Hand of Grace

Prologue

"Fridan, can you sense any nearby guards?" Anne whispered to one of her two companions. She was crouched low, hiding behind some brush as she gazed into the Witch's camp that they were supposed to infiltrate. She knew that her companions were using their supernatural powers to mask her from detection, but common sense told her she should still be hiding in case their incantations failed. She could only see a bunch of tents and a few flickering fires, but no one was in sight. Her heart was beating rapidly, but it wasn't from fear. Not yet at least. It was from excitement. Everything was according to plan! The camp had a few dozen tents, not a massive retinue as one would expect the evil ruler of a nation to have. This was going to work! But she also knew the dangers of stupidity brought about by overconfidence, hence the inquiry directed to the one who had previously demonstrated an affinity for detecting people.

She waited a few moments for Fridan to have caught up with her. He was using his powers on himself too, so she couldn't see him very well unless she knew where he was. She felt herself grow irritated as the moments passed. She knew she wasn't a commander or anything of the sort, but she still was the important one in this mission. Fridan and Jahri were her support. She therefore needed them to be her support and respond! She hissed his name more insistently, annoyed that she had to do so. They were so close that she could smell the smoke of the soldiers' fires. She didn't want to risk speaking any louder and drawing attention from someone out for a leak, especially not after Jahri had told her that he could mask any incidental noises that she made, breathing, stepping on twigs and the like, but talking was beyond his ability to mask.

After several moments, there was still no answer. She knew there was a reason why she didn't like these two. Yes, she had gotten excited and darted ahead of them when she had seen the break in the trees, but this behavior was absolutely unreasonable. How were they supposed to accomplish their mission if her two guards were lack daisy when it came to something as simple as telling her if there were enemies nearby? Anne whipped her head, now more than a little annoyed. "Fri-" Her words caught in her throat and turned into a gasp as she stood and took in the gruesome sight before her.

Two dozen feet away, her two would-be guards, Fridan and Jahri, lay on the ground. Jahri lay face buried in the dirt, skewered through the heart by his own sword and Fridan was on his back, though his severed head, forever frozen in shock, was dangling by the hair from the fingers of a figure enshrouded in darkness. Eyes that somehow radiated an inky darkness even deeper than the shadows of the night met hers and she froze, crippled by fear and feeling bitter disappointment in her belly.

Sergeant Allen had been right; she hadn't needed anyone to tell her what the Death Dealer of N'aaden looked like. She could sense his sinister and malevolent presence from this distance. He was the powerful incubus who served the Witch, the one who had been twisted and corrupted by her magic and who now craved violence and bloodshed more than he craved pure emotions. The one who slaughtered the innocent and tortured for pleasure so he could gorge on pain and fear and drain his victims of their energy. The one who would now kill her, her supposedly Jove-ordained mission woefully incomplete.

Fridan and Jahri hadn't even had a chance, she thought bitterly as he approached, his movements graceful, refined, and deadly. He had so far outstripped them in power and skill that he had effortlessly found and slaughtered them without allowing them to even utter a single breath of warning. Not that a warning would have done her any good. She didn't have any special powers. She was just a lawyer and a bookish one at that.

Why would God let her come here if she was just going to be killed by a monster? Wasn't she supposed to accomplish her mission in a blaze of glory? Wasn't the fire of God supposed to come down and annihilate her enemies, especially when her enemy was a creature of pure evil? Her eyes sought the tree line. Surely Teles would save her. Surely she hadn't been brought to Gaia to die a meaningless death. Surely this all hadn't been for naught...