Chapter 1
The air reeked of death. Blood and guts were scattered over the plains as far as my eyes could see. The sun was just peeping over the horizon, exposing the remnants of the nightime slaughter. Carriages were overturned. Warriors were laying on the ground, drained of all their blood. Beside me, three others watched on taking in this tapestry of destruction. It was; artful.
To my left, Ekon swung his daggers playfully. He was curving some runes into one of the carriages. Apparently to guide their souls on the journey to Beyond. Marla said the runes meant "Orgy gone wrong".
He flashed a cheeky grin as he finished up the words. We shouldn't have come with him. But Mistress Friga had great trust in his marksmanship. Not to mention he made her wail in the sack. Still, he shouldn't have been here. It was too serious. He wasn't.
The ghosts sung a fickle hymn. Not the kind that could be heard. It just whistled through the wisps of the morning mist. It was silent. And like the voice of the siren, entrancing.
"Where did she say it would be?" Remi asked. He towered over the piles of corpses. He was the real definition of a big fella. Stocky, huge neck, huge palms, carried a huge battle axe, and some harlots in Weymech swore he was hugely packing.
Marla organised the frames on the bridge of her nose before turning up to him. "The Lyre's carriage was supposed to have been at the epicenter of the skirmish." Her voice was short and in clipped tones. "We just have to look at the corpses. It will be easier to know which ones he killed. Before he died at least."
Ekon climbed on top of a mound of half burnt carriages. He placed his gun at his sights pointing in a wide arc around him.
"What are you doing?" Marla asked. So far she was the only one of us who seemed to suffer every superfluous behaviour of his.
Without changing posture he yelled back. "Scanning for enemies," he paid no attention to her after that.
Scrimmaging through the debris, it became more evident that most of these men and women had been crushed by rocks. I guess they were launched from airships with some gunpowder tied to them. Inventive. It must have been a hell of a shock to them. Those who had survived the rain of the stones had had been finished off by foot soldiers. A few of whom also lay at our feet right now. The Lyre was a born survivor. Maybe he had survived the pelting rocks. He couldn't survive the Kaldan army though. Must have been one hell of an ambush. The morning was warm with the stench of burnt diesel, from machine guns and airships, but cold, as souls left the bodies of the deceased.
The Lyre used to be one of us. He was, like Ekon, Friga's concubine. Only that he was less insufferable. And he was ambitious. A little too ambitious. Like the ghouls in the scripts we learned at the Abbey. He was a lowborn, again, like one of us. His eyes were dark, palms battle hardened and eyes keen. A veteran, despite being just over twenty. He'd seen the most horrific fronts. That was where he met Friga. Used to tell us it was the only good thing Kaldan's war had brought. Her and him together. When he told us their stories, it was the only time Friga smiled. That was a lifetime ago. Now, she wanted him dead. And like most of the things she wanted, she's got it. By someone else's hand at least. Now was no less different. Someone had beat her to the punch. No surprise there. The Lyre had more enemies, in higher places than Friga. That gift of his ensured that. So obviously, when it ceased to exist, so did he. Like the rest of us, he was expendable.
Marla called out, "Guys I've found something."
She was standing a top a shallow crevice. A trench, kind of thing. Back turned to us.
"Come quick," she said. Her voice was filled with a kind of emotion I couldn't quite put my finger to. Something I wasn't used to hearing from her at least. Fear. No, not fear, we were all afraid. It was, something else. Yes, in that drawn back gesture I sensed it for what it reall was. Shock.
I reached last. When they were all already there. They all stared into the trench. Unmoving and unblinking. I followed their petrified gazes to the muddy ground. My heart stopped when I saw him.
The Lyre
.
His body was cut up, marred like he was a cow in the abattoir. But he smiled at us. His eyes, were unblinking. And from his wounds, a black mist arose. It drew me closer. Beckoning and promising of great things to come. I couldn't think straight. I couldn't focus.
There it was. The Lyre's body. Take it. It's what you came for.
I chided myself but to no avail. I couldn't flinch even a muscle.
"What is it?" I asked Marla. This was her area of expertise. Knowing stuff. And yet she was just as awestricken as the rest of us.
"A man is entitled to one death alone," The Lyre began. "But to a god, as many as he sees fit,"
Hardly had he finished when his body exploded in a flurry of blood and guts. We were covered in it. And the black mist rose. It floated infront of us, as though it had been trapped between two realities. And then, just when all seemed to quieten down, it flew straight towards Ekon, vanishing into his chest.
