Night falls on the Redwing Kingdom capital…

SMASH! Thud-thud!

A man crashes through a wooden wall, flying into an uninhabited building. He smashes into a table, then chairs, bouncing like a pinball. His body goes flying limp, cartwheeling through the air into the ceiling.

Crash!

He once again bounces off the ceiling, and turns a chest of drawers into splinters with his back.

「Koof! …Rrrgh… Gah… Coof!」

The man groans and coughs after the impacts, clutching at his battered and aching body. Wincing, his sharp, elongated fangs are on full display. He manages to collect himself enough to open his scarlet, vertically-slit eyes.

「…Shit!」

「I hope that has refreshed your memory… Allow me to ask again…」

Lily says, as she appears in the massive hole in the wall. The moonlight's cold rays silhouette her form, flaring towards the bottom due to her black dress. She walks in, and towards the recoiling man.

Thud-crreak. Thud-crreak. Thud-crrreak.

She stomps heavily around the destroyed pieces of the furniture with an uncanny ladylike grace. The floor creaks with each step, the floorboards threatening to snap beneath her. The man's eyes widen in panic. He attempts to get up, but crumbles back down with a wince.

「Wait. We're all new here, you can't expect us to instantly follow all the rules-」

The man holds his palm out towards Lily to shield himself, if even a little, from her small figure as she towers above him. She grabs his arm, pulling him up off the irrecognizable mass a little.

「Wait! Wait wait wait!-」

Crack.

「Gyyyaarrrrgh!!」

Bending his elbow the wrong way with very little effort, Lily snaps the man's arm like a pencil, or a ruler.

「I do. And I will. Your compliance with my rule is not a suggestion. If you shirk my laws, that means you intend to challenge my rule.」

She glares down at the man as he clutches onto his arm, writhing and wriggling around in pain. She lets him go, and he drops back onto the bits and pieces of the drawers with a thud.

「We didn't intend to!… He didn't even mean to! He just said he can't wait any longer!」

The man shouts back, staring at Lily's chilling, harsh grimace. A malevolent smirk appears on her face.

「Oh? Starting to remember yet?」

She asks with a smug tone. The man's eyes widen, and his brows rise when he realizes he slipped up. He uses his unbroken arm to push himself up with his elbow. His body turns to flee for the door.

Smash-crack!

Before he can even get up, Lily stomps his chest into the shattered furniture beneath him. A sickening, muffled crack emanates from his torso, and she painfully twists her heel on his ribs.

「I did not declare this audience to be over. I did not permit you to leave. Where do you think you are going?」

She asks the man with a scowl, as his face breathlessly twists and contorts. He grabs Lily's boot and tries to pull it off his chest, but can't nearly muster a fraction of the strength required her deceptively heavy foot.

「Don't tell me this little was enough to destroy your heart. I know you fledglings are weak, but that would be truly pathetic.」

Her mouth scrunches in disappointment. She rolls her eyes and sighs, then takes her boot off the man's chest.

「Now speak.」

She glares down at the man with a face uncaring for his suffering. He clutches at his chest, wincing as he pokes his ribs with his fingers to test if they are fractured.

「I… I don't know him-」

The man holds out his other palm, pleadingly explaining. Her eyes squint, and anger flashes on her face. She violently grabs the man's forearm and pulls him up.

「I am quite frankly growing tired of this charade…」

Lily growls, and additionally grabs onto his hand. She starts pulling the hand and the forearm away from each other with an expression of tempered fury.

「Wait! Stop!」

Pop-ssshhhluck.

「Aaagghh!!」

The man screams as Lily seperates his hand from his arm with a meaty sound of torn flesh. Blood spurts out of his dismembered forearm in weak, significantly delayed streams and splatters the floorboards.

Tha-thud!

Lily throws the hand away, discarding it like trash. The man chokes, his bulging red eyes look at his dismembered hand on the floor, and then at his mangled arm. Seeing the man's suffering, Lily's face gains an amused smirk.

「…And your heart still remembers to beat. Pathetic. It's rather humorous how you're wriggling like a worm, yelping in pain like a dog, terrified of everything. I wonder if I was like that, when I was younger?… But it is fortunate you haven't managed to deaden yourself to pain yet.」

She says as she drops the man and observes him drool and clench his teeth, hyperventilating and almost choking from pain.

「Please… Have mercy-」

「I am being merciful, you insolent brat.」

Lily cuts the man's weak, fatigued pleas off, the heartless scowl on her face returns.

「I suggest you stop wasting my time already, but the night is young, and you have plenty of limbs left. A lot of unnecessary organs, too. What should I break next?」

She asks, as her scarlet eyes ominously drift down to his knees.

「Wait… I'll tell you what I know…」

The man frantically shakes his head, speaking quietly as he struggles to draw breath without more pain.

「You better, I am losing my patience. For the last time… Who murdered that human?」

Lily crosses her arms, glaring down at the man's bloodied face.

