The king and his men ran through the cavern, the horrible chittering and screeching of the innumerable bug-people growing in intensity as the monstrosities grew closer. Thankfully, the way to the outside was easy enough to travel, but despite there being no possibility of getting lost it still felt to the humans that they were not getting any closer to the light of the sun. They fled in terror and fear, their legs growing sore from the extended action and their chests aching as they strained to keep themselves ahead of the skittering fiends.

“The light! I can see the light!” one of the men said as he gasped for air. True enough, there was the faint glimmer of light off in the distance; they were almost out of this nightmare-inducing den of evil!

“Hah… hah… hah… We must keep going… we are almost… hah… there!”

The sunlight grew ever larger in the distance, but its color was altered somewhat by the fact that the morning star was sinking into the west. Just a few more meters and they would be able to mount up and flee. They had to alert the Church! Only the Heroes could deal with something so horrible! There was no way that the strength of normal men would able to take down that hellish creature! Only the chosen of Lumina could have the slightest possibility of sending… whatever that horror was back to the hell that spawned it!

A few more steps later and the humans exited the cave. And not a moment too soon, as the glowing eyes of the bloodthirsty bug-men reached just to the edge of where the light touched before stopping. If King Rodriguez and his posse of knights, priests and minstrels were able to think straight they would have wondered why these creatures of darkness and evil stopped when they did. The one they had chased had seemed perfectly fine with the sunlight, so why were these ones avoiding it? If they had not been in such a hurry to GTFO they might have asked this, but the only thing on their minds was the overwhelming desire to get as far away from this place as possible and do so as quickly as possible.

The hunting party got into their saddles as fast as they possibly could and sped off in the direction of the nearest fort. As they fled, they barely noticed that the sun was a crimson color as it sank beneath the western horizon. The sky was dyed red as the bloody star continued to dip, a clearly ill omen of what was to come if ever there was one. The men pushed their horses to the absolute limit and thanks to the sacrifices made by their mounts they arrived at the nearest fortress before the last bit of light vanished from the sky and plunged the world into the black of night.

The fort they arrived at was, thankfully, fully garrisoned with all manner of soldiers and equipment. There was also a large monastery that trained Warrior Priests and Warrior Nuns inside the fortifications as well, which would be a welcome aid for the humans during the time to come. As the hunting party rode into the fort and the gates shut behind the last of the king’s men, the king himself almost fell of his horse due to how tired he was. This sent the fort’s personnel into a tizzy and they rushed Rodriguez to a bed in the most lavish part of the fort with all due haste. His men also nearly fell of their saddles, but they were less important than the King and were tended to as a lower priority.

The night passed, and so did a decent chunk of the morning before King Rodriguez awoke in a panic and flailed about, hoping to fight off the nightmare creatures that haunted his dreams. Eventually he noticed that he was safe and sound and took a deep breath in silent relief. He rose from his bed and prepared for the hell that was to come. He seriously doubted he would ever get any decent sleep ever again that was not plagued with visions of the unholy abominations he had seen. The undead were bad enough, but these things? These demons scared the ever loving shit out of him.

…

Alexis had followed the petty monarch and his pawns as they fled her little surprise. She was both impressed and angered that they had chosen to run in the face of her Swarm Queen instead of fighting it, an act which forced her to alter her plans for the downfall of this detestable kingdom. If they had stayed and fought then they all would have died horribly, a turn of events that would force the Crown Prince Fernando to take the throne under a regency council.

There was little that a six-year-old boy could do to keep this nation afloat, and with the provincial governors all looking out for ‘number 1’ it would be a much simpler task to divide and conquer. With the king still alive, the kingdom could be held together by one who knew how to play the great game. Alexis had anticipated that she could kill the king and then proceed to destroy the individual provinces one by one, but this plan had not come to fruition.

She would have to devise another way to destroy this nation, and that would be annoying. Yes, she could have easily dealt with the petty monarch herself, but where would be the fun in that? It would be like a fully-grown adult crushing an ant between their fingers, a pointless display of supremacy that would give her no gratification or sense of schadenfreude. No, she wanted to make these people suffer, and suffer they would.

She watched as numerous messengers carried the king’s call-to-arms to the various provinces. It would be too little, too late. Even if they massed their forces, it would not be nearly enough to kill the Swarm Queen. The best they could hope to do would be to collapse the cave entrance and hope to their false goddess that it would keep her little pet contained. Unfortunately for them, such an action would have no real effect. The dungeon fast-travel network was a wonderous thing indeed to allow her to move her troops almost anywhere in a matter of moments. What would have taken days, weeks or months could be done in mere hours at most. For that, at least, she felt thankful to that perverted tin-man, a feeling she would rather not have experienced.

Alexis decided that she would allow the forces of the Siempre Dorado Kingdom to gather together. It would be all the better that they were in one place. While crushing each province one by one would be far more enjoyable, the act of shattering a nation’s ability to wage war right before slaughtering its entire populace was something that put a smile on her face. She had been itching for a chance to raise hell against her ancient enemy ever since her beloved entombed himself. This would be her chance to claim her bloody vengeance against the worshippers of that little bitch of a fake god and aid in the war effort as well.

She was happy that her husband had been too pissed off to tell her to rein in her bloodthirst. She would take this ‘Forever Golden Kingdom’ and drench it in the blood and bile of its own people. From its broken, shattered corpse would be built something more in line with her way of doing things. Although, she did not want to rule a nation made solely of the undead…

Perhaps she could leave a decent number of humans alive to act as meals on legs for the new regime she had planned for this place. It would be a simple enough task to divide this whole landmass into five pieces so that the five surviving Vampire Houses could rule the nation on her behalf. Yes, a nation ruled by Vampires born from the desiccated cadaver that was this doomed nation, its people reduced to a state of servitude to their conquerors and only elevated to the status of ‘full citizen’ once they had wholeheartedly rejected the false Goddess Lumina. That was a fitting end for this nation so blessed by that imagined deity.

Pleased with her new plan for the future, Alexis began to shift her scheming from the actual end of the war to how she would end it. She let out a sinister laugh from behind her folding fan as ideas raced through her head at a blistering speed. Eventually, she settled on a plan as cruel and malicious as she could possibly make it without reducing this doomed nation to an uninhabitable wasteland. With that plan in her mind, she flew off towards the bug-people filled cave and began to set the wheels in motion.