Despite everything, this all began with Mayeli Kane, and she still hadn’t been found. Over the last few days, she’d forgotten that Olem had been searching for over a month for any trace of the girl, the bags under his bloodshot eyes told her more than enough times that he’d been without sleep for who knows how lon
“Today marks the beginning.” It croaked, like it hadn’t spoken in centuries and still shook the dust from its lungs. “We are the rightful owners of this land, and the Pact of the Firstborn returns. Reinvigorated by the blood of our kin, our centuries waiting brings us this, the culmination of our efforts.”
The words were surreal coming from her lips. Years as a Lamplighter had prepared her for the possibility that awful things could happen, in fact, it was a certainty. It was the nature of her job. As if she were an artist fighting starvation, she was driven by the knowledge that eventually, despair would be the only reason left for her to fight.
She had never imagined it on such a massive scale.
“…Veinar took her hand, and turned to the elder Lamplighters, who he’d known had seen their share of haunts. Their faces told stories of nightmares like his, twisted and cruel and filled with pain. For all of the pain, though, he knew one thing.
They grew powerful from the ache. Insight was never free.”
The Fleawild were not like the spirits or the haunts of Ammon’s Reach. They obeyed no such laws denying them access to a home. They came and went as they pleased and without mercy they consumed.
“This isn’t what you think it is.”
Jona stopped humming and eyed her, his eyes filled with fury. “It is exactly what Harmon Orda created! What he’s discovered here is brilliant, to be recognized and known by worlds away, that we are able to harness the very essence of spirits!
“Why?” Olem asked, grimacing.
“Because…” Dhurri let his words fall into the empty space between them as the crowd silenced in unison and turned to him. Hundreds of citizens of Ammon’s Reach stared, piercing their eyes through him as the Archbishop strode forward and knelt before Olem, his eyes wept black tar. “We deserve to be free!”
. In a whirlwind of excitement from the move, she’d taken her potted plants which had been before, crammed into nooks and crannies where she could find places for them and displayed them on the balcony.
She pushed the doors open gently and leaned against the railing, sipping on her lukewarm tea as she watched the Livinglark flocks flutter into the springtime sky and she felt, for the first time, like she was home.
She did not meet pupils staring back at her, instead, she stared into two hollow, black, empty pits where his eyes should have been. Instead, they were shrouded in darkness, obscured by a raw leather mask he wore, covered in scrapes and cuts and faded to a pale greenish white. The crown of the mask had been sewn with horsetail hair to provoke a mockery of a full head of hair, and he wore a long blue coat, beaten and well worn. It was ripped along one side, and the rip was Orri’s fault. She stared into the black eyes of the man who stared back, his head tilted to one side if ever so slightly.
Then, he dropped the body.
“Oh, good hunter.”
It was a woman’s voice, young but not a child. In her early adulthood, she spoke as if to entice him. The lilt in her voice and the breath between her words squirmed within his ear.
“It is an honor, to have you here.”
The Grimoire of Finality 