"GAAA-HA-HA-HAA"

The laughter came in as something in between an ululating howl and a semblance of human speech and it echoed through the dark woods of Sylvania like a thing of form and life, rendering even the blood-maddened Northmen silent by virtue of the underlining insanity that permeated it.

The barbarian Norscan and Kurgan tribesmen, so used to the screaming, terrified masses of the Empire, so enamored with the scent of fear and the terror brimming in the eyes of any Empire army they faced, stopped dead and could do nothing short of stare at the creature that howled with a joy that would have dwarfed even the most zealotic devotee of the Blood God Khorne himself.

Fear. Fear of death. Fear of pain. Fear, that emotion which was such an integral weapon in the arsenal of the Lost Ones, the followers of the Chaos Gods, found no purchase upon the soul of the creature they faced.  

Creator and former Grand Master of the Drakenhof Templars, the Reaper of Sylvania, the beast made manifest, Alberacht Nictus had lost the ability to feel fear centuries ago. All that could give him solace these days was the sweet thundering joy of battle, as sweet upon his tongue as the coppery tang of blood he so readily partook in.

Although distorted by his devolution into a Varghulf, his features still held a semblance of the once handsome twenty-seven year old noble he had been all those many years ago, before he had been turned into a vampire. For the first few centuries, he had still been handsome, frozen in time as a young noble, but he had enjoyed the hunt too much and had glutted himself  too readily on the lifeblood of his prey. It was the fate of those children of the night who took to the beast and the blood too much to devolve into a Varghulf, their mind lost to the baser instincts and desires, barely more than oversized bats.

Where other vampires had become Varghulf, losing their minds as their bodies engorged and turned monstrous, Alberacht had ever been to willful, too determined, too loyal, to allow himself to fall to such depths. His body had grown, his muscles had swelled and his features had somewhat disfigured under the  tender mercies of the beast within all vampires, but his mind was still his own.  

Addled, insane and greatly prone to the manic frenzy of the beast, but his own, nonetheless.

The great pinions of leathery flesh, rivaling the wingspan of a royal griffon, that made the wings upon his back beat at the chill night air, keeping both his muscle-bloated bulk in the air as he surveyed the battlefield. His body alone, a horrific amalgam between that of a bat, human and wolf, a third of a ton of pure, steel-chord like muscle flexed as he mentally chose the next to die spitted upon his talons. The archaic armor he wore, a gift from his father-in-death, Vlad von Carstein himself, sharpened interlocking plates the color of dried blood, gleamed sisterly in the moon's pale light.

His heavy two handed Kriegsmesser, a weapon of such size and weight even the elite greatsword-wielders of the Empire would have been hard pressed in using, lay in a relaxed one handed grip in Alberacht Nictus's right hand.

A first generation vampire, over a millennium old, Alberacht had seen the world. In his time he had faced everything from trolls, orcs and Giants to even Bloodthirsters of Khorne, so famed for their killing prowess. A veteran of such magnitude could only look upon the seemingly endless army of Northmen arrayed beneath him with contempt. Behind silvery strands of hair, his long mane caught in a single braid resting on his shoulder and reaching his midsection, white eyes without irises regarded the Northmen with the scrutiny of an apex predator.

  With a collective roar, goaded by their chieftains, the army of Northmen charged anew the narrow cliff side of the Ebony Stairs, their howling oaths and curses cut short as they spit themselves upon the eerily silent guardians of Drakenhof Castle. Dressed in tattered and freshly ripped finery, the dead-eyed and slack-faced risen dead did not break nor scream as the Northmen collided with their pikes and shields. Like a well-oiled machine, the dead pushed as one, throwing the undisciplined mass of marauders and raiders back, their spears thrusting and "palos" long swords falling.

The part of Alberacht's brain that could still appreciate irony chuckled darkly as he looked at the scene unfolding beneath him. For so many years, the corrupt nobility of Sylvania had bled the province dry of resources and harassed the peasantry, it was only fitting for them to die defending it. Whether they wanted to or not. He had educated the current day nobility

In his day, nobles had standards and responsibilities. He had butchered them all and risen them as mindless automata to defend the Castle. Alberacht had never been fond of necromancy, had barely ever used such magics in his thousand year long unlife. It was too impersonal, too cowardly. However that did not mean he was not good at it.

Raising and maintaining an army of over six hundred nobles and petty barons was child's play to him. Indeed, it was something he had already relegated to his subconscious mind as he readied himself to surge into the barbarians once more and break them on discipline's altar.

