His misshapen head twitched. There, he felt it again. The flare of his master's power. It had been too short when he recognized it for tthe first time, but now he had felt it clearly. It came from the south. Uhlheim. He couldn't waste time. He rose from his dark brown leather armchair and shouted: "Marie, Lenesti, Katalin!" It took less than 10 seconds then the door flew open and the three stormed into the door. They screamed in confusion: "Yes father?" "You called us what is it? What is it?" "Here we are master!" He looked at the three. Brooded. It was possible that they would die in the process. Then he would lose 42 more servants. However, he could not go to Uhlheim himself. It was too dangerous. There was a temple of Torqua there and its aura was too strong to go undetected. These three were his most talented and best trained hunters. He had to entrust it to them. However, if they were discovered or destroyed, he would not go undetected for long. It was completely unclear how the power could have been released. No servant of the gods would have opened the hidden tomb, but none of his servants could have opened the tomb. The curse was known to everyone in the Plague Bay and for generations the magicians of the black academy have been researching methods of breaking the curse. But even large amounts of sacrificed life energy could not break him and everyone who entered the protected area burned to ashes. The attempt to darken the sun and weaken the curse's power also failed. So how had it been freed? It depended on the answer to this question whether he would send his three best students, in whom he had invested 240 years, to death or whether the jagged temple would shine in a dark light again. He opened his arms and said: "Come to me my girls." And the three flew into his arms, nestled against him and wrapped their arms around him. While stroking her hair and kissing one or the other, he said: "Listen, something wonderful has happened. The dark heart has appeared. You have to get it for me. I give you my power to feel it. Kneel in front of me!" The three women obediently loosened their knees in front of him and looked at him from below. He raised his arm and sliced a blood line with the fingernail of the other hand. The three of them immediately stretched their purrs and stuck out their tongues. He carefully poured a few drops of his powerful blood onto each of the three of his tongues. The eyes of the three vampires were filled with a bright red and they lasciviously licked their lips and looked at him seductively. "Now go. Don't come back without the heart. Know that it was shielded by a powerful curse that made it impossible for me to feel it, but now it is free. Pay attention to yourself, do not let any of you perish or fall into the hands of your enemies. Your reward will be much smaller if one of you is missing. Disappears!"
The three vampires hurried down the path from the tower to the old fortress. Marie was faster than the other two. She mastered the powers of the gift of blood better than any other vampire. Apart from him, of course, whom they called father or master. Nobody knew his name. He didn't have one. Everyone in the party always just spoke about the Master. Only the three sisters and Raderak called him father. Raderak was the eldest son and he was born long before the sisters. Lenesti had gotten cheeky on a visit when she found out that he was just a brother. He had beaten her into a bloody lump of meat. The he had thrown her body into the moat completely bloodless. Lenesti didn't stand a chance. The three sisters had initially suspected that Raderak had been expelled and had lost father's favour, but the opposite was the case. Raderak was now an ancient himself and had created a domain in the north. He also had his own castle. And even if he was submissive to the father and always full of respect, he always behaved towards him more like a friend than like his master. Raderak was the father's secret protection, because if all else failed, all his servants failed and his existence was in danger, he could still use his strength to call Raderak for help. While the father completely controlled the powers of blood, insurmountable, fast as lightning and strong as 10 oxen, Raderak controlled the powers of nature. He was gentler in the mind and not so violent. So, all the animals, the wind and even the clouds, obeyed him. He could ride a horse without being thrown off, which was impossible for the three women. Wolves always accompanied him, and the birds of the sky told him what they saw. It was impossible to approach him secretly, and he could walk through wood and stone as if they were open doors. And yet he had been so physically superior to Lenesti that she still flinched when he appeared.
