LIGHTNOVELONLINE Prologue
It was raining when they arrived. Heavy droplets struck the swaying fir trees overhead as they crossed the small stone bridge into the centre of the town. Their boots crunched against the gravel. The sky above was leaden grey and angry. Far away, the thunder rolled.
They found the first bodies near abandoned market stalls: owners, customers, and their animals. Most lay undisturbed, eyes wide in confusion. They'd died before they even knew they were in danger. They had lain here for some time, the bodies bloating, and discolouring. Death fowled the air, and yet the carrion birds had not dared come. It had been more than a day since they had heard birdsong on their journey to this place. Unnatural silence was always a bad sign.
Further in, they found the stalls had been disturbed here. Apples and pears were gone. A few hunks of meat were missing from the counter of the town’s dead butcher. The stall belonging to the baker, who had survived by chance and notified them, had been ransacked. A trail of crumbs and bruised fruit led off towards the church.
The pair cast back their hoods and threw their drenched cloaks open. The human produced a crossbow and loaded it with steady, withered hands. The minotaur produced a warhammer as he bit his lip and looked around nervously.
“Relax,” ordered the elder as he placed his foot into the crossbow’s stirrup to cock it. “Just stay behind me. You’re here to watch, boy. No heroics. They get you killed.”
“Yes, master.”
They followed the trail of forgotten food away from the market square until they found more bodies. Dogs. Birds. People, their faces frozen in fear. These had obviously had warning that something was wrong, warning enough to try and run. Most hadn't gotten more than a step or two. That was the nature of this sort of thing.
The church rose before them, its door ajar. From inside, above the drizzle of the rain and the distant rumble of thunder in the mountains, came the unmistakable sound of sobs. Their quarry was inside.
The minotaur pressed his hand against the door as his companion raised the crossbow to his shoulder. From the other side of the door, the screams continued. Strange and unnatural flashes of light marked some of them, their pattern suggesting the flashes were somehow related to the voice inside.
The human nodded his head. The minotaur threw the door open and they swept inside. The fiend that had slaughtered a score of people waited for them inside. The minotaur gasped, stopping dead in his tracks, eyes wide. The warhammer slipped from ready hands to dangle at his side. The human passed him by, not pausing in his advance upon the altar at the front of the church.
A little girl knelt before them, her face buried in the still chest of a woman's pallid corpse. Thin cheeks and deep circles marred her features in death, and her thin fingers held the stems of a dead and withered bouquet. She started when the doors were swung open, staring at the pair with reddened, wet eyes.
“I wanted her to come back,” she said.
“Close the door,” ordered the human.
The apprentice obeyed slowly, unable to look away. There was a final rumble of thunder, before he closed the doors and the church was cast in darkness.