None could reason what fresh madness had possessed Alberacht's mind, but as feared as he was for his fighting prowess and vicious abandon, the Reaper of Sylvania was known also for his unpredictability and rabid loyalty for his province and the von Carstein bloodline. When all other vampires had fled, driven away by the encroaching horde of Chaos worshippers, Alberacht had stayed. In an act of apparent insanity he had slaughtered the entirety of Sylvania's nobility and opened the gates of Drakenhof Castle to the peasants and common folk of the province. He had even openly defied and challenged Neferata herself, the progenitor of the Lahmian bloodline knowing better than to  dare the lunatic mind of the Reaper of Sylvania.

Now that very same peasentry and common folk stood on the ramparts hurling sling, arrow and musket shot at the Chaos horde, determined to defend their families to the bitter end. The ancient vampire smiled to himself. Finally, the valor and unyielding nature Sylvania had been famed for in his day had emerged anew. If the current nobility was incapable of it, the common folk were more than capable.

With a mental effort he plucked at the strands of Shysh from the aethyr and channeled the Wind of Death into the Corpse Geometries, raising the freshly fallen northmen to add their strength to his dead nobility. Barbarians howled in rage as they were forced to fight against their own warriors, now nothing more than thralls to the Reaper of Sylvania's will.

Sending the maintenance of the Corpse Geometries to his subconscious mind, Alberacht plummeted to his chosen target. A horn-helmed giant of a man, his long beard braided with charms and fetishes, a Jarl or chieftain by his posture, pointed and ordered his three equally large bodyguards to the Reaper.  

Alberacht smashed into the first bodyguard like a falcon, his foot caving in the fool's breastplate like tin. The other two came howling, their axes whirling in their hands. They were obviously veterans, worthy warriors in their own right, but to Alberacht they looked as slow and weak as children. His Kriegsmesser licked out like a viper's tongue beheading one only to slice to the ax haft and throat of the second. He flourished the heavy weapon with the speed and grace a veteran duelist would flourish a rapier, muscles  the size of boulders and cultivated over a thousand battlefields, making the weapon feel as light as a feather in his hand. Throughout the encounter his face never lost it's regal stoicism and practiced indifference.

The bearded northman stood before him and with a challenging roar he charged the gigantic Varghulf. As big as the chieftain was, he barely reached Alberacht's lower chest and was just shy of being half as wide as the shoulders as the vampire was.  

The mask fell instantly and Alberacht's regal poise and noble features twisted into a berserk grimace and twisted grin, fangs the size of dirks splaying to form a horrific death's head smile. Vampires naturally tried to hide the beast from the features but Alberacht had become too much of a Varghulf and waltzed with the beast far too often to be bothered by such masquerading anymore. A good and brave opponent always made him smile and he saw no reason to deny himself that.

Enormous biceps powered his thick wristed hand into the chieftain's banded iron shield. Iron hard fingers tipped with long talons pierced through the ill-forged metal and, with a short tug, the leather straps of the shield split apart and the northman lost his shallow defense. Laughing wildly, Alberacht brought his Kriegsmesser in a blurring arc and chopped through the blade of the northman's ax. His weapon broken and shieldless, the northman could only scream as the Reaper's mouth opened and caught his throat.

Alberacht drank deeply of the northman's blood while shaking the warrior with the ease and viciousness that a hunting hound would shake a rabbit. Another cry shook him out of his blood induced reverie and he dropped into a crouch, dodging a shrieking ax while, in the same fluid motion, slicing the feet from the disease bloated champion of Nurgle that had wielded said ax. Without wasting another moment he brought his heavy boot down upon the screaming barbarian and ended his struggles.

His armor groaned with strain as Alberacht's frame grew and already massive muscles swelled even more. His features grew more lupine, his fang filled maw slowly extending until it started to resemble a wolf's muzzle. The ecstasy-inducing change made Alberacht howl to the sky as he appreciated the sublime beauty of battle. His Varghulf nature came out more and more, what paltry mask of humanity had been left in the ancient vampire becoming more superficial by the second.

The beastly vampire charged the mass of chaos warriors again, froth spewing from his mouth, bellicose laughter thundering from his chest. He bulled through a shield wall, his talons and blade turning all around him to ruin. Northmen and Kurgan died clasping ravaged throats or trying to hold spewing guts from their bellies. Mutated ogres of the Wastes howled their last as their heads and bodies crumpled around the Reaper's strikes. Chosen champions of the Chaos Gods, both those whose names had just begun to rise in their masters eyes and veterans bloated with the gifts of their unholy lords died as chattel to the slaughter house.  

