A Hunger he could not overcome.
Ahead, the scent and sound of the fleeing woman grew stronger.
He could not save her.
Or himself.
And then he was upon her.
And the real nightmare began as the Beast's jaws — his jaws — closed on living flesh.
It was like a thousand other awakenings: the blood, the shredded flesh, the feeling of satisfaction giving way to self-loathing.
But this time it was not an awakening. This time, he had not lost consciousness — had not been able to lose consciousness for even an instant. Instead, he had lived through it all, experienced every grotesque horror of the Beast's feeding frenzy.
And every detail was gouged deeply and permanently into his memory.
He could not forget a moment of the horror, could not force it out of his thoughts for even a second. Nor could he forget — or forgive — his own helplessness to stop it.
Fool! his inner voice exploded. You were wrong! What the Mists held was worse than your wretched existence in Darken!
In a daze, he found a stream to wash the gore from his human form, but nothing could remove it from his mind.
After what seemed like an eternity of aimless wandering, he fell asleep on the jungle floor from sheer exhaustion, but even then, he gained no relief. His dreams, his nightmares, were virtually the same as his waking memories, yet more horrifying.
And even more real, more vivid.
Again and again he relived what he had done. And each time Malika died, her memories spread over the surface of her mind, just as her blood spread over the remnants of her body, and while the Beast devoured the flesh, Von Kharkov unwillingly devoured her mind, absorbed her very soul, until he knew his victim more intimately than he knew himself.
And then he was forced to kill her again. And again.
After the dozenth — or perhaps the hundredth — time, a new memory began to emerge from the horror.
He had done this before, the memory said. To this same woman or to another very like her.
Not here in this jungle world the Mists had thrown him into.
Not even as Dakovny's slave in Darken.
But somewhere else, in a lushly furnished apartment in a city whose name and country he couldn't even guess at.
And with that amorphous memory taking root in his mind like a gangrenous wound, he awakened. The jungle still surrounded him. The scent of blood once again clung to him like a poisonous shroud, renewed and strengthened by the nightmare.
As if triggered by his return to consciousness, a pocket of Mists pulsed into existence barely a dozen yards in front of him. He felt a physical chill as it swirled before him, thickening until it was as opaque as the jungle around it.
Abruptly, the Mists took on a reddish tinge, and for a moment he was certain it was Malika's blood diluting the m and that her tortured body would be deposited at his feet when the Mists retreated.
But it was not the dark red of blood, he realized a moment later. It was brighter, a crimson so intense it almost glowed.
A crimson that, like the jungle, triggered an inexplicable feeling of familiarity. And horror.
Then the Mists were gone, vanishing as quickly as they had come.
A man stood before him, his black-bearded face knotted in anger, his overweight body wrapped from neck to toe in a robe of brilliant crimson.
A name leapt out of nowhere into Von Kharkov's mind.
"Morphayus. ."
The man's eyes widened. For a long moment he scowled at Von Kharkov, then darted quick glances at the jungle around them.
"How did you manage this, Von Kharkov?" the man snapped. "And what is it you want? Whatever it is, be quick about it!"
"Your name is Morphayus? "
"As if you didn't know! Don't waste my time with foolish posturing! Just tell me why you brought me here and what you want of me. If indeed you did bring me here."
The man's voice — Morphayus'voice — grated on Von Kharkov's ears. And suddenly, he did know. He knew this place. He knew this person, this wizard. He knew —
In an instant, like the sky opening and drenching him in a downpour, his true past descended on him, burying him under the million details of a life he had not until that moment known existed.
A life before Darken. A life in which the parents whose gravestones he had visited so often in Neblus did not exist except in his own false memory.
A life in lands called Cormyr and Thay, where that first killing had taken place, the killing that had been echoed in the slaughter of Malika.
And before Cormyr —
For an instant, it was as if he were confronted by a featureless wall that threatened to shatter and fall and crush him, but instead it became akin to the Mists, and shadowy images reached out to grasp him and pull him in.
And he recognized those images.
And he knew the truth about himself.
The final truth.
He had not lost his humanity, trading it for immortality that night in Karg when he had eagerly submitted himself to Dakovny. He had had no true humanity to lose, only a veneer, an illusion.
An illusion created by the creature, the wizard that stood before him now: Morphayus.
Before Morphayus had found him and created that illusion of humanity, there had been no Urik von Kharkov. There had been only a beast, a jungle beast. A panther, virtually a twin to the one he had just encountered and bested. A beast, living its life out in this very jungle to which the Mists had returned both him and Morphayus.
The wizard had found the beast and transformed it into a man. Into the form of a man. And he had supplied that man with memories of a past that did not exist.
And then, when it had suited the wizard's warped purpose, the Beast had been brought back — to wreak bloody vengeance on an innocent woman whose only crime had been to spurn Morphayus. A woman named Selena, who could have been twin to Malika.
For what seemed like an eternity but could have been only a moment, Von Kharkov was lost, adrift in the vast sea of new and contradictory memories.
But then his eyes focused on the crimson-robed man who still stood impatiently before him.
Morphayus.
And he knew that only one thing mattered in all that churning ocean of newfound memories: his true nature lay not in the Von Kharkov shell but in the nameless jungle beast he had originally been. Had he been allowed to remain in that true form, here in the jungle, he would have lived out his life as the simple predator he was. All the senseless killing, all the pain and horror he and his hundreds of victims had undergone, was the fault, not of the Beast or of the Von Kharkov shell, but of the monster who stood before him, the wizard who had created this misbegotten half-human thing and set it upon its hellish course.
Morphayus, who had been brought here and put before him.
For the first time in his pseudo-life, Von Kharkov willingly — eagerly — called forth the Beast. This time the transformation seemed almost instantaneous, the flames of his altering body compressed into a brief pulse of pure agony of an intensity he could not have imagined.
And then it was as if they were one: Von Kharkov and the Beast. Von Kharkov's lust for revenge on Morphayus meshed with the Hunger that pulsed through the Beast, a Hunger that, he was now positive, had not been a part of his original jungle self but something the wizard had stirred into the mixture when the Von Kharkov shell had been created.
They leapt.
Together.
Von Kharkov felt the wizard's will grasping at them, trying to force them back, trying to control them as it had in Cormyr, as Dakovny's will had controlled the Beast so often in Darken.
But the wizard's power was not great enough, not here on the far side of the Mists, and not against the two of them, united in their overwhelming desire for his destruction.
And they were upon him.