1302 – Lazare was born in Béziers in the early 14th century. He was the son of a lovely couple from two noble families. His parents and his whole family had a rather good – and mythical – reputation in the city and even further, in all the country, for special services to some unfortunate people. Indeed, Lazare’s family members – some of them, as a matter of fact – were sometimes called « the Healers ». Some say they had the mysterious abilities, somehow, to get rid of every kind of wounds or diseases. Of course, they were not the only ones to pretend to have such powers, but the difference between these mountebanks and « the Healers » is : the noble family had true powers and didn’t ask for any money. They already had plenty of, anyway. That’s probably the reason why they hadn’t a bad reputation in many people’s eyes. But there’s always these few paranoid citizens who are constantly suspicious and who were wary of Lazare’s family, saying that the help that the « Healers » brought to their clients couldn’t come without any price. And pretending that instead there had to be some hidden evil consequences somewhere. The kind of thoughts that was going to bring a lot of trouble a few decades later.
The young noble kid had a very comfortable childhood, as he lived in the opulence of his family’s life. His parents were truly kind with him, they showed him love et taught him to be a virtuous youngster. I don’t know if ‘wizard’ is the right word, but Lazare’s relatives had real powers. Healing powers. It wasn’t just a rumor. And they tried to spread health and kindness around them, although they also wanted to stay discreet. The first time Lazare was able to discover that he had power too, was when his governess hurt herself while cooking. Lazare was about five, or six years old. Aida – her name – was a young, thin, maid who had a wonderful way to cook the quarry. Anyway. The young child couldn’t heal the governess, but he was able to absorb her pain so she didn’t feel anything, but he felt her pain.
Meanwhile, something a lot darker was already spreading since at least seventy years. The correspondence between those who were called « wizard » and the « heretics ». At first, it wasn’t really something serious, just some crazy thoughts that the pope had, but it grew sneakily, yet dangerously. Nobody saw it coming. Nobody knew what was going to happen. And in 1326, it exploded. Lazare’s family was living a quiet life, and then people’s eyes began to change. In their eyes, the Healers slowly became dangerous. They were called Satan’s children. To some citizens, they were evil, just because they were able to do things « against nature ». This family could have been a miracle. Instead, people considered them enemies.
As Lazare grew up, he stayed with his family. He trained his powers, he was taught how to control them, but the learning was long and difficult. But years after years, he improved more and more and became a good healer. Not as proficient as his elders, but quite talented, and he proved his worth when the Black Death struck the country. The years becoming darker and darker, they all tried to keep their lives going on and to keep bringing all the help they could. But in a more discreet way. They tried to stick together, to be more careful with their power. But there was one woman that Lazare knew he could trust. One that he healed once, and that he got closer with. Miss Ombeline. A young woman from a noble family too, but from Paris. Lazare fell in love with her, as she did with him. They got married soon after the day they first met, in 1377. Lazare was 75 years old, but seemed to be around 20 or 25. They truly loved each other. Not a very long time after their weeding, Ombeline gave birth to a beautiful girl, Heloïse. They were happy, they really were, even though their situation was getting worst and worst.
Lazare’s mother, Léceline, was a quite powerful healer of a great kindness and goodwill, and one day, she rescued a poor girl in the street, who had broken her leg by being chucked down of her horse. In a couple of minutes, the girl was already able to walk again, thanks to Léceline’s help. But some of the few passers-by down here saw what Léceline did and found this outrageous and blasphemous. They couldn’t find out why the Lady would have done such a thing to a destitute girl. The rumor that Lazare’s mother was a heretic began to spread. Fast. Soon, the entire family was considered heretic by more and more people. Lazare’s family lost a lot of property and became victims of vandalism. The citizens wanted a trial. To condemn Léceline. They wanted her to die. They wanted all the family to die. Fortunately, the council of the city had a better opinion of the noble family and refused to kill Lazare’s mother. For now.
