here's a preview of the dark lord zero.

here's a quick chapter from the book, to better give you an idea of what it is you're in for.

I also edited it and lowered the price, so hold off on purchasing until it's been updated.

Chapter 5

Hunter in the fog

“My power wanes the deeper we go.” lil warned, her fog gates losing strength before vanishing altogether.

“Lil?” zero replied, turning around, suddenly realizing that she could no longer reach him.

“what on earth-” he muttered.

Her words now began to ring truer the deeper into fog ridden jackson hole he walked.

Gunshots could be heard from a distance, and, hand on his sword, he proceeded to move deeper, passing a small church on the hill just next to the main road that passed through the city proper.

The skiing hill was somewhat visible, but not as much as he'd like it to be, and as he continued through the city, burning cars and countless wrecks came into view.

What appeared to be the police were busy fighting off more werewolves, these being more developed and attuned to their newfound physical prowess, their regeneration making them a very clear threat.

But their cardiac muscles don't regenerate, he thought to himself, and as he made his way past various blood stained vehicles, now parked in the middle of the roadway, gunfire rattled off their forms as the police engaging the werewolves continued missing the agile creatures.

As much as zero hated it, he couldn't assist them. He'd have to use the distraction they provided to continue his investigation of the town, and try his level best to sneak through, as opposed to fighting in the streets.

Moving to all fours, he placed the sword on his belt loop, quietly and calmly snaking through the vehicles.

One of the doors opened, and a line of intestine oozed out of the vehicle, a green ford bronco form the looks of it, and he frowned as he heard a transforming human's bones cracking from within.

Those who weren't dying were becoming infected, he reasoned.

But with what? Kulil had told him that werewolves weren't real, there was no more reliable source for a fact than a divinity, and kulil fit that bill by admission.

Could it be that something she wasn't aware of, impossible as it seemed, was influencing these events?
If so this could only mean that the werewolves weren't really werewolves, they were artificial ones.

That didn't make the reality of the lycanthrope poking its newly formed head out of the vehicle any less jarring, and with a quick, vicious strike he decapitated the hapless creature and moved on, its body spilling out of the car, the intestines belonging to another body that fell out with it.

Further along the road, a werewolf jumped atop the roof of one of the cars, its burning red eyes scanning its surroundings as zero quietly moved around the front of a truck, slowly picking his way out of its field of vision just as it turned his direction.

Snarling, he could hear it advancing, the vehicle further up shuddering as it slowly moved in for what it assumed to be a kill.

Sniffing the air, it crawled lower as zero moved to the right side of the vehicle.

Just then a well placed shot from a police officer in the distance entered its skull, resulting in an explosion of gore and brain matter.

The head tried and failed to properly regenerate, and zero took care to make note of that detail, decapitated werewolves, or at least werewolves missing a good deal of their skull, wouldn't regenerate.

Which could only mean that a sound bone structure, or at least some semblance of one was needed to regenerate.

Were zero to remove a bone of some sort then damage the flesh, it would compromise the regeneration process.

Which could only mean that the marrow was needed, or perhaps the bone structure itself.

Another shot was fired, and another werewolf jumped back, hopping away like a rabbit before falling down, its upper body unmoving as its lower body twitched and jerked, as though trying to drag itself away.

The next shot took out the head, and zero had to admire their cleverness.

It was then that a howl sounded forth from the center of the city, near town square, and countless werewolves began racing through jackson hole, across rooftops, over bushes and shrubs, through stores, they ignored the police officers, tearing through the streets with abandon and knocking aside any and all who dared to stand in their way.

One officer was cut cleanly in half by a sidelong swipe from a lycanthrope as it raced past, his upper half crawling for a few seconds before he died from blood loss.

Gathering in the park area, the largest and most formidable of these creatures, a great silver furred werewolf, began slaughtering the pack that it had called.

The more bizarre sight was the reaction the pack had to this, they seemed entirely eager to die for their alpha, and many began biting and clawing at one another for the macabre privelege.

As the great silver alpha tore its pack to shreds, it turned to view the police slowly approaching, their guns trained on it.

Baskerville let out a long, hungry howl, and they open fired as he bore down on them.

Zero slowly approached the square, expecting a small army of werewolves or worse as he made his way past the parked police vehicles.

What he encountered was one, seated atop a pile of the dead, the werewolves having turned back to their human shape.

In one of his clawed hands he held a policewoman, who was still struggling and shooting into the beast's chest, to no avail.

