Grasp Heart

Prologue

Watery light washed over the valley and up the mountainside: the wolf's-claw moon above choked further by the noose of a thin cloud. In the valley below, little forms scattered like dead flies across the grassy knolls and up the rocky outcroppings.

A few forms still tussled, a tug-of-war conflict beneath the waning silver light. Some, smeared with speed, were on all fours. Others were upright with fangs bared and grasping. Some an immaterial smoke flitting across the battlefield. Still others were varied in size, made of chunky rock or sinuous vine, and stomped across the fresh graveyard.

The fanged majority, the vampires, flanked by demon-smoke, appeared to be closing in around the scant remaining others. Rending snarls pealed up from the valley below, the calls echoing obscenely up to the lonely peaks.

From between a pair of those peaks, cresting over the lower cropping, a multitude of forms surged over and immediately halted. These were creatures of monstrous proportion, their withers at the height of a fully-grown man, their faces wrinkled and beastly, and their limbs - while not quite human - somehow bent and grasped as a man's would.

Patchy-furred and grotesque as they were, they were allied by cloaked and masked humanoids whose magical attire seemed to dissolve in and out of shadow. They sat astride the beasts' backs or stood side-by-side with them, watching in frozen-horror as they absorbed the battlefield below.

The beastly-mounts bared their dagger-like teeth and shook out their great, lumbering heads. Cloaked fighters and riders balled their fists, clutched their arms, or held their masked faces. Agony surged through the group's posture and a few, despairing shrieks split the night-air. The stoic mountains watched on, tall and looming.

From below, the vampires and demons grew attentive. The faces, wet and glistening with a violent array of dark, speckled liquid, looked greedily upon the small group of newcomers. The smoke-entities crackled and buzzed, jittering excitedly at the sounds of despair. This enemy began to group in the valley, their upturned eyes gleaming in the frail moonlight.

A mounted figure among the mountain-top viewers sat suddenly upright, rounded her shoulders and released a burbled, feminine voice. It rose above the despairing cries and screams of her companions. Its dual-tone conveyed command. The viewers stifled their emotion and turned at once to retreat South, away from the grouping of enemy below.

The wafted smoke surged immediately up the steep-slopes in purposeful lines, eager to pursue. They outpaced their bipedal comrades. Comrades whose vampiric teeth, when bared for the excitement of the chase, revealed four top-canines of long and lethal length.

The escapees panted heavily. The hefty footfalls of the beastly-mounts were loud and frantic as they pressed into blurred sprints. Their cloaked companions ducked low upon their backs or flanked them with matching speeds. It wasn't quite enough.

From the trailing tail of the group, staggered, panicked screams arose as trails of smoke swarmed and clouded the stragglers. Each escapee's shriek peaked shrilly once through the enveloping smoke. Then the sound dropped, as if the vocal cords had simply been cut. A few of the retreating group glanced backward, their pace faltering.

The lead-woman called, commanding all to refocus. Masked faces snapped forward once again. Sprinting upward along the mountain peaks, the group continued. Riders astride the beasts began to glow, little balls of white-magic illuminating in their palms or materializing as arrows about their arms. The silvery light of this spelled ammunition split the semi-darkness, precisely catching a few of the trailing lines of stalking-smoke. These squealed agonizingly as they sizzled and burned out of existence.

A high basin between peaks yawned before the escapees, a bare spot between craggy summits where gravelly rock scattered down the slopes. Within the jaws of this cupped spot, lay an ancient series of giant, clustered circles, carved into the bare-stone face of the little basin.