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"Death to the murderers!" Laya shouted as the rage in her heart boiled over. Before she knew it, she was sprinting across the sands as fast as her disproportionately short legs would carry her. Heila’s voice seemed to echo in her mind as she let loose another blood-curdling scream. "Make them fear the Mongrel Horde!"

"Fear the Horde!" her companions shouted from behind her as they too let loose all of the anger and humiliation they had stored up inside, some of them for decades since they first became one of Tausau’s progeny.

In the stands, people who had been cheering for the criminals just moments ago went still in shock.

Mouths hung agape and a few people even dropped the delicate morsel of one delicacy of another that they were about to eat as they stared, wide-eyed, at the eruption of power from what should have been a group of feeble Clanless mutts.

"They, they’re vampires!" someone on the first floor said in shock, turning to look at Lady Nyrielle and seeing a predatory grin on the woman’s face. "But, but if they’re the vampires, then, those other people..."

All eyes in the arena turned to the convicts, seeing them with fresh eyes now that they realized the Clanless vampires were the ones who stood forth to execute the criminals who had just entered the arena.

Normally, there would have been cheers for the executioners or slurs and insults hurled at the condemned men facing execution.

Now, however, they weren’t sure whether they should be cheering or not.

The Clanless were hunted almost everywhere they went and their parents were put to death for the crime of giving birth to one of the ill-fated offspring.

Yet now, these pitiable figures were sprinting across the sands of the arena with the ferocity of future champions.

Were vampires this strong? So strong that even one of the Clanless could pose a threat?

On the sands of the arena, Laya cared nothing for the confused stares of the crowd or the lack of cheers.

In her eyes, the world had narrowed to just one man.

He was short, like her, though he was a member of the Horned Clan.

There was a look of mockery on his face when he raised a short sword and took a simple, amateurish fighting stance as if to meet her charge.

Laya didn’t know what this man’s crime was.

Had he been the one preying on small boys?

The one sacrificing ladies of the night to his dark sorcery?

She didn’t know and she didn’t care. That smugly superior look on his face was all she needed to decide that this man would be the first one to die tonight!

"Hunter’s leap," she whispered, using what little sorcery she was capable of to launch herself into the air, soaring above the horned man’s outstretched blade before falling on him with all of her weight, the heavy head of her mace leading the way.

The man had only a moment to panic, realizing that he’d badly underestimated the Clanless vampire before his right horn exploded in a shower of horn, bone, and blood from a blow so forceful that it knocked him to the ground.

"No one mocks the Mongrel Horde!" Laya snarled, reaching down to drag the man back to his feet. As soon as she had a hold of him, the mace fell again, slamming into his handsome face with a sickening crunch and splattering blood across Laya’s chest and torso.

In the stands, the audience watched in shock as the vampires of the Mongrel Horde descended on their prey. No criminal died a quick or painless death as even the strongest of the Horde required several blows before the light faded from their victim’s eyes.

That shock turned to horror when the thin-scaled woman who had led the charge lifted up the body of her victim, bringing his battered, bloody face close enough to hers to kiss.

For a moment, the audience thought she might have some final words for the man, some kind of condemnation for whatever crimes had brought him here. ..

Instead, she moved with the speed of a striking snake, twisting his head to the side and sinking her fangs deep into his neck as she began to feed.

It had been more than a decade since Laya became one of Tausau’s progeny. She had long grown accustomed to the hot, metallic taste of another person’s blood as she drank the only thing that sustained her life.

But it wasn’t until now, until this moment as she feasted for the first time on someone that she’d hunted herself, that she thought that this beast masquerading as a man possessed blood that was.

.. sweet. For several moments, there was nothing in her world but the rich, almost intoxicating taste of sweet blood and the faint sounds of her brethren taking hold of their own meals next to her.

"What is this?" A clear, musical voice said from the edge of the first level of the arena, pulling Laya out of her momentary trance as she realized who was speaking. "Does the arena no longer cheer for it’s champions?" Nyrielle asked as she cast her midnight gaze around the crowd of spectators.

Most in the audience were staring in shock at the spectacle that had unfolded before them and many weren’t sure whether they were supposed to applaud or not.

Several were quietly whispering that the Clanless vampires would likely be forced to fight until they died in the arena, giving Nyrielle an opportunity to rid herself of the shameful creatures while preserving some honor for their power as vampires but. .. perhaps this wasn’t the case?

"These are the progeny of my grandsire’s brother," Nyrielle said loudly in a voice filled with pride. "They are Tausau’s Mongrel Horde and they can be considered my younger aunts and uncles. Surely the arena won’t withhold its applause for my family?"

Shock rippled through the crowd, followed moments later by scattered applause as a few people moved mechanically in response to Nyrielle’s request. It wasn’t until a young gladiator on one of the levels above stepped forward to give his cry that people truly processed what they had witnessed.

"Death to the wicked!" the young gladiator shouted. "And glory to their executioners!"

His words seemed to shake people free from their confusion, reminding everyone that these had been very wicked men who died upon the sands and the people who carried out their execution carried literal swords of justice.

Soon, shouts and cheers of ’Death to the wicked’ and ’Glory to the executioners’ exploded from the crowd as spectators leaped to their feet.

Only when they’d broken free of their shock did they realize that they’d nearly slighted the people that the famed Blood Princess recognized as family.

As soon as they did, new cries began to fill the arena as people rushed to ensure that the Blood Princess didn’t feel like her ’younger aunts and uncles’ had been slighted.

"To the Mongrel Horde!"

"The Mongrel Horde and the Blood Princess, Champions of the Arena!"

"Death to the murderers! Glory to their executioners!"

The cheers and exclamations of the crowd washed over Laya and her fellows like soft, cleansing rain, but the short, misshapen vampire didn’t care what the common people thought or said... not anymore.

Lady Nyrielle, Her Eternity the Harbinger of Death had spoken up for them and called her, the discarded girl who barely survived being born, an aunt.

Her own birth parents wouldn’t recognize her as family and both of her clans would kill her on sight to cleanse the shame brought by her mere existence but this woman, this powerful Eldritch Lady who brought the entire city out to honor her.

.. This impossibly strong existence had just declared her family.

As far as Laya was concerned, even the sweetness of her first kill couldn’t compare to the warmth she felt when Her Eternity Nyrielle spoke up for the Mongrel Horde.

She’d wondered, all throughout the long journey to come here, if it was worth leaving behind everything she knew to risk her life fighting someone else’s war.

Now she knew. Tausau hadn’t lied to them when he called it the opportunity of a lifetime and after tonight, she finally felt like she could seize that opportunity.

To do anything less would be letting her family down and if there was one desire in her chest that burned as hot as her desire to keep living.

.. it was the fervent desire to never, ever, give Lady Nyrielle a reason to regret her words tonight.