[WHFRP 2nd Ed] Reign in Blood (IC I)

[BananaPhone]

Regine von Carstein


Regine pressed forward into the dank crypt-like labyrinthe of the abandoned silver mine, the stale air thick with damp earth and the strengthening scent of decay. Gripping her weapons tightly and moving with the quiet grace of a hunting cat, the vampire narrowed her blood-red eyes in the dark, her predatory senses able to discern details unavailable to mortal perception. But it was her ears that detected them first: low grunts. Snuffling. Bestial snorting. Deep, guttural groans and primitive speech to accompany the scent of damp fur and unwashed, matted fur.

Beastmen.

It did not take long until the vampire came upon the hulking figures, their brawny, braying bodies clamoured around a make-shift camp in what looked like a central transport hub of the mine. The smooth walls and rotten tents and hammocks clinging to the peripherals of the small cavern suggested a communal area of rest for miners, as well as a central location through which the trolley's carrying unprocessed ore and earth would be hauled. What had once been a point of industrial intersection had instead been turned into a fetid cave of primitive celebration, as dried blood smeared the walls and splattered the floor in hack-and-slash symbols arrayed in a pattern that only the insane or inhuman would find appealing and spoke of ancient rituals and macabre forces.

Though not yet calibrated to the magic that sustained her unliving body, Regine knew enough from Ulrich that what she saw before her was a ritualistic pit into which the beastmen had gathered the quarry and rocks to form the ring around a herdstone...but there was something off about this arrangement, something rotten and foul. Even from her position near the entrance, Regine could smell the disease in the air, an odiferous melange of bodily humours, sweat and rotten flesh as if something had crawled into the centre of the room and perished to whatever affliction ate away at its body. The former thief could not recall a time when she had been presented with something that offended her nostrils so! And for a few moments the vampire wished, prayed even to whatever bleak gods would listen, that she could be remiss of her powerful senses so that she need not inhale whatever fetid malaise choked the air.

Yet the beastmen continued. Able to see them now, Regine narrowed her eyes in morbid curiosity as she watched their hulking forms huddle around their crude altar fashioned from chunks of raw stone and twisted metal, their malformed bodies contorted in twisted reverence as they grunted and groaned whatever prayers they could conjure from deep within their animal throats. They seemed unaffected by the miasma of the cavern. Indeed, they seemed energised by it, as finally the vampire was able to watch in greater detail as the disgusting beasts would move their hideous, ram-like heads down to behold their own rotting flesh, only to slide their own tongues over the pustules and decaying tissues.

The vampire had had enough.

Stepping forth from the shadows, Regine's cloaked figure immediately seized the attention of the man-animals: their hefty forms all turning about on cloven hooves towards the newcomer. Eyes wide, muzzles open, almost all in unison garbled a sloshing, braying whine that seemed to stick to the wall as fear of the vampires predatory form seized their limited brains and ripped through their nervous system.

Wasting no time, Regine surged forward, sword and dagger in hand. She crossed the distance swiftly, her crimson eyes shimmering in the gloom as she smashed into the first and only one of the children of chaos who could gather his wits about him, her blade coming through in a skewering stab that speared the steel of her weapon right through the beastmans belly. The thing let out a wet howl, the humidity of its stinking breath clinging to Regine's features as she felt its hot blood spill across her gloved hand when she wrenched her weapon free and stabbed upwards with her dagger, the blade silencing the braying beastman through the bottom of its jaw out beyond the top of its muzzle, those vertical-slitted eyes rolling and the body spasming as it toppled backwards in a spreading pool of black-red blood.

The others started to bellow as one by one they were drawn out of their mind-numbing fear, seizing crude weapons of rusted axes, primitive spears and poorly made swords, their monstrous images lurching forward, hooves against the stone floor as swipes and stabs shot in towards Regine's figure. The vampire side-stepped, withdrew backwards, parried, drew herself back in a twirl - she kept herself at arms reach. Alone against five, the vampire played her footwork and kept herself at the maximum distance possible with her cat-like grace, her own weapons slashing out methodically at open exposures and deliberate targets while ensuring to remain on the move, never allowing them to swarm her, always keeping them running and shoving each other aside for the chance to take their swing at her.

The spear-wielder rushed her. She side-stepped, battered the spearhead away, then withdrew again, tumbling backwards. The one with the axe bellowed, its shoulder half covered in white-bloated boils that poked out from its thick, matted fur, weapon drawn up in a downward swing that the vampire re-directed with her dagger-hand, rewarding the beastmans effort with a slash of her blade across its diseased spaulder and splattering a slick of pus-and-blood across the ground with an accompanying guttural bellow of pain.

