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"I don't eat." Fragment said. "I live off the power others give off without even thinking. Put it this way, being around Kain, for me, is like falling into an Elemental Plane of Pizza for folks like you."

Assassin watched from the shadows, his prescence and even his soul hidden. He tapped the earth and a mote of sand rose from the ground and sped into the distance.

The people, loving their new lives in this protective land under their mysterious ruler, were oblivious. Yes, Elizabeth Bathory had been released upon them, but these people were not strangers to dealing with the likes of her. She'd turned out Loogaroo; the pact she'd made with the Devil had been when she was summoned. She indeed fit the description of "shape-changing old hag" that still went about taking the blood of her victims. She bathed in a great deal of it, all of it that she didn't have to offer to her Jumbie Tree for that matter. She wasn't exactly prone to her hag-like state and yearned for her old beauty. Each night she had shed her skin as the Loogaroo did, her form becoming that of a sulfures ball. Doors and windows by no means blockades, she had managed to enter several houses per night and stolen a great deal of blood, namely from young women and fair young men. But the people wised up and relied on old traditions; rice was scattered all over their floors. On that night she was forced to count the grains of rice, giving the people plenty of time to find her skin and pour salt all over it, destroying her skin, forcing the Countess of old to cry out. She had then beaten and stabbed to death in her vulnerable form, her soul returned right back to Hell. Several birds had also died from eating the rice. The rice was quickly cleaned up after this discovery.

Their other tragedy had come from their beloved Vlad Dracul II wandering their streets once more at night and in the shadows of day, though their hearts were crushed to find he had turned rather feral. He would listen to no one and murdered any and all he saw; any he could reach. Using a familiar trick, the villagers had cornered him in an ally. Once Vlad reached the end, he turned around to find what he thought would be a group of angry peasants. He figured this to be a trick with mirrors he'd fallen for once before, but he'd never all for the same mistake twice. Thus he'd turn around and shift through the wall of the dead end to find himself impaled upon a wooden cross, through the heart. He was quickly forced to the ground in his stunned state, his arms cut off and the wounds cauterized so he could never regenerate them. His fangs had been torn out and crushed before the shards were tossed into a fire that a preacher stood over and chanted, blessing the flames. The rest of his teeth were then removed the same way. His eyes were removed as well as his tongue, eyes and mouth sewn shut. The once great Dracula had been silenced. He now, and forever would, sat in one of the town's catholic churches, bound with garlic-laced rope to a throne for all to see and even still pray to.

All the while rumors begun to circulate around the man that had taken up residency in the castle. Some saw him to be a great man while others saw him to be a demon while the crazies whispered of the Apocalypse coming thanks to this man and his army of demons. Rarely were they seen, but all knew of Makai and Angel, and Force often roamed the streets to answer the people's questions while Faust roamed the towns looking for problems that needed to be fixed. Shrine was welcomed in the town; the people's opinions of Kain always seemed to mellow when she was around as they thought, "How could such a monster produce such a sweet girl? She says she loves the castle and is quite fun and Kain is merely someone making sure his country is safe, though cannot stand the ridicule of the people he strives to protect." Shrine new most everyone in Wallachia and most of Transylvania, friends with children and adults alike. She also did the shopping for the castle.

In the end, she also helped to spread Kain's plague. The dark clouds over the castle were nothing out of the norm really, but when the thick, evil fog had replaced the clouds, the people grew fearful. When they saw the figure of Kain in his darkest form in the broken castle wall, the fear in them rose to their throats, often causing people to force back stomach acid. The crazies grew crazier, and when the toxic dust-like rain fell...the crazies had become the most sane of all. The fearful people grew sick, spreading the disease to others as they looked for something, or someone to help them. Some came to accept this as their punishment and stood without fear in their hearts, wondering when they would die, never experiencing the illness. Others stood waiting for their time, seeing this as God's punishment for living under this demon. These individuals grew the sickest, lasted the longest, and hurt the most. Shrine had used her elemental abilities to create streams of water that would carry the virus, allowing it to flow into the country's water supplies. She also forced the virus to stir twice as quickly; grow at a much more rapid rate with her power over wind. All the while she smiled and giggled as she always had while blood began to poor down the streets and screams and moans of suffering and writhing filled the air.