The scent of blood fills the air, and my fangs itch with a desperate hunger for it. This is what I am now. A monster.

The elf girl is cold and pale, falling to the ground once released from her dark chains. She is dead but will rise again with a curse and hunger, not unlike mine. Lewark has shared with me some theories as to our nature, and in truth, she might yet be saved.

Master healers might even, in theory, return life to my own corrupted body and soul. What has happened to this girl here, is that her blood has been stolen away, partly by force and partly through magic. Should blood be returned to her veins, and her wounds healed, she may return to life, or she might still turn into one of my own kind.

“You’re not going to eat?” The vampiric leader asks, turning to me, and making clear that it is no request.

“If I will not?” I ask. She has not ordered me to do this, perhaps she felt as if she did not have to.

“What is it? Are you bothered by the thought of killing someone?” she asks, shaking her head in disgust. “I thought perhaps you were more intelligent than that.”

“I’ve killed before,” I reply lightly, touching at the neck of the girl before me. She’s weeping quietly, staring at me through the darkness, her hands held by her sides. She hasn’t the strength needed to overcome the monster at my side.

Even should she fight, she will not have the strength to survive this battle that rages on. I will not survive this either, should I make even one misstep.

“You will kill her because I have given her to you. You were a noble in your past life, no? Isn’t there some politeness or noble rule about refusing the goodwill of others?” she asks, continuing as she seeds power through me. “Eat.”

Her magic doesn’t compel me as she expects it to, but that doesn’t mean that I am free to refuse her. There is power in simple force. If I deny her will, I will die. If I die, then those who rely on me will also suffer.

Before I can do what needs to be done, we are interrupted.

Figures race through the darkness, vampires who carry themselves with deadly intent. They do not wait before striking.

Knives, blades, and even stray flickering flames are summoned from the air as they fall upon her. Yet she expresses only a vague confusion as she refuses to even lift a hand in her own defence.

There is no need.

Shadows rise from the nothingness around her, sinking us all into dark depths that betray the reality around us. A blend of shadows and illusion, at least that is how my better mind understands it. My heart is convinced that we’ve fallen into the darkest pits of the dread god’s realms.

What power must one have to imitate such a place as this?

I am the only one struck silent by the scene. The vampires who came here with violence in their hearts look past the lies set out before them. Yet, it is the lies that they ignore that see them suffer cruel fates.

Shadows and illusions bear fangs in countless numbers and forms. Unreal shapes find the physical strength to pry through flesh and rend the bodies of the vampires who would stand up against her.

“We will not die as your thralls, Pharisa!” A man cries out in rage, slashing through the darkness with a small blade of his own. Illusions part before a set of lies that he himself constructs, prying only a small path through the realms that this powerful vampire has created.

I stumble backward, nearly tripping on the fallen body of the girl that I meant to kill. She clutches at the body of her cold friend. A friend who will soon rise again to murder her, when given the chance.

Those of us that stand at the edges between life and death are not to be courted. We ought to be feared and destroyed by the good graces of light. This monstrous battle is proof enough of that.

I share only a short glance with the norkit girl, Olive, who looks back with terror and no small measure of conviction. I need not spare a word for her. She turns away from us, closing her eyes to the illusions and pushing through the dark depths while dragging the body of her deceased friend with her.

I would guard them, but I can feel Pharisa’s attention on me, even as she disperses the vampires who dare to revolt against her. Courageous as they are, I do not think that they can win this.

If they could refuse her orders, then why are they here fighting? Why are they not instead running? Why fight when they might flee?

“What bout of foolishness has inspired this action?” Pharisa asks, turning to address the vampire that fails to sneak up behind her. She smiles, accepting his strike without resisting.

“Explain,” she says as the man’s arm falls off from his body, a thread of darkness separating flesh from bone. She catches him before he can escape her, she presses her nails into his chest, into his heart.

“We fight,” the other man whispers in the dark air of the hellscape we imagine. “We fight because you know our names and faces, where he does not. When you die, we will be free. No one will know of us, no one will track us. Our connection to Adlramodore will be severed.”

