With the wrath of a Star Sapphire...but mostly just a vampire hunter...Thomas fights to the last vamp. This all takes a toll on his UV Lantern ring, of course...but he manages to stay lit until the last bed bug dunnart's been slain.

By now, vamp carcasses lie all around him. Thomas need not worry about cleaning up. When the sun rises in the morning, it'll turn all of these carcasses to ash. God, Thomas hopes they can't resurrect themselves... Although it wouldn't surprise him if they could...

By now, Thomas is tired. He's just about ready to make a dash back to his barracks...

Alas, it's not over yet. From four spots in the jungle, he hears heaving. He looks up...and to his dismay, he sees red-lit eyes.

First, he sees a brace of coneys. They're hyraxes. If not for their vampiric appearance, they'd look like they're far from home. They've fangs, claws, and red eyes. One has fan-like fins and a stinger-tipped tail.

If Thomas feels like laughing now, he won't when the others arrive...

Next, an aardvark surfaces from a soft spot in the ground. His claws are much longer and more slender than an actual aardvark's; not just for digging. These claws cleave flesh from bone. Also, his snout looks more like a mosquito's proboscis. He...also has six legs, and the wings of a mosquito. His eyes are about that size, too. His tail is stinger-tipped, too...and can be flashed like a whip.

Next, and from the other direction, a hoverchair hovers into view. It's massive. In it, a dugong sits. He's got the head and mouth of a lamprey. His tail looks like a candiru's. His flippers have spiny claws. He's as fat as a tick.

Thomas supposes that, if he's anything like a real tick, that that dugong is on a diet...to gain weight until he's 600 times heavier than a normal dugong.

From the shadows before the hyraxes, much vibrating goes on. Also, quaking does. It's nothing major; but it still feels like the thing making them is very big.

And, it emerges. It's an elephant. His tusks are longer, and have many spikes up and down them...like half a crown of thorns. His three trunks are more like tentacles. Each one is tipped with the head of a lamprey.

His ears are shaped like vampire bat wings. He, too, is swollen like a tick. Alas, he's taken this a step farther; from out of the back of his shoulders, four very long cybernetic tentacles extend. In the air over him, they writhe. He's like Dr. Octopus in Spider-Man comics...if Doc Ock were ever an elephant.

His lower legs are forked, near the heels. From one heel, the head of a vampiric nematode extends. From his second heel, the head of a lamprey does. From his third heel, the head of a leech does. From his fourth, the head of a neotenic mosquito larva does.

His tail is stinger-tipped, too. Its whipping range is longer than the aardvark's, but shorter than the coney's.

He's got candiru whiskers for toes. A bit creepy... Plus, humanity won't find out for another century and a half that elephants hear with their feet, and their ears are just for HVAC.

They call themselves the Frightful Four. (Technically, there are five... But then, if you were as small as a coney, you'd probably want a partner, too.)

UV Lantern scoffs. "Abusing the heffalump's image," he mutters. "There ought to be a law."

And, at just the right time, the ring fails. Thomas's costume vanishes. He's now down to just the wooden gladiuses and the garlic lei. Shit...

With a claw in his flipper, the lamprey dugong presses a button on the armrest of his hoverchair...and casts an illusion.

They're phantoms and wraiths. From above, they swoop down onto Thomas, and surround him.

Thomas frantically holds up his two gladiuses, and defends himself. Alas, he sees that the threat of the wood has no effect on the wraiths. Alas, this merely means they're not vampires.

With Thomas distracted, the two hyraxes growl, and charge Thomas from behind. Via instinct, Thomas spins, and skewers both coneys through the chest with both gladiuses.

Now, he'd have them with fish and chips...if only he thought vampire meat was edible...and if he thought he'd survive this fight.

Next, the mosquito aardvark tunnels into the earth. He tunnels beneath Thomas, straight down into a very deep hole.

Thomas shouts and flails, as the earth fails beneath him. He falls many scores of meters until he hits rock bottom. He's got no idea how he survives...unless these vampires can do magic.

Down here, the mosquito aardvark has the high ground. His claws are bared. From his mosquito beak, he constantly flicks his nematode head-tipped tongue.

"You will not hinder me," Thomas hisses, "pig!"

With that, the aardvark wails, buzzes his wings, dives, and charges poor Thomas. Thomas retaliates by evading, and slashing both swords. One decapitates the vampire hog; the other amputates his whip tail.

In a flash, Thomas also uses one of these gladiuses to skewer the hog meat...through the chest. He holds it up on the sword, victoriously.

Off walls, the aardvark's head helplessly bounces. It lands upside-down. The nematode in his tongue slowly dies, while out of his mouth.

Thomas would eat this, too...if only he knew vampire meat was edible.

Around him, the tunnels starts caving in. Thomas quickly climbs to where the aardvark was before, and assumes the high ground...

And just in time, too. The vampire heffalump comes plunging down, and lands upside-down among the caved-in soil. This hole has become a pit...and a rather wide-bottomed one, at that.

Like this, the heffalump really DOES look like a tick. He...can't seem to get up. Thomas sure hopes he broke his Doc Ock tentacles...

Confident, Thomas leaps, and draws his gladiuses. The poor heffalump tries to slash Thomas with his many-spiked tusks, but can't. Thomas cuts off his three trunks, while airborne. Thomas lands on his belly...and starts sliding towards his head. He jabs one gladius into him, to slow his fall. He still slides, though...gradually slitting the beast's belly as he goes along.

Once at his heart, he jabs the other gladius inside, hoping to get lucky...

Alas, the heffalump now has six trunks, where he did have three. Using the heart-stabbed gladius as an anchor, Thomas does battle with the six trunks. Staked, the heffalump won't likely last much longer...

Finally, the trunks stop re-growing themselves. And like pieces of coral, the tusks fall off their mounts. They shatter into gravel when they hit the ground...and become diamonds.

The heffalumps heels die, too. As far apart as they were in their host's life, because their host was so fat, they weren't of much help. The short whip-like tail was of even less help.

From above, and like a flying saucer, the hoverchair descends into the pit, prepared to finish the Vampire Hunter off. The lamprey dugong's still in it. He's the last Frightful standing...or, SITTING, rather. He's a dugong; he can't even stand on his head.

He lowers himself into place. He presses buttons on his armrests, and fires energy blasts from the front of his chair.

With human speed, Thomas dodges them. Sadly, one of the blasts destroys one of Thomas's gladiuses.

Nonetheless, Thomas leaps into the chair with the creepy vampiric dugong, takes his lei off, and forces it around the opposition's neck.

Wailing in pain like an actual cow, the vampiric sea cow rolls its lamprey eyes...and starts browning and disintegrating, from the head down. Soon, a pile of ash now occupies the hoverchair.

His candiru tail falls off, and hits the ground. It flops itself to death...like a fish out of water.

Blood spills from the chair, from where the beast's tick gut was. So much for the poor beast's 600-times-bigger diet...

Victorious, Thomas leaps from the chair, and looks around him. This is a VERY deep pit. He might have to dig his own way out...

Alas, his need is soon robbed of him...as a cloud of black magic conjures itself behind him. Thomas tries to fight it...but only makes things worse for himself. Leaving his last gladius, he's sucked into the void. Behind him, the cloud vanishes, having absorbed him completely.

The UV Lantern ring falls off, too. Wherever Thomas is going, he'll be vulnerable.

Carolyn will be depressed, when she gets word of what happened out here tonight. She'd never believe that a lot of it happened because of her mother.