Help, quick, there's trouble in Kiesan!

[The Santach]

A young man was walking through the streets of Krymo Zahrada, wholly aware of everything that went on around him. He saw the young children playing tag or hide-and-go-seek in the bazaar, angering the fruit and fish stand merchants who desperately tried to sell their goods quickly before the oxygen got to their freshness. He heard the cry of the circling crows and the lone vulture, indicating a dead corpse somewhere in the residential district of the city, one the guards must not have been aware of, one that must still be warm with life, despite its absence. And most importantly, he noticed the terrible burning of the sun that never sets in the summers of Kiesan. He walked quickly, but the longer he was out in the sunlight, the more he could feel himself being weakened, burned alive, cooked from the outside in.

Soon, the pain was overwhelming. But his destination... It was only a few meters away! Three, four, maybe five. Unfortunately, his vision was becoming blurred. His sense of hearing was shot, with the exception of a terrible ringing pitch in his ear. His feet and hands grew numb with the faintest feeling of pins and needles, and this numbness crawled up his limbs to feed on his core. He would not survive today. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

It seemed as though someone heard his prayer, because with a ripping sound that was reminiscent of blaring thunder, a blackness swallowed the sun whole, leaving just a shred of light to illuminate the lively city. The young man could feel his health recovering already.

The first sense he regained was his hearing. Women screamed, children whispered to their friends and cried out in fear, and men yelled out about prophecies of the black sun. Afterward, he regained his sight. The people of Krymo Zahrada had all stopped dead in their tracks to stare at the sky, pointing at the black circle against the dark grey dreariness of storm clouds and an eerie fire of crimson red that surrounded the black sun. The entire city was blanketed with a red sheet of bloody light.

The recovering man felt more power, standing tall and soaking in the mysterious light. It was strange. It was the same feeling that erupted within every muscle in his body when he feasted on the blood of man. Could it be ... A divine interference?

Yes, yes it could.

Orphaas, the Selfish Lord of vampires, descended from the sky at a controlled rate. He took the form of a hideous beast, humanoid in features with bulging muscles, dragon-like claws and feet, and terrible bat-like wings that carried him against the will of gravity. His face was with a horrible, permanent scowl and the knitted eyebrows of wrath, and threatening fangs jutted out of his mouth, thirsty for blood.

Without a word, the Selfish Lord landed on a random building, perhaps a shop of some sort, and glanced upon the mortals who cowered in his presence, fearing for their lives. Orphaas raised a hand, forming a crimson ball of his divine magic, and sent it flying at a resident's house. Nothing happened at first, but some sort of spacial implosion made a foreign noise, followed by a mere half-second of silence, and then an unholy, extremely rapid explosion. The shrapnel flew in all directions at impeccable speeds, slicing through any unfortunate human who stood in the path of the flying shards of ice, wood, and stone. Whatever was left of the house now sat aflame, and the wicked screams of the home's residents pierced the air as they ran from their dying house, swallowed by the sinful flames of the selfishly divine.

Now the mortals began to flee in terror, desperately gathering their children and their wives and taking to shelter in hopes of saving their petty lives.

The ones who didn't move instead glowed with a crimson aura, touched by Orphaas as his special children. Vampires. The young man who was so close to dying was one of them. He surged with power, feeling a fraction of the divine strength that Orphaas possessed. He felt unstoppable.

Bats soon rained from the sky, but they were not normal bats. They were monstrous, the size of a wolf, and they had the wretched, bloodsucking fangs of vampires as well as talons as sharp as an eagle's, seizing the people of Krymo Zahrada and sucking up their life essence with mere magic before dropping their empty corpses to the ground.

Gargoyles followed the paths of the bats, bigger than man, landing and murdering the unfortunate souls who happened to be intercepted on their way to safety.

Finally, Orphaas unleashed his hellhounds whose flesh hung loosely from exposed muscle and bone. The only thing in common with these dogs was their size, their fangs, their glowing red eyes, and their thirst for blood. The skin and muscle from their faces was almost completely gone, too, revealing just a canine skull with eye sockets that held blood-red orbs. The Selfish Lord sent down rain that, upon contact with living tissue, burned like sulfuric acid, though the undead vampires of Krymo Zahrada remained untouched. It was an unfortunate day for the people of this cold kingdom.