“You think so?” She snickers, her lips tilting up. It seems without an ounce of satisfaction. “You will never be free. Even in death, we are bound to our sires. You will learn, this eternity or the next.”

Sparks erupt at her fingertips, infecting the man’s heart with furious flames. They spread fast and leave only ash in their wake, spreading out into the darkness. I do not know what she means by her words, but I hope that she is wrong.

“How do you betray your natures?” She asks, looking at those that still circle and stalk her. “What trick have you used to betray your own sires?”

They do not answer her, and there is a measure of panic about them as they rush into the assault as if to finish the fight right now.

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“Stand down!” She orders us all, her words carrying magic that seeks to bind me, though it finds nothing to grasp within my corrupted soul. The others struggle, conflicted and suffering, they battle themselves as they are wounded by the darkness that weaves through the space between them.

“Conflicting orders?” Pharisa asks. “It seems that the symptoms are similar, but whose words might be compared to my own? One of my illusive peers seeking to sabotage me? It would only anger Aldramodore, but I suppose they might be driven mad. Yet still, they should not be capable of controlling a separate branch of us… unless… no, that magic should be gone…

“No matter, you will learn to bow and obey once again, then you will tell me everything,” she says. “Kneel.”

The magic she forces through the word is magnitudes greater than what she used before, but still, it fails to affect me. The others struggle, still rebelling against her orders.

Before she can express anything more, the vampires share a moment between them. Together they stare ahead at her, leaping for her. Limbs are torn free by the thousand branches of darkness that intercept them, but when they are nearly brought to a stop by the darkness, fire burns a path through.

The flames burn at their fingertips first, blazing furiously, fuelled by the terrible æther that bursts through their veins. The flickering lights dispel the darkness, not in whole, but enough to breach through the defences that wall her away from them.

Their regeneration wars against the fire, but it does not stifle it entirely. They should have the power to save themselves from it, but they seem intent on keeping the fires bright and burning through the dark night. Carving a path through the cruel darkness, they fall upon the woman who seeks to retreat.

I step in behind her with a wooden stake raised for her heart, a quick wave of her hand is enough to dispel the flesh that she sees. The illusion that I’ve built for her to see.

I have practised my arts, even if they are only convincing when seen from the corner of one’s eye.

My wooden stake is already gone, but I layer an image of it over my dagger as I rush at her from behind. She doesn’t have the time to see through the second illusion, pausing her retreat to grip me with her pet shadows. I stare into her eyes as the vampires behind her finally reach her, she glances at my knife, my frost dagger worthless against a vampire.

The others have caught up to her, their flames already consuming their bodies as they let the fires growing burn through them. They’re pressing their flow of æther faster, using it to create flames brighter than they otherwise could.

“You will suffer for this!” Pharisa screams into the dark night as she is consumed by the dancing flames. I barely manage to step back in time to survive.

I turn away, stepping back into the shadows where our kind belong.

She doesn’t burn as fast as the others, but the flickering flames are not easily stifled, even as she separates herself from her burning limbs.

I cannot approach, and there is nothing I can do to spread the flames further or hasten her death. It is all that I can do to leave her burn.

“Belle, Lewark…” I whisper their names and hurry from the scene. If the knight is not dealt with, then they will die with the others.

Perhaps… perhaps I might still revive them with my curse, should the worst have come to them. Would that be a kindness or a cruelty, I’m not entirely sure.

The girl who escaped is gone, but so too is the corpse she carried with her. If she is not careful she will be drained of her blood by the very friend she wishes to save, but I cannot linger here in search of her.

“Pharisa is burning, we must save her!” The others of my kind rush past me to attend to their dying master. They glance toward me but do not intercept me. Whatever orders they have received, it gives the others here a chance to survive, assuming that they are not dead already.

The estate is much as I left it but much quieter. A few corpses are left scattered about the place, but the survivors are already rushing to scurry into the manor house that I’ve not an hour ago just escaped.

