Prologue: Tether Soul
The candle provided enough light to see. Its flame flickered in the frigid autumn air, causing the old man’s shadow to dance along the stone wall of the tomb. The pouring rain was the only sound heard for miles. It was the perfect night to call forth the dead. Clothed in a long tattered black coat, mud-caked boots, the skeletal man with sunken filmy eyes, and scraggly gray hair hanging just above his shoulders, set the rain-soaked burlap sack on the table. Fisk Bennett peeled off his wet muddy gloves, and exposed a strange mark branded on his right hand—the alchemic seal. A pentagram with a star in the center. A Latin dialect surrounded the pentagram.
Gaudete in signum, et conteram sanguinem (Break the seal, break the blood bond). Accipe singnaculum, accipere sanguinem servorum (Accept the seal, accept the blood bond).
The man opened the sack. Inside was the tether he needed to bind the child’s soul to the living world. Fisk had no regard for the law of nature. Death only went one way. But tonight, he would reverse its role. pulled out a child’s skull. Examining it, he grinned with satisfaction. “Useless in life.” He set the skull on the table, next to his worn hat. “Useful in death…” Drawing a knife from his belt, he sliced the top of his thumb, watching the blood trickle down from the self-inflicted wound. He picked up the skull and pressed his thumb against the forehead.
He picked up the skull and pressed his thumb against it, and drew the seal identical to the one on his hand, and in the center of the star, he wrote Liga (Bind). Fisk set the skull back onto the table. He pressed his right hand onto the freshly painted seal. Seconds later, a faint blue glow seeped out from beneath his palm and grew brighter.
The light shown in his cloudy eyes. An eerie gust of wind blew in through the opened tomb doors, causing the candlelight to waver. Thunder rumbled in the distance. A strange blue glow appeared beneath Fisk’s palm and spread across the front of the skull.
“Come Felix.” said Fisk with authority. “I command you, boy.”
The faint laughter of a child wafted through the air. A torrent of artic wind, carrying the unforgettable smell of death, gusted in through the doors, chilling the man’s rain-slicked face. Movement behind the marble alter, alerted Fisk to the unearthly presence.
He took a step forward and said, “Come, child.”
From behind the sheltering alter, the boy crept out into the open. Barefooted, the eight-year-old wore blue coveralls and had a mop of blond hair. Looking at the man with sad, filmy eyes, he said, “I don’t belong here…”
Fisk picked up the child’s skull and looked at the boy, “You are bound to me, as I am bound to you.” He tossed the skull to the boy and in mid-air, it transformed into a red ball.
Felix caught the ball with both hands and brought it close to his body. He gazed at it longingly and then to Fisk, “Beware of the cost my earthly tether requires of you.”
“No matter,” said Fisk with a sly grin, “In the end, my prize will be well won.”
