The Queen of Blood

Ch 7: Crimson Red

Queen Celestia's senses were more awake then they had been in the past two hundred years. Her nostrils flared at the smell of rich iron. It was the blood of her people that filled the air that fueled her with anger.

It was not just the blood of her vampires, it was the blood of their human slaves. Someone had dared come into her kingdom and attack one of her towns. They had killed everyone. Bodies lay in the mud, tangled and torn, most unrecognizable.

Around her was shattered glass and broken buildings, some even burnt down to the ground, smoke still drifting from seared wooden frames.

The Queen walked, stepping between corpses of both humans and vampires, the smell of fresh death hung in the eery silence that draped over the down.

The Queen did not show her anger blatantly in her features, but her rage was flowing in her veins and drawing out her fangs. Her eyes were flaming orbs of fiery copper and red and the air cackled around her like silence bolts of lightning.

The reinforcements hung back, cowering at the pure power and rage that emanated off their Queen in waves. None had witnessed their Queen in such a state before. They felt fearful that the Queen would turn her frustration and anger on them.

"Stop your cowering fear," the Queen snarled through her fangs, the smell of their fear clouding her senses as she tried to grasp for scents of the attackers that did this.

"Do not just stand there uselessly!" Princess Eloise's voice commanded, sensing her sister needed space, "spread out and find the attackers!"

The soldiers scuttled away at the command, racing off into the surrounding forests and in the direction of the mountain range.

Princess Eloise watched her older sister as she prowled through the wreckage and rubble. Eloise smirked at the sight of Celestia's fangs and flaming eyes. This was the side of her sister that she missed. This was the side of her sister that had led them into battle and left all the other kingdoms defeated. It was this side of her sister that had left her in awe and earned her respect. She had been resistant to calling her older sister Queen in the beginning, but after seeing her sister's power and grace as she had torn apart thousands in the battlefield she had had no problem bowing down to Celestia.

Princess Eloise was the commander and general of the vampiric army. She adored war. She loved the smell of death. And for the past two hundred years of peace she had missed it, she had missed every second of it. Now, finally, there had been an attack, and the primal anger it had drawn out of her sister, Queen Celestia, brought hope to Princess Eloise.

She knew the attack was from the werewolves. Not only could she smell it, but she recognized their style.

The ripped apart bodies, the torn apart human slaves, the blood that now ran through the streets and painted the bricks with crimson.

She also knew that Celestia would not let this slide. She would want revenge, and Eloise was eager to give it.

Celestia closed her eyes and took a deep breath, tasting the all too familiar scent of wolf. A deep growl radiated from her throat and seemed to rattle the broken window of every nearby building.

"Mutts," she snarled through her fangs, her eyes snapping open, "filthy, worthless muts dare attack my kingdom and slaughter my people."

"They left no survivors, my Queen," Eloise purred, enjoying her sister's anger, her hunger for killing building inside her, "they took nothing. This was clearly an act of war."

"Why did the guards on the watchtowers not warn of the attack?" The Queen snarled, her eyes moving to the towering steep mountain ranges, large stone towers strung up every kilometer.