- [The Domain of the Wolf-Goddess] - One Thousand Years Ago
Sunlight bathes the village in a warm, golden embrace, spilling through the leafy canopy overhead. The festival breathes with life — a vibrant celebration resonating in the summer air. Joyous laughter mingles with the melodic strumming of lutes, while the tempting aroma of freshly baked pastries drifts, alluring those nearby. Brightly colored streamers sway gently in the breeze, wrapping around wooden beams — symbols of the joy that blankets this serene day. At the heart of these festivities, a magnificent wolf rests — a colossal guardian curled gracefully in the soft grass. Her fur glistens like spun silver under the sun, a living emblem of protection. Each breath she takes is deep and unhurried, rippling through her vast frame. Villagers gather around, their hearts filled with reverence, laying offerings of ripe fruit, flowers, and woven charms at the body of the sleeping giant. Each gift is a token of devotion, their backs slightly bowed in respect.
The village, cradled within a lush emerald forest, brims with life. Ancient trees stand like sentinels, their leaves a dance of green and gold in the dappled light. The air hums with the chirping of insects, the distant cry of a hawk, and the rustling whispers of forest fauna. Slightly cooler beneath the trees, the shadows offer a gentle relief — a contrast to the warm sunlit paths that undulate through the clearing. Wildflowers pepper the ground, acting as bold strokes on a canvas of vibrant greens.
Not far from the festivities, a child crouches to adjust a garland upon their brow, fingers careful not to crush the delicate petals. They rise to peer silently at the sleeping wolf through the bushes, eyes wide with innocent wonder as they watch the giant ear on its head twitch.
Nearby, two friends find a place by a weathered bench, their conversation laced with quiet familiarity. One leans back, stretching their legs as they cast a gaze over the crowd.
“Never a day off, is it?” A light smirk crosses their lips.
“Wouldn’t trade it for anything else, though,” the other replies, brushing a stray leaf from their sleeve.
The day rolls onward, a tapestry of colors and emotions woven tightly together, as if to guard against the shadows waiting in the distance — perhaps they are. Things have been getting bad out there in the world lately. But not here, not in the hidden village deep inside of the old forest. They’re protected here by her — the wolf goddess.
Occasionally, the giant, resting wolf will open a lazy eye and stare out at the people dancing and eating all around her before rolling over to rest on her other side, destroying heaps of flowers and decorations as people cry out. But she continues her readjustment, and the people bring more flowers. Rolling over onto her back, she kicks her leg out as a group of children crawl onto her stomach and start playing.
And it is good.
She keeps them safe, and in turn, they keep her company and bring her pretty and delicious things that a wolf like her could never get on her own.
— Not the children, obviously. She doesn’t eat them. But the pastries? It’s pretty hard for a wolf to find a good baker out here. She's very lucky.
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Abomination takes the land.
Fires burn across the horizon, endless flames washing over the crawling night in spiring legions — like lesions across the darkscape, they burn holes into the empty mass. Bodies move — the bodies of people — but they don’t move as such. Instead, they move as shambling, lurching creatures that failingly maintain the facade of personhood. Rotted, failing jaws and decayed flesh hang loosely like bangles from the ungraved dead.
Amongst the blacktide tower colossal masses, abominations made of out the screaming flesh of the captured and killed. Corpse and living alike have been sewn and melted together into unholy golems the size of giants. These giant monsters move in the most unnatural of fashions, as they have not two feet but instead nubbed, sharp stumps like the ends of bent elbows that they walk on with a count as many as a centipede’s legs. Dozens of mouths have been slit apart and stitched together one each of them, forming a giant, pus-dripping maw that screams and never stops.
Through the sky flies a creature with decayed, misaligned wings that have lost their original shape as they have begun transforming into those of a bat but then never finished. A twisted, undead dragon that has been corrupted by the powers of the Vampire Lord. The ancient thing, once a powerful and revered deity of the mountain, is now a broken slave of the Vampire Lord. Venom green poisonous bile drips from its jagged snout, ichor seeping through the missing gaps in its composition as it leaks from above as it flies.
The wolf watches, her fur bristling on the back of her neck. The stench of the dead permeates the forest.
The castle on the mountain has become a blight on the world.
A creature that calls itself the Master of that place has demanded her service and loyalty. But she is a goddess, beholden to no one except those who revere her. She will do no such thing.
