Through the gates of a merchant town called Penshaw passed a small parade of men in their distinctive rounded helmets, chain mail cloaks, and white tabards bearing the black heraldry of the Order of Faiths. Behind them were two covered wagons proudly displaying their order’s symbology — four dark arrowheads meeting at a central point to evoke the convergence of faith amongst the world’s many beliefs. They were a group of twenty formidable warriors, each heavily armed and armoured, marching through the streets to the astonishment of the town’s occupants.

At its head were two riders, differing slightly in attire and armament from their colleagues on foot. Trailing a few paces behind was the brother-sergeant Gabriel, a deceptively old young man with a neatly-trimmed full beard, astride his horse with a back so straight you’d mistake him for a ramrod, and ahead of him was myself, wearing a white cape on top of my surcoat as it fluttered gently in the wind, my expression grave and serious.

Ah, who was I kidding? I try to keep a suitably knightly attitude (if I can remember to, anyway) whenever I entered a new town, going as far as keeping my eyebrows in very close proximity of each other as I frowned my frowniest scowl for the benefit of any onlookers, but this time there really wasn’t much point. The townsfolk we passed by were all looking pretty down, and the richer-looking folk, in particular, seemed to be glancing about frantically, almost as if on alert for something.

We were dispatched to this unexpectedly opulent remote little town, passing through the poorer areas around the walls as we headed for their militia’s garrison in the wealthier districts. Penshaw was something of an outlier when it came to frontier towns, with a great deal of opulence and sophistry in its stone, brick, and mortar residences atypical for most settlements of its size and distance from the rest of civilization. This impression was only furthered by the stark contrast between the poorer, winding streets of downtown and the walled-off uptown areas we were headed towards — the fact that the distinction existed at all was already notable for a place this remote.

The town aside, we’d been dispatched with a small company of the order’s non-noble military arm — the Faiths Militant, twenty men and women clad in the best of the cheapest weapons and armour money could buy. They were a rather new group of men and women, relatively young and excitable new soldiers fresh out of the faiths militant’s schools, among them a nice young woman whose name I had yet to catch. Naturally, I fully intended to rectify this when we got to our billet, so despite outward appearances I was pretty excited for what I hoped would be a few months of downtime with some good “company.”

“Remind me what we’re here for, again?” I asked Gabriel, dropping the trademarked knightly scowl I’d been forcing onto my face for the past hour. I let my eyes drift idly across the town centre as we strolled along, noting the small crowds of well-off plutocrats sweating their balls off with paranoia so palpable it almost formed small, invisible puddles wherever they went. “They seem rich enough, couldn’t they just get some mercenaries to deal with it?”

“I think they already tried, sir,” he replied in a gruff, gravelly voice, his own scowl seeming entirely natural on his face as he rode alongside me. “They died. Got their blood sucked outta them and everything.”

“A vampire of some sort, then?” I asked, rhetorically.

“You’d know if you read the dispatch papers, sir,” my aide said as he flashed me a flat, disappointed look. Regaining his composure as he remembered how he was used to my negligence by now, he shrugged. “Yes, we think so.”

It wasn’t very uncommon for folk tales of boogeymen and other such nuisances to be blood-sucking creatures of the night, with whatever extra features their believers’ culture dictates heretical monsters should have. Hunts for these kinds of creatures usually took a month at most (much to my dismay), as the task of finding the damned things was often more difficult than the actual subjugation. They weren’t the strongest things out there, with some pesky abilities mostly in line with the whole “creature of the night” theme.

Unhappiness with the amount of downtime I’d have to prowl around with aside, it was always pretty interesting to see how local beliefs would manifest as a result of whatever variances there were in the people’s beliefs from region to region. I found myself idly imagining what manner of creature I’d encounter before my aide suddenly yelled something to the effect of “halt!” to the men behind us.

Looking ahead, it wasn’t hard to see why he thought it was necessary. A crowd had formed some distance away from our little parade, at its centre a large empty space they left as they gave whatever was in there a wide berth. They were making a lot of aggressive-sounding noise, accusing someone of some pretty bad things like “she sucked him dry!” and “you’re a monster!”

Just then, a woman let out a terrible scream in what I assumed was frustration, apparently begging the onlookers to leave her alone. This didn’t go down well with them, of course, the cacophony of yelling and accusations only worsening as she made futile attempts to deter the mob around her.

“Stay away from me!”

I turned to Gabriel, giving him a raised eyebrow that asked “should we do something about this?” to which he simply shrugged and gestured for the troops to come forward. “Follow close!” he yelled, pointing to the space in the crowd ahead. “Speaking of, sir — that might be what we’re looking for.”

The alleged monster in the middle of the crowd glanced around nervously, eventually finding our little group down the road with eyes so wide I could make out the colour of her irises from where I stood. They were red, by the way — a very deep red.

“It might just be,” I replied, noting the lifeless ragdoll of a body she held in her arms as she mumbled in place, her eyes darting between myself and everywhere else around her. The body she held was dressed in a gaudy, gold-trimmed double-breasted jacket, pale and shrivelled up like a hungry beggar in the winter if you multiplied that look by a factor of ten. “Shame we won’t be spending too much time enjoying our hosts’ hospitality, though.”

