Chapter 283: Blood And Snow (VI): His Monster

Samira gave a wild smile as the wooden frame of the house they were in began to shake. The snow elves were trained soldiers, even if they were face with what could only be considered insurmountable odds, they were ready and willing to fight back as two arrows quickly flew towards Samira's face. But the vampire was already up to something, and while the snow elves didn't know what it was, they were ready to stake their lives on the line to either bring her down or escape, because there was no choice either way.

The arrows stopped an inch in front of Samira as the wooden flooring of the house they were in blasted outwards. Sharped shards and splinters of wood flew outwards, stabbing into the body of the elves, before the roof of the house actually grew branches that stabbed down into their bodies. Leaving them hanging like some sort of macabre art work. Samira walked forwards until she was standing in front of one of the last standing snow elves, the branches had only stabbed through his thigh and planted him to the ground.

His eyes were wide open with fear as his body shook and quivered from blood loss and fright. It was an emotion that Samira would have been all too happy to relish in, but she had things to do and places to be. Her figured blurred forward as her mouth found purchase on his neck, sucking and drinking like her life depended on it, which in this case it actually did. His body began to dry up and desiccate at a rate that was visible to the naked eyes as every smidge of blood in his body was sucked out.

Samira turned away from him as the hole in her chest closed up. She wiped her hand on her chin to get rid of the last drop of blood at the edge of her lips. She looked up at the moon, took a deep breath of the cold air, smile and turned around in an instant to catch an arrow that was heading right for her face. Her eyes widened as she quickly flung it away, prompting to explode above her, blasting the roof of the house away, or at least what was left of it.

"Looks like you weren't taught much about the rules of engagement by your bitch of a mother. But then again it's understandable for a couple of reasons. One of them being the fact that; just like I said, your mother's a bitch, and two you're just as much as bitch as she is."

Samira jumped backwards into a backflip as an arrow flew over her face, going on to smash a hole at the back of the house and into the next building. Samira had a fleeting thought hoping there was no one in the other house, she really wouldn't want to drag innocents into this fight of hers. Her form blasted forwards, destroying whatever was left of the house behind her, she bent down low on the ground, her claws glinting as she suddenly appeared in front of the princess who barely had the time to react and put her bow as a shield.

*Clang! *there was a shower of sparks as claw met bow, but Samira was not willing to give up on her onslaught as her very first attack had put the princess in a precarious position. The strength of vampire wasn't something that could be underestimated. And Samira's attack proved that as the first strike had actually sent the princess flying backwards seven feet into the air. But the princess was a snow elf. Finesse and grace was something that was attributed to the very race, so there was no way she would be landing on anything other than her own two feet.

As soon as the princess landed her feet skidded backwards on the snow, moving her out of the confines of the house until she was out in a plaza with a fountain a few dozen meters behind her. She kept on pulling arrow after arrow and knocking it on her bow, shooting it in the direction of the approaching Samira who weaved through some, and took some, not giving a damn about the damage she was receiving.

The princess's attacks became a little too frantic, for every arrow she shot, Samira was a few feet closer. And while she might claim to be really strong, the princess knew after her first exchange with Samira, that she was not a match for the vampire. But before she could come with an escape route, Samira had seemingly vanished in a flock of bats and then quickly traveled forwards, reforming in from of her and stabbing her hands deep into the body of the princess.

However, her hands didn't go as deep as she would have wanted. About two or three inches beneath the princess skin was what felt like cold metal to Samira. It seemed as if there was some sort of armor below her skin, but while that protected the princess from dying outright at the hands of Samira, there was still enough force behind the strike to blast the prince backwards until she smashed into the fountain that was at the center of this town.

There was a spray of water that rose up into the air, mixed with it was a few specks of blood that though tiny, could not escape the sharp hungry eyes of a vampire. An icicle shot towards Samira, she inclined her body to the side as it light brushed her. She swung her claws forwards as she smashed another one to pieces, however the force behind the icicle pushed her backwards a bit.

She shuddered and wrung her hands around a bit, it was cold, and a little bit harder than she thought; however, their approach was erratic, so even if they were quite a bit of force behind it, she could still dodge a majority of it. She looked closed and noticed the princess struggling to get back to her feet, a glowing white spell circle spinning around her left palm while the left was bent at a crooked angle.

Samira noticed immediately the shards of silver like glass poking out of her skin, just below her shoulder where it seemed her arm had snapped under sufficient pressure. Like a hound that had smelt blood Samira narrowed her eyes as she shot forwards, her form seeming illusory as she appeared in front of the princess.

The princess waved her hands forwards spraying a stream of cold air, froze everything in front of her to popsicles, even the moisture in the air was not spared. But Samira skirted the edge of this attack by the skin of her teeth; going round the princess with her body gliding close to the ground, until she came up in the princess blind spot and then moved forwards with barely a few inches of separation between the both of them.

Samira grabbed her still functioning left arm and pointed in the direction of the spouting geyser of water from the destroyed fountain. The entire geyser, twenty feet tall and then some, was frozen all the way down to its source below. And then Samira jumped up, both her hands holding both ends of the princess's arm, from her wrist, to her shoulder blades. She didn't jump up to high, just enough that both her knees were above her outstretched arm, and then she brought them both down on the middle of her arm, with her hands pulling at them with vampiric strength.

*Craaaaaack! *

"Arrghhhhhhhh!"

Her screams of pain rent the night as she fell to her knees with tears in her eyes. The princess might have had a fairly easy life this time she reincarnated, becoming a princess and being taught politics and despicableness 101 at the foot of what she would consider a master; her own mother. But in all that time she has never had the misfortune of being in so much pain, it was so blinding it was the only thing she could focus on.

She felt Samira grab her hair and pull her back up, a sinister grin etched on the face of the vampire that did nothing more than make the young snow elf feel cold from the deepest pit of her stomach. She had chosen to chase after the spy alone and without any significant support because it was a ploy on her's and her mother's part to build her reputation in the eyes of the other elven families. Now she was looking at a monster, her life held firmly in its hands.

"I really hate the way you look princess; I've never seen anyone uglier than you in my entire life. How about we fix that up for you a bit."

And Samira turned her head to face the pillar of ice her powers had made from the destroyed fountain. The first strike did nothing more than clear the princesses head. underneath her skin she had what many would call cold steel. A special synthetic material secretly developed by the snow elves. Its power for defense was unprecedented, especially when it was possible for it to grow stronger after absorbing a significant amount of mana. It was her ultimate defense that Samira had shredded like paper.

The second strike twisted her nose, even with the cold steel beneath her skin that shit hurt a lot. And then the third came and she felt a tooth get chipped, and then the fourth the fifth, until she lost count of how many times her face had been smashed against that ice. Her blood and flakes of her skin hung off the cold sculpture, a bizarre rendition of art.

"Now you looooooook beautiful enough for an audience with my King." Samira said to her with a smile.

Seconds later her vision s went dark as she became shrouded in a cloud of bats. The resident of the town who had wisely kept their distance watched on in abject horror as a flock of bats took away their crowned princess, leaving nothing behind but a garish ice sculpture pained red with her blood and the frozen tears of pain she left behind.