The queen's claw swept out, annihilating the gnat that pestered her.

But the gnat was a thing of drifting shadow and settling ash. She shattered one body, and it grew another, appearing from out of the city's rubble. It shot forward and flickered past her blinded right side, delivering a quick, stinging blow-

With no more effect than an ant's bite.

Her tail came ripping round, laying low the buildings and smashing the offending gnat to dust.

Once more, another body arose.

"Poor confused thing. You really don't understand your place in the world, do you?"

The gnat had a buzzing, annoying voice.

"You really have no talent at all. Just the trash that climbed highest, over a mountain of other trash..."

She had risen up over a mountain of bodies. She had forgotten everything but killing, cutting, scraping with her nails for the barest thread of existence, and that desperation had become strength.

Once more she reached out to crush the gnat. This time it exploded in her hand, splitting into dozens of serpentine wisps of ash that swirled around her, speaking in many voices.

"Trash."

The word echoed.

"Do you really think you're a match for my disciple? Ha!"

Her claws clutched at him. Her wings bent the air until it tore at his being. Still the gnat persisted.

"My disciple..."

A whirlwind of blows lashed out, tearing the city apart as she chased the scraps of ash through the air. Her massive, heavy legs sent waves through the wager as she waded into the depths of the lake, pursuing the final fleeing portion of the gnat.

"My disciple was able to recreate my Black Hegemon Palm from seeing it performed once! Now that's talent- that's a shining talent you don't qualify to even look at! When you've whelped as many worthless sons as I have, you'll understand that a good student is heaven’s blessing! Fuck the System's promises- I, Li Blackleaf, will live as long as my legacy does!"

She slammed her fist shut like a vise around the smoke-serpent, crushing it to gray dust.

Was that finally the last of him?

Had she silenced that irritating, nasally voice?

"He's right, you know..."

She looked down.

Standing atop the waters was an old man in saffron colored robes, carrying a simple wooden staff.

"Take it from us old creatures, who've paid the price for wisdom..."

He swept the staff out to point at her.

"Run while you can."

Run?

Run?

She was a creature of scars and nightmarish memories, who had spent her life forever at the edge of death; she had never run. She had let the fires wash over her and temper her soul.

To run would be to admit weakness.

To say all those experiences hadn't made her strong, hadn't been worth something, had simply been stupid and senseless pain.

She screamed defiance and lunged to crush this second pest.

---

For a hundred feet surrounding Winterhome's Totem, everyone was dead. Young and old. Male or female. Whether they'd fought or cried out...

They had died.

Flies gathered on the corpses.

The dhampir stepped over the bodies, polished boots thudding on the blood-soaked ground. Their leader lifted his hand and pressed it to Totem, leaving a streak of red behind each fingertip. A beacon of light shot from the Totem up into the sky…

CITIZENS OF WINTERHOME

YOUR DOMINION IS CONTESTED

IN ONE HOUR, UNLESS THE INVADING PRESENCE IS KILLED OR DRIVEN AWAY FROM THE TOTEM, THE SETTLEMENT WILL BE DISSOLVED.

And the dhampir waited.

The leader was a tall man, with bitterly cold features and a thin smile. Luxurious black hair hung from his head in braids fastened together by red clay. He wielded a whip between his gloved hands.

To his left-side was a broad, bald dhampir, his arms studded with crude metal spikes bristling out like shrapnel. The left-hand servant’s mouth had been replaced with steel jaws like a bear trap; to his right was a woman with a starved-gaunt face, her teeth a mangle of mismatched bone. She carried a long staff tipped by crescent blades meant for tripping and cutting.

Only three against a city…

But who were they?

Sons and daughters of an ancient force. Inheritors of millennia-long legacies, students of sacred teachers. If their own skill did not suffice, then they could wield their knowledge and their riches; they carried protective trinkets and killing tools gifted to them by their elders. Treasures these backwater Natives couldn’t hope to match.

So they stood and waited, openly challenging the city.

Rise up…

And die at our feet.

---

The third and final assassin leapt from the rooftops, moving like a shadow. Her mission was the most vital; her prey was the most fearsome. In this she was blessed, serving as the favored hand of their patriarch.

She reached the edge of the city and descended into the dark water of the lake.

There he was.

The leader of Winterhome had chosen the wrong time to evolve; wrapped in the cocoon of amber energy, he was as helpless as a child in the crib.

She would take his sleeping life and his dream of power would continue forever.

She sank towards the lake’s bottom, and then…

Motion. A huge portion of the mud rose up, shaking off the dirt of the lakebed. A massive wyrm, with a centipede’s terrible jaws and a dragon’s scaly muzzle. Antennas reached out from its slimy face.

But the dhampir only smirked.

Circlets of blade-edged bone appeared in her hands. She flicked a razor-sharp chakram at the beast’s master, carving a swathe of bubbling froth through the dark water.

