Always tired.

Sleep.

If only she could get just one more day, one more hour, one more minute of slumber she was sure she could rise. Lately her body was at rest even while she was awake, her senses wrapped in a shroud that promised to strangle her. The vampire had cheated death for too long, and that one final dream was so seductive. To drown in the warmth of her own bed...

Darkness.

Safety.

Sleep.

That was when the smell hit her. The cloying scent of decaying flesh was overwhelming and choked her despite it's familiarity. The odor, however, seemed somehow detached from the drained and mutilated corpses which surrounded the bed. It was her own personal opium, a perfume that overcame her as she succumbed to the lullaby of the swarming black flies.

....sleep....

Yet somewhere deep inside the dream a speck of her subconscious cried out in defiance. Sierra Miuret would not spend the rest of eternity in some pathetic backwater ghost town that stank of human waste no matter how tired she was! She hadn't escaped the dream which had subjugated the rest of her clan for two centuries just to lose her herself here. The vampire's will was much stronger than that, strong enough to return from the bloody high and take back her weary mind. It had to be so that she could get up, get out of there..

Well, maybe in a moment or two.

The vampire had been growing weaker lately. It was a far cry from the days when she could fly for an eternity, savoring the freedom of the open sky and the comfort of moonlight. But without the Lunar Rune Sierra knew she was nothing, a pale facsimile of the once proud Lady of the Vampire Tribe. She had fallen from luxury into the life of a desperate nomad, a junkie hooked on the scarlet fluid of life.

As she scanned the room the woman came to the unsettling discovery that she had just spent the night, or possibly several nights, in a rat infested shack full of dead bodies. Of course, Sierra usually didn't know or care where she slept or who she ate during the dreaming. But now the dream was over, and this was definitely not even close to her standards. Scanning the pitiful room for any sort of exit, her gaze fell to a muddied pool of water fed by the spider web of cracks in the roof. After what she saw there, vampire Sierra was horrified. Her cloak was spattered with blood and encrusted with the vomit of her victims. Matted and greasy, once luxurious locks were ridden with lice and her every pore looked to be clogged with dirt and grease. It was so grimy, so common, so utterly base that in her pride she almost refused to believe that the reflection was hers. Perhaps it was better that the past few days had been forgotten. She didn't know if her pride could take the truth.

This new vitality, however, that was an interesting development. Coupled with an insistent tingling in the air, the intangibly electric feeling that the albino knew so well, it was obvious what had happened. That maggot Variev and her Lunar Rune were near. To think that he had reduced her, a lady of noble blood and founder of the Vampire Tribe, to some disgusting filthy vagrant! But then, at least she was still awake. Her people... most had died for the morals she had never really understood. The rest were dreaming now. In the end there was no real difference between their fates. The day that she had given Renilliard Variev eternity was the day she had signed her tribe's death warrant...

The two stood facing one another on the barren peak, the only noise to interrupt the ceremony an anguished howling of the wind. Pure darkness surrounded them, the clouded night sky shadowing the pair and the circle of acolytes who surrounded them. Shrouded in black, even those who had tread the path that the newest of their number was to take were hidden from sight. Only the the white robed Lady shone in the void. The young man fixed his eyes upon her, and waited for judgment to arrive. After a disquieting silence she spoke, her voice filled with an eerie calm.

"You seek Death"

"Y-yes" The youth replied, trying to control his apprehension. He would not admit to himself that it was fear.

"Why?"

"Because I want to live. I want to be awakened," he stated, regaining his composure.

"Do you fear the night?"

"I fear nothing"

"You should not. Without the moonlight to guide us we have only the nothingness of night," the Lady said as a scowl marred the her marble countenance, the serenity in her tone replaced by subdued anger.

"I see the moonlight, Lady, and I embrace it. I have no fear."

"Acceptable," she said, the calm returning," Whom do you serve, boy?"

"Why, Eternity milady. Eternity and of course yourself."

At this, the lady extended the dagger clutched in her left hand and announced, "Then I bear witness to your ascension."

The Lady gave a half-smile as the youth approached her. This one was cocky. It was rare to find one such as him, one who could embrace the beauty of rebirth after death. The boy didn't even hesitate when he plunged the silver knife into his heart.

As the youth's life's blood poured onto the rocks, the rune upon the Lady's right hand began to glow with a supernatural light. The moon broke through the clouds, a shaft of light illuminating her as the rune appeared above her outstretched palm. The silver glow enveloped the pair as the Lady gave the youth a second life.

"Renilliard Variev, I grant you Eternity."

He would serve her well.

He had ruined them. Her entire tribe gone, just because she couldn't see through some foolish lackey with the half crazed notion of building an undead army! Mortals were useless enough alive, but to destroy what she had worked so hard to build just to possess their corpses? It was madness, and it could not be tolerated. She turned to the door, and the crimson fire which had left her eyes decades ago returned for a fleeting moment. There was only one viable course of action: find the Necromancer Lord and rip his soul apart.