Black Sun Rising: Frozen Dawn (Part 3)

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Grate.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

A ragged servant stands alone in the kitchen, his boney back hunched over the work of chopping vegetables and collecting them in a small wooden bowl. The room is hot- too goddamn hot- and his stained and torn clothes are soaked through with sweat. He constantly wipes sweat out of his eyes and curses under his breath, muttering about how he is going to run the Lord through with his kitchen knife and shit in his dinner.

I like this man. He is distracted and angry and, most importantly, will not notice me unless I draw my knife and take it to his face.

I stride across the small kitchen to the cold fireplace , not minding the sound of my footsteps on the stone floor- there is no danger in this room. I crawl inside the mantle and stand up inside the chimney, careful to keep my cloak tucked tightly around my body; if any of the equipment I have strapped around my person were to brush the side of the chimney during my climb it would cause a large cascade of ash to fall, alerting even the oblivious cook.

This mission is more complicated than I anticipated.

Breaking in was easy- scale the wall and take a hop, skip, and jump up a rope arrow, and climb into the nearest window.
But Gods curse me, Narrin is a much smarter man than I gave credit for.

Lord Narrin is not known among my circle to be a wide traveler or a particularly knowledgeable man. He is one of the only men on the Great Council to uphold the outdated standards of the Age of Kings and regularly flaunts his wealth in the poor sectors of The City. He has the baying laugh of a rowdy prostitute and covers his face in the waxy white makeup of antiquity; his bald head is constantly covered with a ridiculous wig and a preposterous hat to match. Narrin claims to be a bonified master of “archery, the sport of our Great Kings”- also known as the sport of missing rather large targets with horribly blunt arrows.

How the man has not been robbed and raped is quite the mystery.

The man is a stupid ass- but his coffers…oh, his coffers are an entirely different story altogether. Narrin is an Heir of The City, a heritage that led him to great power and even greater wealth. His father was one of the cruelest Lords of The City and worked many of his serfs to death in a never ending quest for wealth; any that tried to escape or move to another plot of land were hunted down in the dead of night and tortured in front of the entire community. That was not the half of it. Over time the Narrin estate grew to encompass not only a large section of the land surrounding The City but a major section of the government as well.

Needless to say, The City entered a period of treachery and deceit that has only been prolonged by the current Lord Narrin.

Narrin is not a poor man and his manor certainly shows it.

The outside of the mansion is just as enormous and imposing as any royalty would demand. It is bordered by a tall stone wall and elaborate hedge gardens decorate the yard, serving as a lining to the long gravel driveway. These served quite well as a mask for me work my way over to one of the large balconies on the side of the manor. The mansion itself is constructed of polished granite, impossible to scale even with quality tools. All of the windows and balconies are on the third floor only due to Narrin’s paranoia- to the untrained, the balconies are too high to climb up to and too far to fall from.

To the trained…well, my day was only slightly ruined by this obstacle.

Its a shame that Narrin’s intelligence is not equal to his paranoia. While he accounted for criminals attempting to scale the wall or drop down from the roof, he disregarded the usefulness of the hedges surrounding the manor. He also disregarded the fact that his roof is made of wood and straw and is a perfect anchor for rope arrows.

A secure hiding spot in the hedges, a well placed arrow, and a bit of climbing was all that was needed to reach the balcony.

The lock on the balcony door presented quite a challenge, requiring me to revert back to the old gunpowder trickery that I used to use to break locks before I became skilled in the use of proper picks.

It was at this point in my work that I should have abandoned my prey, for when I entered the mansion I found myself in Narrin’s vast library with my treasure presented before me and no guards or traps in sight.

The small spheres lay in a perfect arrangement on the grandiose black walnut table, placed exactly in the center of its circular breadth, each one representing a cardinal direction of the Compass Rose. The traditional elements representing each cardinal direction had been painstakingly carved into the table top: mountains for the earth of the North, waves for the water of the South, trees for the grand forests of the East, and stars for the unknown lands to the West. The artist had filled in the carved lines with a form of white dye or paint, making his work stand out from the wooden canvas and adding another dimension of brilliance to the masterpiece. To add to the artwork, each sphere lay within a small indentation in the table and was cushioned from the wood by a small bed of silk of appropriate color: white for the snows of the North, turquoise for the waves of the South, brown for the trees of the East, and black for the mysteries of the West. The library was well lit with overhead lanterns, and the spheres glittered in the torchlight, each one seeming to promise wealth and riches of great magnitude if only I would release them from this prison and return them to their rightful resting place………

By this time I was sure I had been noticed or had stepped into an elaborately planned trap. I had stayed in one place for far too long, and such a bounty would certainly not go unprotected by a greedy bastard like Narrin.

