~Chapter 2~
The crimson mist trail slowly disappeared into thin air as the cloud also dispersed, blown away in the wind revealing a truly gut-wrenching sight. A group of vile-looking creatures, crouched and jumping around, gathered and surrounding something the rider could not get a clear view of. Their screeches echoed through the darkness; their savage growls rumbled through the trees. As the rider got closer and closer, he knew exactly what they were.
"Ragers!"
He growls to himself as a deep breath leaves his body and his crimson eyes grow ever so wider filling his dark hood with a red aura easily visible in the darkness of the night. His teeth uncontrollably grind against each other as if they were those of a wild dog, mad with hunger. With his glowing eyes, he sees the creatures, though still far from him he sees them as if they were right in front of his face. He smells their putrid flesh as if standing right next to them and hears their monstrous wails as if being whispered into his ear.
They had smooth, dark grey skin almost invisible in the darkness to the human eye, with spikes running down their spine which seemed to keep them in a crouched position. These were the Rager Vampires. They are the final stage in vampire mutation. These extremely dangerous creatures were once human until infected by the vampire curse that plagued the many villages of Transylvania. The Rager start as a human-vampire, but as they live and lurk in dark dungeons and caves, and are forgotten by time, their bodies begin to transform and adapt to survive in these daunting conditions. They gain three long claws on each hand, sharp fangs and their eyesight is stripped from them. The rager depends solely on their significantly enhanced and sensitive hearing for hunting and navigation.
As he drew closer to them, they heard the thundering sounds of his horse racing down the road towards them. The ragers disperse from the group and turn their attention towards the horse and its rider. In doing so the ragers expose the source of the desperate cries for help. The creatures gather in the middle of the road leaving a young boy on the brink of death, bleeding on the ground in front of the cabin with one arm clenching his neck and his other arm stretched in front of him as if trying to catch the stars in the night sky. He breathes deeply, every breath a battle for him as he lies there with an open chest and wearing a crimson shirt you would never have believed to have been white earlier that afternoon.
The rider smells the blood of the boy in the air and it infuriates him, it fills his heart with rage and hatred, for the spilling of human blood was what he lived to prevent. The very spine of his oath. He lets out a loud roar, freezing the blood of the ragers, stopping them in their tracks. They look ahead at the rider coming towards them with their eyes wide open filled with nothing but the look of hunger and the lust for death as they look on towards their target; thick clotting blood dripping down their chins and off their exposed fangs with forked tongues licking their faces in their entirety. Followed soon after, by the hisses, the hisses of a thousand serpents escaped from their tongues as they spread their arms revealing their long sharp claws, reflecting the moonlight off their edges like freshly forged steel.
"Van Kolte!"
They screech in unison with monstrous voices, like men shouting with vice gripping their throats.
"Hmph, only six of you!? You shall all perish this night. Back to the depths of man's darkest nightmares, you shall return by my hand. You vile, villainous vermin!"
He shouts in a thundering voice, a voice not of his human self. A beastly voice, like if a wolf could utter words of rage.
Van Kolte, with his blood afire and his heart as true as his words, puts both feet onto the horse's saddle, and with the horse galloping as fast as it possibly can he stands on the horse's back, nerves as calm as a sunny ocean morning. His crimson eyes don't waver from the vile creatures that await him now just fifty meters ahead, clawing at the ground sending sparks flying into the air; copious amounts of blood and thick, almost white saliva flying from their snarling mouths with their mucus-secreting bodies glistening from the moonlight and the lit torches hanging on the cabin doorposts. Van Kolte sees them clearly, he poises to jump and whistles for his horse to stop. The horse stops after a skid that burrows a trench into the ground and with a huge jump, Kolte goes soaring through the air towards the ragers, with their pitch-black eyes following him as he comes flying at them.
"You're all mine, you savage, sickening scourge!" He shouts with his beastly voice.
"Come to your death, meat sack!" The ragers shout and screech once again in unison.
During the few seconds of him soaring through the air, Van pulls his crossbow from his back. As composed as ever he looks down the aiming sights and into the crowd of ragers just ahead and slightly below him. His focus, matched only by his lust for the abolishment of this evil scourge. Time seems to freeze between those few seconds from when he looks down the sight of the weapon, to when he pulls the trigger, letting loose a thirty-centimeter silver bolt at the group of ragers. The bolt had engravings on it, holy prayers in the ancient language, Latin. Enchantments were carved into the bolts to ensure the successful exorcism and or abolishment of evil creatures and ethereal beings.
