Games of the Powerful, Page 2

Prologue

  The wraith flitted between the buildings on a late and dreary night with no one about to take notice of his passing. This wraith does not fit the portrayals of evil wraiths described in stories to scare children into good behavior or campfire stories late at night. Many a child lay awake in their beds at night not able to go to sleep fearing the late-night shadows and listening to the eerie sounds in the night thinking about the wraiths from those stories. This wraith is much more dangerous and malevolent because it can think, rationalize, and make some decisions to fulfill the needs of its masters. Their will is what controlled it and sent it on its way to fulfill their wishes. What drew this wraith aside from others of its kind is in its subconscious it has the curiosity to wonder what it had been before this. It had a distinct feeling in its past it had been human and a very evil human indeed. Try as it may it could not remember its past. Was it male or female? What was its human name? Its curiosity is limited but still there in its subconscious.

  The wraiths in the legends of old were dark shrouded evil creatures having remnants of rotten flesh hanging from their bones visible from under the rotting sections of their burial shrouds. They floated in the air making unnerving sounds and their presence brought on a frightening temperature drop making the air around it very cold. It took a powerful wizard to call them from the dead and bring them to the realm of the living, but only for a short time before they had to return to the realm of the dead. Most wizards called them forth to ask them important questions or have them forespeak of the future and some of those same wizards hearing the proclamations of dread lost their own sanity to the wiles of the wraiths.

  Not this wraith, it is evil personified living in the realm of the living and it could stay here as long its masters wished or magically returned to the abyss it hails from. The wraith in all appearances magically looked like any other person out on a wet and cold night wearing a long black cloak enshrouding it with the cowl pulled over its head. If any passerby were to see it, they would not know it for what it is unless it chose to allow it. When it is self-serving, it liked to take pleasure on seeing the horror on its victim's faces, allowing them to see the unmasked evil before them. On those occasions, the wraith wondered about its nature and its purpose, and of course, the distinct pleasure it gets out of seeing the terror on its victims faces. The wraith was not sure but something deep in its awareness tried to prevent it from feeling any pleasure but for odd reasons beyond the wraiths comprehension, it could.

  Darkness swirled around it, as it turned right into a deserted alley of a nameless city. The city is nameless because the wraith did not know the name of the city it now found itself nor did it care. The wraith knew one thing, to do its masters bidding it had to go where its masters required. It floated unerringly down the center of the stench-filled alley over a cesspool of waste and excrement most human beings would naturally avoid. The torches in the wall sconces sent flickering light and dancing shadows across the walls revealing the pad locked doors on either side of the alley that the wraith ignored making its way to the end of the alley.

  Reaching the wall at the end of the alley, a boney hand snaked out from between the folds of its cloak. Suddenly a distinct blackness, a slowly spiraling circle of darkness the nearby torches could not penetrate with their yellowish flickering light formed in the brick wall. Passing through the blackness, the apparition disappeared from the alley returning the bricks to normal to reappear in a tunnel leading downwards into thick and impenetrable stygian blackness.

  The burning torch in a wall sconce sent dancing flickering light across the walls but it ignored the torch for it needed no light to see by as it headed down the tunnel. Floating down the dank tunnel the wraith ignored the water seeping through the walls and pooling on the rough-cut stone floor. Rounding a curve in the tunnel, the miasma of fear exuding down the tunnel would have been overwhelming to anyone but the wraith; it thrived on that fear, giving it strength knowing its masters are near.

  Entering a large cavern cut into the stone, the first thing it saw in the center of the cavern is an altar made of obsidian and its masters standing behind it. Torches in wall sconces lined the room shedding an eerie light around an already macabre scene. In front of the altar are rows of benches forming a half circle with a center isle leading from the tunnel. The wrath floated down the center aisle toward the altar, noticing in a detached manner a nearly naked young woman chained there.

  She is perhaps seventeen summers wearing a thin see through white silk long sleeve gown cut low at the bosom and long at the legs. The beautiful gown would be such a thing as she might have worn to her wedding bed because its sheerness would have enticed her newly betrothed with her obvious beauty. Securely chained to the altar with heavy manacles, her arms pulled downwards along the sides of her body and similar chains holding her legs wide apart, she struggled to no avail to free herself. Besides the chains and manacles, a thin steel band around her head secured her tightly to the altar preventing her from moving her head or neck with another steel band across her stomach making it impossible for her to move her body leaving only her terror-filled eyes the ability to look around the torch lit cavern. With bloody ankles and wrists from the manacles, her danced frantically in stark terror knowing there was no escape.

  Three human acolytes dressed in dark robes with cowls over their heads are standing in a half circle to one side and at the head of the altar. One held a gleaming gold encrusted dagger in his right hand and a gold chalice in the other, while the other two acolytes each held like chalices. Watching the macabre tableau unfolding before it the wraith did not know why it enjoyed seeing the cold-blooded fear etching the girls face.

  Gasping for breath in fear, the girl watched with terror-filled eyes as the acolyte with the dagger slowly moved closer to her quickly slashing her throat. The blood flowed into the specially formed depression in the obsidian and from there it flowed down a channel in the altar to drip in the waiting cups the acolytes are holding to catch the blood. The girl tried repeatedly to scream but no sound came from her open mouth disappointing the wraith and again it wondered why this was so.

  Her heart beating frantically, the girl’s blood continued flowing rapidly into the waiting cups, her eyes gently closing as she lost strength from the extreme blood loss. The wraith somehow knew she would be dead in a few moments and reveled at the thought of her dying so gruesomely. The acolytes continued to switch the cups in front of the dripping blood when suddenly, the girl's eyes sprang open, and her chest heaved taking her last breathe. Her body settled back and did not move; her once beautiful face now looked haggard and sunken, her vacant eyes staring up at the ceiling with her mouth open in a soundless scream. The wraith is euphoric from the grisly death it had witnessed.

  The three human acolytes turned toward their masters, bowing at the waist in unison extending their arms forward holding the gold chalices in each of their hands. Each of the masters reached with a clawed hand taking a cup and with the other savagely slashing the necks of the acolytes. Their claws ripped through the heavy cloth of the robes they wore spraying blood high into the air to fall on the girl’s body. When the acolytes fell to the floor their bodies in paroxysm of death the wraith convulsed in ecstasy seeing their deaths in such a dramatic fashion.

  Once, the creatures finished drinking her blood they dropped the chalices with a resounding clatter on the cavern floor and faced the wraith blood dripping from their mouths. Their sharp-toothed mouths uttered no sound but the wraith heard their every word. “Wraith you have been summoned before us, we have a task for you! The blood of the human girl was a life sustaining nectar but not enough to let us stay in this realm much longer. A time will come when we will call this realm ours. Heed our words wraith we have little time left! You must find the one who is coming and the one who is here and eradicate them from this realm. Kill whomever you find with them but make sure they die! Do not fail us wraith or you will wish you were back in the dark abyss you came from!” The wraith
s masters sent it images of its quarry, as it wondered why it is so concerned about the threat. Within, its minimal thought process the wraith thought it might like it better here than the abyss. At least in this world, it had more than enough victims to slack its bloodlust.

  Appearing suddenly, a cone shaped spiraling mass of darkness with its edges moving inward beckoned to its masters. Watching its master's walk into it and disappearing as the circle spiraled into itself, it wondered why it took pleasure in killing humans. Returning the way it came with one thought to find a victim that would nourish it and a few more for it to take pleasure in the killing it felt almost giddy, a unique human trait. The wraith knew it would not be the last time it wondered why it felt the need to kill for pleasure.