Alberacht tossed and pivoted, jumped and charged, his style changing from step to step. He struck out with the precise strokes of the Nippon samurai, charged with the stoicism and unbreakable poise of the Zhufbaraki dwarfs and pounced with the sheer bloodlust that would have made the savage Ulfwerenar quiver in their pelts. Sanity and insanity warred for the dominion of his mind and the vampire enjoyed the clash, the constant tug-of-war.

With a mental strain, Alberacht beat the beast back into submission. Not yet, first he had to find worthy prey. Then he would fully rampage.

His taloned hand shot out, shattering a wooden shield and grabbed the northman behind it by his bone braided beard. With a swift tug, he lifted the howling barbarian of his feet and pulled him in, while simultaneously smashing his forehead forwards. The barbarian fell back, his head split like a rotten egg.

  A horned giant, thirty foot tall, moaned idiotically as it made to grab for the vampire. Alberacht sliced it's fingers off with indifference and the giant's jaw soon followed suit as the Reaper swept pass it, his wings unfurled, and eyed a proper source of information.

Targeting another chieftain, clad in black iron plate, Alberacht surged forward. His two housecarls died within moments, yelling as the Reaper's sword sliced them to ribbons and the chieftain could only howl as the vampire's taloned hand engulfed his head. With resounding cracks, his great wings unfurled and Alberacht took once more to the sky, his prey struggling futily in his massive fist.

The creature brought the struggling northman close to his face. Eyes that up to that point had belonged to a veteran regarded the vampire with the fear of a child even as his gauntleted fists scratched futily at Alberacht gravestone colored flesh. With a cry of despair, the chieftain slashed at Alberacht with his hand ax only to drop it in utter shock as it barely scored the stone hard muscles of the Reaper's forearm.

Alberacht sighed. It was only common courtesy for a defeated warrior to stop their useless struggles, but it would have been too much to expect from the base barbarians of the far North. His muscles flexed as he slowly, methodically began crushing the warlord's skull. A single word, more growled than spoken, escaped the vampire's lips.

"Where is your strongest?"

The chieftain stammered and yelled but offered no answer. His famed temper already running on embers, Alberacht dug his talons deeper into the man's  face and asked again.

"Where... is... your strongest?" he asked, punctuating every word with a bone shattering squeeze.

The warrior raised his shaking arm to a spot roughly six hundred feet from where they hovered in the air, in the middle of the main fighting force of the northmen. A round no-man's land where no northman dared to pass stood out, the air around it seeming to shimmer and twist.

With the chieftain being of no more interest or use, Alberacht shattered his skull with a lazy squeeze of his massive fist and let the body fall into the mass of Chaos worshipers. Grasping at the wind of Ulgu, the Shadow Wind, Alberacht looked again at the spot, this time seeing through the magical glamour that had rendered the spot all but invisible to the naked eye. He could see three shapes, magic coalescing around them, and a fourth one, a creature so enshrouded and bloated with power that it dwarfed the three put together. Like  the whisper of the wind, the name came to him, born upon the winds of the aethyr.

"Kholek Suneater"

Alberacht's face split into a wolfish grin so complete, it would have been excusable for any that gazed upon him to mistake him with the avatar of Ulric, the wolf-god himself.

With a massive beat of his wings, Alberacht plummeted like a hunting falcon into the no-man's land. A thousand years of battle had made his flesh as tough as gravestone and his bones as strong as iron, and as such his impact with the unfortunate souls that stood before the illusionary wall came with the force that would have equaled even one of the famed Empire great cannons.  

Laughing and frothing at the mouth, all pretense of civility and nobility forgotten, Alberacht Nictus became a whirlwind of destruction as he advanced upon the aethyric wall. His Kriegsmesser licked out to behead and disembowel even as his talons tore heads from necks and shattered spines and chests. In but a few heartbeats, almost a dozen northmen had become mewling, broken flesh upon the ground.  

The Reaper pivoted a final time, his hand grasping at the wind of Ulgu and wielding it like a thing of shape and form, forming upon his clenched fist like a ball of darkness. He smashed the spell into the aethyric wall, breaking both the illusion and the shield with such force that the backlash tore at the mind of one of the three sorcerers maintaining it, shattering his skull to nothing more than shards of bone and brain matter.

