The orders from my King were to investigate why our merchant suppliers were no longer arriving from the western pass.
Expecting a band of simple highwaymen I gathered nine of my most elite banner-men and set out to uphold my King's wishes.

After two days and two nights, we had managed to traverse a large length of the pass without seeing a soul, let alone a band of idiot thieves.
We had not yet seen even the signs of a ruined caravan or single coach cart.
On the third night we approached a small village after one of my men returned to camp claiming to see a faint glow just over the hill.
Topping the hill made ice of our bones.

In front of us a village lay littered with the dead.
The source of the glow, a light from the village church, illuminated a river of red flowing from under its doors and down its stone steps.
What lie beyond that sepulchral portal I wish I'd never known, but our mission's success was yet to be realized.
My eyes were not prepared for the scene my men and I would uncover as we pressed forward into, what I now know was, the Mouth of Hell.

What pews were not shattered held the bodies of fallen worshipers, their faces contorted, frozen in a horror I did not yet know.
Amidst the gore of that unholy chamber I heard the faintest of sounds coming from the once-hallowed pulpit.
Upon a hesitant investigation there, curled up like a fawn in a pasture, lie a young maiden.
Her pale skin and golden hair was spattered with the surrounding gore.
Her face remained hidden behind the gilded curtain of locks but did not hide the sound of gentle sobbing.

My guardsmen, still reconciling the contents of the scene before them, took my order to secure the chamber and look for more survivors.
As they began taking inventory of the dead I made my way closer to the only other sign of life in the building.
On approach my shadow grew long over her, blocking the torchlight from the walls nearest the altar.
I could see her trembling and whimpering as if she were a struck dog.
I knelt down, and reached to comfort her.
When my hand met her back the trembling stopped.
Her whimpering suddenly light laughter.
Then, in an instant, everything was wrong.

As suddenly as a strike of lightning, she had taken hold of my extended arm and flung me against the stone pedestal of the altar.
It was then I saw it.
In a dizzied state, my head swimming from the impact, she slowly stood and turned to me.
Pushing her hair behind her ears she revealed a smile accented with two daggers.
I could make out two of my guards rushing to my aid just before she struck.
As she buried those damn teeth into my neck I could only watch in shock.
Of the two men that were rushing towards me only one would make it.

The dead were not dead at all.
They were rising and making meals of my brothers.
Hearing shouts echoing off the stone and the inner walls of my own head, I could faintly make out my aid charging with sword drawn before I was cast aside like a child's plaything.
I laid there, crumpled and battered under another, now splintered, pew.
The shouts had now turned to screams.
As I laid in an ever-widening puddle of my own blood, I watched the shadows of those monsters tear my men apart.

I don't know how long it had been before I awoke.
The original corpses were now replaced with the dried husks of my former company.
I wondered how and why had I not joined them in their departure from this world as I stumbled out of that tomb and back into the street.
I could smell smoke.
The village was on fire now.

I limped through the shadows of empty streets and made my way off the paths and into the woods.
I walked for what seemed eons through that dark grove with the moon flickering through the leaves above.
My head had begun to throb, pulsing with every heavy step I took.
By the grace of gods or devils, just as I knew I could not take another step forward, a small light shewn through the trees.
A cottage, and sanctuary, in the forest.
I made it to the door just before collapsing.

I awoke to the gentle cracking of a small fire.
My head was elevated and I was more comfortable than I deserved.
She came to me then, the lady of the cottage, with a wet cloth for my head.
It was when it found its home upon my brow I could gauge my fever.
She was doing all she could to help a stranger, poor thing.

The sun had risen and fallen again while I lay in the bed of that generous woman.
During the second night of her attempted care for me it happened.
While tending the fire a hunger washed over me like a river.
It was the shadows bouncing off her supple flesh.
Her throat illuminated like so many night market store fronts.
Before she could turn and before I knew what I was doing, life drained from her eyes as I drank her essence.

I snapped to only after I had every last drop of her.
My headache now ceasing.
My gods, what had I done?
Those...things! I had become one of those bastards of the night!

Horrified at what lie before me, I fled from the cottage trying to find fresh air.
She had a stall there with a horse that I took to flee from my crime.
But there was no fleeing this crime, for I was the crime, a blasphemous stain on humanity.

I rode through the thick forest for several days, hiding from the sun that now singed my flesh, contemplating my future.
My King would have me burned for what I had done, nevertheless what I had become.
I could never return to tell my tale and give proper closure to the families of my fallen banner-men.
I would never know the touch of my lover again for fear of taking her life in the process.

It had been a fortnight of hiding from the heavens and contemplating my fate when I wandered down your road.
Your lantern has brought me here, a sanctuary not unlike the cottage in the wood.
I know now the path that fate shall have me walk and it is not one of darkness.

Please send raven to my Lord with my story and let him know I am sorry to have failed him.

I hope the sun is warm this morning and in the next life I am able to make amends for my actions in this one.