The Vampire & Her Witch

"Merciful Lords and Ladies, what, what are those?" A startled shopkeeper said, pointing at the group of strange, misshapen men who followed after the Golden Eyed Black Wolf Brigade.

"They’re Clanless," a swordsmith from the Clan of Painted Masks said as he suppressed his urge to draw back in revulsion from the group of men and women who strode into the city with their heads held higher than they’d ever been and their backs as straight as they could make them.

Tausau, the vampire at the head of the Mongrel Horde, allowed a predatory aura of menace to seep from his burly body as his eyes swept the crowd, savoring the taste of revulsion and fear in the air. For too long, he’d allowed the judgment of outsiders to wear him and his mongrel progeny down, but since Nyrielle granted him a rebirth, reigniting the passions buried deep in his heart, he’d come to relish in the way his twisted appearance discomforted the more ’proper’ people in the Eldritch world.

Who among them had the strength to endure a twisted birth and a cursed life? Who among them had worked half as hard as the least among his progeny, simply to survive another day? Rather than accepting the judgment of the common folk, he looked down on them as people too weak to survive what he and his progeny had endured. Now, with the opportunity his grand-niece had presented them, they would teach the world to shudder in fear not at the appearance of the Mongrel Horde, but at their strength!

"They’re not just Clanless," a grizzled gladiator standing next to the swordsmith said when Tausau’s Mongrel Horde passed by. "They’re vampires. Thirty, thirty-one if you include the leader... How are there nearly three dozen Clanless Vampires, all in one place?"

"Atrice," the swordsmith said in very hushed tones. "Are Clanless Vampires as strong as other vampires? Or are they as weak as the Clanless?"

"I don’t know," the gladiator whispered. "But from where I stand, I wouldn’t want to fight them. At the very least, I’m not confident that I could win without suffering injuries that would end my career in the arena."

Around him, several people nodded. No one wanted to fight a vampire if they could avoid it. They weren’t considered the ultimate predators for nothing. Perhaps the ill-fated Glimmerwing clan might once have enjoyed an equally fierce reputation, but their complete and utter destruction at the hands of Vampires had cemented the latter’s place in most people’s minds as the most deadly of all Eldritch beings.

The people breathed more easily after Tausau’s Mongrel Horde passed, followed closely by dozens of men and women wearing dark silk robes, covered by ancient glyphs and symbols used by some of the oldest traditions of sorcery in Eldritch lands. The people seemed to come from more than a dozen different clans, but all of them carried an air of mystery that drew the attention of countless commoners.

"Nana," a young boy said, tugging on his grandmother’s dress while his eyes strained to capture every detail of the robed men. "How do they make the writing on their robes glow? I want words on my tunic that glow, can you, can you sew words like that Nana?"

"You see them as glowing?" the stoop-shouldered tailor said, looking at her grandson in surprise. "Don’t you lie to me about this boy," she said, her voice unexpectedly sharp. "If you see something on the robes of sorcerers..."

"I see it, I see it, I swear!" the boy insisted. "They shine in blue and purple and gold," he said, pointing at different robed figures with each color he named. "They’re pretty, really pretty and..."