King Charles the Occult Blood-Baptizer
In the fog-shrouded nights of the year 800, the castle at Aachen stood like a black tooth rising from the earth. In its deepest crypt, where no candlelight had ever reached, stood a stone baptismal font. It was not filled with water. It was filled to the brim with dark, still-warm blood—the blood of the heathens who had been dragged from the forests.
King Charles, the crown from the year 700 upon his head, approached the font. His fingers, long and bony, reached for a small, bowl-like vessel of beaten silver. Slowly he scooped the blood, raised the bowl to his lips, and drank. The warm liquid ran down his chin, dripped onto the purple-red mantle, and vanished into the folds as if the cloth itself thirsted.
Every drop gave him power. Wounds that would have killed other men closed within hours. His lungs did not merely draw air—they could suck the breath from the bodies of the living until they sank down silently, eyes wide open, mouths gaping like those of the drowned on dry land.
The people in the villages around Aachen knew it.
They barred their doors and laid heavy, smoke-soaked cloths before the thresholds. In their hearths they burned juniper branches and dried wormwood, whose dense, acrid smoke made the air heavy and stinging and rendered breathing difficult. Some additionally scattered crushed dried nettles and mugwort into the embers, so that a sharp, lung-irritating haze crept through the cracks.
On the doorposts and window shutters they carved the Algiz rune (ᛉ)—the ancient protective sign against evil spirits and nocturnal powers.
Yet it helped little.
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At night the dark figure in the purple-red robe came. It glided through the acrid smoke as if it were only mist. First it took the breath. The victims fell silently, their lungs already irritated by the smoke and now completely emptied. Then the others came.
A small troop followed the king. They too had drunk of the blood. Their fingernails had grown into knife-sharp, tubular cannulas. With a single cut they opened the carotid artery and sucked the blood while the body still twitched. They left behind nothing but empty husks and the metallic smell of iron and fear.
By day King Charles was a different man. In the garments of a Catholic priest he walked through the streets, blessed children, spoke Latin prayers, and smiled mildly. The people knelt before him and kissed his ring. No one saw the thin, almost invisible cannulas beneath his fingernails. No one heard the soft hissing when at night he stole the breath of the sleeping.
Only a few knew the way to kill him. One had to pierce the Blood-Baptizer’s lungs—deeply, until the black, clotted blood sprayed out—tear them out and burn them in the fire. Only when the ashes of the lungs had scattered would the healing cease. Only then would the Blood-Baptizer truly die.
One man knew it.
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Hardrad of Thuringia, a hard, silent count who had long distrusted the purple-red mantle and the priestly smile of the king. While others still believed in the mild messenger of the Church, Hardrad had seen the empty husks in the nights and smelled the acrid scent of old blood. He secretly gathered men around him—Thuringians who still knew the ancient runes and did not fear the juniper smoke.
On a starless night they entered the crypt of Aachen. The Blood-Baptizer stood at the font and drank. Hardrad stepped forward, the Algiz rune carved into the palm of his hand. With a long, narrow iron he pierced the king’s chest, tore out the black, twitching lung, and threw it into the waiting fire. The scream that escaped the Blood-Baptizer was no longer human. The lung burned with green, stinking smoke. When the last ash had scattered, the king’s body collapsed—finally.
The small troop of blood-drinkers scattered and vanished into the forests.
Yet the Church remained silent.
Out of shame and fear of the scandal it concealed the true death of Charles. For by day he had appeared as a priest and messenger of the Christians. In the annals it was merely recorded that the great king had peacefully passed away. Hardrad’s name was struck from the chronicles or defamed as that of a rebel.
Only in Thuringia do people still sometimes whisper the name of the count who took the demon’s lung and freed the land from the Blood-Baptizer.
In the forests around Aachen one sometimes still hears the soft scraping of nails on stone. And when the wind blows from the castle, it smells of old blood, incense, and the acrid haze of juniper.