The other two reeled back, the first, a Kurgan witch-doctor, her face a mass of piercings and tribal tattoos and the second, a hunchbacked and horribly mutated Norscan war-shaman, his ten eyes rolling with confusion.

Even before the shaman could think of a spell to launch at the monstrous apparition before them, Alberacht covered the space between them in the blink of an eye and his blade fell, splitting the man from crest to groin in a single perfect stroke.

The Kurgan woman fared little better, the shadowy creatures that launched from her staff, all mouth and fangs, striking nothing than air as Alberacht evaded each one with a the speed and fluidity of a dire wolf, something that should have not been possible for one with a body so massive. Her spell-shrieking turned into a dying gurgle, her throat torn cleanly out by the vampire's fangs. He pivoted once more and beheaded the falling corpse, stopping perfectly to face the creature Alberacht had chosen as his prey.

A five ton monstrosity, it's mammoth body a gruesome amalgam between the lower quarters of a dragon and the upper body of a humanoid, the Dragon Ogre Shaggoth whose name had been whispered in fear since the dawn of time, Kholek Suneater gazed at the vampire with open disdain.

Second only to Krakanrok the Black, Sire of the Dragon Ogres, Kholek Suneater, the Mountain Lord was one of the oldest and most feared creatures that had ever walked the world. The skull-rune of Khorne, the Blood God, emblazoned his chest marking him as one of the Mad God's favored scions.  

A bone rattling bellow was the only challenge Kholek offered and the monster hefted it's great hammer, the earth underneath it cracking and sizzling with discharged lightning as it charged Alberacht.  

Grinning wildly, Alberacht took to the skies, his bestial mind, possessed by animal cunning, making choices instinctively rather than rationally. Shaggoth or no, all the dragon ogres had the same strategy. They hurled the lightning that empowered them through the earth before trampling their enemies to the ground. How of little use it was against an enemy that could fly.

Plummeting once more, Alberacht launched a blizzard of blows with his Kriegsmesser against the monster. It retaliated with it's own human sized hammer, sparks flying where the weapons met as the two monsters became a blur of motion and the sound of steel, their bodies moving impossibly fast for creatures of such size.

The monster strength and size of Kholek clashed with the raw brutality of Alberacht and they found one another evenly matched.

The part of Alberacht's mind that could still reason appreciated the challenge Kholek was offering him. For all his twelve feet of height, he barely reached the middle of Kholek's prodigious belly. A lesser vampire would have been dominated immediately but for Alberacht it was nothing more than a larger mass of flesh to cut and rip.

Kholek trampled the ground even as he swung, arcs of lightning coursing through the ground and his hammer, flowing through Alberacht's muscle swollen body. The vampire bit through the pain and used it only to fuel his growing anger, his body growing ever larger and more lupine with every surge of agonizing electricity.

Slowly Kholek was pushed back, as the strikes he had to defend against grew faster and harder, the blade thrusting under or over his guard to scrape against his flesh or glance against his armor. The mammoth creature roared it's disbelief and, in a surge of bestial fury that rivaled Alberacht's, charged forward. His shoulder was split open by a taloned hand but Kholek surged onward and plunged the haft of his great hammer into the vampire chest.  

Archaic armor crumpled and flesh was crushed but the Reaper of Sylvania stood unbowed. A massive fist connected with the side of Kholek's face, shattering the oversized helmet it wore and sending shards of black iron deep into the meat and bone of the Dragon Ogre's face.

Howling, Kholek spun, bringing it's scaly tail about to hamstring the vampire. Alberacht jumped while simultaneously launching with his greatsword and talons for the Dragon Ogre's back. Iron armor split under the strength of the attack and warm draconic blood spilled. But the bulk of the creature was enough to sustain the damage it had been dealt and Kholek ended it's spin with an overhead swipe of his hammer.

It connected with Alberacht's side in a explosion of blunt force and lightning that would have crumpled a giant's bones. But Alberacht was one of the oldest vampires, whose only profession over the past millennia had been warfare. He pivoted with the force of the blow and took the hit, spinning in a mimic of Kholek's own attack and slicing a deep gash into the dragon ogre's chest.

The Dragon Ogre reeled from the force of the blow and Alberacht, grinning maniacally, grabbed the haft of his Kriegsmesser with both hands and the heavy blade bit deep into Kholek's thick bally plate, striking into the muscled flesh beneath.

