Peace. Quiet. Relax – crawling things nipping at my flesh, squirming all over me in the dark…
One with natur– buried alive under tons of earth and stone. Corpse dust on my face, in my mouth, choking…
Peac– the revenant’s hungry eyes as it rises from its deathbed…
My eyes snapped open as the vision of that old undead thing materialized before me, echoed in every leering skull and scattered bone, a palpable presence hanging in the darkness that resurrected a child’s terror. No – I destroyed you!
I was going about this all wrong.
Dissever was in my hands as I stood and opened my Gift. Anger and power flooded into me, blasting through the pain barrier caused by alchemic poison. I was a magus. I was no longer that powerless cringing child shivering in terror from crawling bugs and long-dead monsters. I didn’t need mind-rotting drugs to feel powerful.
“I am the fucking monster here!” I roared at the vision of the revenant, my voice reverberating back in hollow echo.
I closed my eyes and plunged into absolute darkness. Except, that didn’t matter. The air currents washed over skin and super-sensitive hairs, and the earth vibrated with almost imperceptible movement and pressures. In a mess of panic and fear I’d suppressed and forgotten my magic-given gifts. I couldn’t see far in my little island of lantern light, but then I didn’t need to actually see.
I sensed no malign magic or movement in the tunnels nearby, no revenant creeping towards me in the darkness. An ever-so-slight air current cooled my skin. I took several deep breaths of moist, warm, stale air, and then turned around. The air was slightly cooler in that direction, and a mite fresher. It seemed a possible way out.
I opened my eyes again and stamped down the last remnants of my panic with bloody-minded will. It was still there waiting to break free, but Charra’s breathing was ragged and her skin covered in a swollen lattice of angry red streaks. I cursed myself for an idiot and ran to her side, scooping handfuls of cold water from the stream to scrub her exposed flesh to get rid of any lingering poisons. She didn’t stir.
“Charra,” I said, shaking her. “Charra, wake up. Please wake up.” No response. I peeled back one eyelid. She didn’t even twitch. Her pupil was huge and dark, not natural.
I gritted my teeth, wishing again that I had the Gift to heal. But, no, all I had was a manipulative curse. All I could do was to get her to somebody that could help, whatever that cost me.
I winced as I hefted her back on my shoulder. Lantern in hand, I followed the hint of fresher air, staggering through a winding maze of dank tunnels and excavated caverns, forced to fortify myself with magic and take frequent breaks to stave off complete exhaustion. I stood at a crossroads, peering into the darkness down each path. Something slammed into rock somewhere down the tunnel to my left, causing stalactites to crack and fall. I shuttered my lantern so only a glimmer of light showed my way, and edged towards the source. Every few years the Arcanum sent coteries of magi into the depths to clear out warped creatures, and if this was an Arcanum party they would have a healer with them.
I made my way down towards the vibrations. Warm, humid air washed over me in rhythmic cycles. As I got closer the air carried a rancid meaty smell akin to a bad Docklands butcher sited next to a tannery.
I carefully set Charra down and propped her up against the wall. “I’ll be back soon,” I whispered.
It took an almighty force of will to prise my hand from the handle of the lantern, and shuffle forward in the darkness, ever wary of stepping on bones. Gradually my eyes picked up a dim light ahead, and with it, muffled voices.
“Pour it in the pool, not over my feet, you cretin,” a man said. “That spill is worth more than your entire village!” At that distance it was difficult to make him out clearly, but his voice was slick with the cultured tones of the Old Town.
I slunk forward, back to the wall, until the tunnel opened out into a torch-lit cavern. The whole space was awash with a hiss of stray magic, masking lesser magical traces. Four rough men in tattered homespun, their skin mottled with rashes and sores and unnatural growths, were pouring the contents of large jars into a pool of black water a hundred paces wide. A dozen empties had been discarded behind them and, sat closer to me, only a single remaining jar remained sealed with green wax. Their robed leader’s face was hidden in the shadows of his hood and a pair of fresh corpses lay at his feet. My gut instinctively clenched – he was Gifted, and surely had to be an elder magus from the insanely potent aura of magic that cut through the haze of stray magic. Or something more – a god perhaps.
The men finished and scurried back from the pool. The hooded man pulled back his sleeves and plunged his arms up to the elbow in the water. The aura of power drained away and the air reeked of blood sorcery. At a word his cringing minions tossed in the two corpses. The surface of the water churned to pink froth as something snatched them under.
The ground shuddered. Stalactites fell from above to splash into the black pool. The hooded man turned in my direction and I slipped further behind the safety of the wall, holding my breath as he scanned the cavern. I resumed breathing as he chuckled and said, “How they struggle, trapped so deep below the city. Trusting fools.”
I scowled as the sweet scent of blood and alchemical spice reached my nostrils. I recognized the green wax around the necks of those jars and was certain they were pouring mageblood into the pool, more than I had ever believed existed.
It was impossible to obtain that much from a few down-on-their-luck donors. Somewhere, somebody was farming Gifted like cattle, draining their blood and smuggling it into Setharis. But why? What could they possibly gain by pouring it into the water? With that much you could have sold it to amass entire armies of mercenaries.
“Fetch the last of it,” the man ordered.
One of his minions scrambled closer to my hiding place and picked up the final jar. It seemed the perfect time to get into his head. Hidden by the magical haze, I eased my Gift open and carefully snuck into the depths of his mind. He was half-deaf and his knee ached from an old breakage. I learned he was a simple, weak-willed country man come to Setharis to find his fortune, and been consumed by the dark underbelly of the city. Sadly his memory was damaged by years of alcohol and alchemic abuse and he knew little of worth, but he was deathly afraid of whatever the magus kept beneath the water. Oh well, he would just have to ask this hooded man a few leading questions. It was a simple task to gently take his reins and guide his lips.
He lumbered towards his master and considered the jar in his hands. I could smell the heady reek of mageblood through his nostrils. “Master, how long until we are ready with… whatever we are doing?”
The hooded man paused, surprised at being questioned. “The date is set and we cannot afford further delay. Three days left until the city is full of lazy peasants fat from food and wine. I had hoped my creature would be fully mature and already able to scale the walls of the Old Town by then – curse that fat fool’s interference! Now pour that last jar in unless you want to join it in the pool. In three days you will have all the women, wine and gold I promised you.”
Fat fool? I almost said it out loud, catching myself just in time. He was planning something terrible for Sumarfuin. This wasn’t some pissy little blood sorcery ritual to bolster a weakling’s power; this was on a grand scale, like something straight out of the histories of the fall of Escharr. If the sorcerer could enact a ritual this huge and complex he was dangerous beyond anything I’d ever dealt with. Suddenly the invasion of Ironport seemed a mere portent of far worse to come. My anger grew, causing the minion’s knuckles to go white around the jar. I took a deep breath and calmed myself, bidding my puppet to begin pouring slowly. I had to find out everything I could.