The Pale Moors: Confessions of a Somber Vampire

[Caira Ayryn]

Trapped. Horrified. Deserted.

Thoughts of flight tangled with those of all-too-desperate survival. Would her rock, covering the door, be broken by the sheer force of a large hoard, bombarded by the mass of monsters that threatened to overtake her last place of sanctity.

The stone-enclosed cave was looking more and more like her tomb. She thought of the monsters, the glimpse of one, singular zombie passing by in the forest, but at the time she had not associated the face of decaying flesh and chomping teeth with something that had the ability to rip her, quite literally, limb from limb. She would not dwell on the power of the beasts, their ability to rip flesh so easily with their teeth, their potential to rip her flesh from its bone.

The revolver glinted in the light, and Caira’s hand went to it. Her hear swelled with sorrow. She had met Omni, and now look where she was? Trapped in some hellhole in the spookiest verse of the Omniverse.

This. Is. The. End.

Caira’s heart withered and drowned in the rush of emotion that swamped over her being, and threatened to take her with it. In the time she could have been planning her escape, with every added pound against the cave’s stone, her thoughts of contemplation overtook her like a tsunami.

Agony.

Torture.

Complete and utter Devastation.

Devastation because she felt the weight of the gun in her hand, she had even placed the revolver’s cold snout against the temple of her skull. Her finger lingered on the trigger, as it had when she had shot Merik. Shot him, to -save- him. That was the difference. That was the devastating difference. It was not her last resort. This would -not- be her end.

Caira mustered up all the courage she had in her heart, and her eyes narrowed as she pulled the revolver down from her temple. It wasn’t in her. After all she had learned, all she had known. It was a decision she was not willing to make, because if she chose the easy way out, she would not be herself anymore.

So she stayed.

Having uncovered the truth about Omni in the Oververse, and the truth about herself here and now, Caira stood tall against the threat of death, despite seeing the monster she might become if she was infected by the magic of the undead beings.

Her books, those in the tote bag hanging off of her shoulder, the ones she had acquired from the great library in Dalaran, had mentioned such beasts, and the dangers their infectious breed carried. It was, more or less, much like a vampire. If they got a hold of you and you didn’t die, then you would become one of them. The difference was, at least vampires had brains. These undead, seemed to work on instinct.

She gulped. If she could find a vampire, that seemed like a much more appealing fate. But for now, not even opening up her books would be able to save her, because time, for Caira the Knight of Camelot, and Ayryn, the Bounty Hunter and Legend of the Dunes, had run out. She grimaced and her violet eyes glowed in the unearthly light.

The Prime had only a few moments until the rock was literally pounded to bits. How would she escape? How could she? She faced the impossible almost unarmed as she surveyed her surroundings and charged her fist.

Then she saw it. The rocks began to clatter away and the darkness of the Pale Moors crept in with the reverberating sounds of gross horror, and the clawing of decayed fingernails against the last bits of rock. Caira’s eyes were fierce with determination as she slammed her fist into the ground. Backed into a corner, she had chosen the only way to go was down.

There was another empty cavity below the cave she stood in, and when her magic-charged fist collided with stone, it broke the roof easily and gave the zombies a place to fall as they charged her. The prime had leapt up to a rock, and was hanging by a finely balanced toe as the zombies got close to her, and then found there was no ground underneath them. Hands, so human, and yet, so vicious, attempted to grab her on their way down.

The beasts hungered for the warm blood in her flesh, she saw drool slither down many blood-stained chins as their teeth chomped loudly on empty air. Into the cavity they plunged, and lucky for Caira, it was a long way down.