[Sky]

Skyelar blinked in surprise as she gazed out upon the site before her. Kiesan was under attack from the looks of things. Krymo Zahrada to be exact. She had received word of a possible escort job that would start in the capitol city. They always payed well, but she doubted the one she was to escort was still living at this point. So she started walking towards the chaos.

She was curious about what was going on. She pulled her leather armor tighter, making sure to place the light helmet over her head before pulling her cloak's hood over it. She gripped the handle of her sword tightly. She may need to use the ancient, family weapon today if it was a divine interference. She respected all the gods, but when one attacked she would be on the front lines to fight back.

She was a protector of the innocent, which meant that she would take on a god if need be. As she approached the city she noticed that there was a light drizzle of an unknown substance, and heard the shrieks of terror and pain. She looked up, making sure that the cowl of her cloak kept the liquid off of her face and blinked.

People were being burned by the stuff At that moment she was glad that the cloak was woven as thick as it was. It woudl take a while for the liquid to soak through, and even then her leather armor would take even longer. She guessed she had about six to seven hours of not having to worry about the stuff.

She suddenly felt a presence circling her from above and then dive down at her. In the moments before impact she looked up, her eyes suddenly full of realization. The form up on top of a building, it was one of legend. One of the Selfish God Orphaas. Just before the creature that had dove down to attack her hit her she swung her sword up in a short arc, the curved blade slicing cleanly through the creature like a knife through butter.

She looked around once more. "Well, what to do about all of this. Either leave and let things be, or try to fight the god. Doubt I could win, especially considering the number of vampires in the area...." she mumbled to herself. She shook her head, holding the sword out from her body at an angle. Hopefully the thing she woudl need to do would come to her.

In the meantime she decided she needed to act against the creatures that were attacking people, especially the hounds. She didn't have the power of flight so she couldn't take out those flying bat like creatures, but she could start to thin out the heard as far as the hell hounds went. She swung around and sliced off the head of one that had leaped at her. She smiled and sidestepped a few more.

Well, first she would have to take care of the few attacking her. At least she had her leather gloves on to protect her hands from the drizzle around her. She kept maneuvering, avoiding the hound's attacks and cutting down as many as possible.

What else was she supposed to do? She needed to protect herself if she was to help those in trouble around her. At that moment she glanced back up to see what appeared to be a vampire leaping across the rooftops, land in front of the god, and take a knee.

"Great, now he has an ally other then these beasts"

---

On the other side of the city Rei was already smiling. She stood up and simply kicked a child running by. Why not? She felt like a god anyways. She laughed as it collapsed in a heap. She was here after a target she had been given by one of the elder dragons. But she had finished that job already. Now it was time for her to have some fun.

She smiled as she started to dash through the streets, ignoring the rain as if it was nothing more then rain, which it was to her. She smiled and leapt through the crowd, glancing around to see more of her fellow blood suckers. She laughed and quickly climbed to the top of a building. Oh how this was going to be fun!

She felt unbeatable, invincible, like she could do anything! Now she was glad that she had been sent on this mission, for then she would not have seen the day the vampires rise up and take over! Well she would have, she just would not have been a part of the original uprising. She laughed some more before turning to look out over the distance. It was Orphaas.

He was responsible for this. Instantly she took off at a sprint, heading towards the god. She wanted to thank him for this wonderful day. It was amazing, being able to run about in what was originally broad daylight. She smiled as she slid to a stop expertly on the roof just adjacent to where the Selfish God stood.

"Thank you my lord," she said while falling to her knee and bowing her head. "Thank you for this most wonderful day." She smiled down at the ground before standing up. "Is there anything I can do for you to repay your kindness?"

[The Santach]

The demonic, slightly humanoid face of Orphaas looked down at one of his own. She possessed the glowing aura of protection that swirled around her, signifying her as one of his children, a fellow vampire, another beast of the night.

