Marcus knew he was dreaming but it felt so real he was back in his Citadel walking through his court he could see the first of his children and their children paving a path for him, all around  they him they venerated him, adored him but also envied him.

He knew that they were ambitious, he had encouraged it after all only the best of the spawns were allowed to join his family. The rest would were not worthy, Marcus himself did not usually spawn family members anymore he instead allowed his first children to procreate and spawn their own children and and only the strongest among them were chosen to join his family.

The clan achieved this through a ritual called the “Bloodletting” it was simply pure ritualistic combat where the children of the various vampires would fight in a pit to the death and the survivor would join the clan and after proving their worth further was he or she allowed to spawn his own child and then the process would start again. If your spawn was killed he or she was too weak then you would need to find another and only in very special circumstances and the with the blessing of marcus himself would you be allowed to acquire another spawn but this was very rare and only common with the first born of Marcus.

He took the hands of both his favorite mistresses Juliana and Catherine, Juliana had long black as night hair her face was pale like most vampires and her look burned with an unholy fire that would make the most hardy men quiver in fear.  had been blessed with an aura akin to a pulsing black star- It was rare but sometimes before back it takes power back with it from the lands of the dead .

but Cathrine her whole being was graceful and fluid not a muscle moved without permission to Marcus they were two sides of the same coin.

Then he thought how could it have gone so wrong?

Marcus awoke just as the sun went down on the horizon he walked to the common room to find that his zombie warriors standing over 4 bound and gagged humans

Marcus had ordered the zombies to hunt during the day while he slept.

He had done this by giving one of the zombies sentience and he had become the primary lieutenant of marcus a completely loyal minion to Marcus, Marcus had named Magog if he proved himself useful Marcus might consider converting him into a death knight but not yet the process was tiresome and time consuming.

Marcus looked at the prisoners “Magog where did you find these specimens?”

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Magog turned his jaw it was chipped giving him a slight difficulty speaking

“Master we found them hunting game closeby we caught them unaware when their lookout fell asleep.”

Marcus walked up to the captives, inspecting them he turned their cheeks studying their features. “They seem strong, did any of them give you any trouble?”

Magog paused a second contemplating his answer “one cleaved a warrior’s arm off master it was this one” and he pointed to a blond female sitting slumped her Marcus lifted her head and she seemed barely conscious on her forehead was a large gash leaking blood it dripped down her face and to the cave floor.

“Interesting” and then Marcus bit into the female's jugular he took a large drink from the warm blood before forcing himself to let go and no kill the female.

He repeated the process on each of the captives, Marcus was testing their blood every living being has a certain degree of potency to their blood and vampires were experts in measuring it.  

Three out of four of the captives had sufficient blood potency the rest Marcus did something different to he made them into half breeds half vampire, half human. They would make excellent spies for Marcus as they could walk in the sun undetected by the normal human population. They were not however ageless like a normal vampire but they would still live 200-300 years before dying to old age.

The process was simple the victim would drink the master vampire's blood and become bound to them and utterly loyal they can however be cured of their vampirism and become a human again but they would still retain their enhanced abilities that come with being a Halfblood.

They also usually become vampire hunters using their new abilities to hunt their former masters most efficiently.

Marcus had the new Half Bloods let loose they would go to the biggest cities around, intergrate and then report back to him as spies of the mortal realm.

Marcus decided the would do some recon on his own he had the one human who didn’t have enough blood potency brought up the human's blood still had it’s uses.

He gripped the man's throat using his claws he ripped it apart blood soaking everything and Marcus started to speak the dark words of power the blood slowly started to retreat backwards from the walls and ground into a pool of blood completely red blank.

Marcus kneeled by the pool of blood and with swipe of his hand a face appeared.

“Show me the land i find myself in”

The disappeared and and the blood transformed into a 3d rendering of local area.

Marcus pulled his hand back zooming the image out it showed a large area of woodland with several hamlets interspersed between to the north there was a large city to the west the start of a mountain range and the the east a murky swamp and finally to the south the woods continued until large cliffs cut it off and a large ocean panned out before the horizon.

The spell expired and without haste Marcus marched out into the darkness of the forest his entourage of undead warriors following him four of them carrying the adamantium coffin like pallbearers during a funeral.