The Plague Doctor's Apprentice

The sky runs dark with smoke. A deadly Plague ravages the Dominion. The sick perish by the thousands as the disease continues to spread. Plague victims are quickly incinerated in massive pyres that burn day and night, creating a persistent haze of smoke which reeks of charred flesh and creeping mortality. For the living, it is a time of great uncertainty, fear, and hardship. For the dead, it is a time of unfathomable prosperity. Vampyres, once forced to skulk in the shadows of the most forgotten corners of the world, have used the turmoil brought on by the Plague to infest society with their malice. They have become a second plague all their own, one whose victims are never even aware of what is happening to them until it is far too late to stop it. Vlad Albescu, an aging Plague doctor, journeys across the Dominion slaying these undead abominations while in pursuit of a single, elusive target: a vampyre that he has dubbed Three-Fang. He meets Sybil, a huntsman’s daughter, who was recently orphaned by the same monster that he so eagerly wishes to destroy. Vlad reluctantly takes Sybil on as his apprentice; he teaches her what it means to be a Plague doctor while they travel the Dominion in search of the fiend that has taken so much from both of them. But in a land overrun by both pestilence and the undead, surviving long enough to see their quest through to its end sometimes seems like an almost impossible task—and their chances of success grow weaker with each passing day. *Content warning: Graphic Violence I do not think the violence depicted in this story is particularly excessive, but I've decided to include this warning just in case, because this story features many battles with supernatural creatures that involve decapitation, impalement, dismemberment, etc.