「He didn't mean to… He lost control-」

「I said who not why. Dodge the question again, and I'll break your entire leg starting with the toes.」

Lily frigidly cuts the man off again, scowling down at him.

「…I don't know him. I've only seen him in passing-」

Lily cuts the man off again, grabbing the man's shirt and pulling him up by the collar.

「It seems you younger lot are very intent on making light of me. Maybe I should twist your head off and let you see how disembodiment feels?」

Lily growls at the man with squinted eyes, staring directly into his terrified ones in controlled wrath.

「Wait wait wait wait! I don't know him, not personally… But I generally know who he is…」

The man keeps shaking his head, holding up the bleeding stump of his arm up for some psychological comfort, despite his shielding being of no help before.

Thud.

Lily throws the man onto the floor, and crosses her arms again.

「Then speak. If you waste a single second more of my time, there will be consequences.」

「I can't, they'll kill me…」

The man shakes his head again, staring at Lily with furrowed brows and pleading inhuman red eyes.

「They? Who is they? Are they closer than I am right now? Which one should you be more concerned about right at the moment?」

Lily asks in a frustrated tone, walking up closer to the man as he lays on the ground. He crawls away a little, cowering.

「The… The Backstreet Biters! I know it was one of theirs!」

The man exclaims and nods his head.

「The… What?」

Lily squints one of her eyes in confusion.

「The Backstreet Biters. It's one of the vampire gangs. They're pretty small, they're more like an association, but-」

The man tries to explain, but Lily cuts him off again.

「Gang? Vampire gang? What are you talking about?」

Lily's eyes widen in disbelief.

「The… What are you confused about, exactly? It's a gang. They're pretty common, but the Backstreet Biters are pretty tightly-knit, and they've known each other for a long time. Most of them goes back a decade, some even as much as thirty years-」

Lily's confusion confuses the man. As he explains, he crawls up to his hand on his back, and holds it under his armpit. He places his mangled stump of a forearm at where the wrist would be, and the flesh slowly starts mending itself.

「Three decades? A long time?」

Lily's brows furrow, and she starts chuckling. She walks up to one of the last remaining, undisturbed chairs left in the man's wake as he went flying through the room, and takes a seat, still chuckling.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

「Yes… What's so funny? I'm 60, I can't imagine what's it like to know someone for so long-」

The not-60-years-old-looking man asks. Lily keeps chuckling, and covers her face with her clawed hand.

「Ahhh… Three decades is a long time, isn't it?」

Lily sighs, slouching onto her knees with a slightly sullen expression as she lowers her hand.

《If not for Straf, I would be truly alone again. How am I suppose to relate to someone who thinks thirty years is a lot?》

Lily thinks as she stares blankly at nothing in particular in front of her.

「Uh, am I free to go?-」

The man asks, testing his reattached hand for movement.

「No.」

Lily bluntly replies, glaring at him. She stands up, and walks back up to the man, causing him to shrink in panic.

「Answer me. Where do I find these… Backstreet Biters?」

Lily asks in a serious tone, glaring down at the man again.

「They- They're usually at the commune… Down in the slums…」

The man points in the vague direction of the capital's poorer district with his reattached hand.

「The what now?」

Lily tilts her head, furrowing her brows.

「The vampire commune. There's usually at least one in most cities without the lamps. How do you not know this?- Agh!」

The man shrugs his shoulders as if the knowledge was the most obvious thing in the world. He asks Lily, but his question is interrupted by a rough kick across his face.

「Dimwit, do not even attempt to make fun of me. I have not interacted with our kind in centuries. Within those 200 years, you have managed to turn vampire houses into vampire gangs. You lowered yourself to the level of humans, and you are now sinking deeper. You fill me with disgust.」

Lily lets go of her dress, still clutching at it after the kick, as she berates the man as if he were a small child who just did something wrong. The man rubs his face, wincing from the impact.

「Where is this commune, exactly? Explain.」

Lily crosses her arms, staring down at the man with a sour expression.

「It's right across the brothel. You won't find anyone there at night, except maybe the barman… As we call him. To get there during the day, there's a tunnel that you can-」

「I don't need to. The sun is something to fear for you, lowly fledglings.」

Lily scoffs, and turns her head to look at the moonlight flooding in through the hole that the man punched through the wall with his body.

「…Explain the rest of the details. Who is he? What does he look like? What are these Biters exactly, how many of them are there… If you want to keep your limbs on.」

Lily returns her cold gaze back to the man, glaring at him with her crimson eyes…

…

In a dimly-lit room with a large, circular table…

「Why are we here again? I thought we have discussed everything there was to discuss for the time being!」

A voice from across the table complains.

「And why are we sitting in the dark again!? Stop doing that already! It's not atmospheric or moody!-」

Another man shouts in indignation, and slams his fist on the table.

Crr- Thud!

「Hey!-」

「Argh!… Ahh… My hip!… Ahh…」

A brief noise of stone scraping against stone echoes out in the room, then a loud thud of someone falling onto the ground. A man feebly groans out in pain, grunting and moaning.