A howling roar split the heavens as Kholek, blazing lightning shrouding his form, cried out and brought it's hammer to bear. The front of Alberacht's armor broke into shrapnel that tore into his flesh and his neck gorget shattered into metallic splinters. Even as the vampire was lifted off his feet, his bloodshot eye caught the glint of his locket as it snapped from the thin chain around his neck and opened to reveal the two thumb sized paintings hidden within it.

The beast whinnied and slunk back as time seemed to slow around Alberacht and the pain of flesh dissipated only to make way for the pain of the heart.

The image of the ebony haired, pale beauty of the right painting reminded him of his beloved wife of so long ago. The Nipponian princess, Etsuko, he had fought for in the grand Kumite in Nippon. He had defeated all opponents and won the right to ask for her hand in marriage. He remembered how he had loved her and how she had loved him. They had been two opposites, she, a petite saint of incredible kindness and possessed of a heart so warm it could melt the ice of Kislev and he, a bear sized man, rugged and unbending, a general of Empire armies  famed and respected at the tender age of twenty.

He recalled her grief when they had realized that she could bear him no children. He remembered his rage as he had beheaded the Sylvanian advisers and nobles that had dared imply that he should find another wife or concubine that could bear him children.

He had killed them all for daring to assume that he would ever betray the love of his world. Even now, one thousand years later, Etsuko long passed on, he had never betrayed her.

As much as the first image filled his mind with memories and his black heart with love, the second did just as much. A scarlet haired child graced the second painting, the artist having gone so far as to paint the missing tooth the five year old child had had when she had posed for the portrait.

Little Mishka.

The red headed angel had appeared upon the doorstep of Drakenhof Castle like a gift from the gods. Orphaned, crying and swaddled in grey blankets, the baby had been abandoned by her mother in the Castle's Servant Quarters when only a few months old. Etsuko and Alberacht had taken to the child immediately and raised her as their own. Alberacht had even named her as Mishka Nictus, a name of his Kislevite heritage and his own family line. Any who had dared refer to the girl as a bastard child had faced the bulwark of Alberacht's overprotective anger.

How he had loved those two. How they had been the light of his life. His wife and daughter.

How he had raged as he had returned from the war campaign only to find his beloved girls dead, killed at the hands of Chaos worshipers. How he had cursed the Chaos Gods and harried their cultists. How he had tortured those few he had captured alive, his mind slowly  falling to madness with each passing day. How he had howled with joy when he had been turned unto the path of eternity by Vlad von Carstein. How he had pledged his eternal loyalty when Vlad had given him the means and the eternal life to forever slake his thirst against those that followed Chaos Gods.

  Rage and grief as fresh as the day he had found his beloved wife and daughter cold and dead filled him and remorse faded to make way for the beast that returned howling and claimed once again dominion over his mind. Feral instinct and cultured hatred grabbed hold of his heart and the world snapped back into reality.

Kholek thundered towards him in a rabid charge even as Alberacht still flew, propelled by the impact of the Dragon Ogre's hammer. The Reaper of Sylvania threw out a hand and loped the locket around his massive wrist. He twisted in on himself, his wings closed flatly against his back and landed on his feet.

The Kriegsmesser still stuck in the monster's gut, Kholek charged into Alberacht's shoulders, with the sound of a cannon ball slamming against a fortress wall. Alberacht moved not an inch, his clawed feet digging into the cold stone for purchase as inertia and the immovable object the vampire had become forced the greatsword to it's hilt into the monster's gut, coming out his back in a spray of gore.  

With and audible snap, the vampire's shoulder disconnected.

Kholek's pain shriek was cut short by Alberacht's fist, as iron hard knuckles crumpled it's overgrown face into mush, cartilage and bone breaking along with dagger sized tusks. Using the momentum of his counter, Alberacht looped his arm around the Shaggoth's neck and, muscles bulging like slabs of steel and veins standing out like ropes, in a supreme show of force lifted the five ton creature of it's draconic feet and crushed it to the ground in a spray of stone and dust.

Muscles bulged once more and his shoulder audibly popped back into it's socket as Alberacht tilted his head and grabbed the haft of the Shaggoth's hammer. He lifted the massive weapon over his head and grinned evilly.

"Your Gods are weak" he rasped.

