Many men and women had sought it over the centuries. Kings and queens, as well as commoners. It had journeyed the earth and seen much of it, from the plains of Europe to the African savannah and the vast lands of the Americas, which it knew by other names of course. Distance meant nothing to it, which was called the Sacred Beast by so many throughout time. Those who sought it often sought to discover the source of its immortality. It laughed in their faces when queried on the subject. It had been around for untold thousands of years. Or perhaps tens of thousands of years. It remembered a time when the humans looked a bit different than they did now. They were more brutish, and actually harder to slay. How funny. Today's humans were easier to kill, even with their technology and their terrible weapons. The brutish humans of the old days had been formidable hunters, and fought fiercely. They had lived in an environment teeming with monsters, from cats with gigantic teeth to woolly mammoths. It remembered those days fondly, though it couldn't tell you how long it had been. Time mattered very little to it, for it was immortal.
It thought of all those times it had come close to death. Hurled inside a volcano by the assembled warriors of a primitive tribe in a forgotten land. Hacked to pieces by men and women wielding blades made of a metal which man in his madness had forgotten even existed. Very few weapons could pierce its hide, which was tougher than steel. Oh, yeah. It once thought itself gone, alright. However, it healed. Even after being melted down by the awesome heat of the volcano, it somehow put itself back together. That day, it learned that it could transfer its essence inside a new host. Ah, the supreme irony of it. It transferred its consciousness within the body of the man who killed it. And eventually, that man's body was transformed until it became a suitable vessel for it. Only after being killed could it move to a new body. And it always moved to the nearest body. The process was completely involuntary. Something inside simply would not let it die. Something which was beyond flesh and blood.
The last time it had died, it went inside the body of the man within whom it lived now. That man had been a magnificent warrior. Tall, dark-skinned, proud and strong. A former slave on the island of Saint Domingue, he rose up and became a military leader which led the African rebels to absolute victory over the European forces. And in doing so, became the founder and First Emperor of that island nation. Of course, that was before the Great One was betrayed by the very people he had saved. It had been new within the man's body, not yet in full control of its powers. It went through a period of immaturity as it inhabited every new host body after being killed. The Great One was betrayed, and got hacked to pieces and buried. It had taken nearly all of its power to revive its new host. For moving onto another would have been ill-advised. Dying took a lot out of it. Yes, it had dwelled within that man since. The man's soul was long since gone. What remained was a creature of inhuman strength and speed, one all too familiar with the ways of eternity.
The body which it inhabited had grown magnificent over the course of two hundred years. It never aged, and it possessed the strength of twenty men and the speed of a gazelle. And like all the others, it hungered for human blood, its only source of nourishment. Yes, it lived within a magnificent host. Too bad it would soon be time to move on. It couldn't remain trapped in this prison forever. It most definitely wouldn't. When the handler came to feed it, it did the unthinkable. It willed itself to die. The handler, a tall, dark-skinned young man in his early twenties, rushed into the room. Too late did he realize his mistake. For as soon as its body crumbled into ash, it willed its consciousness into the handler's body. There was a brief struggle, and it expelled the man's soul. The body died, and was reanimated by its titanic will. Fresh power flowed through the new body, endowing it with amazing strength and speed. It stepped out into the sun.
For centuries, many thought its kind loathed to walk in the sun. It laughed at the notion that the sun could kill it, recalling how it hunted men and women in the sun-drenched plains of Africa since time immemorial. Day or night, all that mattered was the hunt. As it stalked out of its prison, it saw a young woman. The handler's mate. Its first victim in ages. It drained the woman, then disposed of the body. Then it stepped out into the street. Everywhere it looked it saw them. These sons and daughters of the African motherland living in this island nation in the Caribbean. It smiled at them, knowing interesting times were upon them. For the Emperor had returned.
