The Fallen Vampire

Gu Mu-Song couldn't pinpoint his emotional state today.

Unsettled? Anxious? There were many ways to categorize what he was feeling at the moment.

The issue with this was simple. His instincts were usually almost never wrong.

He didn't live this long and do the things that he had done by being unaware of his surroundings.

He could feel the world around him crying.

It was a prelude to a great disaster that he had felt many times before.

Gu Mu-Song got tired of pacing about his room, so he left in the hopes of either easing his nerves or coming across the problem.

Whichever came first.

Gu Mu-Song could see that the bulk of his disciples were returning back here so that they didn't miss curfew.

They bowed to him respectfully before tucking into their rooms.

But Gu Mu-Song raised a brow when he realized that the last few stragglers were coming in with snow on them… and it most certainly wasn't cold enough for that.

"What the hell, it's really coming down out there."

"What is it with the weird weather on this island?"

"I'm freezing."

Gu Mu-Song looked out the nearest window.

The scene was white. Pure white.

He couldn't even see beyond the gate to his residence.

And that was when Gu Mu-Song's anxiety finally hit a fever pitch.

"GET DOWN!!" He roared.

Complete pandemonium unfolded when the entire palace seemingly caved in on itself.

Mu-Song was thrown off his feet and knocked around by all sorts of debris.

His confusion gave way to sheer rage in short order.

Among the endless downpour of white snow, there was only one figure that the grandmaster could see.

It was a 100 meter tall ethereal creature.

Made from a deep blue aura, the creature resembled a horrific bat-like creature with four arms and two leathery pairs of wings.n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

It's face was that of a vampire bat, with an additional set of eyes and some egregiously long ears.

Nine tails with open mouths and eyes of their own swung behind it's back like horrific monstrous worms.

And standing underneath the ungodly creature was a figure that the grandmaster knew far too well.

"DOGGG!!!! WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS!?"

The spiritual construct lurched forward and screamed so loudly that the crow-man felt his eardrums burst.

It held out all four of it's arms and each of them summoned giant scythes connected by great rattling chains of ice.

Gu Mu-Song felt his extremities clench and shrivel all on their own.

Taira's voice was like the wind- gently tickling the ears of the entire Poison Cloud Sect, yet bringing with it a bitter chill.

"So you're awake. That's good... This will be the only time you hear me speak today- so listen closely.

You have one minute to find me the one responsible for poisoning my Sect... Or you will all die with every member of yours."

Alarm flooded the minds of the cultivators.

"Dai-Shi! Cease this action!"

The entire gentle brotherhood appeared around Taira.

The situation must have been dire to them, because First Brother didn't even have on his mask.

Now, Taira could see the face of a male fae who was dangerously similar in appearance to Daraxerxes...

"I will stop nothing. If you don't stand aside and stop protecting those diseased wretches, then you may all die with them."

Taira's dharma body let out another impossibly loud screech that could have woken up every resting soul on this hemisphere.

A line of blood ran from between First Brother's lips.

Internal injury aside, the beast's roar had rattled him to the very core and evoked a fear in him that he had never known before.

"I understand your frustration, Dai-Shi, but I urge you to let us conduct a proper investigation of the incident and then-"

Taira held up his hand, and the fear of death cut the fairy's words short instantly.

"My sect members are ill, my quarters were invaded, and the place where my wives and daughter rest their heads has been defiled.

I will have the life of the one responsible in the next few minutes.

The only question is just how many other lives you will make me take before I have my vengeance. You've twenty seconds to decide."

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First Brother was afraid to take his eyes off Taira for even a moment.

Lucky for him, all of the noise and the snowstorm had drawn the attention of the other sects.

When the other Sect Masters came outside, he saw an opportunity.

"Sect leaders, please quell the Dai-Shi for but a moment!" First Brother pleaded.

The only one who actually seemed eager to do anything about this was Grandmaster Romula.

In fact, he seemed a little too gung-ho...

"FINALLY!! The chance to crush evil underneath my great fist has arrived! May the heavens watch my battle fondly and send me their favor!!"

A shroud of golden light surrounded Romula's body as he soared into the air.

He came no more than fifty yards close to Taira before a pillar of green flame knocked him out of the sky.

If First Brother thought the situation couldn't get any worse, he was horribly mistaken.

A bright green dragon that seemed to fill up the entire sky with it's body.

Beside it, there was an equally menacing dharma of glowing red.

It had the shape of a female oni with eight powerful arms and a glowing third eye.

With every step Aveena took, she cracked the frozen ground underneath her.

She spoke with no less of an authoritative dialect than Taira. And her words rattled through the ears of everyone present like thunder.

"Make no mistake. Today all who stand in our way of rooting out the culprits are declaring war on our sect. The Divine Black Myth does not entertain survivors."

Her words had just barely expired before Taira's came whistling behind it.

"Time's up."

Deep black lightning fell from the sky and brimmed along the blades of his scythes.

He raised them high above his head.

First Brother recognized that he had a decision to make.

And ultimately, he decided to pick the wiser of the two paths before him.

"MOVE!!"

The entire Gentle Brotherhood dove out of the way just as Taira's blades came crashing into the island.

Sheets of ice and columns of lightning shot up from the ground to terraform the landscape around them.

Dozens of members of the Purple Haze Sect were cut to ribbons in an instant. Even more were eaten alive by the lightning.

Gu Mu-Song watched the butchering unfold in what felt like slow motion.

It was as if his decades of hard work were dying right in front of him pathetically.

And the culprit of this atrocity was this arrogant, conniving fox who had been causing him trouble from the moment he showed up.

The grandmaster had enough.

Instead of doing battle with the giant dharma still laying waste to the island, he was going to go for it's architect- and humiliate him in the worst way possible.