“Ouch...”

Axel stared unhappily at his severed fingers, the bony chunks falling to the grass silently, speckling the green carpet red. He brought his stumpy hand up as red strand swirled in the air, slowly banding into crimson tendrils that attached to his finger-stumps and grew into fresh new appendages. “These strings are hard to get right.”

In the three weeks since he escaped Zorne, drenching half the city in blood, Axel had lived in the murky forest ringing the vampire city, known as the Greenmaw. It might have been extremely dangerous to a human or even an unprepared blood-drinker, but so far Axel hadn’t seen anything that challenged his survival. As a bonus, the forest was strewn with the not-so-rotten corpses of the various unfortunates that entered its depth in some ardent quest for foolish glory, saving the Dhampyre the need to hunt at the expense of drinking dirty blood.

Axel had taken advantage of the deserted forest to practice thinning his blood strings to the point of monofilamentality, practicing on the denizens of the forest. Their blood provided an exotic flavour, but were hard to catch.

“Ah, a tree hawk.” Before his transformation, Axel was positively terrified of these pests. It has the body of a thin plucked chicken, but with scales. Where its arms and legs grew were sharp crustacean claws. Its tubular neck supported a skeletal-looking head which was in fact a huge sensory organ. The little terror was blind, relying on air waves created by movement and the mana-trace present in all things. It had picked up some prey-trace by the look of its tense, alert attitude.

Suddenly, it pushed off the trunk it hung from at high speed, flying to the left of Axel. Its arms and legs spread out, revealing membranes between them that it used to steer and glide. The predator collided with a bark moth, basically a triangle of flesh with claws underneath, screaming loudly. The prey let out a screech of its own, but its musculature had collapse from the impact, and it could only produce a pathetic yelp, filled with fear of death.

From the neck of the tree hawk, a small, two-pronged, bony needle extended on another fleshy wire. This was the tree hawk’s mouth. It drew its stinger back, then stabbed it ferociously into the bark moth’s back.

The bark north, close to death, could only flop weakly and let out another plaintive cry. The mouth of the tree hawk was embedded to its base in its flesh. Axel knew that the bottom needle produced a solvent that would rapidly liquify the prey’s internal organs, turning it into a bag a soup, which the tree hawk would sip from at leisure through its top needle. Axel stared at the drooping body of the unfortunate bark moth in morbid fascination as it slowly lost all form, slopping down to the floor, where the tree hawk pursued.

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Just as the tree hawk prepared to enjoy its meal, Axel flashed his hands through the air. From his fingers extended red strings arcing out quickly. Slicing across the tree hawk, the strings rebounded faster than Axel expected and sliced deep into his other hand. “Shit!” Axel drew the strings back and watched as his wrist, hanging by a thin sinew, reattached itself. Meanwhile, the tree hawk was not unscathed, its lower legs whipped out savagely from beneath it. It made a call that sounded like wood knocking on wood and started to crawl away agonizingly slowly.

“Damn it!” Annoyed that the tree hawk had not been killed outright for his trouble, Axel walked over to it and kicked it, hard, into a tree. The animal splatted into the trunk with a loud squeal, bursting and strewing its innards all over Axel. The Dhampyre bent down and started licking his hands.

“Mmm.. gamey.”

“Halt, sir!”

Axel looked up at the approaching hoofbeats. “You are in within the territory of some very important people!”

Axel peered curiously. As far as he remembered, the Greenmaw was a no-man’s land between Zorne and the ruins to the north. “And who might that be?”

The rider smiled, displaying a mouth of dazzling white teeth while reaching for a pearly swordhilt at his leather belt. “Us!”

Axel stepped back, raising his palms in placation. “I’m just a passing hunter. I don’t want to cause any trouble. I’ll leave if you want.”

The stranger frowned. “No, no, I don’t want you to leave.” The smile again. “I—I mean we—want your things!” At that, three more people, also brightly clad in red and purple, strode out of the surrounding tree cover.

Axel laughed. “What kind of highwayman works in a forest?” The bandit’s smile didn’t budge. “You have no right to talk, sir. We’ll start with those coins by your belt!” Axel looked down at the string of Zorne crowns that he pinched from a dead Arbitrator in, well, Zorne. “Sure...” Unclipping the string he held it out to the leader. “Thanks. In the meantime, take off your shirt.” As the bandit’s grasping hands clasped the coins, Axel quickly grabbed the arm and pulled down, smashing the bandit into the floor and breaking his legs into pulp. The man screamed in pain. His three friends closed on Axel, swords drawn. Axel smiled and raised his palms. “Time to get it right.”

He swished his palms to his side and a slice of red cut through the air. The three thugs stopped, confused by the sudden and high-speed movement. A second later, they fell into chunks of gristle and organs to the ground, spurting viscous blood high into the air. Axel walked over to the injured leader and stirred his finger through the man’s mess of legs, poking at raw nerve on mine. The bandit writhed and howled in agony. Axel lifted the unfortunate by his hair. “Who are you?”

Axel smiled, displaying his feline, vampiristic teeth. “A passing hunter. It looks like I’ve just found some prey.”

“Oh shit! Oh fuck! Fuck, fuck, a vampire’s got me, help! Someone! Someone fucking help!”

Axel drew away in disgust. “Quiet, food.”

The Dhampyre opened his mouth and bit down.