From somewhere beyond they could hear the faint tap-tapping of a gnarled, wooden staff and muffled chants underground. High above it all, their souls called to them in pain, promising an end, redemption for their failures. They turned their backs to the iron fence, crouching low, their rusty blades in hand. They waited in silence, the remnants of the Vigilant Order, to defend and to witness all that they were promised by the silvered tongue of an angel.
His black wings flapped slowly overhead, a single herald to a dark host their order had invited in ages long past. In the silent streets of Sea Ward, the roaring waves of the Sword Coast thundered like the armies they had once imagined, answering the call of the Flensing to come.
Jinn stared through a pane of glass dripping with rain, watching as the ahimazzi gathered within the circle of homes and businesses across the street, hiding outside the gates of the House of Thome. Dark spires rose from the corners of its flat roof, gables along the sides, the windows blackened and stained by neglect. Amid the bright homes around it, it stood like an architectural cancer, fouling the order of an otherwise typical neighborhood.
The mansion Jinn stood within was empty, its owners packed and evacuated long before gateclose. A useless exodus, he reasoned, for the victims had been chosen long before their own births, taken-save for a precious few-all before the sun had risen, the slain bloodlines of nine men too greedy for life to die, too hungry for immortality to let blood relation stand in their way.
'They should have torn it down more than a century ago,' Quessahn said from the shadows behind him.
'They couldn't. It was a fascination, a whispered story for their parties. Passed along like a secret,' Jinn replied. 'Besides, the skulls would have protected it, kept it safe until all was prepared for their working.'
'Perhaps they might have hired a gardener, then,' Quessahn muttered as she bent to her task, surrounding herself with spell components and an old scroll. She began to draw on the floor of the living room, the chalk giving off a bitter scent that mingled with that of dried petals and leaves as she prepared her ritual, the strange magic of a new age. 'Do you trust her? Mara, I mean.'
'I trust her to be what she is. I believe greed will keep her actions in line with ours, if not her intentions,' Jinn answered as he waited for the last of the sunset to leave the ward in darkness. Quessahn did not reply, but he knew she wasn't convinced and he could not blame her, for he had his own doubts. 'Do you trust the avolakia? Briarbones?'
'Until he grows bored, yes, I do,' she said, the scrape of chalk on smooth stone accompanying her words. 'He is very old and not afraid of death in the least. As long as there is something to interest him, to engage his voracious curiosity, he shouldn't feel the need to create something interesting. Luckily I think the whisperers of Seawind Alley should keep him occupied for decades at least.'
'I doubt he will be easily bored tonight,' Jinn said quietly.
'Do you really think Callak Saerfynn is involved in all of this?' she asked. 'He has wealth, status-such as it is- and wants for nothing
…'
'I imagine to some, the more gold one has, the less valuable it seems. To a few, immortality would be beyond value, even worth the life of a sister,' he answered absently, musing as he studied the dark house and the dirtied host surrounding it.
'I guess those that don't have immortality-' Quessahn began then stopped abruptly, falling silent, her ghostly reflection in the window casting nervous glances at Jinn as she focused on the arcane circle drawn around her.
Jinn hesitated as he considered the door mere strides away, part of him already outside and retreating from the ghosts of his previous life, another part holding him still, waiting for her to speak again, to say things he had no right to ask of her.
He managed a single step, his hand rising to take the handle.
'I buried him,' she said, her voice faltering slightly. 'I… I don't know if that means anything to you, but you-I mean, Kehran-you both…' She sighed loudly and slumped, shaking her head as he turned to face her. 'Gods above, but this is strange.'
'Go on,' Jinn said, unsure if he said it out of pity or just for himself, but he wanted to hear her, needed to hear her.
'He fought like you, endlessly. It was hard to keep him still most days,' she said. 'But for a time, he did stand still and we had a life together, deep in the High Forest. He had what, for him, passed for peace, like he had escaped something, and for almost a year, he was a different person.' A brief smile crossed her face, disappearing as quickly as it had come. 'But in the end, it called him back, his drive to fight, to chase down the memory of old causes and raise a standard against… Well, good and evil meant different things to him.
'We argued the last time I saw him alive, and I told him not to go, but…' Her voice broke and she breathed deeply, maintaining her composure. 'I found his body the next day and buried him that evening.'
Drops of rain tapped on the doorstep and on the grass outside, dripping from the trees outside as mist gathered in their branches and ran down the bark like tears. Jinn stared at the eladrin, her brief tale a unique experience for him, as though he'd witnessed his own funeral. He took the doorknob in his hand and turned it once.
'You're not really hunting Sathariel, are you,' she said. It was a statement, almost an accusation, rather than a question. 'He's just a means to an end, your connection to Asmodeus.'
Jinn did not reply, for there was no need. He could not deny what was in his heart, what festered in the deepest parts of himself.
'Do you think to kill a god?' she asked quietly. 'Or do you hope he has the power to kill you, to truly end you?'
'I don't know,' he said, considering his answer carefully. 'There is a reason, I suppose. For the cycles in the world, death and rebirth, over and again. They have a meaning, as if we are all being prepared for something, either glory or death or both.' He shook his head and swore under his breath. 'But damned if I'll ever understand it.'
He opened the door and looked out across the street, silhouettes of the ahimazzi merging like the dark shape of a single crouched beast, their daggers its rusty teeth, their tattered robes its filthy mane.
'Be careful,' he said to her as he stepped outside, leaving her to her ritual and praying that she would survive what she had planned.
'See you soon,' she replied. He closed the door behind himself and made his way through the garden, sword drawn to challenge the many-eyed beast that awaited him-as they always did, time and again. He did not shout or flourish his sword in a duelist's manner, though his heart raced to meet them and to clip the wings of their dark master.
Tavian's boots scuffed loudly in the empty streets, a patrol at his back as night settled into the alleys and dark avenues of Sea Ward. He had often wished to escape the bureaucracy of his command and put heels to the cobbles, but he'd never imagined he would regret that selfish desire. They carried their lanterns high along lines of dark street lamps, a casualty of the curfew and of the lamplighters' fear after the morning's news had spread to the other wards. Foolhardy gawkers and would-be adventurers were stopped and questioned before being sent away, though Tavian knew they would attempt to slip back in, to make a name for themselves or hire themselves out to nobles amassing armies of bodyguards.
The Watch commanders, fearing an increased lack of trust in their officers, had called for reinforcements to patrol until the ward's matters could be settled. Investigators had been summoned, and the details of the killings, such as they were, were under review. Already they had found odd notations and inconsistencies in the recent logs.
Primary among them was a sizable donation to the local Watch by the slain Loethe family, a donation recorded and signed for yet long since disappeared.
As much as he could, Tavian had defended Allek Marson to his superiors, proclaiming him to be a good man in unusual circumstances, but as evidence mounted and changed by the bell, he found he could no longer trust his own report of the man. He'd known Allek to be honest and trustworthy, an efficient officer if ever there was one, though he could not deny the growing sense that the fallen rorden had been manipulated and used. Worse still was the idea that Allek had allowed himself to be treated that way, pawn to a foul plot and seduced by something he could not turn down.
As rumors spread through the ranks, more and more patrols frequented the perimeter of the House of
