«Ponygirl-08, can you hear me?» That request, spoken by the voice of a rather elderly man, reaches the girl's earpiece.
Time inside the old shopping mall, abandoned for years, flows with the eerie ticking of drops sliding along corroded pipes.
The air is damp and filled with the nauseating stench of mold, mixed with the sickening miasma of rotting animals.
Their remains are mutilated and half-devoured, like a meal torn apart by a fierce predator.
«I can hear you loud and clear. But seriously, we need to talk about my code name. It sounds like something from the early 2000s. It's so embarrassing, I'm serious!» a young girl grumbles, annoyed.
Ponygirl moves forward with slow, cautious steps inside the unsettling place, using a flashlight to carve a path through the thick darkness surrounding her.
«Stop complaining and keep your eyes open. If it's like I think, you'll have to deal with something dangerous,» the man warns her.
«I know that perfectly well too, gramps.»
«Gramps? You should show more respect to your superiors, or you'll never make a career as a Monster Reaper in HESPARC's Italian Division!»
«The day you decide to change my ridiculous code name, I'll stop calling you gramps!»
The calendar has just moved into October. Even though autumn has only just begun, that night the cold inside the shopping mall feels like the harshest winter dusk.
«BRRR. Damn it! Why do these things never happen in summer?!» Ponygirl mutters, wrapping herself tighter in her cloak to find some warmth.
Under her cloak, she wears only a tight black suit, like a one-piece swimsuit, tough but useless against the unusual cold.
She would have preferred a wool sweater and a padded jacket, but she knows they would limit her freedom of movement.
«How's the inspection going?» the man asks.
«I've just finished checking the three upper floors. I'm heading down now to the underground parking lots...»
While going down the stairs, Ponygirl notices the stagnant stench of rot filling the building growing even worse and more unbearable. «...and I have the feeling that thing is hiding down here.»
Ponygirl keeps her fists clenched and bounces lightly on her legs, ready to move at the first sign of danger.
At the bottom of the stairs, Ponygirl steps into a vast, deserted parking lot.
The beam of light she uses to scan the place falls on a horrifying body lying on the ground.
It belongs to a child no older than three, lying in a pool of blood, his skin crawling with maggots and flies eating through his decomposing flesh.
Pointing the flashlight at the child's face, Ponygirl recognizes him from the photos shown on TV and the posters around town: the boy who went missing a few weeks ago near the abandoned mall.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
At that moment, Ponygirl hears a sinister sound of footsteps coming from the center of the parking lot.
With her heart pounding, Ponygirl points the flashlight in that direction and spots a pale, monstrous, inhuman figure behind a pillar.
The creature's hands, tipped with large sharp claws, are still stained with blood. Its glowing scarlet eyes stare at her with a ferocity that freezes her blood more than the freezing night air.
«I found it,» Ponygirl says, speaking to the man through her earpiece.
«So, was my intuition right?» the man asks.
«Yes, gramps, you were right. It's a primordial vampire.»
Just like humans evolved over millions of years, vampires followed a similar path. Primordial vampires are simply the ancestors of modern vampires, the earlier stage of their evolution. In other words, they are to vampires what apes are to humans.
Being less evolved doesn't mean weakness—quite the opposite.
Primordial vampires have physical strength far greater than their descendants, a trait that faded over millennia with the rise of magic and intellect.
Still, they can speak and think, even if their vocabulary and reasoning are very basic.
All these traits create monstrously violent, bloodthirsty beings, driven only by hunger and wild fury.
The vampire, noticing Ponygirl's arrival, steps out from its hiding place.
Terrifying animalistic sounds come from its mouth, a mix between a wolf's growl and a lion's roar, broken by clearly spoken words that leave no doubt about its intentions.
«Hunger... GRRR... blood...»
The creature's pace speeds up, turning into a full sprint. It leaps forward, ready to pounce on Ponygirl with all its primordial ferocity.