Over Your Dead Body (working title)

Prologue

It was dark. Not just dark but Dark. The kind of darkness that can only be found in the unkind places of the world - behind taverns, in old sewers and the backs of prison cells. The kind of Dark that happens when Evil walks abroad

A pinprick of light from a candle that should have filled the study with a warm orange glow flickered and guttered, briefly casting light over the thick leather bound tome. Inside were words, scratched and thin of ink, barely legible:
"It was a dark and stormy night..." they began.
Somewhere close to the book something - someone - laughed a dry laugh, a chuckle that cracked like the turning of old manuscript:
"No."
Then a hand, a quill, a flourish - the words changed:
'They were blind. Alone. Afraid. From outside the room came the baying and banging of terrible creatures, creatures spawned from their deepest of nightmares. And as the doors split upon their hinges, they found themselves defenceless against the coming dark.'
Another chuckle. Then silence.

It was Dark. And Evil walked abroad.
***

It happened like this: Across the empire mercenaries slept. Those that could sleep anyway. It is said that in the Empire the good sleep well while the bad enjoy the waking hours much more. That might be true. For in the Empire, particularly among the mercenary caste, there were many reasons not to sleep: conscience, occupation and lineage being the three most common.

For some though, it was a feeling that something wasn’t right in the world. Which in a place as varied and spontaneously life threatening as the Empire is saying something indeed. And in the Empire on this night, there were eight such people.

Well, seven, not counting Rapheal since he was too paranoid to notice and too drunk to care. Such is the life of the homeless and dispossessed in the Empire.

His brother Vellian however, was neither drunk nor paranoid. He perched, like some man-sized gargoyle on the railings outside one of Sellaville’s less reputable brothels, which would pretty much be all of them. He sighed heavily – partly in boredom, mostly in disappointment.  He drew his knees up to his chest, wrapped his arms around his knees and rocked gently on his heels, held up by some unseen counterweight. Not long to wait now.

In fact, he had to wait less than he imagined, but then time passed in a curiously linear patern in the Primus. He watched the Dark draw in, saw the buildings around them vanish as if they were never there until the visible world contracted to no more than twenty paces across.

He cocked his head sideways and watched the cowled figure approach:
“I see you,” he said, his voice echoing unnaturally around the walls of alley.
“And I… see… you,” said the figure, “Angel.”
Vellian dropped from his perch and stood over his brother: “You can’t have him.”
The figure laughed:
“But why? Without him the cast is incomplete. I already have quite an ensemble – the bastard child of Imrazil, a warrior mage trapped in Primus against his will, a weapon bearing priest with a penchant for the dead and a Priest of Shaehan who only joined the Church so he could hang around the priestesses bathing rooms.  And I still have several individuals with equally delinquent personality problems to collect.”
Vellian’s voice came again, somehow out of sync with the movements of his mouth:
“He belongs to me. You can’t have him.”
“Oh I know all about your Covenant with the beggar. The real question is, does he know?”
Vellian didn’t answer:
“I thought not. You amuse me Angel, perhaps I will take you both after all. Imagine the drama when the beggar finds out his so-called brother is slowly killing him.”
The cowled figure drew closer and with him, shadows ran and danced
“The only question left to answer is who will tell him. You? Or me?”

***

In a place so religiously diverse as the Empire, there is one universal truth that binds all acolytes together: The size of your cloister is proportionate to the rank in your church. Which means that if you plan to bring junior acolytes together for some kind of mixer party, be prepared for one topic of conversation: is your room bigger than mine?.

But in the High Temple to Talthar, there was one acolyte who did not complain about the size of her cloister. In comparison to the quarters she had spent the last five years in, her tiny quarters seemed like a veritable mansion. Razia liked it’s quiet location, the piercing damp in the winter, the boiling heat in the summer. She didn’t mind the smell of damp that never seemed to leave the room no matter how much she washed.

But she hated, with a passion that she couldn’t explain to her Abbess, the rats that had moved into the walls in the last week. The scratching, like the nibs of a thousand pens, crept out of the walls and permeated the room, driving her both to distraction and a long way from sleep. And Tonight was the worst of the last week. She buried her head in her hands trying to block out the noise.

