In the dimming beginning of a moonless night, the sprawling city of Vaste lay silent.

King Alaric III turned the page.

Alaric the Ruthless. That was what they called him- they being his enemies, of which there were now few left. None that he feared, certainly. Few that he was even worried about. The uprising of Crims and his so-called “Valiant People” had been crushed without mercy. The coup in Niariv had reached his ears before most of its own citizens had heard of it, and the King of Vaste was not afraid of the hostile sentiments of a puny puppet ruler three hundred leagues away.
Alaric turned the next page. He wasn’t really reading.

The Apostles, now, they were always causing trouble of some kind. But who had ever heard of a Therist who didn’t? Blinded idiots, they were, who believed their god cared about them and how they lived. Most of his subjects shared Alaric’s opinion of the Therists, and by extension the Apostles of the Golden Circle. Let them follow their stupid laws and rituals- it didn’t matter to him if they lived peacefully or died a horrible death, as long as it was somewhere far away.

There had been reports of increased ghoulu numbers in Eldon. Alaric didn’t even give them a second thought- it seemed that all the mountain villages ever did was report increased numbers of ghoulu, and he had long since come to the conclusion that the villagers were all idiotic muddies who were only good for farming and being ruled. There weren’t any ghoulu left. There hadn’t been for decades, if not centuries, he knew. Yet every time some old codger jumped at a squirrel’s shadow, sure as the sunrise came a new report of increased ghoulu numbers.

He idly wondered if the Eldon range was such a bad place to live that it made people truly paranoid, or if they were playing some kind of joke on him. It didn’t matter- even if there was a single ghoulu still somehow alive in some corner of the mountains, he could trust the Nine Mage Orders to deal with it. Sure, not everyone liked Vaste’s alliance with the Nine Orders, but everyone admitted that it was for the best. If you wanted mages- and every truly powerful nation wanted mages- you really only had two options. You could ally with the Nine Orders, or you could ally with the Apostles. And no one wanted to ally with the Apostles.

Ruler of Vaste, King Alaric III, Alaric the Ruthless, turned the next page. Out of a rare feeling of duty and obligation, he spared the parchment a glance.

Elmdred Pareo, age 85, mother of Henning Pareo, Maisely Pareo-Eman, Jotham Pareo, currently sick with Goose-mouth, height 5’2”, residence Greymoor, Parai quarter…
The line stretched to the edge of the page and then doubled back on itself below, listing every useless detail about some mudfaced granny who had probably died in the three days since she was registered. And there were still thousands more entries that he needed to “read.”

How he hated the census.

A slight noise in the room startled him out of his reading, and Alaric turned. No one should be allowed in his private chambers. His tongue was prepared to deliver a sentence to the dungeons before he even turned around to see who was there.

“Alaric. We meet again.”

The King of Vaste froze. Blood turned to ice in his veins.

He rose quickly, not daring for even a second to take his eyes off of the figure in the pitch-black cloak. The man carried no weapon, but Alaric knew he didn’t need to. He made his mouth open, forced himself to speak. It was an effort.

“Prima Vonex… I-I’m almost surprised… What is your name, betrayer?”

The man’s face was shrouded entirely by his ebony hood, yet even if it was visible, Alaric wouldn’t have expected to see a reaction. The voice that emanated from the cowl was deep and coarse, with a strange accent Alaric had only heard twice before, long ago and far away.

“It is nothing to you. Now, accept payment.”

Suddenly, blue-white lighting arced off of the man’s right arm and between his fingers. The air seemed to faintly crackle in the King’s ears, as if someone was rustling papers from a long way off. Warm tingling spread across his skin.

Alaric’s eyes darted to his sword. It lay three feet away, sheath-less on his bed. Fear was pulsing through his body with every heartbeat- not mere worry, but the primal terror that a rabbit feels as it flees from a wolf.

The black-clad man laughed harshly, glancing at the sword as if it were a piece of straw. “You can’t reach that in time. You know that as well as I do. And even if you could, it wouldn’t do you any good.” After a short second of silence, he continued. “But try it if you’d like. I can wait.”

Alaric took a deep breath. Muscles were tensing in anxiety, vibrating with rigid panic. He needed to get control of himself.

“I don’t need to reach it.”

To any third observer in the room, nothing would have changed. But Alaric saw something, and what was more, he knew the other man saw that same something too.

The hooded head raised itself in shock, just enough for the King of Vaste to see a mouth agape.

Right before his sword blurred through the air towards the man.

In a split second, the cloaked man had produced a short sword from his robes. The blade was twisted, snakelike, and snake-fast it flicked up to meet the King’s sword in a flash of sparks.

Immediately, Alaric’s sword whipped around to the man’s other side, and the twisted weapon was barely fast enough to deflect the blow. Metal shrieked against metal, as if the two blades were voicing the unspoken hate between the two warriors.

The third strike was almost too quick for sight, and it was too quick for defense. The man dropped to his knees, the long, elegant sword of the King sticking from his midsection.

“D-d-do they know?!” he croaked. Despite his condition, it sounded almost like a mocking laugh.

“No,” replied Alaric in a steadier voice than he had previously mustered. “They do not.” His hand clutched the census-book with a white-knuckled grip.

“Oh, they will. They will.” The man laughed in truth this time, but it turned into a blood-choked cough. He didn’t have long to live, Alaric knew, yet he did not let his guard down. With one such as this man, you didn’t let your guard down until he was dead, burned, and his ashes were sealed underground in the nearest Mage Order.

The lightning had faded from the man’s arm. It worried Alaric- in fact, it terrified him, though he didn’t want to admit it. The man was perfectly capable of blasting him with a thunderbolt, or rending the stone ceiling above his head to crush him, or any number of other things that he would rather not think about. What scared him, though, was not what the man could do, but why he wasn’t doing anything. Expect anything. If you let down your guard, he can kill you ten different ways in the space of a breath.

The man continued his laughter. Blood was seeping onto the floor from the man’s wound. Alaric tried to make himself calm down.

“They will know. They will know you lied. Never used magic, you say?” The man’s mirth seemed only to increase, but his chuckling grew fainter as life fled.

Abruptly, laughter stopped, and the black-cloaked man fell to the floor, the King’s blade jutting out through his back.

Alaric took a deep and deliberate breath, and then he was sure that the man was dead.

“That was too close, old man,” he muttered to himself, and turned back to face the desk and the census-book.

“It was indeed.”

Though he wore the same ebony garb as his accomplice, this man was noticeably taller. Alaric wondered why he had even noticed such a small detail. It didn’t comfort him any, because although the body was different, the voice was exactly the same as the one of the man he had just killed, and it had a new note of triumph. Such was his enemy, he knew, but he had vainly hoped for a new voice, a unique voice.

No such luck.

King Alaric III, ruler of the grand kingdom of Vaste, cold and merciless destroyer of insurrection, supreme keeper of peace, member of the Crown-council of the Eldon Imperium, battle-hardened victor of thirteen separate wars, the man who fear could not touch, ran for his life.

In the deepening blackness of a moonless night, all of Vaste was quiet.

Except for one voice.

In the very apex of the highest tower of the sleeping city, one voice spoke fear, ancient fear. Few would have understood its words, but even to the ignorant, every dusty, archaic syllable would be an abomination, a horror, as if each one had slithered up from a forgotten nightmare buried for long ages. And to the knowledgeable, the learned, those who understood…

…the words were even more terrible.