The House Of Blood and Dust, Book One: Darkness Rising

'Tis The Dead, That Wish For My Head

The stench of burning and the taste of blood soils my mouth. I open my eyes and spit blood onto the floor. Onto my feet and I look around the dimly lit room, the moon shines in, lighting around a quarter of the room.

          “Shit… they must have put me in a bed, how kind.” I laugh to myself and see upon the desk side table are my gauntlets. I take them from there and strap them to my hands as they should always be so I begin to walk: out of the room and into the corridor. I’m left to wonder how they got the gauntlets off of Zachary but one shall not complain as they’ll help me not get killed in here. I can hardly see in the corridor, my hand sets ablaze and I guide it back into the middle of my palm it creates the perfect amount of light for me to guide myself through the corridors of Winterhall, the dim lit college shows no signs of any sort of life but then again I am sure something will wish to kill me. I slowly walk down the desolate corridors, the strange will that has surged throughout my body ever since dying has given me a better perspective on life.

          Flashlights shine down the corridor, like piecing eyes from some sort of demon ready to devour my heart and soul; four of them with rifles.

          “Get down, mage.” Mage that’s new, I guess I kind of am as well. The men point their carbines at me, “We will put you down, if you do not drop to your knees.” I oblige and fall harshly to my knees; I wince in pain and smile at them, showing somewhat madness in the expression.

          “He must have been in hiding for the past three days, we’ve searched top to bottom now everyday.”

          “Blood mage?” The men look at each other, I continue to smile and let out a little laugh.

       “I can assure you I am no blood mage… I don’t like the idea of cutting myself and dancing naked in the moonlight, sends bad vibes you know and I’ve already got a bad reputation to think about.” I almost hear one laugh but he’s silenced,

          “Cocky this one is… think highly of yourself do you?”

     "“One has to.” I prepared to kill them all; they just need to get close to me so that I can disembowel the fuckers. Two walk forward and within seconds I have the wrist blades in their stomachs and I tear them out as quickly as they entered, I push forward and before a round has fired, I thrust the blades into the throats of them. “This is probably why I think highly of myself.” I push forward and into the evermore. The bleakness shrouds the hatefulness.

          I find myself at the staircases, the everlasting darkness is somewhat suspicious but nonetheless I’ll progress. Half way down to the ground floor, I start hearing voices, the accent too thick to be Senim, too harsh to be dounas or even Alikian. The voices are thin and weak, perhaps humans trapped.

          “Hello… is anyone there?”

          “Where are you?” I reply, the voice mutters something incoherent. “Pardon?”The silence sits with me for a bit as I wait for the lonely feminine voice to come to me. The dim moonlight shines through a crack in the wall, I go to it and look through it and an eye is there gazing back at me, I breathe in slowly and harshly as the eye stares, the eye is a green one but the features of the face are not there.

          “Are you an enemy of the mages?”

          “I guess I am not as I am one, myself.” The eye closes and her breaths are drawn out and terrified. “I am not going to hurt you.”

          “Why are you free?”

          “I’m new.”

          “There is no one new in the college… only death.” I look at the ground, my hands still pressed to the wall,