I came forward and gestured for Gabriel and the rest to follow, moving at a brisk trot to get a closer look at the unlucky vampire. She was incredibly pale, dressed in tattered, blood-stained clothes that seemed to be just as obnoxiously decorated as her apparent victim’s get-up. Though dishevelled and dirty, she looked pretty young if you ignored the pale skin and platinum head of hair.

The crowd parted to let our little band through, and my aide lost no time in ordering the men to fill the gap, using the crowd to keep the creature bottled in. It probably wasn’t the smartest (or most ethical) of decisions to use non-combatants like this, especially if it meant they’d be in harm’s way — but this one didn’t seem to want anything to do with said non-combatants, so we would take advantage of that. I strode forward on my horse, drawing my sword as I entered the circle and came face-to-face (rather, horse-to-face) with the frightened young vampire. I decided I’d give her a chance to come peacefully, as she didn’t seem particularly hostile at the moment.

“You are under arrest, lay down your arms and come peacefully!” was what I wanted to say, but she interrupted me by flinging the body in my direction, nearly throwing me off my horse as I ducked out of its way. We all weren’t even an obstacle to her, apparently — leaping past a pair of riders over two ranks of fairly tall, well-built, heavily armed and armoured infantry like it wasn’t a feat beyond the limits of human ability.

“Disperse!” my aide yelled to the crowd, his voice booming so loud it gave me pause for a few precious moments. The vampire was running at a full sprint now, running down the main carriageway, weaving and pushing through pedestrians and horse-drawn carriages alike.

"Gabriel, block off her escape!" I ordered before giving chase, pushing my horse to its limits as we struggled to catch up with her through crowded streets and whatever alleyways she decided to duck into, probably in an attempt to lose me. Leaving my brother-sergeant to handle the more onerous task of using the men under my nominal command to block off whatever escape routes there were for the vampire to take, I allowed myself to focus on the challenge of navigating on a horse at full speed through the narrow paths we found ourselves travelling.

We'd gotten into something of a rhythm during the chase, so I had the opportunity to give my actions a little more thought. If her speed and athleticism were anything to go by, I probably wasn't very well-equipped to handle subduing a creature like her (don't even get me started on trying to kill her), so I would need to get my men and the town's militia involved somehow. We were going in pretty much every direction as she kept trying to lose me, but the fact that we were inching closer and closer to the gates at the other end of uptown didn't elude me.

That meant she wanted to lose us downtown, where she probably planned on escaping our grasp in its infinitely more complicated topography before leaving Penshaw itself. If I failed to capitalize on this opportunity being practically handed to me on a silver platter and let her escape, it'd be an utter embarrassment!

I couldn't have that, naturally. I had my pride and reputation to uphold.

After some more thought, I decided the best way to go about things would be to distract her for long enough to let Gabriel bring our men over to the gates for an ambush. It was the only way to leave uptown in the general direction we were headed, and I felt reasonably comfortable about herding her over there at the rate things were going.

I just had to take a few fake swipes at her, opposite the direction I wanted her to go, then block it with the bulk of my horse, then repeat the whole process for a few minutes before I let her sprint to the gate. Easy enough, right?

Wrong, she slid under the horse the first time I tried to get in her way, rendering my devious plotting entirely useless.

So there we were, barreling down the road to the gates in the distance, entering the spacious field between the walls and the fancy residences of uptown. Her inhuman speed picked up as we did, and if my memory serves, she started running faster than my horse could gallop.

Thankfully, Gabriel was quick on the uptake as always, as he and our men were already blockading the gates with the wagons and an impressive shield wall. They even managed to rope in some of the town's militia, who were all stood at a close approximation of a ready stance as they ogled at the sight of the vampire's freakish charge. The reception was quite formidable — twenty-one of my own heavily armed men and a few dozen of the local militia ready to meet one superhuman vampire's headlong rush — except I wasn't so sure it'd be enough.

There was no turning back now, though.

Abruptly, she stopped in her tracks, skidding on her feet before she fell on her butt with an admittedly adorable yelp. My horse apparently had the same idea for some inexplicable reason, launching me off its back a few feet away, in the direction of the vampire's hapless self. She turned her head to face the screaming man still in the process of flying into her with that same wide-eyed expression I noticed on her face moments prior, our gazes meeting for the first time as the world around us slowed to a halt.

Startled by my screaming approach, she spun around to face the man now flying towards her, only to be petrified by the sight of my not-so-graceful avian impression looming ever closer. This gave me a good view of her vivid, red irises, evoking a strangely warm response from within the depths of my jaded heart as I lost myself in their beautiful depths — is what I would like to say, but reality is seldom ever so idyllic. Instead, I had my lips puckered alongside squinting eyes, as if appraising the girl I was about to collide with.

Of course, now wasn't really the best time to be judging appearances, as right now she looked like she'd just risen from the grave with strangely youthful pale skin. Still, she managed to look absolutely adorable in my eyes — glaringly obvious bat ears poking out from her silver hair notwithstanding.

Unfortunately for me, however, my time admiring her was cut short by the impending collision mentioned previously, and suddenly, everything went to black.