“The haft of the arrow had been feathered with one of the eagle's own plumes. We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction.”

― Aesop

“In the name of King Vilander von Margrinar, we command you to lay down your arms and surrender. Fail to comply and we will use any force necessary.” A dignified voice amplified many times by a spell or artifact echoed between the dismal ruins. The snowfall intensified.

In the distance running steps could be heard as some of the neighbors tried to flee while the fighting lessened for a moment- the blood-crazed ‘fiends’ were naturally not inclined to listen.

Vadislav looked apoplectic at that announcement and quivering with rage he turned towards the advancing group of knights. The five elite soldiers of Margrinar wore plate mail with runic enhancements and carried weapons forged of crystal tempered steel. Their cloaks billowed behind them as they strode towards the melee. Behind them stood an equal number of crossbow-wielding guardsmen.

The robed and masked Poroskar standing behind Orpen shook his shoulders and loosened his arms before turning around, magic crackling at his fingertips. A volley of crossbow bolts answered his obvious rejection of the offered terms. Raising his arm with the quickness of thought a shield of glowing blood gushed forth and swallowed the incoming bolts. The knights quickened their charge and the two in the middle voiced their command words before being engulfed in earthen armor.

Vanessa thrust both her claws straight ahead and then forcefully spread her arms ripping into the fighting mercenaries and throwing them to the side. Iseret was bleeding from many wounds dark poison dripped from her lips and hands coating her khopesh and the dagger she had drawn, she looked near death.

The vampire shot forward and gripped her companion before gathering power into her legs like a coiling spring and then jumped towards the upper floors of the house to her left. A sword cut into her side and a hammer thudded into her arm before she gained enough height to be out of reach. Hissing with pain she twisted in midair and entered an empty window rolling with the force of her landing while protecting her charge.

Iseret gave a pained moan as she hit the sagging floor. Cracking sounds could be heard and for a moment it seemed as if the moldy planks might give way before everything stabilized.

Outside a hulking shadow leaned over in a seemingly soft movement before biting with enormous black fangs into the back of the mercenary with the gold-capped teeth. Straightening, a copious amount of flesh, blood, and bone was ripped in a geyser of gore from the unlucky fighter.

One of the floating mages narrowed his eyes and began an incantation while lightning gathered between his outstretched hands.

The other two began their own spells and shields of force and ice flashed into being.

The crossbowmen reloaded.

Vadislav jumped towards the leading knight and punched him in the chest with his fist glowing with magical rings and trinkets. An explosion sounded and the knight was thrown back with his stone armor flaking off in great chunks before finally coming to a stop on his knees losing the shield in the tumble. The knights began to attack the vampire ganglord as his protective amulets began to flare and sizzle. Another backhand dented a shield and forced another knight to stagger backward. “Poroskar, let them loose unchain the hounds let’s kill them all. None shall live when I don’t get what I neeeeeeeed!” A sword flaring with sigils and icy magic cut into his abdomen. The vampire grabbed the offending extremity and teeth elongating bit into the armored arm crushing mail and puncturing steel. Blood flowed freely and slurping sounds could be heard as the knight staggered while his companions hacked into the vampire.

The robed Poroskar spat a command word and three bolts of a bloody liquid shot from his hand impacting the shield of one of the knights fighting his lord. Out of the blood, wriggling leeches coalesced and began to flow around the kite shield. Cursing the elite tried to get rid of it paling rapidly as they began to gorge on his blood.

Lightning crackled and thunder boomed, mercenaries, fiends, and Gloomskulls were thrown to the ground by the impact in their midst. Another mage cast several whirling missiles of force at the retreating Poroskar who let himself fall into the still open door to the basement. The bolts of energy impacted the ground leaving spiderweb cracks in the stone-paving accompanied by low cracking sounds.

Two of the fiends clambered after Vanessa, the others raised their heads as if listening and swarmed towards the fighting around Orpen.

The mercenaries and Gloomskulls had had enough, more than enough, and began to flee without direction before crashing into the still flickering barrier of bloody sigils that still enclosed parts of the area. From the shadows at their feet the hulking giant made of dark nothingness rose and tore into them with razor-sharp claws.

