Améline stands in a wintry forest, armed and armoured as a knight of her people. A small part of her wonders why she has two hands, or why she feels a longing to return to… Someone important. The exact nature of that person slips away from her, but she misses them.
Manonne. That’s who she wants to return to.
But an unknown duty pushes her onwards through the forest. Something terrible lurks here she knows, and it must be vanquished. Could she do anything else?
Trudging through the snow, eventually Améline finds a clearing. In the centre of it crouches a woman armoured all in red with their back turned to her, bent over an unconscious woman held in her arms. Even just having seen them Améline is struck by a feeling of revulsion, of wrongness; something abominable is happening here, something she must stop.
Sensing her intrusion, the armoured woman turns to look at Améline, and her instinct is confirmed as she sees long fangs and a mouth dripping with blood underneath a half-open visor. She snarls at the vampire;
“Fiend! I swear upon Ghal Maraz, your vile predations end today!”
The vampire stands up, letting the woman she had been holding fall to the ground roughly. Améline can see that she is a peasant girl with long messy red hair, but that knowledge is quickly pushed aside by an overwhelming need to protect her.
The vampire lowers her visor, lending her voice a metallic quality.
“I was granting her a boon, ser. With it she will not only survive this world, but triumph and impose her will upon it.”
Malliana lowers her own visor.
“You’ll turn her into a monster.”
“That is of no consequence, in a world of monsters.”
The vampire draws her blade.
“I offer thee retreat, death, or the Blood Kiss, ser. Choose wisely.”
Améline raises her sword, lifts her shield and roars her challenge as she charges.
“This is Shyish. There is only death!”
The two knights impact each other with a crash, rapidly descending into a furious melee. A tall woman with a body crafted by a duardin blacksmith and an errant knight, Améline is used to being able to overpower her opponents through sheer might, but the vampire’s lithe form belies a strength that exceeds her own. And she moves so fast, barely enough for Améline to keep up with. Quickly her shield becomes a ragged ruin under the vampire’s blows, and Améline is slowly forced back.
The vampire breaks away from her assault for a moment, stepping neatly back.
“Ser, thou art brave, but overmatched. I repeat my offer; retreat, death, or joining me. What dost thou say?”
Améline lets her shattered shield fall from her arm and grips her longsword in both hands.
“I see no choice but to oppose evil like you.”
The vampire cocks her head to the side.
“Truly? Art thou so limited in imagination?”
“If you think conscience is a limitation, then I pity you.”
Améline raises her sword once again.
“But that will not stay my purpose. Come. Here, now. You, me. As Sigmar is my witness, one of us dies.”
The vampire steps forward, moving with a confidence that Améline knows means she has lost this fight. Perhaps Manonne will find her body when she sends other knights looking for her…
Then, moving as fast as a gryph-charger at full pelt, a grey streak erupts into the clearing. Améline briefly catches flashing fangs and yellow eyes before it throws itself at the vampire, ripping into her with a savagery that didn’t seem wholly feral.
Améline is briefly stunned by the sudden reinforcements, before she once again moves towards the vampire. The wolf’s assault had caught the vampire off-guard, and with a swipe of its claws it rips off the vampire’s helmet. The head revealed is a monstrous one, with long fangs and inhuman eyes, but what is more disturbing to Améline is a strange recognition the face produces in her, like she has seen her before.
The vampire recovers swiftly, beating back the wolf with great swings of her sword that never seems to be bloody for long. Just as Améline is just a few steps away from the two the vampire stands above the wolf, sword raised for a final blow.
Améline swings her blade up to block the blow, overcome by a certainty that this is exactly what she must do.
She roars aloud her battle cry, hoping that they pierce the heavens themselves.
“In Sigmar’s name!”
The air becomes charged as the vampire’s blade descends and Améline’s rises to meet it. They touch, in that slowed split-second to Améline as softly as if this was nothing more than a friendly bout.
Then an overwhelming light strikes down into the clearing, impacting upon the crossed swords and blinding Améline. But it doesn’t make her recoil away from it, instead filling her with renewed vigour. She throws the last of her newfound strength into her strike, trusting in whatever had sent this miracle upon her.