In 1381, September the 8th, to be accurate, people in Béziers got together to demand a trial for Léceline. The crowd of people turned fast into a riot. All the d’Arbovan family, even the ones without powers, was thrown out of their house and forcibly led into the main square of Béziers. People screamed against the family, they hit them, again and again. The Council tried to calm down the crowd, but they became soon victims of the riot too. Lazare and some of his relatives tried to defend themselves, but they weren’t able to do anything, because the citizens were too many. The members of the Council and the d’Arbovan’s were forced to retreat in the communal house. But the people outside were too enraged and nothing could stop them. Soon the flames began to eat away the house’s foundations so they had to run into the building’s tower, but they had no way to escape the fire. They were at the top of the tower, and there was nowhere to go but to jump through the window. Lazare refused to die in that pyre, and refused his family to die too. He wanted to go down the tower and find a way to put out the fire. And he was about to race downstairs, but his mother hold his arm and told him that jumping through the window was the only way. But the young wizard couldn’t believe that. « We’re going to make it, son. We are. » No. Lazare was convinced that there was another way. He was hearing his five-year-old daughter screaming and it was making him crazy. It hurt. He just wanted everything to stop. And he was going to stop everything. The fire, the crying, the chaos. He convinced himself of this. So he rushed down the stairs. He went through the flames, that were getting warmer and warmer. The wooden steps collapsed under his feet and he felt violently onto the floor of the ignited old building. His clothes began to burn, so did his skin and his hair. But he ran through the ruined wall and got out. Alive. Well, more or less alive. He tumbled on the ground. The real ground. Outside. He couldn’t get up. He couldn’t see clearly. He was just able to crawl, with difficulty. He was supposed to extinguish the fire. How ? How could he do that ? He couldn’t walk. He heard the communal house cave in, loudly, and a cloud of ash and dust covered him… Then he began to cry, trying to articulate some magical words. Every part of his body hurt. His clothes had been consumed by the fire, his skin was seriously burnt… And everyone in his family had gone. All dead. Victims of humans' hate. And Lazare didn’t do anything right to save them. It was because of him. Mostly because of them. Humans were nothing but monsters. Lazare hated them. He abhorred them. His anger was so deep, so harmful, so ravaging, that, if he could stand up, he would have been able to kill them all. But he couldn't. So he cried, without any sound coming out of his mouth, and soon he passed out.
He felt the cold bites of the rain against his dark, scarlet, cracked and steaming skin. His clothes had melted and mingled with his flesh. It smelled funny. As if Aida had over-roasted some bad meat. Somehow, it wasn’t hurting. The spells he had earlier casted may have worked. Maybe he was not going to die, after all. But why? What was the point of being alive? With all the strength that he had left, Lazare used his broken body to stand up. The smells and the ashy and dusty air made him want to throw up. And he did, as he was coughing. He staggered as he left the place and stumbled on something. As his eyes hadn’t completely recovered yet, he had to squat to see what he had walked on. He didn’t recognize them yet, but then he saw the jewelry and some remaining hair on what seemed to be two heads. His wife and his daughter were laying on the dusty floor, burnt to death. Lazare cried out, his salty tears running down his dirty cheeks. It couldn’t be. He refused to believe it. They couldn’t be dead. It couldn’t be them. His broken voice rang out in the fog, as strong as a whisper. Someone heard him and tried to come close. Another citizen who was going to shout the alert that one go « them » was still alive. And Lazare couldn’t let this be. So he grabbed a sharp piece of some wooden debris and stabbed the man in the neck.
They had killed his wife, his daughter, his mother, his father. All his family. How could he have any sanity left ? From this day, Lazare was never the same again. He walked, day after day, without even knowing where he was going. His body took several months to heal, and it took years to get rid of all these scars. The his hair began to grow up again, and finally he recovered his normal look. But during these many years, he hid himself, lived like a savage. He never talked to anyone, he never used his power again except to heal himself. He became a subject of legends. Under his hood, he became, they pretended, an evil wizard who haunted the forest. Or a monster. Or a demon. He was mean, and because of him, people were scared. They didn’t have to, at first… Because Lazare was just a hermit, who never did anything to hurt people.
