9
A History of Blood"Now let's see, where to begin… Well I guess the most obvious place to start would be that one time. Before I begin though, I should tell you that I was not alive at the time of these happenings, but I did get the events in question from someone who was alive then, so you can pretty much take my word for it. Alrighty then. A long time ago, at least one hundred years ago by my reckoning, a vampire named Lucifer, who is widely regarded as the originator of their bloodline, and a few other vampires raided an ancient castle just outside of Darkovia forest and stole a princess named Christine from it. It is said that Lucifer had been lusting after the princess ever since she was born, but that he had decided to wait until she was matured before he came for her. All of the inhabitants of the castle, and also the surrounding country, had loved Christine, so they had tried to find Lucifer and kill him, but when they did they were easily beaten back by the vampires around him. After their crushing defeat, most of them gave up, but two of her three brothers, Galstryx and Edward, swore that they would never rest until they had saved their sister.
"Edward was the younger of the two, he was barely fifteen at the time of his sister's capture, but he was widely regarded as the best fighter in the nation. He resolved that the vampires must have a weakness and that he would kill them one by one until they were all dead. He disappeared into the forest and was not seen for a very long time. The oldest brother, Galstryx, was not a warrior, but he was also renowned in his own way. At the age of thirty he was considered to be hundreds of years ahead of his time in science. He decided that the only way to defeat the vampires was to find a way to be better than they were. He hid himself in his room for several years, and in the course of his time there he analyzed all of the properties that made vampires special: their strength, speed, blood-driven regenerative capabilities, how they can make others their own kind, and even their Other form. He soon deduced that the only way he could defeat Lucifer and his demonic race of followers was to find a formula powerful enough to transform him into something more powerful than they were in every way.
"It took him many years to find the formula, but like I said, he was a genius. Eventually he discovered it and he rashly decided to try it on himself. As you can probably imagine, the result was to turn him into a werewolf. You see, we are superior to vampires in every way. We are stronger, faster, we do not need to feed to regenerate, others are made werewolves whether we want them to or not, our first class form comes to us immediately upon reaching a certain amount of power, and we have no weaknesses to the sun, holy water, or crucifixes. Unfortunately, Galstryx forgot to compensate for just how much strain his transformation would place on his mind. He went insane, and in his madness he finished the job Lucifer started and slaughtered every human in his castle and country. That insanity has been our bane for all these years. Most of us lose a fair amount of our intelligence in the first Bloodlust, and even those who don't tend to lost technical skill when fighting. These small faults are what have kept us from defeating the vampires. Their technical skill will always be better than ours will, and they are extremely levelheaded.
"On a side note, a few of us have been able to deny the first Bloodlust, and some of those are still able to deny the feral beast within us when we fight. Those that can are without a doubt our deadliest fighters, and few vampires can stand against them.
"Well, anyway, so in a few minutes, every single human in the castle and surrounding countryside that had been killed by Galstryx was resurrected as a werewolf and followed him into the forest of Darkovia with one mind. That's another way we are superior to vampires. They have to consciously make a human a vampire, and they only bestow that gift on those they think are worthy, but we will make anyone a werewolf. Even if they die in the process, they will come back to life unless their head is severed from their body or their heart is ripped out. While I'm at this I guess I'll tell you a bit of trivia, there was a third brother, but he was about five or six at the time of Galstryx's rampage and no one knows what happened to him. We assume that his head must have been crushed or something, 'cause he is not a werewolf now.
"Man, I'm really getting side-tracked. So, while Galstryx and his army charged towards Lucifer and his nation, Edward returned from trying to fight his way to Lucifer. He had fought for a very long time, with many vampires falling to his blade, and many more knowing and fearing his name, but in the end he was not able to battle his way to Lucifer, so he decided to return to the castle with his extensive knowledge of the Vampire anatomy and weaknesses. He had meant to train others so that he could return later, but when he returned he discovered that everyone he had known was dead. At that moment Edward vowed to kill all evil vampires and werewolves, and to make this come about he changed his name and started a school to train others to kill vampires and werewolves."
"E." Bryce muttered under his breath.