In a dark and damp room, Iseret looked curiously into Vanessa’s eyes. “I have no regrets. Leave me.” She gave a half-smile and before the vampire girl could act she lifted her arms and gently cupped Vanessa’s cheeks before kissing her with lips dripping blood and poison, tasting strangely sweet.

In all her centuries of life that was a first. She was dazed and felt as if her lips had caught fire a heart that was no longer beating clenched painfully.

She stumbled back and heavily sat on the floor shaking her head. “Don’t talk...don’t do...what was…?” She got a grip on her emotions. “We will talk later and there will be a later you hear!”

A fiend surged through the window, this one had been female once upon a time. Black ice surged from Vanessa’s fingertips and reformed her claws. She jumped in front of Iseret and cleaved into the sinewy creature ripping cloth and flesh alike. Black brackish blood spurted and the air was filled with a sickly stench. The other fiend clambered through the window coming from above and like a spider it scuttled along the ceiling.

Forced to remain stationary while protecting Iseret she stood and endured the ghoulish creature falling from above slashing with blighted bone spurs and biting with elongated teeth resembling a moray eel. Weeping bloody tears while suppressing the pain Vanessa punched one of them in the throat her claws piercing into the spine before she ripped the head off with a violent wrenching movement.

The other one ripped chunks of flesh and armor from her shoulder.

With a movement quick as lightning the vampire turned her head and spat a word of power and an explosion of force and sound threw the vile being through one of the feeble walls into the night. The exertion left her stumbling and dazed. Such words were not meant for mortal kind and even a vampire's prodigious toughness would not keep the effects at bay.

Hunching over, Vanessa concentrated and felt the flesh of her upper arm slowly grow back. Pale strands of tissue flowed over the bared bone.

Iseret gasped and tried to sit up while drinking a potion grabbed from her belt. She held on tight to Vanessa for added stability.

“You. Will. Not. Die.” Vanessa forced the words through clenched teeth. Then she carefully grabbed her friend and asked. “Can you hold fast to my neck?”

“I will try.” It looked somewhat incongruous as Iseret tried to hug Vanessa from behind, her legs firmly grasped by the short girl.

Flames burst into being and illuminated the outside shortly after followed by another bolt of lightning. Thunder rumbled and the shockwave of the explosion blew out the shutters of the adjacent room.

The fighting outside was heating up and it was only the perseverance of the berserking Orpen against an elite force that served to gain them a bit of breathing room.

Outside three of the knights were dead or severely injured the crossbowmen had fled after some of them were devoured by the leeches. The magicians incinerated the mercenaries and Gloomskulls but found the fiends and the shadow demon to be very difficult foes indeed.

An old man in courtly attire waited on the roof of a building a hundred yards away. Seeing the chaos he shook his head in disbelief before conjuring a message sparrow and sending it forth with the urgent request for reinforcements.

Vanessa ran toward the hole made by the explosion and subsequently ejected fiend but before she could reach it the wall behind her was shattered and Vadislav Orpen forced the stone apart with his hands grinning with a face splattered with gore his uniform hanging in tatters, deep wounds crisscrossing his body while half his cheek and the left ear was sheared cleanly from the bone. “You will not get away deary. I will crush your…”

Before he could finish his diatribe Vanessa spat some blood and screamed, “GHHERALXYAIR kill him!”

The darkness birthed a hulking form, much diminished after the fighting, that latched onto Orpen’s arm. “Nooooooo!” The vampire furiously punched into the mass of shadows his amulets and rings glowing.

A fireball exploded behind him and flared about his form before the flames engulfed the room stopping just before Vanessa. Hot air evaporated the falling snow singing the stonework while the cavalry uniform began to burn. In between the falling snow, a mage could be seen floating over the roof of the neighboring building. The once dignified-looking man was much worse for wear as he began the incantation for another while flames began to compress before him.

Vanessa did not wait any longer and jumped out of the building into the labyrinthine streets seeking to escape the vicinity. Thankfully the fighting and some misdirected spells had ripped great holes into the still glowing barrier spell. She did not want to think about what kind of sacrifice had been necessary to do this.

