Eodem: A Rifle and Sword Adventure (Complete)

Chapter 64: What Have We Done?

For all of her life, Mita the Crow Master knew three things that matter in life above all else. Power, Money that comes from Power, and to always run many leagues ahead of her competition to maintain her Money and Power. As the Crow Master, she always chased what was best for herself and her Fellow Crows, the highest coins, the most amicable of respect, and the finest of comforts that came from the former two.

But now... all such of her former knavish virtue is made for naught.

She collapsed in exhaustion, thirst, exposure, and hunger besting her fortitude after hours if not a day of fleeing she could not count. All she cared about was running as far away from her pursuers that they had no hope if any Deity could watch her now give the constitution to doggedly pursue her. The night's veil shrouded Gliesia at her present, but not so dark that Calyriel's silver shine, if only but a shy tease of a quarter of her body lit Mita's eyes of where she is now. With what faint glints of light her eyes could gather, she had found herself by a riverbank. The soft cricketing of riverside insects and the faint flowing of water perked her ears and tempted her now thirsting mouth.

Cupping her hands together, the Crow Master relieved her throat with the river's bounty. She coughed a few times as it wasn't the cleanest of refreshments but today was not such a day to be choosy. After several gulps of water, Mita sighed in relief as she sensed that nobody else had followed her nor is nearby to disturb her peace. She looked at herself, with the single flicker of Calyriel's light on her reflection by the river creek's pool. Attrition had besieged the leathers of her roguish armor during her hasty retreat. The exertion also drumming her stomach to a revolt.

The denizens of her hungered body seeking a new form of nourishment.

All around her there were a couple of small critters, glowing red with life that her newly awakened vampiric nose has scented. Such low-hanging fruit that she could pluck with just the reach of her hands.

Blood that tasted oh so... tempting to sate herself with.

Mita licked her fangs with her mouth instinctively...

"No..." Mita stopped herself. Eyes shaking of the taboo thought that had danced into her head.

She had known several but never indulged in such occultic rituals such as blood ceremonies, empowering dinings upon the flesh of exotic beasts, or scarring sacraments in all of her life. But none so compared to what she is being tempted now, not after what she had discovered about herself.

She peered over the river's waters and opened her mouth. There lay before her what betrays her the most. A Quadro of Vampiric Fangs, resonating harmful Negative Energies around their edges. The scent of her own blood, seeming to salivate her newfound fangs

"This is just... a dream..." the Crow Master muttered to herself.

Vampires were one of the vilest of creatures that reigned terror into the hearts of all men across Ysanigrad. Barbaric monsters of the night who cloak themselves in a masquerade of feigned wholesomeness before entrapping their prey and devouring their blood and viscera until all that is left is a husk of a once-living person. They hold shadowy gatherings with their Cabals to indulge in the rituals of their vile incantations to their dead God-King and his Sunken Dominion. To indulge let alone be in communion to their corrupt practices sickened was the furthest antithesis to any sentient amity.

Such adumbral adversary requires an equally umbral of war to defeat these remnants of a barbarous era of the Slaegian Empire rivaled the deepest pits of the Crow's Nest back in Kobold's Hollow. The theocratic Clergy of the Holy Pantheon had used her Crows, Adventurer's and their own Inquisition to root them out. But now, with all of the Empire in flames, the Vampires are now given reign to unleash all of their depraved communions with impunity.