Friday Night September 13th, 546 ALW (AFTER LYCAN-WARS). Fennur's Maw, Northern Glacial-Regions….
The northern regions of earth were consumed in unforgivingly cold ice. Ice that splits your skin as it blows like daggers in the wind. Ice that consumes moisture and refracts light, casting bizzare illusions across the glacial landscape.
It's here that specialized NightBorn mining teams drill through the ice and slushed waters below in search of rare species.
All at the behest of their Nobleblood Captains.
All for the betterment of Vampire-kind.
It's in their diets and what the Full-Blood Monarch's of their kind feed on that dictates the abilities and mutations of their NightBorn Warrior and Protector castes. Not to mention the scientific advancements to be made from the rare glacial materials they could find.
The mining team had a dark and boring— but incredibly important, job as they drilled and pickaxed through glacier after glacier until finally—
"ON ME!!!!" An older grizzled low-class Vampire on the mining team yelled from the seat of his claw-drill driver.
The other drivers continued maneuvering and manipulating their machines to split up the ice while a unit of vamps on foot known as Scavenge-Teams or Clean-Up Crews began sprinting to his driver.
They wielded pickaxes, shovels and blow-fire guns that shot massive gusts of hot wind to quickly melt through ice.
It was their job to retrieve and make the access of species, materials and remnants easier.
The vampire driver put his machine in reverse and backed away to allow the other units to surround the hole in the frozen ground.
"It's hard as steel down there— I think I got something good!" The vampire yelled up to the Scavenger Units.
The leading Scavenger was tall with eyes that glimmered crimson in the dark. He wore layers of reinforced leathers and an armored coat with the company crest etched on the left breast. The fangs of a bat bordering a jagged snowflake. "We'll see about that, Vic."
Vic waited as they dug and cut and blasted around the object in the ground until they were suddenly dragging out a massive beige-white object.
"What— is that a bone?" Vic asked from the driver-seat of his machine.
The Scavenger leader kicked it. It was as long as three of his men stacked on top of eachother. "Yea. A leg bone of a Crystal-Tusked Mammoth. Lycans used to ride them into battle. Under moonlight, their tusks could refract the rays and make it look like their were hundreds of them running across this ice."
Vic shivered at the thought, "Glad those bastards are gone." He thought to himself before replying, "Well, how much is that worth?"
"Considering we have few— quite a bit. Also considering the quality of this….. a large bit. But that's to be expected. Mining teams rarely go this far north. We're in old Lycan stronghold territory."
Vic waved him off, "I could give a damn about history. It's been over five-hundred years and no word of Lycans. Just help me cash in that bone and then some."
The Scavenger lead grunted in compliance and commanded his men to lift up the bone and haul it to the massive load-up truck trailing them.
Before they could though, the earth shook.
Vampires miles ahead of them, working to mine a path through a massive glacier in their path began to scream.
From where Vic sat, he could see a massive split rip up the face of the glacier with echoing cracks and howls.
Even from where he sat, he could hear their words of what was to come.
"AVALANCHE!!!"
The glacier split and toppled sending a tidal wave of snow, ice shards and harsh winds.
"DRIVERS! SHIELD-UP!" Vic yelled as he drove ahead of the Scavengers and lined up, forming a circle with the other drivers.
He clicked a few commands on his control panel near the center column and cast a hardlight shield of compressed heat and light molecules as a circular beam shot from the center of his drill.
Suddenly they were in a dome of heat.
The waves of ice and wind hit like a tornado. The ground shook and split. Scavenger units fell between the cracks and were swallowed up in the shadows. The shields cracked and fizzled under the pressures of the ultra cold waves.
It lasted ten minutes before stopping.
The drill machines sputtered and crapped out from overheating and blunt force trauma from the wind and ice.
When the smoke cleared and the frosted dust settled, they found themselves facing the cracked open remains of something otherworldly.
Vic's breaths fell short as he gazed across the tundra, "It's….. that's a Lycan Stronghold."
"An old one. Already destroyed and excavated of natural resources— its been kept relatively clean and unweathered from the glacial shell. The Lycans had strange magic" The Scavenger leader said as he walked past the drills.