The bolt soared through the air and found its mark, descending right into the soulless eye of one of the ragers with so much force it pins the creature's head to the ground. The others look on as their brother screeches in pain, a sound that makes the windows of the cabin crack, and the flames of the torches flicker as if in a strong wind. The rager desperately claws at its own head and tries pulling the bolt out of its eye as the flesh on its head and body dissolves slowly into a putrid-smelling liquid, like rotting meat in the sewer. It leaves nothing but dry, bare-bones crumbling to dust in the wind. The liquid seeps into the cracks in the stone ground changing the color of the rocks and soil from brown to a pale green. Before the rest could look back up at Van Kolte, he lands right in the middle of the remaining ragers on both feet into a combat roll causing a massive fracture of the stone pavement, and finally he skids for a few meters on his right knee before coming to a complete stop with his arms spread out to the sides; his crossbow in his right hand, and a huge double-edged great sword in the other. Van Kolte looks back over his shoulder to find four ragers in the air, flying in twisted positions, going in all directions, floating away slowly as if time itself had slowed down. The fifth rager was still on the ground, bewildered as it turns around slowly with its eyes wide open and an expression of shock in its face as its eyes meet Van Kolte's.
"Damn you. Damn you, wretch." It says with a low weak voice as it slowly splits apart in two, having been cleaved perfectly in twine. Its body halves hit the floor, blood and insides spill out onto the ground in a mass of tar before too dissolving into the ground.
Van Kolte looks down the length of his great blade, now coated in thick clotted blood, which is almost black and dripping slowly off the sword's diamond-sharp edges.
"Is this it, is this all you have to offer? Fearful, fucking fiends!" He taunts them in his beastly voice with a monstrous smile on his face, his teeth exposed, all looking as sharp as razors, like wolf fangs made of glistening silver.
The remaining ragers flew through the air with one being stopped by crashing into a nearby tree. Before it could drop down and hit the ground, two silver daggers pin its arms to the rough trunk, weakening but not killing it. It looks up with a pain-filled screech to see Van Kolte's terrifyingly violent smile, with silver throwing knives between his fingers. The other two creatures violently hit the side of the cabin walls and drop down to the hard ground. As they attempt to get back their bearings and get on their feet, four daggers soar through the air seeming as fast as bullets, reflecting the light of the torch flames burning close by. All four knives find their mark with two piercing each of the ragers' hearts and pinning them against the side of the log cabin. They let out blood-curdling screeches as they hang against the side of the cabin with their legs suspended above the ground and kicking violently while clawing at the silver dagger with its fingers melting like candle wax to flame against the blade.
The ragers look down at the daggers noticing a piece of parchment bearing Latin enchantments and runes, having been run through by the blades and pinned against their chests. These blessed sheets of vellum were like searing irons on the skin of the creatures. Burning and sizzling flesh as if on a kitchen pan. The ancient-looking sheets of paper spontaneously combust and start to burn along the edges, creating small flames like a countdown, moving inward towards the blades of the daggers. The ragers screech and hiss in pain as they helplessly watch the parchment burn away, making the silver blades sing like wind chimes and their engravings glow in a luminous light blue light. Their pitch getting higher and higher, and brightness ever more intense as the paper burns away into golden cinders.
When the flames finally reach the blades, the paper simply burns out into a puff of smoke and the high pitch whistle of the silver blades suddenly stops. After a short pause, the edges of the daggers' blades emit a bright blue aura before violently exploding and sending a straight wave of light shooting from both daggers, as if the very wind had been cut by light.
Both ragers fall to the ground in perfectly cut halves, and their pieces having been cauterized by the intense beam of light. They both soon dissolve simultaneously covering a small part of the cabin with their toxic remains. The vile liquid eats through the log walls of the cabin like acid until finally making them catch fire, setting the cabin ablaze as if it were doused in oil.
The last rager lands on the ground and tumbles for a few meters until coming to a stop, then jumping straight up to its feet to find its brothers slaughtered by a single man standing in front of a great blazing fire. A shadow with a shining animalistic smile reflecting the gold of the flames and illuminating blood-red eyes that fills its heart with fear and dread, standing in front of the roaring fires of the hell that it was about to be banished to.
"Insect!" It snarls, with blood dripping from its battered face due to the impact with the hard ground.
Poised to attack, it runs and leaps towards Kolte, its arms spread out with its claws ready to carve Kolte into shreds.
"Now you shall perish, worm!" The rager shouts with its monstrous voice as it flies through the air.
Its eyes abruptly snap open with their anger and hatred quickly changing to eyes of shock and pain as its arms fall off, separating from its body and flying in different directions. The rest of the rager's mutilated body continues torpedoing towards Kolte as he stretches out his freakishly huge arm and catches the rager by its head, tightening his grip around its skull like a vice. His arm expands and almost tears the sleeve of his leather and silver armored jacket with long nails penetrating the ends of his leather glove. Kolte carries and holds the rager off its feet, and still wearing the same feral smile on his face, he says with a calm voice.
"Thou shall feed the soul of one's beast with the scourge that curses the lands of our Lord and kings, or thy shall suffer the beast's wrath on one's own soul, Amen!"