Snow swirled about them as another lance of force shattered the roof of the building they had landed upon before the magician pursuing them turned and focused his attention on the still fighting Vadislav.

“You should...have...left me.” Iseret gasped as they sailed through the air just barely missing the flickering wall of magic.

“Shh. I have to concentrate.” The small vampire called upon the winds turned and shifted her grip so that her back skidded along the roof of another building they could not completely avoid. Protective spells unraveled as they crashed to the street as runes gleamed and sparks flew when they impacted the ground. Vanessa coughed some blood and spoke another spell and a wave of white light flowed along the path they had taken erasing- for the moment- the signs of their passing. Far behind them, an explosion could be heard and red light briefly lit the sky.

“We did want to be oh so clever.” Iseret smiled with bloody lips and a very pale face.

“Don’t talk.” Vanessa limped towards the building they had landed before and inspected the door. She spoke a short spell and pressed her hand against the lock which opened with a crackling sound. Metal sand drifted from the keyhole as the small girl looked a bit apologetic at the questioning look of her companion. Inside was a dark corridor with a stair leading up and another one underneath leading down. There was also a cold fireplace and some closed doors.

Half-carrying, half dragging Iseret. Vanessa made her way into what should be the living room. Thankfully it seemed that the house was otherwise deserted or at least the occupants should be still asleep.

Putting her wounded companion on a cushioned bench she began to cast spells to stop the bleeding and lessen the pain. Vanessa softly cursed to herself that her nature prohibited her from using most nature and light spells. Even the healing waters Alyssa preferred were unreliable at best in the hands of the unliving.

Distant thunder spoke of continuing hostilities. The windows were shuttered and only small slivers of light fell into the room to illuminate an ornate fireplace with a shelf made of marble but cracked and dusty with disuse. A large table with several chairs stood on a carpeted wooden floor. The air was stale and reeked of mildew. A corner showed extensive water damage in the peeling cloth wallpaper.

Meanwhile in the palace.

Thomas Ardelius von Margrinar looked up from the book he was reading. He was a heavy-set, dark-haired young man in his late twenties. He was wearing a dressing gown over his nightclothes as he was wont to do when the day's labors had come to an end.

A glass of wine kept him company and he was very strict in enforcing the one peaceful hour in the day before he had to go to sleep. He narrowed his sapphire eyes and got up from the ornately upholstered chair. The study was directly adjacent to his bedroom and he had heard a noise from there. “Paulette? Is that you?”

He had been engaging in a dalliance with a lady in waiting assigned to the queen dowager. It was such a waste for a young and beautiful girl to always be serving the near-dead former queen. His mouth twisted in distaste as he thought of the engagement his father had forced on him. He should marry the second daughter of the priest-king of Sur Kesh. She might be pretty in her own way but snakes…he was no perverted reptile-lover!

Walking towards the door separating the two rooms he was startled as the door opened and someone stepped through. If he were later to be asked he could not have described the person. There was a sense of light and golden hair flowing garments and some jewels flashing in the light. He would not even be able to tell the gender. And as he looked in astonishment a long pale arm snaked around his neck while the other put the long-forgotten glass of wine to his lips. And a voice whispered, “Drink up my dear.”

And as the wine flowed into his suddenly parched mouth he reflexively drank it down. Eyes of indeterminate color looked at him dispassionately as his breath hitched and he began to suffocate. Grasping at his throat with eyes begging the person before him for help he slowly sank to the ground.

The creature lowered him gently while the life left the crown prince of Margrinar. Grinning a smile containing many, many teeth the being mused ‘Thank you Vadislav for the magnificent distraction!’

Outside the room, the palace was in an uproar. A request made by the second prince had sent the palace guard to a disturbance in the dock area. The normal city guard had only been in an auxiliary function. But instead of quelling the disruption the battle had intensified and knights had died, reinforcements had been dispatched.

The second prince, Carl Askander von Margrinar, stood on the walls of the inner palace and turned his hand this way and that as he inspected his nails, raising his eyes he looked out over the city. A sudden cry of alarm sounded from the royal quarters and without turning a smile spread on his formerly impassive features.

Somewhere far over the city, actinic light flared and thunder rumbled. From afar it could almost be taken for a celebration.