The mass of mud and muck stands where the knight was fighting but I cannot imagine that it would slow him for long.

“Hurry, hurry,” Lewark rushes them along, glancing briefly back at the robed priests who are gathering bodies of the fallen. I do not understand why they are not escaping.

“Merry, what are you doing?” I ask, rushing up to the man as he stands over a corpse. The limbs are separated from the body, and I can pity the ghoul that is born from this flesh…

“Belle,” the priest’s face is contorted with worry as his hands hover over her. “It is in times like this that I wish that I had mastered the healing magics, but alas my talents were never in that direction.”

“Belle,” I blink but her face remains the same. Cold, still, and pale. “She’s… will she… blood. I must find her some blood.”

I swallow back the words that burn in my throat, imitations of emotions that I would feel as a human, things that a monster like me need not pretend to have.

She is not dead. She is simply like me now.

Her limbs will grow back with the new magics… but will she be herself when she awakens?

It doesn’t matter. I don’t care.

I shouldn’t care.

I’m a monster, so why is my mind so thick and slow?

Why is it so difficult to find the right words?

“I wish to try to save her first,” the priest says. “You can still feel it, can’t you?”

“Feel it?”

“Her faith,” the priest whispers, lifting her body and cradling it in his arms as we walk back toward the manor house.

I walk by his side and place a hand on her unmoving chest.

My fingers tingle, then burn.

It is only a very slight feeling, but it persists, and rather than fading, it’s growing hotter.

“We will hide when the knight breaks out,” Merry says. “You can help with that, can’t you?”

I nod slowly, “Belle…”

“If I cannot save her any other way, then I will give her my own blood,” Merry says, leading us through the broken earthen wall and into the house. “I’m afraid that in this case, your lies might serve us better than the truth, so please, save us while I save her.”

I lower my head, meeting the cold glazed eyes of the girl who has rejected me. I imagine for a moment, all the things that I had before. All the futures that I had dreamed of. The worst of them return to me, the moments when I desired to kill her myself. A desire that I stifled, because I knew just how terrible a world that would be.

“Save her,” I whisper, letting him take her away.

Lewark doesn’t disguise his worry, trying not to focus on Belle, and instead directing a worried frown towards me.

Hanging over our shoulders is Vael, her smile a little too eager given the death that surrounds us. Yet… there is a quiet to her. Something that drags at her feet. A sombre air that seems unintentional, like a person trying to smile through their grief.

“Are you going to be able to do this?” she asks me.

“It will be fine,” I say. Perhaps, it wouldn’t be wrong to get to know her better.

It takes but a moment for us to retreat into the manor where I string together magic to disguise the entrance with darkness. It is nothing fancy, I haven’t so much talent. Using the terror that still consumes the many here, and the fear born from lingering magic around the manor, I wall us in. it is only the rooms where we are gathered, but even that is enough to drain my stressed limits.

As the layer of darkness begins to close around us, the mass of soil explodes with pure undiluted force. I cannot guard entirely against the clumps that strike the walls near us, and I can barely reform the shadows in time to contain the screams of those around me.

I clench my hands tight, watching that dark wall before me. If the knight is charging us now, then we are lost. My illusion isn’t so grand a thing to hold up to scrutiny.

“Have we made it?” Lewark asks, leaning heavily on his ashen cane. I do not think that his reliance on it is as much a lie as it was before.

“We aren’t dead,” I reply after a few minutes have passed. “I have to suppose that we are safe.”

“Can we glimpse outside?” Lewark asks. “Can we check?”

I nod, warping the shadows to allow a glimpse outside.

The soil that buried the knight is now scattered and the man himself is gone. A gully is carved into his earth trailing into the streets and away from us.

Some strange earth magic? But he wouldn’t have been buried so long if that were the case.

“It seems that he is gone,” I say, but before the others can rejoice. Living darkness flows into the estate’s trampled gardens warring against the fires that still burn amid their shadowed storm. I subdue my errant trembling hands and step out into the night where Pharasa still burns.