Lupine was oblivious. "Meanwhile, Galstryx had been waging a war against the vampires with his army unlike anything Lore had ever seen. The vampires were woefully unprepared for what lay in store for them. They had been around for countless years before this incident, and they had had no serious challenges to their power for over a century. In the absence of any real war, they had turned to infighting. They had become tired with slowly increasing their power by eating the blood of lesser mortals and had begun a vicious faction war that centered on devouring each other for more strength. They had also forbade any of their kind from recruiting any new members because they had become greedy and paranoid. Their style of advancing was like how ours is now, a duel to the death was required to advance in rank, except that while we can afford the loss, they absolutely could not.
"So basically, Galstryx caught the vampires at their worst moment, but the few hundred of them that were left had become very powerful from killing all of the weaker ones. The battles were fierce, but victory for Galstryx and our perfect race was inevitable. They tore through the Vampires' ranks, despite taking heavy losses of their own, and stormed the Vampire Castle. After they raided through all of the halls and tunnels, they finally reached the highest room in the castle, and when they burst through the door they found Lucifer and all of the strongest vampires left alive. If the earlier battles were fierce, this one was legendary. The werewolves must have outnumbered the vampires one hundred to one, but these were the oldest, craftiest, and strongest vampires left alive, and they had nowhere else to run. The fighting continued for hours, with both sides slaughtering each other with bloody revelry, but towards the end it seemed that, with their age-honed skills and desperation, the vampires would come out as the victors.
Then, however, Galstryx found Lucifer and immediately attacked him. They fought for many minutes, but eventually Galstryx rammed into Lucifer and they both fell to the ground. Lucifer somehow came out of top, but when he tried to stab Galstryx, his sword was no longer in his hand. Galstryx rolled him over and finally…Say, all this talking is parching my throat. Could I maybe get a cup of water?"
Bryce let out a sigh, he was very engrossed in the story, but as he was about to get up he smiled mischievously and nodded to Serenade. "Find her some water, slave."
He did not need eyes to see her scowl as she stood and went into another room. She quickly returned with a clay cup and some water that had been kept in a bucket. When Lupine finished her drink, she cleared her throat and started up again. "So, anyway, they grappled for a bit, but eventually Galstryx proved the stronger of the two and ripped out Lucifer's heart. As he devoured the heart, it looked like the vampires would certainly be destroyed. Here was the strongest being in the forest becoming even stronger by eating the heart of the second strongest. However, once again Galstryx miscalculated just how powerful he could handle. The surge of power intoxicated him, and he was powerless to resist his own sister Christine, now known as Safiria, when she cut out his heart with a silver sword and devoured it, gaining both his power and Lucifer's. She was just as overtaken as Galstryx had been, but with the destruction of their originator and leader, the werewolves reverted to mere animals and fled in all directions. Ever since then, for reasons no one knows, silver has retarded our regeneration abilities.
"It took us several years before we regained our senses and began a real resistance against the vampires, but at the end of the war there was only about ten vampires left besides Safiria, and they were forced to go far abroad on missions from her to quickly bolster their troops. So in the end, we found this lair, which hasn't been discovered yet, and they found some way to disguise the location of their castle. The vampires changed their political structure, we found ours, and we've been fighting an equal battle since then. Except for the Werepyre Wars, after those we were united in a treaty for a bit, but eventually they betrayed us and we fell to fighting again. Well, I'm thoroughly tired, so unless you have no other questions or problems, I'll be leaving."
Bryce took a moment to gather all of the information. E had never told them the history behind the war; he had merely told them that he was determined to kill all evil. "Oh, thank you very much Lupine. I've been very well educated today."
"No problem, if you really want to learn more, you can enroll in my history class." She headed towards the door and shifted to her werewolf form. "Oh, and don't forget to appear before the royal couple in three days."
Bryce had forgotten about that. "Oh yea, what's that for anyway?"
"So that you can be stationed, obviously."
Bryce did not like where this conversation was going. "In what?"
She turned back. "Why, in the werewolf army of course. You are a first class after all. What did you expect?" She left and closed the door behind her. Bryce and Serenade looked at each other with mortified expressions. Eventually Bryce spoke what both of them were thinking. "I can't join the army!"
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