak here, a little adjustment there. And then, instantly, conceive of the results. Imperfect, but dramatically powerful within its confines.
The self of the now proceeds onward, tick tock, unabated. Even as I project into my own history to ripple through the present, the now-me goes on, a single point moving along time's arrow, no matter which cones of possibility I might steer us both toward. I become, then, a man of a thousand histories rather than one, as well as a man living a thousand linear lifetimes. My reward for all this? Reward? Why speak of reward? There is no reward. Oblivion, one day, perhaps. If I were to reject the vein's command, the future would dim and vanish. I know this all the way to my ancient bones, but with no capacity to prove it. At times, I have felt the weakness take me, those moments of doubt, as if my long-lost humanity deigns to reassert itself. And, as if in response, icy talons grip me by the opposite arm, threatening to drag me toward something too terrible to imagine, a terror only the vein could know, and in which I could only dissolve into nothingness.
So, I obey. I kill and protect, protect and kill, move back and forth through the ages, rewriting fates as the vein insists. Its pulse grows louder in my ears when it is pleased, I suppose. A sound to obliterate the souls of mortals, but for me, it is my nourishment. I would starve the heat death of the universe to be denied its taste, just one more taste.
No one understands what I truly am. Perhaps I fail to understand myself. Does the vein understand? It must. Someone--something--must. Otherwise, I am for nought.
I am surrounded by venal hedonists, power seekers and power mongers, sociopaths with regard for little save their own sordid gratifications. They value my knowledge, my acumen. It must puzzle them that one of my peculiar disposition chooses to associate with them, but as with all else, it is as the vein commands. I believe it is to steer them, subtly, away from the dark ends that would await should their appetites become unrestrained. I am, then, that restraint. That is a purpose I can understand.
But then there's him. The other time-walker, and like me, not quite a man--not any longer. His curse is not the same. We could have been comrades were the circumstances different, but he is deemed my enemy, and so I must thwart him. Turn by turn, I break and corrupt his plans, frustrate his ambitions, topple his ladders of aggrandizement. I don't know his aims, and I don't care to know. I only know that the vein has ordained me to stand in his way, and I shall do so, immovable and eternal, until the last star has faded.