The dead wander the forest.
Her people no longer leave the tight circle of their tree-woven walls.
A hand touches her fur. The great wolf looks down, staring at the young man who she knows from the village for a time, before then looking back out toward the darkness.
Ten thousands, and then some fires extinguish all at once, as if a single, foul breath had blown them all out, and the night is dark.
There are fewer stars now than there once were, as if they had been eaten too.
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A hundred wolves from across the land’s many forests stand at her side, fangs snarling at the darkness, and behind them stand hundreds of men of the village, more with tools and spears at the ready.
“The Master demands your service, Beast,” says the ghost’s voice. It’s a wretched, sloppy-looking thing that is stretched and leaking — like a wax figurine having been pulled apart too far for it to stay in a single shape. It looks behind its shoulders at the dark forest it has emerged from. “Submit at once and join the wild hunt,” it commands, looking back at her with wide eyes as its three-fingered hands grasp its face, tearing at it frantically like a caged animal that gnaws at itself to feel any sense of stimulation. It repeats the demand it had made the other day. “Or else.”
The ghost screams, diving out of the way as a massive maw snaps shut where it was a second ago, the dirt and air shifting as a wave of power from the hammering of its teeth ripples the air. “The only thing that’s going to be hunted is you,” threatens the wolf, its yellow eyes glaring at the ghost that had just barely managed to slip away between its clasped fangs. It lifts its head. “This place belongs to the living, runt.”
The panicked ghost tears at its hair, frantically ripping off chunks of itself. Ectoplasm leaks down its face. “You don’t know!” it warns. “You don’t know what’s coming!” shouts the spirit, its hand pointing over her and then at all of the others behind her. “I suggest you kill yourselves now, because you won’t want to be alive tomorrow!” it threatens, its eyes bulging wide. “You don’t know what he’s like! The Master, the Master will —!”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
The ghost’s extended arm stiffens, its eyes spreading the same as its shoulders. Its body starts shaking, its words no longer forming whole concepts and instead simply turning into noises. It looks behind itself for a moment, and then its eyes shoot back to the wolf. “SAY YOU’LL JOIN!” it screams, suddenly in its hoarse voice as if a depravity had taken over it. “SAY IT!” shouts the desperate spirit as it begins to fly forward with its arms out toward the giant wolf it had just tried to escape only a second ago. Its hand hovers an inch over the sleek fur of the giant, and the ghost’s eyes suddenly fill with a frantic horror that she’s never seen before. “…You need to…” it starts to plead, its voice shaking as it looks back behind itself. “- No, please, I tried my best! I swear! I -!”
The night illuminates with wildfire, a thousand shadows that had been around them all this time now only revealing themselves as having been more than the innocuous darkness between the trees of the forest. Shining, hollow eyes appear one after the other in the night as the eyes of legions of undead appear one after the other in the flash of an instant.
(Vampire Lord) has used: [Let Them Know]
The ghost screams, its hands latching onto the wolf of all things, as something yanks at its legs and slams it to the ground. Its hands claw into the dirt as it’s pulled back toward the darkness from whence it first emerged.
(Vampire Lord) has used: [Recall Spirit]
The fires all around the village extinguish, endless torches and blazes extinguishing at once, leaving the people lost in a panic and terror as they struggle to relight their sconces and burning lifelines.
(Vampire Lord) has used: [The Dead Domain]
There’s a horrific screaming from the darkness ahead of her. The wolf’s fur stands on end, electrified as she listens to the wretched wailing as something comes into sight.
Amongst the undead that had found them is an opening, in which stands a silhouette blacker than all the rest of the night. It is a man, at least in feature, but even the dead stay distant from him as if afraid of what he truly is. The trail of six claw marks leads straight to him, a shape who stands there in the clothes of a foreign merchant. His eyes are cold with the touch of death, and the wind that even she cannot feel billows behind his mantle and holds it aloft as if he were a one-winged bat. His face is gaunt and painted in an expression belonging to the damned. The only oddity to him that sets him apart from what she would consider a demon in every sense of the word is the curiosity of the regally dressed marionette puppet that he’s cradling in one arm as if it were a child. His boot presses down on the head of the ghost, as if crushing through its skull.
“Useless,” is the only word he has for it, his heel twisting as the rest of its body flails beneath him.
