For all my life I shall never forget the horror the night King Alidiphus sent forth the troops of Atas`Cosita to end the plague of nightwalkers. Sent with our brave troops I was, to archive an accurate record of the attack.

For weeks our people were living in terror. No one felt safe, and bodies were being found too often. Males, females, elderly, children...none were safe.

The fiends came from the shadows during the great lunar alignment. Soundless even to the ears of our Rangers, slowly they came. They fed - perhaps one or two citizens a night. Those horrid beasts multiplied and stole away a dozen or so each evening. Our numbers of pure furres were becoming dangerously low. King Alidiphus declared that the vampires were to be slaughtered.

He called together Atas' finest troops and sent them forth, into the night. He bade me to go with them, and I did with much foreboding. We made our way into the ruined temple of the great Dragon, Mother/Father to the primes. At the dawn of morn the moons hung low in the sky, and the sun threatened to overtake the darkness of the night. Nothing could be heard from within. It is a rare day that a furre sees a Cositan Elite Guard pale in fear, yet on that dark silent morning all but one of the troops were rigid with terror. That stone-faced furre was Darnalt. Head of the Royal Guard to King Alidiphus, Darnalt had a wife as beautiful as the great Prime Danival. A sweet and innocent lady who loved her husband as much as he loved her. He woke one morning to find himself lying beside her cold body. She was one of the first taken by the vampires. Were that not enough, the young lass was soon to bring their first child into this world. Darnalt lost both his wife and child and many say he was dead from his grief, though his heart still beat. What better than an unfeeling warrior to resist an unfeeling foe?

The carnage started when Darnalt screamed the battle cry. Our troops swarmed into the caves, surprising the hoard of vampires. Blood spewed forth from fighters on both sides. I stayed back and watched the gruesome confrontation in horror. Darnalt's expression was the most terrifying thing in the ruins that pre-dawn day. There was a demented joy shining brightly in his eyes, his lips turned up into a malicious grin. He fought like a beast gone mad, felling foul vampires with every swing.

Yet, everyone knows that a beast that succumbs to primal madness often falls. And so too did Darnalt. No one saw how it happened, but he was found at the end of the battle with his own sword through his heart. His face shone with the peace he had found. His paw clutched a scrap of hair, presumably his poor dead wife's.

We were triumphant, but at a heavy cost. Over three fourths of our fighters were dead. We carried them all back for proper burial. The vampire corpses were burned. That very night King Alidiphus declared all vampires outlaws, and ordered them removed from the Kingdom or slaughtered... Whichever was easiest.

I myself documented most of what I encountered...but after this night I will speak of it nevermore. The memory is too terrible.

Scholar Elira.