[center][h3][color=000000]Dark Angel[/color][/h3][/center]

Laboured breathing and heavy footsteps sounded through the desolate, twilight streets of Kolandis. Volkimir wandered in the shaded back-alleys, fleeing from the coming dawn. His off hand was pressed tightly onto bleeding the wound in his gut, mostly to ensure that his entrails did not escape from it. It was deep, running completely through him, but nothing vital was injured. This was deliberate, Volkimir was sure, as the man could have easily killed him when back was turned. Volkimir's magic worked at the wound, slowly closing it up, but he had expended too much effort in his duel with the Forefather, and had already lost a great deal of blood.

The vampire eventually found what he had been searching for: a building without east-facing windows. Volkimir kicked in the door to the tenement and scurried in, hiding from the rising sun. Only when he was inside did he realized that he had discovered a charnel house. It seemed that just shy of a dozen of the black-robed cultists had met their end in this room, as their corpses littered the floor. Amidst them was a single corpse that was not of their own. A commoner in a black, leather apron; a blacksmith if Volkimir had to guess. A hefty axe rested in his dead hand, the blade buried in the head of a cultist. That same cultist had its demonic sword thrust through the heart of the blacksmith. The rats and flies had only claimed the corpse of the commoner; none apparently dared to touch the bodies of the robed assailants.

Volkimir was now genuinely curious. He hacked away the robes of the nearest dead cultist with Elbrus, and inspected the corpse. He didn't know what he was expecting; some sort of mutation or other anomaly. What he found was a symbol, seared into the flesh. Obviously runic, Volkimir was sure that he had seen the glyph somewhere before. However, his current state of exhaustion and blood loss left him without the willpower to search the archives of his expansive memory for the answer.

He needed a meal, badly, and there were unfortunately few warm bodies at hand. He would have to make do with what was available to him. Volkimir stripped out of his torn, bloodied clothes. He cast away the breastplate and its underlying maille, both pierced through by Ansus. Damned waste of new armor. Well, new to Volkimir anyway. The fine cloak was also ruined, and Volkimir threw that away. He inspected the wound more closely, and it was about as he thought. He would survive it, but it still pained him greatly and cost him much blood. Volkimir turned what remained of his sangromantic power to the corpses scattered about the room. It was distasteful to be forced to do this, but Volkimir's wish to no longer have a hole in his abdomen outweighed his pride. The flesh melted, liquefying into a slurry of bright, crimson essence. [i]Sanguis Vitae[/i], not a perfect solution, but it would suffice.

The ruby corpse-puree drifted into the air as Volkimir guided it, flowing through like a ribbon of crimson. It poured directly into the vampire's wound, and surged up through his body. Volkimir felt his strength returning to him as he consumed whatever life energies were left in the corpses he had cannibalized. The red flow quickly dried up, and what was once a deep, piercing wound on Volkimir's gut was now raw scar tissue. Not perfect, and Volkimir would still need a proper meal to fully recover, but at least he wasn't dying. He ran a thumb over the taut flesh of the new scar and hoped that the mark would vanish in time. He wasn't keen on having a permanent reminder of that embarrassing incident.

Volkimir threw himself into a nearby chair, which creaked in protest but thankfully did not collapse. Leaning his head on his off-hand, Volkimir's eyes wandered over the leftovers of the cultists that he had just devoured: their robes and weapons. This was what terrified the Forefather? Some lunatics that managed to land weapons from a surely lopsided bargain with a demon somewhere? Volkimir reminded himself that they had managed to essentially conquer the capital of the most powerful nation on the continent. They were at once an unknown enemy, and the enemy within. Insidious forces such as these were the most dangerous to established nation-states. However, this still did not convince Volkimir that they were a particularly credible threat. What did Ansur know that he did not? If legend held true, Ansur fled from Raida in the south in the wake of some great calamity. The man was formidable, this much Volkimir would admit. What could be so terrible that he would rather run than stand and fight? Did they face the same threat even now?

The Dark Prince looked to what his free hand held. Clutched tightly, as it had been since he had escaped from the Forefather, was the cloak that had been thrown over him to shield him from the dawn. Heavy fur, made for a man larger than Volkimir, rough in appearance but not lacking in practical quality. Why had he held onto it for this long? Volkimir questioned his own state of mind after having been burned by the Forefather's false daylight and run through by his sword. He thought back on Ansur's words, half-remembered and distorted by Volkimir's sun-scorched delirium. If there was such a grave threat to this world that Ansur himself feared it, what did that mean for Volkimir? This was the same world that he had fought and died to protect more than two thousand years ago. What had changed? Perhaps new names, new faces, but this was nothing that he was not already used to. If there were truly a threat that commanded his attention as the Midnight Suns had done so ages ago, Volkimir knew that it was upon him to combat it. Admitting this to himself felt like swallowing a hot coal, but there it was, plain as day.

Even so, was this a threat that could be fought? Ansur, who had so soundly trounced Volkimir, seemed to live in fear of it. Volkimir had the creeping suspicion that he was too weak to fight off something like that. A rare and unsettling thought, but once again obvious. Outsmart it, perhaps. Maybe even endure and outlive it, as he had done for many calamities before. However, he would not allow himself to be so complacent. However powerful he was now, it was insufficient. He needed to delve deeper into the forgotten depths and corners of the world. He needed more ancient secrets, even darker sorceries. If Ansus was to be believed, the Gods had returned fallen legends from their graves to combat this menace. Volkimir would have to match their desperation. Nothing could be forbidden at this point; he could not suffice to be the lesser evil.

The time for such preparations would come, but in the meantime, Volkimir had other matters to attend to. He tossed the heavy cloak around his shoulders loosely, and found that he did not dislike the weight of it. It felt like lives other than his own. A pressure he had not known in many years. It made him stand straighter, and put more care into how and when he acted. Volkimir touched the dessicated corpse of the dead blacksmith. Volkimir had spared the fallen commoner the desecration of being cannibalized. Now, however, he had use of him. The dead rose, stumbling onto his feet on rotted, half-eaten limbs. Volkimir gave the zombie a considerable portion of his own power, imbuing it with power well beyond that which a mortal could endure. The walking corpse followed Volkimir's silent, mental commands, leading into his forge in the next room. More corpses laid scattered about, a woman and children apparently mixed in with the cultists. On the vampire's command, the zombie hefted the corpses into the forge and reignited its fires. The coals burned with unearthly, blue light, fueled by the fires of undeath.

Volkimir picked up a smattering of demonic weapons that lay scattered about, and handed them to the undead blacksmith. "[color=black][b]I have a commission for you,[/b][/color]" Volkimir said, more to himself than anyone else, "[color=black][b]See what you can make of these.[/b][/color]"