Prologue

I look at my partners, they all look tired. Andrea gives me a nod, and then raises her shotgun to the direction of the door in front of us, while professor Jayce checks his weapon and Alfred takes  deep breaths, slightly moving his hands around his sword.

Looks like all are ready to die here, and we don't even know the reason… Whatever this creature is doing, we need to stop it. To believe that was on this morning that we meet each other, and not even one day later we are all ready to die together.

Holding the point of Alfred’s blade, and gripping my sword with a lot of strength, I start to pray to God, using the chant that was made by my ancestors, that would bless a weapon with holy power, harming the supernatural creatures with a lot of efficiency.

“Quis, Deus, fortitudo tua, concedo quia gladium meum, et stare, quia nemo unquam infidelis in semitis.”

“Thanks Jon”

Alfred thanks me for blessing his weapon. I still don't trust him very much after what happened with the kid that tried to kill him, but now we have no choice but to trust each other. I nod at him, and move in front of the door. On the corners of the door can be seen the foot of one of the wax monster. Different of the ones at the surface, these are completely inhuman, with spike shaped arms, a wax like skin, a deformed face and a much more agile body. We tried to throw molotovs at them, but there is some sort of magic barrier blocking fire from existing on the room.

If Wallen was smart and realised about the barrier… Maybe he wouldn't die at his own molotov. And I wouldn't need to charge suicidally at them.

Wallen was a nice guy, but his head had some issues. Well, all of ours heads have issues, if we were normal we would not be on the basement of this mansion at this time of the night fighting walking wax statues and the one that made them.

I take one deep breath, blink one last time, and then charge through the door. After just 2 steps the first one of the creature's hit me from the left, penetrating my armor and severely injuring my abdomen. With its arm's extended, it becomes easy to hit, and with a downward slash, I cut it on half, and quickly rotate myself and face other wax monster.

With my injuries I can't dodge him, so I go for a quick trust in its chest, but he redirects the blade with his spike arm, and hit me on my chest. This time the armor blocked much more damage, but the arm still penetrates my flesh and bones.

The time seems to stop for a second, and I use the moment look the room that I just entered. On a pedestal the vampire that we are hunting is chanting some sort of blood magic. Next to the pedestal is Wallen dead body. When his molotovs exploded in his hand, he charged the room like the mad man that he was, but it looks that he did not lived very long. Directly in front of the pedestal is a well, surrounded by chanting robed figures.

Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

Knowing that I will probably die in a minute, and inspiring myself on Wallen, i charge madly at the vampire.

“DEUS VULT!”

I shout when my blade approaches the monster, but my injured body fails me, and miss my attack, just slightly scratching it's cheeks. I can't move my body anymore, falling to the ground, looking at the well and the door where I see Alfred swinging his sword at the wax soldier that I missed.

My vision starts to get blurry, and I can't hear anymore the chant.

Wait, I still can hear Alfred fighting the wax soldier. Shit, we were too late, the ritual is already finished!

Realising the same thing, Alfred rushes into the room, with Andrea closely behind. Around the well the robed figures stop moving, like they were just dolls all the time.

Two of the wax soldiers follow Alfred and Andrea, and the last one waits for prof. Jayce but his head is blown up by Jayce firing his assault rifle.

I feel a wave of fear going through my body, and when I look at the well, what was once a stone circle is now a vortex of darkness, and there is a huge and grotesque hand holding the vortex border. Alfred runs to one of the hooded figures, and with a precise swing he cut its head, but the vortex still remains intact, and the others hooded figures don't even respond to their lost brother. Suddenly I see a person approaching me, but quickly I realise that is Andrea. She start to desperately search my body, until she finds the strange dagger, with weightless blade that was sent to the professor. I keep the blade, since She and the professor trusted me more to had a potentially magic blade than the crazy Wallen or the child murder suspect Alfred.

Andrea finds the dagger and rushes to the big and ugly climbing creature, that I assume to be some sort of demon. When she gets close to the vortex, she jumps holding the dagger with her two hands. Meanwhile, the professor is killing the last two wax soldiers, but one of them manages to injure Alfred when he is distracted watching the demon leaving his prison. Just after Andrea disappearing in the vortex, Alfred jumps after her and the professor goes to the pedestal behind me. When they enter the vortex, a loud banshee like scream is released from the demon.

Then, everything starts to get hot, I feel the cloth of my tabard burning. It was a smart idea to use non flammable padding under my chain mail, or I would be dying with a lot of pain. On the corner of the room, near the door, I see the vampire that did all of this, burning to ashes. Thinking that we failed to save the city, another  scream is made by the demon, but this time even more high pitched, but when it stops, the fire stops burning and the room cools down.

We did it, we killed the demon. Now I can finally die, but I'm not satisfied with this, I still feel like I should continue my mission. The plan was to everyone to survive so we could deal with the possible “Nosferatu” sewer vampires.

My vision finally fades, and I start to see all my life like a time lapse. From when I was born in a rich family, with a loving mother and a distant father, when I listened to grandpa and his stories about brave knights fighting against the evils of the night, when my mother died and my grandfather died, when I was just 8, to the day that I found the passage to the secret room in grandpa old study room, when I started learning and training on how to hunt vampires and other supernatural creatures, to the several mission that I did together with the order to finally see this day, when I met all of these people, and fought to the death together with them. And after all of this, I get surrounded by darkness and die.

Or so should have happened.

But a bright light surges from the darkness, and I go in it's direction, trying to reach it. When I finally catch the light, I found myself on a strange place, with sculpted marble columns representing epic battles between several warriors and mages against armies of monsters, and a high arched sealing, giving a grand look to the room, and on the back of this room in a elevated position is a grandiose throne, where a old man with a strong and deep presence is seated. He wears fancy looking clothes, a dark green shirt with details on a golden yellow, and black pants. On his head is a simple crown, but even at distance you can see the fine craftsmanship of the golden band, with perfectly cut gems.

The man get up from the throne, slightly raises his arms on a welcoming pose and says:

“Welcome Heroes!”