Dark Eye

Prologue: The Storm

      To those who stood close enough, the Father's voice was harsh; his graveled tone neared rasping, his northern accent blunted further by years of barked orders. His bushy brow, ostensibly scrunched from the permanent look of doubt and anger he wore, had grown grey, as did the expression hung from his eyes.

      When he stood, his shoulders were broad, his arms thick, and to those ordained, his grip on the hand machine-like. And much as the rest of his body—stubborn muscles built throughout the years—it was iron; against the wind, the only movement about him was his clothes hanging to the air, as even when he did move, no step was out of place; every posture was rigid and angled, every breath regimented, and every thought calculated.

      His corpse sat against the wall, his eyes open from an obscene death. A pool of blood dripped from entrails still cradled in his arms, though his body had not yet gone stiff. Outside, the rumble of thunder drew near.

      "We have to leave now."

      Samuel's declaration broke the silence, though no one replied.

      "If we stay, we're just as good as him."

      Still, no response.

      Samuel reflexively cleared his throat and stepped forward just enough so when he turned, he could face the rest.

     "Dark Eye is coming. We aren't meant for this, he was." He gestured at the Father. "We leave, we mi-"

      "You leave, I'll kill you."

      Samuel flinched and everyone's stare broke from the Father to Lieutenant Graven. She stood near the opposing the wall, though did not lean on it, with her saber still in hand, and still dripping.

    "We stay."

     Samuel stuttered before giving a fully formed response. "We. Are. Going. To. Die."

    Every word was separated by increasing frustration.

     Graven didn't answer but instead walked to the door. There, another mound of meat, still alive in fresh memories of blurred frenzy and hooked claws, lay before her boots. She prodded it with her saber's tip, straining its hide enough to draw a trickle of black blood.

    "So we kill him first."

                                                                                   ***

      "It's in the mind, Grace. Always in the mind." Thorp pointed to his temple. The ride of the stagecoach moved his finger up and down, but nonetheless, he pointed.

      "Yes, Professor." Grace nodded, keeping the good Professor's journal pressed against her lap despite the coach's best attempts.

      "The mind is powerful, striking and powerful."

      Grace nodded again, autonomously. "Of course, Professor."

      He lowered his finger and pointed it at her. "Then, why?"

      "Cert-" Grace snapped from her daze. She fixated on the tip of Thorp's sausage-plump finger. "I beg your pardon, Professor?"

      He sighed and brought his finger in with the rest of them to form a first. "That is precisely the point, dear Atlen. Precisely the point."

      Her brow narrowed.

      Thorp smiled, "The waste of a good mind is a crime." He raised his fist, rallying the cheering crowd in his mind.

      "And I shan't tolerate it. I shan't see it continue." He leaned forward, fist returning to pointed gesture. "And-"

      KAATHUUUUM

      Both Grace and Thorp looked through the coach window. The storm, once seeming an entire province over, bled into the daylight-blue sky. Swathes of rain hammered the forest outside—though the coach had only caught mist so far—as hail drummed against swaying oak.

      "What a wonderful storm, that is." Thorp picked his glasses from his coat pocket and put them on. "I wonder what will happen to the bugs."

      Grace rested her head back against the coach's interior; her mind dulled, and her well-practiced responses readied...

      "Yes, Professor..."

      Though she sat in an Institute financed coach—the cushions were silk to the touch, violet to the eye, forgiving to rest on—every rock, every dent, every minor freckle its wooden wheels encountered was a seeming crunch of her lower spine. And though her posture had ridden her muscles stale, and the temptation to stretch herself limber was stubborn, she was not in the coach.

      Of course, Professor...

      With rainfall, she heard the cheer of Parliament; the smell of wetness before a storm was replaced with cedar and puffed tobacco; Thorp's blurred monologue became the Minister's stern demands.

      "And within a single year, we shall rid this nation of what festers."

      She was one of many, that day, eyes wide, ears hungry for every word.

      "For a sickness grows; and takes. It takes, and though the bravest of the Regiment stand for us all, we can-NOT" his inflection seemed to break the word in two "see their duty as separate from our own."

      She was one of many that day. Now she was one of a few.

      Of-

      Thorp's tone indicated a question—she was back in the coach.

      "I beg your pardon, Professor?"

      There was no reply.

      Grace blinked and shifted in the seat before noticing it:

      The coach was stopped, Thorp's expression was granite; his inquiring gaze, through which biological and medical and philosophical wonders could be seen brewing, harrowed.

      He brought a finger to his lips.

      Shhhhh.