Approvingly, the Selfish Lord placed a hand on Rei's head, the permanent scowl fixed unmoving on his face. His entire hand was enormous, for he stood at a height three feet taller than the average man, and his cold claws were long enough to just barely graze the back of Rei's neck like the tips of sharpened icicles. A crimson and white glow traveled from his unfriendly eyes down his arm and onto the vampire girl, a sense of power and electrification to heighten her skills, her strengths, her abilities. Orphaas blessed her with speed, strength, power, magic, and augmented sensory skills that were triple her standard statistics. Her eyes would now see thrice the distance they normally could and pick out the most hidden details, her ears were as sensitive as an owl's if not more, she'd be able to smell the fear as strong as rotting eggs as it emanated from the bodies of the terrorized. She could crush a man's skull by accidentally flicking it too hard, she would be able to run faster than a horse, and her magical abilities would now parallel those of a court wizard.

When he finishing augmenting virtually every predatory trait about Rei, he removed his hand and looked at her. There was nothing in his eyes. Absolutely nothing, no sense of remorse or pride or pleasure. Just bloody eyes. "Kill," he said.

And that was that. The guards had begun to take a position and shoot Orphaas from afar with arrows, obviously too stubborn to try to appease the god. Why bother attacking if that will only anger him more? Foolish mortals. They were just asking for their entire city to be sunken into the ground.

Another glowing ball of light was sent flying toward a particularly dense heap of city guards who were shooting arrows at the Selfish Lord. The explosion caused body parts to fly everywhere, and the resulting shockwave distorted the bodies of those unfortunate enough to be near the blast zone in such a way that their entrails were ripped from their bellies and their joints were dislocated in many different locations.

The light rain of fiery acid came down harder as it began to pour, the way it did when a thunderstorm was directly overhead. Innocent citizens suddenly began bursting into flames, while others were destined to a more... Tragic demise. It was a foreign sensation in their stomachs as their insides were ripped open and a rapidly growing gargoyle crawled out of their bellies or up their throats and out of their mouths.

It was at this time that Orphaas sent an animalistic signal to all of his vampires, the one primal in nature that commanded the hellish beasts to attack and feast, for this was a joyous day when the vampires rose to power and were given free reign to consume the blood of as many mortals as they desired without having to be discreet about it.

And somewhere, not far in the distance as they zeroed in on Krymo Zahrada, the protective howling of a pack of wolves could be heard.

[Sky]

Skyelar swore under her breath as she continued to use her speed and agility to her advantage, avoiding attack after attack. what she had not expected, however, was the sharp increase in the flow of rain over the area. She was getting bored of the fight, nothing but sword play was going on for her. So what did she do? Drew every ounce of water she could from the air before ejecting it out in a web of sharp, ice particles that pierced many of her attackers in mid air, stopping them cold literally as the ice enveloped them.

She had been working on her ice manipulation for a while now, and it seemed to come in handy in a world of ice, even if the rain was melting most of it away. She smiled and swung her sword around and cut down what she though had been another one of the hell hounds, but upon turning around her guess had been wrong. The body had been surrounded by a strange aurora. Did that mean the vampires were now attacking? She frowned as she saw many others fall upon the guards, killing them quickly and smoothly.

What was Skyelar supposed to do now? Her sword could slice through even the barrier, but that was just because of what it was made of. She couldn't hope to match their speed, nor their strength. All she could do was try to survive.

---

Rei smiled and nodded, the surge of power leaving her breathless. She was surprised by this. She had not expected to be blessed with such abilities by a god, ever. She stood up slowly before leaping away, landing among a group of guards who instantly fell in on her.

Within seconds they were all on the ground grabbing their throats as Rei simply stepped over them, licking the blood off her nails. She smiled and suddenly sent a blast of frosty wind directly at another group, setting them in ice. She laughed and rocked back on her heels happily. Oh, she was going to have fun with this.

She smiled and picked up the sword of a fallen guard, placing it on her shoulder. "Who's next?" she asked, taunting another group of guards who were staring at her blankly.