“I don’t mean to be rude,” asked a very uncomfortable Dion O. Brandou as he swatted away the idiot mosquitoes that obviously couldn’t tell that he was an undead, “but is really a good idea to have an outing like this while there is a war going on in the immediate area?”

Alexis merely looked back at the posh House Founder and rolled her eyes. If there was to be any House that was not a fan of the current environment that they were in, it would be House Brandou. They did represent the ideal of the ‘upper-class aristocrat with extreme fashion sense’ type of vampire, and so of course the idea of trudging through the undergrowth and muck in the jungle would not be something that they were interested in.

“If you would prefer me to give you another reason, then maybe you can get a few new pelts and plants for your clothing lines. From preliminary reports, it does appear as though there are some insanely unique critters with some equally unique fur patterns. Maybe that could be a reason for wanting to rough it out here with everyone else?”

Rather than Alexis being the one to chastise the entire House, it was Elileth Carmilla who did the verbal lashing. Then again, she did have a point. Like the traditional aristocracy that House Brandou was inspired by, a proper incentive could be enough to turn a formerly irritating and frustration-inducing situation into a welcome one. A new perspective was all that was needed, in the end.

And, as it turned out, the potential option of finding some new critters with unique and/ or foreign patterns that could be used in their fashion boutiques was just the impetus needed to sway House Brandou from being whiny little bitches to being very interested in keeping up with everyone else. With something that they desired now potentially being within their grasp, House Brandou finally stopped bitching about everything and now looked forward to going deeper into the jungle.

Eventually, the massive horde of vampires ceased moving as Alexis herself stopped trudging deeper. Their Primogenitor turned to them and simply bade them to split up and have ‘fun’ before zooming off into the sky to have her own enjoyment elsewhere. At this, the roughly tens of thousands of vampires from the five Houses began to pursue their own agendas, splitting from their fellows and then even further into smaller and smaller groups until some were entirely on their own.

House Brandou had their own objective now, which partially ran counter to that of House Draconis and House Moreau, while being partially aligned with the main goal of House Carmilla. House Draconis was really only here to find and fight anything that could be remotely challenging, taking trophies when possible and leaving the rest to rot, which of course would result in the hide being damaged, which would piss off House Brandou.

House Moreau was really only interested in letting their more… animalistic side out, as it would help them vent the tension that had been building up as of late. This, too, would result in animals being torn to shreds rather than being delicately carved up, which would, of course, render any trophies utterly worthless and any nice hides utterly ruined.

House Carmilla was not really interested in hunting or killing so much as they were here to find new ‘tools’ to heighten their own ‘experiences’ with. Be it plant, animal, or fungus, it didn’t matter in the end. If they could find a nice critter and gain some satisfaction from tormenting it or using it as a [CENSORED FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY], then they would be perfectly happy. Even if a critter or thing was ravaged unmercifully by House Dracones of House Moreau, they would find some use for the bones or tattered bits of flesh. You’d be surprised just how kinky House Carmilla was, and if you did know exactly how they were you’d need literal oceans of Mind/ Eye/ Ear Bleach just to get the deviant perversions out of your head.

But this leaves House Nefarius out in the cold, now doesn’t it. Surely they were competing with another House for resources and fun, right? Well, being a bunch of near-muscleless nerds that loved being inside and doing experiments, you’d expect them to not be very happy to be out in the jungle. Yes, it was hot, humid, and filled with all manner of irritants, but despite this, House Nefarius came here willingly and with a desire of its own.

After all, they were a collection of chemists, alchemists, enchanters, mages, potion-makers, and more. The chance to potentially find new reagents and material that could be used to create new, possibly unique, and previously unknown objects and items was enough of a reason to get them to willingly come down here. Besides, being a bunch of mages, alchemists, and enchanters had its perks. For one, they were all uniformly slathered in chemicals designed to make them invisible to any bugs or arachnids nearby, and they were also wearing enough enchanted gear to make the heat and humidity essentially non-existent for them.

In fact, while the other Houses were having to deal with heat and grime, House Nefarius may very well have been the most comfortable of all. Sometimes it paid great dividends to boost your brain instead of your body, or so it seemed.

…

Meanwhile, while the five (surviving) Houses did their thing, Alexis was off doing something else. Her goal was rather simple, and that was to ‘let her hair down’. If you understand what that idiom means, then you understand how utterly fucked all the beings loyal to the Great Tree were once she finally decided on the place where she would ‘relax and unwind’. She kept her position overhead for quite a while, making full use of her inhuman mind and equally inhuman senses to plot out a plan of attack that would be both brutal and ‘entertaining’.

She was about to strike when she overheard something from the gathering below. They were talking about how a big festival was coming up and how the next night would be one full of raucous celebration and indulgence. This piqued her interest, and what further changed her plan was when she overheard the idiots below talking about how the night after the festival a group of wandering traders would arrive. This was then added to by the information that these traders had family in this little village.

Alexis now knew what she needed to do. She would break these traders’ resolve, instill utter despair and fear in them, and then let them flee. They would spread the story of what she had done, and also what she had forced them to witness. Some of them would be run down like the feral, mongrel dogs that they were, but some of them would be permitted to run.

Whether they would live long enough to instill abject hopelessness in the nearby villages, though, was something she did not know. Well, as long as they managed to spread the message to at least one other place, then it would almost certainly start a domino effect that she would oh so dearly love perpetuating. After all, while this place was far, far removed from any front, what better morale shock could there be than to bring death and despair to such a well-protected place with absolute impunity?

They would learn that, even here in the heart of the jungle, they simply were not safe at all. They would learn that the war was closer than they would have liked to believe, and that, in the end, their beloved/ feared Great Tree could not and would not protect them.