It was like a castle made of crystal and braided silvery-stone and gold framing that was only barely cracked and broken in massive chunks. Signs of war. Age old war.
"Are all those miners dead….?" One of the scavenger unit members asked.
"Absolutely. The ice up here is denser than anywhere else in the world." The Scavenger lead replied.
Vic revved his engine, noticing that he still had forty percent in his tank and seventy percent energy reserves, "Better them than us. Let's see if we can't find anything."
It didn't take much to convince them all to push onward after reporting the deaths and glacial collapse.
Afterall, it was part of Vampire culture to always strive for more. To entertain one's innate thirst for sustenance was not only a right, but a pleasure.
They pushed it all the way up the tundra under the pale glow of the full moon.
It didn't take long for them to reach the Lycan Stronghold. Nothing more than the ruins of an ancient lineage with the withered remnants of its dna found in men and women infected to become werewolves.
Vic marveled at the castle up so close.
It was well over five hundred feet tall with jagged crystal and gold topped spires, corridors of silvery moon-stone and massive wolf skulls covered in runes and arctic flowering.
He used his drill and blasted open a way in.
Casually he entered the castle with the scavengers and other drivers in tow.
The ground was smooth— made uneven only by the presence of old missile shells, bullet casings, swords and spears. Black metal railings, stairs and walkways were built into the castle from the vampires of the time excavating and stealing artifacts etched into the architecture. Tablets, runes, ornaments, bones and weaponry.
It was all gone now.
A scavenger ran ahead like a red eyed rat and scooped up a spear. It's blade was pure silver and it was braided around the handle with black vines and feathers.
"HAHA! This belonged to a Lycan Assassin named Shadow-Smear. They said he could turn into smoke and materialize in seconds. This spear was apparently bound to his soul." The scavenger tapped the blade with his knuckle, "You guys think he's still in there?"
"I think you've been reading too much revisionist history and fantasizing of the past." The Scavenger lead came into the ruins and kicked aside the weapons in his path. "The Lycans had no named legends. Only the alpha and his savages. It's why we won. We Vampires have structure. We're intelligent— well mannered. It was our destiny to rid the world of them and its thanks to The Twin Lords of our Country Boreall that we did."
"Enough of this supremacy bullshit." Vic thought before speaking up, "How much is all of this worth?"
"Well it's antiquated now. Probably a pretty penny if you find the right merchant channels on the dark-web. Allegedly." The Scavenger lead replied.
"Then let's get all this cleaned up." Vic said to the scavengers.
"It's only our job hehehe…"
They scraped and scavenged the remains of the Lycan ruins for the next hour until nothing was left.
For real this time.
It was right when they were about to leave with their treasures that something screamed from above the clouds.
Thunder crackled and boomed in the black expanse.
Arcs of lightning burned and split the clouds until they could see it soar as they gazed through the busted in ceilings of the ruins.
"No way…"
Vic felt like he was in heaven.
The bird descended under the slowly forming blood-moon. Each feather like a sliver of galactic essence. Silky navy-black and dotted with Diamond-white studs to match the stars.
It didn't fly with two wings but four to brave the high altitude currents. In that same way it had four eyes to better perceive the world so far below. The world it descended to.
Silently— on wings that dwarfed the massive condor, the bird landed, perching on the jagged crystal and gold remains of a throne. It aimed its golden eyes at them all and watched with a strange essence of divinity.
"That's a Star-Hunter Hawk…" One of the miner's mumbled.
"They're supposed to be extinct." Even the scavenger unit leader was astounded.
"I heard each feather goes for eight million credits…" Vic said with a thirsty swallow.
The Scavenger unit leader raised his blow-fire gun. The black metal shell steamed as the ammo cartridge full of fiery wind held in spinning capsules glowed. He shut one eye as he gazed down the iron sights, centering it on the birds body.
He fired.
A flash of orange light and a wave of drying heat hit them all from the recoil.
Feathers fell in the aftermath, outlined by burning embers.
The ashen remains of the bird fell on the throne seat.
The scavengers took off like rats to scoop up and retrieve the feathers.
"Hey! That one was mine!"
"You're pocketing them for yourself!"
"Watch out!"