The beast’s tail intervened, sweeping the chakram aside- but a deep cut was left behind, piercing into its sluggy flesh. It roared and advanced, kicking through the water with a force that turned its wide, clumsy body into a forward missile, racing towards her with open jaws lined by terrible hook-turned teeth.

She darted aside, coiling through the water in a long spiral like a dancer. Her chakrams were curled into her hands, the wrapped side pressed to her palm with the blades over her knuckles. She cut out, slashing deep gashes into the beast’s back, dragging out trails of mud-black blood.

Its trajectory shifted, coiling into itself. Its tail exploded out in a circling flick.

It caught the dhampir and sent her sailing back.

She hit the lakebed and bounced up, weightless, turning the graceless landing into a summersault and sending two more chakrams racing out.

The beast slithered between them, agile like a dancer in the embrace of the waters. It came for her again, a darting kick that stirred the mud of the lake-bottom sending its jaws flying for her throat once more.

Pressure.

Relentless pressure.

She was winning, but it was a win scraped out with small, cumulative strikes. The beast only had to get ahold of her once…

She kicked up, over the blow, tilting in the air. The beast spun in the water, chasing, jaws cutting trails of white froth in the waters as it raced for her relentlessly; a breath swelled in its throat, and it unleashed a frozen wave of energy.

She was caught. The strength in her limbs was locked down, her aura restricting until she could barely feed any strength to her motion. In that moment-

The dhampir was a sitting duck.

Her robe tore open. From her back, unfolding, a golden skeleton emerged from a tattoo. It was an angelic thing with a halo of bone above its masked face. It connected to her limbs by silver strings, a marionette in reverse, hovering above her…

Her hand slammed down. The marionette’s skeletal hand mirrored the movement, striking the wyrm aside.

Before it could recover from that first, stunning blow, she reached out; the marionette grabbed the wyrm by the tail and flung it down against the muddy earth. Her hands reached up, the puppet following suit to lift the halo from its skull.

It was a single, massive chakram.

The blade tore through the waters in a streak of silver. It knocked the wyrm flying, biting through the beast’s tough flesh and tearing a deep gash in its flank.

Without hesitation the dhampir turned and rushed for the cocoon. This fight wasn’t her goal; the beast’s master was.

The wyrm could only roar in anger.

But as she closed the distance, lifting her weapon high in both hands to crush down against the cocoon-

A second layer emerged. A slimy blue wave washed over the sleeping figure, surrounding it with gooey flesh. Her blade slammed down into something as hard as iron- biting against thread after thread of metallic fiber spun through the slime’s inner body, each layer ablating the force of the blow.

“No!” A childish voice declared. “Redjaw, get her! Get get!”

She felt a wave of pressure move through the water as the beast lunged for her from behind.

And before she could pivot-

The wyrm’s jaws had snapped shut around her right arm. It twisted, thrashing left and right, a scream escaping her mouth as the bones in her limb bent backwards and twisted against the straining sinew, snapping the arm from its joint. As the beast began to spin in a circles, rolling its weight over and over and over-

Until her arm was ripped into shreds.

Bubbles flooding from her lips, she spun and backhanded it with her remaining arm, the skeletal puppet following suit. The beast was sent flying.

But it was her blood that filled the waters.

---

Lou’s eyes flickered, but it was the thin, repetitive motion of uneasy dreams.

He didn’t see the hand emerging from the lake. The dhampir he’d ‘defeated’ pulled itself back up, an evil sneer on the creature's face as it regarded his crumpled body. A thin silver blade snapped out on a spring trigger from within the back of its palm, fitting over its middle finger.

It drew back to finish the job.

Mist swirled through the air…

The dhampir hesitated. It didn’t know why, only that it did.

As if its limbs weren’t its own.

Stop.

A ghostly voice whispered.

The assassin bit down against its tongue, using pain to try and break free of the illusion, but the whispers were already in his mind. The fog surrounded him with a gray and hallucinatory landscape.

For a long moment the dhampir stood frozen, before suddenly shaking its head, snapping ‘free’ of the illusion.

It reached down to examine the boy’s treasures.

Why not? See what you’ve earned; you never know what lovely things you might find.

The voices were so soothing, so lullaby-perfect, the dhampir didn’t even notice them anymore. It only listened and obeyed.

It pulled the bag open to find two paper talismans.

But no…

No, its eyes blurred, and it saw two pills. Golden-colored and fragrant. It lifted them up in its slim fingers.

Eat them. Aren’t they delicious? Don’t you deserve them? Your master would take them, if you told him, but he doesn’t need to know…

Standing over its defeated foe, the dhampir assassin pulled the two talismans out and crammed them down into its own mouth, pushing the paper pasted wretched, twisted teeth.

Good.

Now die.

There was a short, sharp flare of explosion, and the dhampir’s head burst apart in a splatter of gore around a golden core of flame.

Lou’s eyes jolted open. In the moment before he slipped back into unconsciousness, he saw a silver-skinned deer standing over him, and behind her…

Coming out from the depths of the forest…

He saw an army of beasts.