Not-So-Cute #Rabbits, And The Other Animals Of Nytefall - A Guest Post By @cyallowitz

Thank you to Victoria for offering a space on her blog to help promote my newest release, War of Nytefall: Rivalry. This is the third volume of my vampire series, which takes place in the world of Windemere where my previous series, Legends of Windemere, was set. So, there is a lot of magic and monsters in this world to join the civil war between the old-world vampires and the more dangerous Dawn Fangs. Let’s meet the . . . Oh . . . Yeah, I might have a problem here.

In my last series, I had Fizzle the drite who was a purple dragon with dragonfly wings. He was very popular and was perfect for gaining attention to the books. He was happy, loved apples, talked like a child, and had enough power to protect his friends. Fizzle worked for that series because it was an epic adventure with a sense of bright humor. War of Nytefall has an entire cast of vampires, so cute animals are kind of rare. Now, if you will bear/bare/beer with me and cast the ‘cute’ part aside, I do have a few critters that you can meet.

Lost’s Bunny
This may take a little explanation. Lost is a vampire who was born instead of turned, so she’s very special. She’s also a powerful psionic and her pet/weapon is this bunny. Originally, this was my sister’s character in ‘Vampire: The Masquerade’ RPG and she just did whatever popped into her head at the time. Having promised to keep the character as close to what she was, I couldn’t forget the rabbit. It flies around and moves really fast, which is really because of her telekinesis. Many times, it’s shot through an enemy because they’re too busy watching the vampire dancing around in front of them. The poor thing doubles as a purse too with gems, coins, and other random objects inside of it.

It’s really hard to put this creature on the list even though it has the most amount of page time among the ‘animals’. The reason is because it isn’t alive. As a baby, Lost was approached by this rabbit and it tried to bite her. She snapped its neck and they’ve been friends ever since with her subconsciously animating the bunny. The two of them talk with people only hearing her side of the conversation and she feeds it tomatoes. I describe it fairly often as looking decrepit and strange, which is the main reason I said that we weren’t going to find any cute animals here.

Bob’s Horses
Bob is one of the vampire heroes who has an obsession with horses. He loves them and will bring them up in conversation every chance he gets. In fact, his special power is that he can create horses from corpses. He can actually do it to any animal, but he sticks to horses for the most part. In an emergency, Bob will use another riding beast while complaining about them or getting himself to believe that they are close enough to horses to count. One of my favorite scenes is him using a cobbled together pronghorn antelope and having to do repairs as he rides along.

Here’s the thing with Bob and his horses: They aren’t normal. That might seem like an understatement, but I’m sure everyone is thinking skeletal and zombie horses right now. It isn’t that simple. He literally builds them and can keep a stable of 12-16 before he has to junk one to make room for another. Bob can make them for speed, strength, agility, gliding, metal skin, stone skin, breathing acid, and the list is as long as his imagination. Whatever parts and ingredients he can get his hands on, he can put into or onto one of his creations. For example, he could take a normal stallion and add griffin wings to it for a makeshift Pegasus. So, I can’t really list all of his horses because I’d be here all day. There are always some new ones that show up in every book too.

Clyde’s Eusu
I almost forgot about this guy because he’s in the background. Clyde is the leader of the Dawn Fangs and the protagonist of the entire series. After being transformed by the Great Cataclysm into a vampire who is immune to sunlight and displays incredible physical abilities, he becomes a target of the old-world vampires. They really fear him because his blood can transform them into Dawn Fangs, which many go through with for the increase in power. Personality-wise, Clyde is aggressive and struggling to maintain his humanity, so I gave him a pet. It wasn’t on purpose either. It just kind of happened because I had this animal hanging around where he had one of his big battles in War of Nytefall: Loyalty. It was eating so many vampires and some of his blood that I couldn’t imagine it being anything other than an immortal pet.

So, what is an Eusu? Imagine a large alligator that is really aggressive and the top of whatever food chain it decides to join. At least in regards to non-magical animals. Of course, there has to be something unique for me to call it something other than an alligator. It’s got a four-jawed mouth that opens into a wide ‘X’ and slams down on its prey with enough force to usually snap its neck or sever a limb. This was a beast I came up with on the fly when I wanted Timoran Wrath to have a big fight in Legends of Windemere: The Compass Key. He’s a barbarian and I wanted a really nasty predator. The Eusu just came to me and it’s been one of my favorite creatures to use ever since. It’s surprisingly simple in design and makes a great pet for someone like Clyde who is rather predatory himself. It typically hangs around the moat that is near his fortress or wanders out to prowl the island in search of food. Given that it’s been vampirized to some extent, this Eusu is much stronger and durable than others. Makes me wonder if I should do more with it.

So, there are the animals found within War of Nytefall: Rivalry (UK readers can find the book here). Hope you enjoyed it enough to give the book a look on Amazon. See you in the comments.

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About the Author:
Charles E. Yallowitz was born, raised, and educated in New York. Then he spent a few years in Florida, realized his fear of alligators, and moved back to the Empire State. When he isn't working hard on his epic fantasy stories, Charles can be found cooking or going on whatever adventure his son has planned for the day. Truthfully, his tales of adventure are much more interesting than his real life, so skip the bio and dive into the action

Blog: www.legendsofwindemere.com
Twitter: @cyallowitz
Website: www.charleseyallowitz.com