I slunk into the shadows, careful to remain completely still and to hide my face as so not to expose the whites of my eyes to anyone in the vicinity. One of the easiest ways to get caught is to show your eyes to the man who is hunting you- eyes do not blend in with a supposedly empty room.

No guards appeared.

Believing that there were no guards because of traps, I took a large bag of fine dust out of my inner pocket. I slowly circled the entire room, hunched over and sprinkling the dust before me. If there had been any traps, the dust would have exposed them by falling into crevices in the floor that might expose a trap door and by outlining any suspicious triggers or wires that lay across the ground.

I found nothing.

I armed my small crossbow with a flash arrow and fired it at the ceiling.

No traps.

For once in a very long time, I didn’t know what to do- no one worth their weight in pebbles left their valuables out for the taking.

I made my way back over to the table, carefully inspecting each sphere and the cloth nests that they rested in. Although there seemed to be no snares in the library itself, the spheres could easily have rested on pressure pads that would trigger an alarm when their burden was removed and their triggers released. Most thieves know only one way to identify these traps: if a thief picks up his treasure and loses his hand, well, chances are he’s just come across a pressure pad trap.

I, however, use a more…sophisticated method.

I removed my blackjack from my belt, positioned myself near one of the corners of the table (one of the safest places to be should a trap go off, as most assume a thief will approach their quarry from the most obvious, straight on angle), and struck the surface of the table as hard as I could. The table shook, jostling the spheres in their resting places.

Nothing.

I quickly gathered the spheres, wrapping them in their respective cloths and gently packing them into the small pack that I used to discreetly transport “goods”.

After waiting in the shadows for a good long while, I exited the library and began to make my way through the rest of Narrin’s manor. A good thief never passes up the chance to alleviate his victims of their overflowing safes and vaults.

That’s when my problems started.

No matter where I went, no matter how well I concealed myself, I always felt as if there was always someone behind me, something eating away at the back of my mind. If I stood in the shadows where no man could possibly see me, I felt as if there were something directly behind me, watching, waiting, ready to kill if I were to turn to confront it. If I flattened myself against a wall, I felt as if someone was going to charge out of my surroundings to pin me against it with one arm and disembowel me with the other. If I stood in a dark corner, I felt as if the walls on both sides were going to stretch and flex and swallow me whole, fixing me in one place while the demon pursuing me devoured my soul. If I walked, if I ran, if I crawled, I always felt as if there were someone at my back, lurking behind the last corner I’d rounded, hiding in the shadows that lay behind me.

The only place that I felt somewhat safe was in well lit rooms- the very places that could get me killed if a guard were to come along.

The safest idea was for me to fight this torture, this curse, this mind bending spell that had fallen upon me and to escape from the manor.

I moved from room to room, trying as best I could to ignore the constant feeling of fear and mental anguish, risking my own mind to avoid being noticed by Narrin’s men. When I finally made my way into this kitchen, a wave of relief ran over me.

The shadowy figure and the fear seemed to disappear when I entered the bright room, as if the light were a needle that drew the toxins and puss from an infected wound. I felt energized and calm, happy to be in the light.

Something is wrong with me, though be it some sort of spell, snare, or in my own mind I do not know.

I arm my crossbow with a small grappling hook and aim at the chimney opening high above me, slightly angling my shot so that the hook will snag the edge of the chimney and provide a strong anchor for my climb upwards. A few seconds later I hear the metal hook scrape on the brick and I tug on the rope to make sure it has anchored properly.

Beautiful- my route of escape has been secured.

I start to climb the rope, careful not to brush against the thick deposits of coal dust on the sides of the chimney. As I climb the light seeping into the base of the chimney from the kitchen gets dimmer and dimmer, and the curse returns with a vengeance. I cannot look upwards, as the night is pitch black and it seems as if the sky is consumed by devils that want only to rip me to shreds; I cannot look at the walls of the chimney, as it seems as if at any moment I will be absorbed and lost forever. My only option is to look down, to focus on the sliver of light far below me…it gives me strength, it gives me courage, it gives me hope.

I repeat that mantra over and over, keeping my eyes on the light far below until the upper edge of the chimney and my grappling hook appear before my eyes.

Finally, I have escaped….now to get back to my apartment and to try to end whatever spell has been put upon me.

I bring myself to look away from the light, to gaze upon the rooftop so I can make my way home…

The darkness.

The demons.

The pain.

Pain….my mind…

The rooftop, the darkness…..

The demons, my head, the pain…

Impact.

Darkness…..