Baskerville had already torn off her shirt, exposing her bare chest to the cold fog soaked air, and was taking his time with her, biting her shoulder to elicit a pained cry.

It was then zero noticed that all of the bodies were female.

Not a single male corpse could be seen outside of the ones clothed in police uniform.

“Hey, fido!” zero shouted, and baskerville's ears perked up as his silver fur, fur that had transformed in the few days he'd been killing bristled while it slowly turned to regard zero.

“you gonna eat that?” he joked, gesturing to the officer.

Growling angrily, for the werewolf surely recognized its assailant, it casually tossed the officer aside, her back snapping as she struck a tree, killing her on the spot.

“Man, I've seen some low beasts in my day.” zero laughed. “But this.....gotta say, it takes the cake.”
snarling baskerville leaped forward, and zero wisely sidestepped.

The werewolf came on, claws swiping.

This wasn't a newly transformed beast, quite the contrary, this one was entirely used to his form, and each attack was measured, each blow more careful than the last.

More than once the werewolf's strikes would pull up short, as if baiting out a reaction or testing zero's reactive limitations, and zero knew all too well that his opponent was measuring him.

He jumped over a raking talon as it passed low, baskerville's maw shooting forth.

Leaning to the side as the maw came in, zero gave it a savage uppercut, content to hear the jawbone cracking.

But baskerville wasn't as sensitive to pain as the females it had turned, and it pinned zero down.

About to deal the killing blow, for surely it held the advantage, it glanced down when it felt a stinging, burning pain in its chest.

Zero twisted the sword, just to make certain that he destroyed as much cardiac tissue as he could, and, barking angrily, baskerville staggered back.

And the fog grew thicker around the two combatants as baskerville, his adrenaline the only thing keeping his body in its current shape, roared and charged once more, his attacks now savage, desperate.

Just what zero was hoping for.

One arm shot in, and zero's diagonal counter tore the limb free.

The next arm reached out, as though grabbing for his neck, and zero wisely ducked under the blow, turning with the ducking motion and performing a quick, but forceful close range overhead slash.

Baskerville rolled away as zero held the blade in that stance, pointed to the side before turning to regard the alpha lycanthrope, its limbs now completely gone.

Something was wrong, zero realized, he was certain he'd destroyed the werewolf's heart earlier, yet here it was, still pressing the attack.

The werewolf was hardly defeated by the earlier exchange, which made matters worse, and it raced forth, its maw wide open.

Taken by surprise, for he hadn't expected it to attack again, he found his weapons knocked free and suddenly he was struggling against the hot, snapping jaws of that fanged mouth, its hot breath spilling over his face as he held it back by the throat.

The werewolf's mouth made visible clicking sounds as it roared and barked, its maw mere inches from zero's face, its saliva pooling over his face while its blood spurted freely from those two wounds, twin waterfalls of thick crimson crashing down on either side of his black trenchcoat as he held the dying werewolf back, the beast's heart likely having been repaired during the fight.

Finally, baskerville went limp, and zero, seeing the feint for what it was, didn't relent in his tension.

His guess paid off, for baskerville went mad in his arms, renewing his attack one final time, pulling in closer with every last ounce of its strength before finally going slack for the last time.

The blood stopped pouring from its stumps in regular intervals, now falling freely in a tiny, mute trickle, and zero heaved the silver haired fiend off of him with a look of disgust.

As it slowly began to revert to its human form, zero's eyebrow rose.

“the rapist.” he remarked, suddenly realizing what it about the werewolf that had seemed so familiar.

All of the werewolves had been female.

It had slaughtered them all, if its presence atop their bodies was any indication.

From a distance, he heard clapping, and he bent low to collect his weapon just as a silhouette approached in the ever thickening fog.

Those awful golden eyes shone forth with an inner light even as the fog became thick enough to darken the daylight.

“We meet at last.” came the noble voice of the fog borne specter, its form so veiled in the mire that the only thing he could determine about it was that it was human.

And even then, that was a shaky foundation of evidence he was seated upon when he looked at those awful golden eyes.

He leveled his sword at the figure.

“Who are you?”

This is of course a long story featuring many elements from my favorite videogame franchises, the character of "baskerville" is a lycanthrope transformed by the main antagonist with the collective concept of "lycanthropy" in the dark lord zero universe, ideas and figments of the imagination have to be real in other realities and worlds, and the main antagonist can acquire them in their malleable state and use them for his own ends, baskerville to this end, is a serial killer transformed by the concept of lycanthropy, and is himself a symbol of werewolves in general as people have imagined them to be.