「See!? I told you this would happen! Where's the lights!?」

Another man shouts, demanding the lights.

「Alright! Alright! Everybody settle down! Who fell over!? Someone help him up!… Brighten the lights!」

In the dark, another voice calls out to others. He pauses, and shouts at the door, underneath which a slight sliver of light beams through. After just a second, the room lights up into a bright, bluish hue.

「Much better…」 「Finally!…」 「Good grief…」 「Ohh… My hip…」

Seven hooded men mumble, and one groans, rubbing his aching hip as another old man helps him limp to a seat.

「Now. I would not call this assembly so soon, but there has been a development. A development that may affect our plans. Ear, say what you have to say.」

The hooded, middle-aged man with a graying beard points his hand at another man sitting across the table, then locks his fingers together as he props his elbows up against the table.

「Ahem… Colleagues, there has been a significant, unexpected, and quite frankly, disruptive development. The Rankor Kingdom has invaded the Redwing Kingdom-」

「What!?」 「For what reason!?」 「That stupid kid!」 「Old Rankor wouldn't have done that…」

The man gets interrupted by an outburst of shock from the old men around the table. The pepper-and-salt-bearded man lifts his hands up.

「Settle down, settle down! Let him finish. Go on, Ear.」

Some of the old men shake their heads in silence, and when the room is orderly again, the man points his hand at Ear.

「…As I have said, the Redwing Kingdom has been invaded. My spies will be informing me on their progress, but they have said the situation is fluid. I have been told, that war readiness in the Redwing Kingdom is at an all-time low, and it's unlikely they will be able to stop their advance.」

Ear looks at his fellow hooded men, and shrugs.

「We must decide whether the plan should be continued, and if so, to what degree. They may make it as far as the capital within days, or by some miracle, they may be interrupted by arising peasants. Or logistics issues. I'm sure Helmet concurs.」

Ear nods his head at the man rubbing his hip in his seat.

「Ahhh… My hip…」

Helmet ignores Ear completely, and keeps groaning.

「I have a question, Ear…」

Another man from across the table announces.

「Yes?」

「What are the chances this is a simple land grab? Or that the new Rankor king just wants to prove himself? War is the wine of every young man. You don't think he will demand land he has no claim on, do you?」

The man asks, inquisitively spreading his hands and shrugging his shoulders.

「I wish I could tell you, but I can't. Nobody knows what that brat is like. The best we have, is that he's hot-headed, short-tempered, and awfully cocky. His father was a wise man, but he failed to teach his heir some humility and temperance.」

The man nods, and Ear shrugs, looking at the rest of the men around the table. A momentary silence falls on the room lit by a pale blue light.

「…Alright. Gentlemen, we need to come to a decision. Let's take a short 10 minute break, come up with an argument for or against continuation of the plan, and let's hear them.」

「Ahhh… My hip…」

The middle-aged man announces, and the men shuffle out of their stone thrones, discussing something amongst themselves as a quiet murmur begins…

…

In the capital city of the Redwing Kingdom, in an unassuming warehouse…

「Oookay. Let's try it…」

Straf steps away from the complex contraption filled with cogs, wheels, blades and other hand-pinching or hand-dismembering elements. He begins turning a crank, and the machine noisily stirs to life. It lifts a sheet of paper onto a flat surface, with a dragon-shaped indents on it.

Thud!

With Straf only winding the machine up, it stamps the sheet of paper with an entire array of golden dragons across a large sheet of paper. The sheet is then grabbed inside the machine with moving clamps, placed on another tray…

Thud!

A set of evenly-spaced blades first perforates, then cuts the paper sheet into rectangles. The tray then swings down, and drops all the stamped paper rectangles into a funnel, which funnels the papers onto a very simplistic conveyor belt of wooden blocks linked by strings.

「Nice. Let's see how they turned out.」

Straf stops turning the crank, and the machine continues its operation without him. The conveyor belt dumps the papers into a box, and Straf takes one of them out.

「Heh. Nice.」

Straf looks at the stamped paper. It proudly states, 「Gold-backed currency of the Redwing Kingdom redeemable for its value in gold, legal tender for settling all debts public and private.」 In each corner of the paper, a large, stylized gold-colored 1 is boldly on display for all to see.

「Man, that ate all my fucking materials and took a fuckload of experimenting, but now we're here. Nukes? Gunpowder? Forget it. This is the real deal here. Everyone is scared of anthrax, or some airborne disease that makes you bleed out of your eyes, but the real killer is this. A shitty flu.」

Straf grins, looking at the golden dragon on the bill, holding it up high with his hands.

「Unassuming, quiet, and nobody expects it to ruin their day. Paper money. The flu of economics. Especially in a backwards world like this. Now that I think about it, it's more like the pox blankets.」

Straf lowers the bill, and rubs his chin with furrowed brows.

「Well, whatever. Time to show this to Lia- Ah, fuck. It's night already?」

Straf shrugs, and his head recoils when he looks at the windows up high on the wall, only to realize it's dark outside…