Tall and well formed, Mortimer had the sort of rangy build that men of extreme activity sometimes possessed. He was neither as broad nor as handsome as some but the overall combination of his looks and intelligence were memorable and pleasing to the opposite sex.
It was during an ill-fated trip to Sovereign in 1793 that he had been confronted with an entity known as the Headless Horseman. The ensuing battle had left Mortimer a dead man until the same Voice that would later resurrect Charity Grace had made him an offer he could not refuse.
Mortimer had served his time as Gravedigger, successfully redeeming his soul in the process. To his surprise, he’d found his own aging severely retarded. Where others grew old and died, he simply kept… existing. There were a few small signs of the passage of time — a wrinkle or two around the eyes, a stray wisp of silver to his hair — but they were few and far between.
Eventually, he had returned to the place of his birth, using some of the occult knowledge he’d gained as Gravedigger to ensure his continued wealth. He’d lived in relative solitude, aware that others had been pressed into service to The Voice but never interacting with them… not until Charity.
He’d happened to catch a brief newspaper mention of Gravedigger and her activities. He’d recognized it immediately, knowing what it meant and curious that this new Gravedigger was a woman, the first female to ever own that title, Mortimer believed.
Mortimer liked to believe that it wasn’t prurient interest that had led him out of the shadows, eager to confront Charity. He wanted to offer her guidance and protection, a purely gallant response to both her position and her gender.
Of course, he’d been quite pleased to discover that she was amazingly gorgeous, but what red-blooded male wouldn’t have been?
All of these thoughts ran through his mind as he sat in the study, his eyes riveted to the flickering flames in the fireplace. He wore the modern fashions, even though they felt strange to him even after all these years. The only outward sign of his age was the somewhat unusual nature of his features. It had been a source of no small amount of amusement to him over the years that the nature of human appearance shifted and altered over time. People simply looked and carried themselves differently than they did in the past. Whether it was the result of increasingly better health conditions or simply the evolution of the species, men and women were generally taller and stronger than they had been in the era of Mortimer’s birth.
So far, the group that surrounded Gravedigger had been slow to embrace Mortimer. He was quite the outsider amongst them and he wasn’t quite sure why that was. He had certainly tried to ingratiate himself into the team but none of them, not even the overly flirtatious Li, had warmed up to him.
The chiming of the grandfather clock made Mortimer glance up. It was nearly midnight. With a yawn, Mortimer pushed himself out of the chair and finished the last of the brandy that he’d been nursing for the past half hour. The liquid was burning its way down his throat when a sound caught his attention. The heavy brass knockers on the front door clanged against the front entrance again and Mortimer sighed, wondering who would be brave enough to approach the darkness of Hendry Hall at the witching hour.
He approached and took the time to peer through the slot on the door. Seeing nothing but shadows and fog, Mortimer’s time as a Gravedigger prompted him to take precaution. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small handgun, keeping it hidden as he unlocked the door and opened it.
To his amazement, there was no one standing there. He had expected to find someone lying in wait for him, having hidden from the peephole’s view, but all that he found was a well-wrapped parcel sitting on the stoop. He picked it up, noting the heavy weight of the thing, and took note that there was no writing on the box at all; nothing to suggest who it was from or even who it was meant for.
Mortimer closed the door behind him and entered the study, wondering if he should set the box aside for Cedric. The house was technically his, even if everyone treated it as belonging to Charity. If anyone was going to have packages delivered here, it was liable to be the man of the house but the mail service didn’t typically run a midnight delivery shift, did they?
Thinking that the box might pose a threat, Mortimer began to open it. What he found inside was enough of a surprise that he merely stood there looking into the package’s interior for nearly a full minute. Finally reaching in, he pulled out a wonderful carved replica of a human skull, one that was made completely out of silver. The weight of the thing assured him that it wasn’t hollowed out and as he brought it close to his face. Peering at its many fine details, he saw that tiny emeralds were affixed to the back of the eye sockets. The light caught these gems, giving the eyes an artificial glow.
Mortimer set the skull aside so that he could finish its examination of the package. He felt along the interior of the box and felt a slip of paper that had become wedged along the side. A less thorough search would not have detected it, as it was hidden so well that it almost suggested that it was unintentional.
He yanked it free, seeing that it had a series of strange symbols written in ink on one side. They looked almost like Norse runes. Turning the paper over revealed more writing on the back, this time in English: Pandora Rises.
The incongruity of Norse runes being used on the same slip of paper as a reference to an ancient Greek myth was not lost on Mortimer. According to the original stories, many of which had received considerable embellishment over the years, Pandora was the very first mortal woman, formed out of clay at the command of Zeus himself. Endowed with beauty, grace and wisdom by the Gods, Pandora was offered to Epimetheus as a bride. Shortly after being brought into his home, Pandora’s curiosity about a strange jar led her to open it, unleashing a swarm of evil spirits that would plague humanity from that day forward.
Though some cast Pandora as malicious or unintelligent, the truth was that she had merely succumbed to curiosity, which was hardly the worst of sins.
What connection that story could have with a silver skull and some Norse runes escaped him.
Deciding that the skull posed no immediate danger, Mortimer placed it and the slip of paper back in the box. He carried it down to Charity’s room and set it on the floor outside her door.
After taking one last walk around outside Hendry Hall, Mortimer felt he’d done his due diligence as far as the silver skull was concerned. Whoever had left it was long gone and the box’s contents would hopefully make more sense once Charity had examined them.
He had no idea that a terrible evil was about to descend upon Sovereign City.
WARDEN JOHNNY MATTHEWS[1] had a lovely wife and three adorable children. He was a church deacon and frequently took part in charitable activities throughout Sovereign. It was sometimes whispered that he took bribes in his position as Warden but in a place like Sovereign, this was hardly unusual. In fact, many of those who gossiped about such things would have argued that he did it out of a desire to provide for his family, which was hardly a terrible thing.
A stout man with an unsightly complexion, Johnny had married above his station in terms of physical appearance. His wife had curves in all the right places and was a warm-hearted person and a good mother.
He lived, to all who knew him, the perfect life.
Which would have made it all the more surprising to his friends and family to know what Matthews was up to now.