And even that word, which ought to be of human breath and make, is as cold and distant as those of a spirit from the other side of the veil.
The Vampire Lord. This must be him.
There’s an aura he emits… the raw power… is otherworldly. Everything in her senses tells her to get away from this thing, this creature. Nearby, there is a whimpering as many younger wolves fall down low and hide their fangs in fear of retribution from the approacher. Their animal senses overpower their loyalty to her.
The puppet on his arms almost seems to lean over, whispering into his ear. He nods, smiling. She doesn’t like that. His smile is… wrong. It’s perfectly content and whole, and it is fully misplaced as the shape below his foot cries out in terror. “Good idea. Thank you,” he says. The doll maintains its lifeless, blank expression. With his free hand, he snaps a finger. “Cork this useless thing into a bottle and boil it,” he orders, an undead soldier in black, hollow armor taking hold of the ghost and dragging it out from beneath him off into the darkness.
His eyes look up, the Vampire Lord looking at her with a cold, dead gaze belonging to a predator as he stares at her entirely fearlessly.
“Submit,” is the only word that he says, but it carries with it an unnatural power.
(Vampire Lord) has used: [Beastfather]
A shock wave disrupts the air, her joints buckling as some unseen force presses down over her — a force strong enough to press down every other wolf flat to the ground. The people are unaffected but huddle together by the remnants of the last sparks they’re trying to keep alight. But that black magic blows it out every time a flame comes to life, each flash of a second painting only one horrified face after the other.
The great wolf — having the power of a goddess — steps forward toward him with her strongest gait, as if the spell hasn’t affected her in the least and then lunges.
— Her body stops.
Red, burning pain shoots through her from every angle as metal clinks and climpers in the night. Her yellow eyes watch, her body lurching as metal hooks and javelins pierce her legs and thighs — black metal chains of an unnatural material weave out into the night, shot out by undead pushing siege weapons.
The man stands there entirely unphased and blank, holding the doll in his arms as he listens to it.
“You are a beast. I own you,” he says plainly and without emotion, as if reciting an obvious fact from a book. The doll lifts a hand, pointing by itself past her toward the people. “Kill them.”
Immediately, the wolf fights against the tightening chains, trying to lunge a second time, but a new barrage comes from the night — spider’s silk weaves over its snout from creatures that had come up to the crowns of the trees unseen. As the men in metal armor pull the chains tighter apart, causing her muscles to rip, the spiders in the trees tighten the silk until bones begin to crack.
“Useless,” is the only word he has for her.
The doll whispers to the Vampire Lord.
He smiles.
He looks past the wolf, toward the terrified people of the village who huddle together in their circle. “Kill her,” he orders.
The wolf’s eyes go wide, watching the people who worship and revere her stand there in their terror. None of them move, frozen in fear and uncertainty. But then a shape slowly comes free from the crowd — a young man who she recognizes looks at her, a knife in his shaking hand as he approaches her with weak, utterly terrified steps. He tries to stabilize himself, holding onto the weapon with both hands as he steps over the black chains pierced through her body and toward her neck.
With fear in his eyes, he stands by her side.
She doesn’t close her eyes, still fighting in the only way she has left.
The boy looks at the knife and then, without another word, lifts it and runs right past her. He makes a rush straight toward the Vampire Lord, pressing out with the blade at the ready.
— A stone construction bursts out from the ground below, like a burrowing worm. A sarcophagus. Its doors open in a second, and the inside of it is lined with large black spikes.
(Vampire Lord) has used: [Summon Sarcophagus]
The sarcophagus slams shut. A wet, sickly crunching fills the air. Blood and viscera run down through the gaps at its base, together with a scream of a man who isn’t dead.
“What a waste of my time,” says the man behind the iron maiden as it vanishes back into the ground, muffling the voice inside of it.
The doll whispers into his ear as he turns around and lifts a hand. “Kill them,” instructs the Vampire Lord dryly as he leaves. He listens to the doll and then nods. “Leave her.”
The wolf rages, lashing against the tightening binds, but has no ability to go as a great slaughter happens behind her, close enough to hear and see but not stop.
And by the time the night is over, all that is left are a thousand blank, staring eyes of cut heads that have been rearranged to look her way from atop the corpses as she is left, suspended in hooks and chains amongst them.
The light of the full moon above makes any detail impossible to hide.