GasLight

Prologue: Dollan Chancellor and the Ogre in the Alley

                I came too when my face hit the bricks. Apparently I'd just been punched. Hard. The dirty water of the alleyway puddle had splashed into my eyes and mouth. I lay there for a moment as I regained my bearings.

Without lifting my head I scanned what I could make out as an alleyway. I'd landed with the right side of my face submerged in the middle of a good-sized puddle. Rings rippled away from me on the surface of the water to lap against uneven bricks. The light from the alleyway's lone streetlamp flickered from behind me as I lay in a literal puddle of water as well as a large pool of shadow.

Someone was standing over me just outside of my strained and limited peripheral vision. Someone with one hell of a fist judging by the pain in my jaw and the left side of my face. I spat grime and dirt into the puddle invading my mouth. I really didn't want to know the true contents of the standing water but I had my guesses.

A pristine pair of loafers, much smaller than I'd expected, stepped into view on the other side of my puddle. They gleamed in the unstable light with an obsessively clean shine.

"Get up." A hoarse voice demanded. One of the loafers lashed out toward my face, sending wet sand to pepper my forehead and hair. I guessed he was talking to me. I craned my neck enough to look up the suit above the loafers. It wasn't a long trip for my eyes to reach the round black hat that capped a short little man who would barely come up to my waist.

"Gimme a moment," I groaned. My hair had fallen over what was now my good eye but I was still able to make out the face of the little man standing over me. A pinched little face with a round little nose. His thick eyebrows and large ears were scrunched down under a dirty bowler hat that appeared to be at least two sizes too big for the little man's head. The brim of the hat cast a portion of his face in shadow but I could still make out his squinting right eye and the reflective lens of a monocle covering the left. His little hands balled up into fists and he planted them on his hips. He almost looked cute.

He snapped his fingers at someone I couldn't see.

"Get him up." A little flourish of wrist and fingers followed as if to further communicate that he meant me and up.

A grunt and grumble emitted over my head as a massive hand clasped around my shoulder and lifted me by my coat. The brick floor of the alleyway swam away from me in my swift, unceremonious ascent. While I dangled by the sleeves of my coat I was able to catch a glance at my assistant. The quality of the suit he wore stood in boggling juxtaposition to the creature's grey-green flesh, crooked tusks, and savage ancestry. While the little man was short, his Heavy towered over me. A stench enveloped me of foul body odor and fouler diet as he drew me up to glare me in the eye. The huge fist opened and I was dropped to my feet. Well almost. My legs weren't ready with joints of liquid and I had to make some quick adjustments to my posture lest I be face-first in the mud again.

I quickly corralled my composure and brushed earth and horse manure off of my coat. That didn't stop me from glaring up at the brute in puffin clothing, though. His glare did that. I straightened myself up to look down at the little man in the bowler. He looked pretty cute from this angle too.

"You know why you're out here and my friend's upset with you?" The little man struck a stick on the side of the building and brought it to relight the snubbed butt of a Leaf. It smelled like it had been put out in my puddle, only now it was burning.

"I take it we're not out here to cash in my winnings..." I replied and felt that ship's paddle palm of the giant puffin behind me smack the back of my head. It sent me a step closer to my new little friend and I was a little pleased at how unhappy he looked over the water I splashed on his loafers.