Pain turned to hatred in the Dragon Ogre's beady eyes and the prone creature howled to the skies in a final act of defiance. The Chaos Gods answered the plea in the form of a shard of jade lightning that struck Alberacht with a thunderclap.

His teeth bared, his flesh charred and his muscles twitching, Alberacht opened his mouth and laughed.

"GAHAHAHA, SO VERY WEAK" and he struck down with the hammer.

The hammer connected with the screaming Dragon Ogre's skull, shattering it to grime and gristle, ending the legacy of one of the most feared and primal creatures of the world, in one fell swoop.

The heavy weapon slowly slid from his hands and Alberacht slowly began falling on his back.

"Etsuko, Mishka, I am coming home... my sweet ones".

But even as he fell, Alberacht knew it would not be so. The Chaos Gods did not accept to be cheated of their victories and like a sheath of skin over a gangrenous wound, the faint outline of an entity so horrific it could not be described, faded in and out of the sky.

An infinite number of mouths smiled hatefully and whispered the thousand names of the Grand Architect, Tzeentch.

Final rest would not be allowed to the warrior who had seen fit to end one of Chaos's favored sons.  

The world opened up like a maw beneath him. A thousand times a thousand worlds lay in wait, their gates opened wide, in a thousand times a thousand possibilities and realities as the wheel of destiny made it's turns.

Albericht howled as he fell through.

Applebloom ran through the Everfree forest, her small hands cut by thorns, her tiny feet struggling to give her as much speed as possible

How could she have been so stupid.

Of any day or night she could have chosen to enter the Everfree Forest, she had made the mistake of entering it on the Moonless Night.

Old things. Malevolent things.  

Things older than Celestia, Luna and even Equestria herself lay in the Everfree Forest and it was upon such nights that they emerged, hungry and unforgiving.

Apllebloom's scarlet hair flailed around her terrified eyes, as the trees screamed behind her.

"Stupid, stupid girl" she yelled to herself, every step sending white hot knives of pain through her exhausted muscles, every gasp of breath like boiling steam in her tired lungs, her yellow pelt of fur and clothes slick and heavy with cold sweat. She would die here, she knew it, and the last thing her family would remember her by would be her stupid little sister's quarrel she had had with Applejack. Instead of a fond farewell, a heart warming "Thank now", all they would remember would be Applebloom yelling "Stop tryin' ta act like mother, yah'll never be her", and the sight of her back as she had ran away from home.

Even as she ran, another apparition sauntered at the very edge of her sight, coalescing as if from the very shadows of the Forest themselves. It's glowing white form was such a contrast with the dark gloom of the woods, it's white flowing mane so alight it would have made stars weep tears of jealousy, it's face so motherly and beautiful it would have made Celestia herself seem blanched and haggard, it's slender form shrouded in a dress so thin it looked more like mist quilted into shape.

Applebloom darted to her right, her frame racked with crying hiccups, her eyes screwed shut, refusing to look at the change she knew was coming. She did not want to have to see again the angelic mare's ivory hair fall into clumps and harden, her beautiful face shrivel and rot into a leering skull, eye-holes blazing with corpse-light and shimmering dress rip apart to reveal a hideous and malformed bony construct with far too many skeletal limbs to be natural.

She could not however, blot out the sound of it's shrieks as it joined the other apparitions hounding her, howling a call somewhere between a cackling, sepulchral laugh and the hunger growls of starving wolves. All she could do was run, knowing more and more that with every step the apparitions were gaining on her, eager to feast and devour, to rend and tear, to rip the very life out of her.

A scream of utter pain escaped her mouth as one of the apparitions pounced, barely missing the back of her head, only for it's fleshless teeth to rip a deep wound into her thigh. Flesh ripped and bone fractured under the abomination's bite, shock and pain making the little filly crash to the moss covered ground of the Forest, momentum rolling her from the monstrosities grasping, skeletal hands into a deep ravine. She rolled down the large hillock, her tiny frame bruising heavily as it impacted wayward branches and boulders and landed in a heap, colliding with a large dark-red mound that stank of old blood and rang with the sound of metal against her body.

Applebloom reluctantly opened an eye, the other swollen shut, and looked towards the top of the hillock, where the apparition had begun descending it with deliberate slowness, the first among them, it's leering skull glistening with the filly's blood. This was it, then? A slow rasping cry burgeoned into Applebloom's throat as the creatures closed in further and further.

