The Chessboard Undead Prince

Chapter the First

Everyone had a time to live and a time to die.

Most of the man's victims were situated in the latter category.

His victim lay below his spread legs, body writhing like a wounded snake. Instead of deadly, poisonous venom scaling his skin where he clutched the dual long knives, dark blood splattered the silken bedsheets. From the dead man's mouth came gurgling words, his feeble fingers pressed to his slit throat, and then his body stiffened, and eyes glazed.

"Done already?" the Executioner asked in a low, bored tone. 

He was standing at the end of the four-poster bed, one of his boots squishing the dead clawed hand around a longsword that had previously been hidden under the pillows and now between his heel and foot when the man had heard him enter the chamber. Untucked blankets and silk sheets formed around the corpse like a grave hole. They were splattered with blood. Too much blood.

Slowly, the murderer peeled back the dead man's nightshirt, and pulling a small serrated knife from his hip, dug the tip into the cold chest and spilled the ribcage in half, the blade snapping each bone like paper. He pushed his hand into the cavity and pulled out a live, glass soul, still beating from the strange golden aurora from the bloody diamond flesh. Heart in hand, he flipped the knife and carved a crude heart on the open chest and one on his corpse's left cheek. Marks of the Executioner. That way the watchmen knew who was responsible and would not turn the twelve towns of the empire inside out to find the murderer.

Blood oozed from the pumping heart over the murderer's fingers, seeping into the grooves of his fingers. He raised the bloodied knife again and cut off one of the dead man's fingers, with one deft slice. It was the wedding finger, severed at the knuckle, which held a wedding ring and crest ring. These rings were the proof of his execution. One thing left. From a pouch, he lifted out two gold coins stamped with the Crown of Hearts and laid them over the man's eyes.

He pocketed the severed finger and its trophies into his tunic. The heart he tenderly placed into a brown leather satchel across his heart. Across the chamber, the sun's rays peeped through the open shutters. The one corpse had caused a bloody mess in here. If the Duke's wife and two daughters had not left on the last day before his killing time for a holiday to the southern city of Doscarta, it would have ended in a bloodbath and screaming, hysterical mess.

One last glance at Duke Charles of Carlien told the murderer the only thing he needed to know.

One less human against Her Majesty. 

Mounting the open window sill, he pushed off from the balls of his feet into the evening. If any human had dared to look up, he would have appeared to them as a stretch of the coming dusk to the evening sky. His hands made a connection with a terrace railing and curled over. His body, cloaked in shadows of silk, connected next, slamming into solid stone like a sledgehammer. He pulled up his body onto the railing and climbed swiftly up to the terracotta rooftop. The Empire of Glass was scattered before him like a map. The Glass Clocktower was the one clock for the people on this island. Entirely carved of the purest crystal glass and soaring into the blue sky, the Clocktower chimed twelve times, signalling the glass people what time it was for that part of the empire. Its pearl-carved hands struck the seventh hour. Evening coming tonight.

Back to the Palace of Estela.

Leaping from rooftop to rooftop was hardly a daunting challenge for him. It was simply faith. You had to believe in yourself. In your body and soul. Trust your body that you will make the jump and trick your mind to do the same. For the Executioner, it was as easy as slitting someone's throat, easier in fact. To hunt down a marked execution took time and careful planning for three days. Slitting a throat just took a flick of the wrist. He simply hurled his body into emptiness.