Lenesti was the princess among the three women, as father sometimes said. She was still beautiful. Even though the age passed all three women, she always seemed to be more attractive. The two other women had a wilder expression on their faces and, if they had not hunted for a long time, their blood vessels could be seen darkly through the pale, almost parchment-thin skin. But not with Lenesti. She looked like freshly peeled from the egg. There was no sign of her undead existence in her. Her power lay in her appearance and her charm. Nobody could deny her anything. In addition, she could read people's thoughts and see distant places. She usually avoided a fight. Since everyone was always at her feet and her sisters also had a hard time defending themselves against her wishes, an arrogance quickly crept in that had brought her great trouble with Raderak. Marie and Katalin often hated her for shamelessly using her powers against them. Because her use of her power was often not so obvious while making just a simple request, they fell for her regularly. However, father had said that they had to stick and work together. He had given each of them their own skills and he needed all three of them. So the other two had to live with falling for their arrogant sister. In addition they had to save her neck often when she got herself in trouble. Since she always had it easy and cheated by asking others to do her job, she was generally the weakest of the three.
For her, Katalin was a constant mystery. She had to do most of the development of her strength on her own. Raderak liked her best of the three sisters. Katalin was well versed in black magic and had learned to strengthen and change it with the power of the blood. She was a thinker, once a free magician who had gone to the Tribulation Academy in Zir Magnon when she met Father on one of her trips to the Imperial Mountains to collect Manticor spines. He was starved of a fight against one of these beasts. It had not been easy to overcome her. But during the fight her powers had finally weakened and he had overcome her. Impressed by her strength and willingness to survive, he had made her his first daughter. But she was not at all of his character according to his taste, because she did not like the animal joys of her existence at all. She read or studied and was only interested in blood when she felt weak. She had never let herself go like that. And so she could stand the longest without blood. Lenesti was just a stupid port whore to her and Marie an animal. But she never said it and tried to suppress her disregard. She also had a long-standing desire, like Raderak, to separate from her father and set up her own domain so that she was not distracted from her studies by his barbaric orders, as it was the case now. Nevertheless, she loved him and loved being with him. But this could not go on forever. Every daughter must leave her father once and so she secretly studied how to weaken or dissolve the powers of blood. She had also seen what Raderak had done to Lenesti. Even if that had given her some pleasure, she never wanted to end up the same way. There had to be a way to weaken the old or protect against their powers. Since she had inherited the power of darkness in addition to the powers of magic which she had previously, she had learned to cloud her mind completely so that neither Father nor Lenesti were able to explore it. But that was not all. She could cover herself and everyone she touched in complete darkness and walk around with them and the darkness followed them. It was also possible for her to travel through shadows if she could see the place she wanted to go.
The third of the three vampires and the last one created by the master was Marie. She was closest to father. She had been a sword master from the southwest of the empire. Already in the thirties when father found her, she had a good living as a bodyguard and exhibition fighter. Wherever there were tournaments, exhibition fights, arena games - she was to be found there. She was the only one of the three whom Father hadn't attacked out of hunger. He had noticed her. Marie always struggled with contempt for death. Her defence was apparently mediocre, and she took great risks in the fighting due to her extremely aggressive style of fighting. Father had quickly felt that Marie was tired of life and therefore neglected her defence. Over time, however, he realized that Marie was feigning her weakness to provoke attacks that ended in a fatal counterattack on her part. He had been fascinated by her and watched her very carefully for a long time to find out her nature. Finally, he offered up all of his arts to seduce her at night and transform her when she was completely defenceless. He knew that her inner strength was largely build on the fact that she was undefeated, and he didn't want to break that. Therefore he chose this way to transform her. Marie had surely gained most power through her transformation. If she had been an excellent fighter before, the transformation had increased her body's strength and speed and wounds healed in a short time. In addition, father was the only one who had inherited the blood manipulation. So, Marie could spit out blood that became a poisonous, caustic acid and ate up stone, metal and wood. If she spit it onher weapon, it would just as easily penetrate any material. Separated parts of her body she could just put on again and she could bring her blood to a boil and so increase her reflexes immeasurably so that she could easily catch a crossbow bolt. Coupled with her physical dexterity, she was such an inhuman opponent who could easily overcome large groups of enemies. There was hardly a living being that she had to be afraid of. She and father fought spectacular battles in the castle yard and only through each other could they learn something. Even though Father was still the only one to defeat her, through the sheer use of his vampiric power, the thought came to Marie that she was invincible. This arrogance had further increased, and the lives of ordinary people had become less and less worthwhile. She was the moral and spiritual successor of father and if he would go to sleep one day, he would surely entrust his domain to Marie. These three sisters were now released.