The heavy, rapid hoof-falls of a charge and a snorting growl were the only warning Regine received. Turning about on her feet and readying herself to side-step, the vampire was caught flat-footed as the shoulder of one of the beasts slammed into her flat stomach, blasting hot, dull pain across her body before weightlessness overcame her when it immediately drew its shoulders to its height and hoisted her off her feet and into the air, powerful arms wrapping around her mid-section and crushing in like two vice-prongs. Grimmacing and flashing fangs, Regine stabbed downwards with her dagger, the blade penetrating the back of the Gor's big, ram-like head with the crack of splintering bone and a gout of red-and-pink foamy film, but she was too slow. The world blacked out for half a second as a third beastman had rounded its axe-wielding compatriot and brought its crude, mace-like club around in a batters arc, only missing a sickening blow by centimetres and instead grazing off Regine's skull with a pranging impact that opened a bloody graze across the vampire's head. For a brief moment, the world sung for the former thief; her eyes crossing, her mouth gaping, everything moving so slowly, until rapidly escalating.

The swing from the Gor, though powerful, had overextended the beasts thick, fur-covered arms. Still moving to bring its weapon back for another swing, it squealed out in pain as Regine turned and swiftly drew her sword across its belly, spilling a noodle-like mass of steaming entrails to hang from its midsection as it toppled over onto its side, roaring and mewling and clutching at its opened centre. Still in the death-clutch of the Gor that had charged her, the vampire used her grip on her dagger that she had planted in its skull to throw herself backwards, the stony earth slamming into her back as a sword stab missed her by mere inches. On her back, gritting her fangs and using her left hand to push and heave the beastman off from her body, enough to pry its dead, locked arms from about her figure so that she could wriggle away, Regine pulled her head and shoulders aside at the last milli-second to avoid a spear thrust down at her face, then a hoof-stomp, the last two active beastmen seized the opportunity to expunge their undead opponent for good. Another hoof, another spearhead swipe that Regine parried - then she ceased trying to wrest away the Gor from about her, her long, black claws of her free hand sliding out for action. She shot her hand up and grabbed one of the beastmans knee's and sank her natural weapons into that join, the screeching howl from the child of chaos filling the air as reflexes caused it to try and wrench its goat-like leg free, but its flailing only tore more inner tendons and sinews against those sharp talons, wrecking and mutilating the connection until Regine let go, the Gor stumbling back and bestial squealing and gripping at its destroyed leg. Free for half a second, the vampire drove her sword upwards at the last beastman, the blade finding a sheath between the rusted plates of the creatures crude armor and sinking into the tissue beneath, blood hissing out from the wound as its body was seized, weapon falling from its grip, eyes wide, a gargling bray bubbling up from its throat in a frothing film across its lips, before toppling backwards onto its rear, then over onto its side, dead.

Laying there for a moment, glaring up at the ceiling, her head-wound sealing itself over, the vampire sneered and pushed her apprehending beastman off and away, standing upright and staring down at the squalling Gor behind her still clutching at its ruined knee, tissue and flesh curling away in ribbons as blood-loss was draining its features. Drawing her sword up, Regine stepped forward and slashed, the beasts ugly head flying from its shoulders and tumbling wetly across the stone floor behind it.

They were dead. All of them. Strew about her in broken, opened, bloody heaps. For several long moments the only sound in that cavern was the click! click! click! click! of one of the slain beastman's hooves tapping against the stone floor as the creatures nervous system played out its final spasms, the Gor's empty eyes staring at the ceiling with no further life while the last bubbles of red-tinged spittle frothed from its lips.

Then silence.

If she required breath, Regine would have been panting. Swallowing, inhaling, exhaling, she looked down at the mess of her clothes, then back at the carnage about her, standing amidst the broken, mutilated bodies of the children of chaos. Limbs severed. One decapitation. Another disembowelled. The stench of innards and bloody, raw flesh exposed to the dank air of the cave mixed with the already putrid edifice of their worship to thoroughly disgust the woman. Retrieving her sword and dagger, cleaning them, then acquiring her spear, the vampire inspected the makeshift herdstone and tattered tents, but she found little of value among the decaying remains of such forgone barbarians.

Swallowing, rolling her shoulders, her wound regenerated over, the vampire sniffed the air and listened to the corridors and chambers. Discerning the one that was most foul, she knew that is where she would get to the bottom of this, and so she pressed forth, further into the dark, deeper into the mine.