When sight returns to Améline she sees herself standing with sword still in hand, unhurt by the light. Before her lies the vampire, body and armour both scorched as if struck by a lightning bolt. Améline can see the broken sword still clutched in a claw, along with the shards from it scattered across the clearing.
Améline doesn’t pause for long, stepping forward to kneel beside the vampire. There is one last question she needs to ask.
“You have been bested, ser. I am ser Améline, apprentice-foundling of Thraki Coalmane and former squire to ser Manonne D’Haridoc. What is your name, so that I may carry it into posterity?”
The vampire stirs, and whispers back;
“Erzsébet, sired by Belladama Volga of Vyrkos… ser Améline.”
Améline nods, and just as she draws her misericord Erzsébet reaches out with a faltering hand to grasp her arm.
“Thou… Thou hast doomed her, ser. Alone… She shalt not survive…”
Améline shrugs off the hand.
“Then she shall not be alone, ser Erzsébet.”
She plunges the dagger into Erzsébet’s heart, and watches as the vampire dissolves into ash born away on the cold wind. Améline haltingly stands up, suddenly acutely aware of how much of a toll the fight had taken on her, when she remembers her ally.
She looks over in their direction, to see them taking slow, faltering steps out of the clearing. The wolf turns back to look at her, and Améline is struck not just by the sentience in his eyes, but also by the feeling that she should know him. An idea enters her mind unbidden, that she must have met both him and the vampire before they had been transformed. It is an uncomfortable proposition to her.
The wolf looks back to the girl, then back to Améline, a question in his eyes. She slowly nods at him.
“I keep my promises.”
He stares at her for a moment longer, then seems to be satisfied. He turns again, and soon he disappears into the darkness of the forest, gone as if he had never been here.
Améline watches him leave, then stumbles over to the girl. She kneels down next to her and lifts up her visor to examine the girl. Though bloody around her neck where the vampire had been feeding from her, she seems otherwise unhurt to Améline. She quickly binds the wound with a strip of fabric ripped from her cloak; it was makeshift at best, but it would do until a proper bandage could be found for her.
Having done the best that she could to wrap up her wounds, Améline brings her arms under her and lifts her up with only a little difficulty. This close up she is not surprised to once again feel recognition at the sight of her face, but this time it’s coupled by a rapidly burgeoning feeling of certainty that she is taking the right path. Not just in saving her, but in promising to look after her. This had been why she had become a knight, Améline knows.
The girl must have felt herself be carried by Améline, as she begins to stir. She half-opens her eyes and looks up at Améline.
“Who…?”
The language is unrecognisable to Améline, but nonetheless she seems to understand it.
“I am ser Améline. Don’t exert yourself, you may be out of danger but you’ve still lost a lot of blood.”
The girl must have understood Améline, for she nods and closes her eyes again. Her voice becomes a whisper as she struggles to speak.
“My brother… He disappeared, and I went looking for him. Is he…?”
Améline feels a cold suspicion plant itself within her.
“I… Believe I may have seen him, briefly, but I don’t know where he is now.”
The girl’s expression falls. Améline shifts her arm slightly to bring her head into a more comfortable position.
“But I swear upon my honour, I will help you find him, no matter how long that takes and no matter how far he has gone.”
The girl opens her eyes again, this time filled with furtive hope instead of pain.
“You promise to stay?”
Améline nods.
“Until you no longer need me.”
Finally they leave the forest, finding Améline’s horse Châtaigne exactly where she had left it. She props up the girl in the saddle and takes Châtaigne by the rein to lead him back to the village. It would be slow travel like this, but Améline was confident that the worst had passed. She looks up at the girl and asks her;
“May I ask you for your name?”
The girl gives Améline a slight smile.
“I am called Erzsébet, ser.”
The name sends a chill down Améline’s spine, and she wonders what the significance of the girl and vampire’s shared name might be. As she begins leading Châtaigne back to civilization, she prays that it is just a common name.