But they made him evil. People who knew him hated him because he was a good wizard with marvelous powers. And those who didn’t know him, hated him too, because he was now ugly and he lived alone. So, yes, over the years, he began to hate them more, and more. When his wound had healed but the scars of the burning remained, he looked for a way to get rid of them. But he wasn’t enough powerful to heal his skin and his awful face. So he came in the house of a true witch that had been burnt on a pyre, in the centre of a small town. A black witch. A true one. Lazare spied on her for a few days before she'd been killed. In her house, he found many books about black or evil magic. But Lazare couldn't use this kind of magic. So he kept on reading, more and more books, until he found that old book, who was going to teach him the evil side of his powers. He opened the grimoire and it was the beginning of the end. This very day, the Good Lazare died and let Evil Lazare replace him.
In exchange of killing people, Lazare would be able to heal his scars. So he didn’t hesitate, not even one second. The younger the people were, the better the spell would worked. He nourished his hatred so much that he could kill people without even shivering, just because they were hateful humans. He became that legendary monster that people thought he was. And he was unapologetic about it.
The grimoire didn’t just taught him how to get rid of his scars by committing awful crimes, but also to pervert his healing powers and to make them bad, harmful, aggressive and dangerous. Instead of healing, he was injuring people. And he loved it. He loved bringing trouble around him. He loved summoning demons to spread illness and bad fortune to those he didn’t like. That was his way to get revenge and his way to be satisfied, to be happy. During many years, perhaps even centuries, he tried to end some of the trials against real witches. He travelled in all Europe to carry his mission of revenge out. He did save some witches, but a lot of the trials where against simple human women. These times, he just looked the women burning with a malicious pleasure. Just because he hated the human race. He was insane. He knew it. But a wise author will say : “Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.” Who knows. Maybe he will be right.
Sometimes, he cried again. Mostly at night, when he suddenly had a moment of sanity, when he let his madness go. In those moments, he wanted to give up on everything. What was the point of getting revenge? It wouldn’t bring them back. But it was the only way to give sense to their deaths.
When Lonely Lazare arrived in Eastern Europe, around the 17th or 18th century, the trials for witchery began to stop and he heard that there was a place for all creatures to be safe. In Russia. In addition to be safe, Lazare also heard that this place’s boss was even more evil than him. No humans were allowed to enter that place. This idea delighted Lazare. He had seen too much humans, he needed to retreat for a while. He needed to meet more creatures of his kind, he needed to find a world he could cling to. He was tired of hiding.
So he went to this place. He found this hotel. He stayed there many years. In the meantime he had the chance to extend his knowledge of the magic world and of his corrupted powers, by meeting other dark or medical witches and wizards who knew magic much more than he did.
He’s never fallen in love again. Never. As if this feeling had run away from his heart. Yes, he still has a heart, but it is black and cold. It was perverted by all the dark years of his long life, by all the crimes he committed, by all his insane thirst for revenge. Instead of loving, he had devoted himself to be the cancer of mankind.
* * *
Because he was a regular in Semak’s hotel in Russia, it is not a coincidence that Lazare ended up in Miracle. His whole life had been marked by his craving for revenge, and so did Semak’s. The Russian hotel owner managed to convince Lazare that Miracle’s hotel was a new threat for the creatures such as him. Lazare couldn’t accept that. He strictly refused something like witch-hunts he’d been through to happen again. That was one reason. Among others. Miracle’s hotel seemed to be the perfect place to bring trouble in, and Lazare was the kind of twisted person to do such a thing. Just because it was fun. Just because he needed to find a reason to keep his life entertaining. Just because he’s twisted. (Does he really need more reasons?) And maybe because he’s gotten used to live in the comfort of a hotel, and Miracle’s seemed to be the best alternative. Oh, yeah, and lately Semak decided to send his allies into the hotel in order to launch an attack from the inside. Lazare is one of them. He’s that discreet guy behind the bar, serving you every kind of drinks. If I were you, I’d be careful about what’s in my drink… He pretends to be a humble wizard – more human than wizard – to whom lots of bad things happened, however helpful with his healing powers… And, well, now that you know him better, you are aware that it isn’t really the whole truth. But we mustn’t forget that a part of him – the good one – is still fighting deep inside him. Maybe, he’s come to Miracle’s hotel because, somewhere in his being, a part of him wants to get back to the man he was before he got perverted. This part of him maybe hopes to get back to his roots. Somehow. That’s the reason why his future is quite unpredictable. Anything could happen.