Prologue

The lightning lights up not just the night sky, but sparks hope into my soul that all is not lost. The rolling roar of the thunder that follows causes the Earth itself to tremble and my heart to shiver along with it. Defeat is most certain and even the glimpse of hope passes nearly as fast as the bolt flashed across the skies not moments ago. The rain brings down streams from between the mountain rocks, not of clean clear water, but of water painted of red and tainted of dead. Those that fought this day lie on the hillsides with their bodies draining of their life force. I can only look at the waste of human life - the waste of ... food.

The humans found our retreat and laid siege to it for nearly forty hours straight. Those that believe in one God, those that believe in a single god of many parts, those that believe in many gods, and those that do not believe in a god, join together with their differences aside to fight a common foe ... us. We cannot say that we did not see the rising rebellion. We cannot say that we deserve this fate. We can only fight back the same forces that we, ourselves, prey upon.

We have the advantage, as it is nightfall and we are creatures of the night with abilities far superior to that of our foe. However, our foe took advantage of our strengths that become our weaknesses during the hours of sunshine. Their numbers, their cunning, and their will to survive brought this battle to point of our extinction. There is little more that we can do but to take flight in retreat, hide ourselves in shame, and learn from this the lesson that greed is of the most powerful of enemies.

An arrow catches me scratching against my heart. As I fall, I expect that this will be my final hours on this Earth and that no more will be the ways ... of a vampyre.