Alberacht Nictus lay in the same spot he had lay for the past three days now, at the very bottom of a ravine. His wounds had already healed, his unnatural constitution refusing to allow him to die, even though he had been sent into the skies of this world by the spiteful Chaos Gods instead of being allowed to die and finally meet his wife and daughter again, in the afterlife. He had fallen through the sky and plummeted to the embrace of this world unforgiving ground.

Tzeentch had opened the gates of eternity underneath him and had sentenced Alberacht Nictus to the continuation of his unending life in another world, another time, another existence.

He had roared his hatred for Chaos for the first few hours, his broken flesh and bones slowly re knitting. He had cursed the Chaos Gods in a dozen different languages and had alternated between the cultured spoken word of the most read tongue to the intelligible howls and growls of a base beast. But he had not moved.

Even now, three days later, he simply lay there, remembering only the days he had spent as a family, Etsuko and Mishka ever by his side. In the distance he could hear the shrieks and howls of creatures he recognized as "Moroi". He had spent enough of his "unlife" amongst the denizens of death to know of such hungering entities, the dammed souls of the spiteful that clung to their withered husks, becoming disgusting physical manifestations of hatred and spite, driven only by the desire to see the life snuffed out of those that had the temerity to live while they had died. He could even hear the shouts and gasping breath of their prey. By sound and pitch it was a little girl. It had no chance. "Moroi" fed on fear as much as on flesh and the only reason it was still alive now was because they enjoyed the hunt.

The Varghulf side of him whispered of the hunt. It whispered of the blood it would entail and enticed him to claim that prey as it's own. But he still did not move. Nor would he have even if he were on the verge of starvation. Over the thousand years he had been a vampire, he had slaughtered and butchered untold thousand upon thousands, but never a child. No, never a child.

As such, Alberacht merely stood there, hoping that at the very least the child would die quickly and with relatively little pain. The sounds drew closer and closer until, with a shriek of pain and the sound of tumbling down, the child had fallen into the same ravine where he now lay. With a small crump to his side he realized that the girl had collided with his own body. His eyes slowly turned to gaze at the child. In the confines of his mind he could hear the last remnants of his forgotten humanity screaming for him to rise and save the girl, but his black heart was dead and it had been dead for a thousand years. He could feel no pity or sadness, all he could offer her was a witness for her final moments.

His eyes widened as he found himself gazing at a child that must have been no more than five, her small body draped in torn and scratched clothes, her tiny head, crowned in a mane of... scarlet... hair.

"... Mishka... "

Applebloom tried to back away from the encroaching creatures, her wounded thigh gushing with blood, her battered and bruised body thrumming with pain, but the unyielding mound behind her brokered no passage. Corpse-lights blazed from empty eye sockets as the "Moroi" made ready to feast and she wanted to cover her eyes, shock and fear making her unable to do even that. With a rasping parody of an intake of breath the first of the "Moroi" pounced, three skeletal hands aimed at her face, it's fleshless jaws opened for the bounty of flesh it was to receive.

The mound behind her suddenly shifted and a massive clawed hand shot out engulfing the "Moroi's" head and snapping it to powder and bony chunks.

With the speed and alacrity of quicksilver, the dark-red shape that had been the mound pounced from behind the little filly in a blurring maelstrom of bludgeoning fists, ripping talons and bared teeth. An ululating howl accompanied the gigantic beast, like the bellow of a hundred angered bulls. The creature was massive, the "Moroi's" buckling forms barely reaching his midsection, and he  shot out and charged into them, sending ancient stone hardened bone and rotting flesh hurtling onto the ground with reckless, brutal strikes, all the while howling in hatred.

"NOT MY MISHKA"

Within moments the pack of twelve "Moroi" had been reduced to broken heaps and bone dust in the wind and the creature turned to the shivering form of Applebloom. It moved faster than the eye could follow and it's all encompassing hands engulfed the little filly's shoulders and back. A face, the color and texture of dark gravestone glared at her with white iris-less eyes and a grin filled with dagger fangs.

Slowly the grin faded and eyes became downcast.

"Not... my... Mishka..."

The hands let go and the creature rose only to set itself leaning against a tree.

Applebloom lay on the cold ground, to terrified to speak or move, as moments stretched into minutes, her battered body aching and her thigh still bleeding profusely from it's wound. Summoning up the last remnants of her courage, she slowly crawled to the unmoving form of her horrifying savior and said in a small, quivering voice.

"P..Please mister... ah need... ah need to get home".

Alberacht Nictus

Applebloom

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