The scavengers began to better fit their name-sake as the others yelled and demanded them to stop.
They didn't listen until the sky darkened, swallowing up the now fully-formed blood-moon.
Pure blackness consumed them. Followed by silence.
A chilling silence that went beyond the cold of the tundra.
The light returned, from below.
The crystallized castle grounds of ice and gold and Lycan bone remains began to glow.
Thunder shook the earth in the distance as lightning fell in blinding showers, splitting glaciers and burning deep metals lodged into the iced earth.
The lightning storm continued. Growing. Closing in like a predator on the hunt.
The clouds once split at the birds arrival recollected. Snow fell and melted as lightning bubbled in the thunderclouds.
Vic's skin tingled in his seat for a second— a prelude to the blast of lightning that hit the castle.
"Oh— shit!" They all jumped at the sudden blast.
"I'm out!" One of the scavengers yelled and sprinted for the door behind them.
Another blast of lightning fell, incinerating the fleeing scavenger a mere foot from the exit door.
Thunder boomed like a laughing god.
Another blast of lightning hit, blasting a hole in the ground and revealing a clump of bones.
Lycan bones. Thick and dark and rising magnetically as the electrical currents seem to breathe life into the dead—
The scavenger lead fired his gun and ashed the bones.
Then another lightning strike. Another risen skeleton.
"NO!" The scavenger lead fired.
And another.
They kept firing. All together now, rising the heat of the castle in their panic.
Vic clicked his radio a dozen times from his drill-driver, but the frequency of the lightning strikes— or something more haunting, was frying his connection.
The hellish torment of light and death and fire and rebirth continued until all he heard was distant Thunder and empty clicks.
"We're out you dumbasses. Reload!"
The scavengers began fumbling with their utility belts to grab another ammo cartridge and reload their blow-fire guns.
Another lightning strike hit— right in the center of them all.
The suddenness of it after the silence caused one of the scavengers to the far right— a young wide eyed new-hire, to drop his cartridge on the floor.
Blow-fire ammunition cartridges were high volitile and only worked safely in areas of an average temperature of twenty degrees below zero.
Even that wasn't always enough.
The cartridge hit the hard crystal grounds and blew up in an explosion of white-hot fiery winds and molten shrapnel.
The blast knocked everyone down who wasn't outright melted on the spot.
Vic was quick and spawned his shield.
His driver had zero energy left.
The shield flickered and fizzled out as smoke spirals and portions of the castle fell.
"Idiot!" Someone snarled.
"How many dead? Contact home-base, we need back-up!" The scavenger lead coughed up commands as he crawled out of the debris. "Vic!? Contact the blood-damned home-base! We're under some sort of attack!"
Vic would've replied, but he lost his words.
The smoke settled.
The castle grounds were littered with fresh craters made by the lightning. Making a spiral. Starting behind him— at the door the other scavenger tried to escape through.
And slowly, flashily, it spiraled to the center of them all, where the last blast hit.
No bones rise from the impact.
At least not just bones.
The skeleton that rose from the blast of light was sheathed in dense muscle and deep-tanned flesh.
He was tall. Well over six and a half feet with hands like the paws of a polar bear. Or worse since all he wore was the skin of one fashioned as a kilt.
He wore tendon and leather wrappings around his hands but that was it.
And he didn't look the slightest bit cold.
In fact, he was steaming. Like he was sent from the skies, riding the lightning down to unleash hell on earth.
"Who the hell are you?!" The lead scavenger spotted the new individual.
He didn't respond.
One of the Star-Hunter Hawk's feathers fell in front of him.
With terrifying speed, he caught it. Drawn to movement like a predator.
"Hey! Put it down!" The lead spat.
He didn't.
The lead scavenger fired his blow-Fire gun, sending a focused blast of blinding fiery wind at the interloper.
The blast hit him on the left side of the head and sent him stumbling to the right from the force winds.
It was bad.
His long curly silver-tinted black hair and bronze skin was blown off down to the muscle covered skull.
It was there that Vic saw the teeth turn to fangs before it all healed over.
He turned to face the man who fired, aiming a horrifying pair of wolf-gold eyes at him and growled.
Seemingly everyone in the room gasped.
"LYCAN!"