***

And she wasn't the only one distracted. Far away across the Empire, a mage of Half elven descent struggled to focus. Rose, the aforementioned arcanist,  sat arms crossed and head in her hands, her black hair covering the small part of her face that her hands didn’t.
“That’s four times now Rose,” said a voice from somewhere close by. She nodded furiously, but didn’t look up
“Reading runes is first year student work.”
Rose nodded some more before finding words
“I know… it’s just…” her voice trembled, tinged with anger at herself for failing
“It’s just that you’re possibly the worst mage I know?”
Rose paused, in shock – she’d never heard her mentor talk to her so. She looked up
“Worst…?”
But her quarters were empty. Dark. The voice came again, from around her:
“Poor little Rose, no-one knows, how she died in the dark with no marks on her clothes” the voice taunted. It was an infantile taunt. Which made all the more infuriating.
Rose jumped to her feet – she could already sense the build up of potent magic – a gift from her elven father – and her mind raced: A test perhaps? The voice was obscured by darkness – if only she could see!
Instinctively, she tapped into her arcane power: “SPRITE come forth, I command you!” she shouted.
“I don’t think so,” said the voice with a dry chuckle.
And it was right, the elemental that appeared was not a sprite. The lights went out. Rose screamed. The world fell into Darkness

***
Razia – meanwhile was also in darkness - and full of regrets. She regretted using the broom like sledgehammer on the walls of her cloister. She regretted not stopping bashing the walls when the first cracks appeared. But mostly, she regretted walking to the space she found behind the plaster once the broom had broken, without a light.
***

It’s well known by those that know it, that people who play with poisons are much like those that play with fire: addicted to the thrill of being a hair’s breath from death and, although you wouldn’t say this directly to them, slightly mad.

Angherst was, by most measures employed in the Empire, slightly mad. Whether this was because he played regularly with poisons or fire is something enquiring minds can ask him themselves. And in doing so, they too might briefly also know what it feels like to be a hair’s breath from death. Shortly before actually dying, that is.

When Angherst’s room turned Dark and the shadows ran, he didn’t scream. He grinned. He liked this sort of game. A lot. He’d been playing it for as long as he could remember and had a lot of practice under his belt. He always won. Always. And this time would be no different.

He moved like oil on water – across the Dark rather than through it – a favourite shiv in each hand – nothing fancy – working blades. That’s why they were his favourite. Ahead, just, he could make the outline of a figure. He grinned silently and approached from behind, watching the sweet spot: third lumbar up. But decided instead to go for the throat – quicker – he had places to go once this business was done. That’d teach the f**ker for messing with his head.

With well-practiced grace he stood and put the haft of the shiv against the targets artery-major. Which was when he felt something cold against his own throat:
“Angherst, the man with many a shiv. Our positions reversed, would he let me live?”
“You better ghost me,” Angherst hissed “Easier for you that way. Less painful.”
Silver flashed in the Dark and it was joined by a red that could have been uncharitably described as “hint of Angherst”

***
Razias’ predicament had not improved. She was in a long dark corridor – some kind of escape tunnel perhaps? – behind the walls of the Talthari Temple. She couldn’t help but wonder why on Primus there would there be escape tunnels in the walls of the temple? The point was mute - she could barely see her hands in front of her face – she had other priorities. Like finding a way out. She paused, the dust from the tunnels working their way up her nose and she sneezed twice, but on the third, he held it in as best she could. Was that… could that be… a child singing?
Behind her, a shadow moved, a little girl:
“Hey there, little one, “ began Razia but she stopped short – something was wrong. The little girl, replete with bunches had blood on her – her hands, her dress, her face.
“No need to be scared, sweetie, I can help you…”
The little girl skipped slightly closer:
“I like you, you’re pretty,” she half sang, “I think I might kill you last.”
Razia didn’t need a second warning, she turned and fled into the darkness. Behind her, the girl giggled but Razia didn’t stop to see if she was being chased, she plunged headlong into the enveloping Darkness. Suddenly ahead a dull light glowered, a flickering candle and she leapt at it, hoping that it somehow would stop her pursuer. But she needn’t have worried – the little girl was gone, a fact she discovered as she turned, candle in hand.

She was in a small room, a room that was somehow vaguely familiar. Wait… no… it couldn’t be. She turned and ran toward where she hoped she’d find a blank stretch of wall. But it wasn’t blank – it was covered in scratches and marks she knew only too well - she ran her fingers over the words she had painfully carved with her own fingernails, as tears began to well in her eyes:
“Razia’s Oubliette.” Below it, one scratch for every day she had been locked away by her own church – nearly two thousand in total. Tears flooded from her then and were mixed great sobs of anguish and fear.
And around her, the Dark closed in.

***
Elsewhere.
Everywhere and nowhere, a hand plucked a quill from the stand and began to write quickly. Daylight was in it's death throws, the last rays of it's life fighting valiantly against the turn of the world and the author knew his time was short. The words came quickly, scratching the paper before the ink had time to flow onto the page:
'The hinges cracked and split but held. It was as they looked for the key, they found the cache of weapons.'
With what sounded like a sigh of relief, the hand faded, the pen dropped.
Time slowed.
Things changed.
***