[center][h1]The War of the Dragon's Spine[/h1]
[b]- Act One -[/b]

[i]To sit in darkness here
Hatching vain empires.[/i]
- Milton, Paradise Lost

[img]https://msolneyauthor.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/1354924079-0600534-www-nevsepic-com-ua.jpg[/img][/center]

[center][h3]Zar Dratha[/h3]

[i]City of Slaves and Sorcery[/i][/center]

"Just so," he said, taking another sip of tea. His grey eyes glittered in the glare of the setting sun, which painted the vast city spread out below the balcony on which he sat in brilliant shades of crimson and gold. The Bay of Teeth shone radiantly in the evening light, its glittering red sheen pockmarked by the small black silhouettes of trading junks and slave hulks crawling towards or away from the Harbor of Chains. "Sacrosanctum will make its move soon. All of Geryon lies under its sway, now. My agents tell me that the Kingdom of Vassirya too has lent forty thousand troops to the God-King's cause."

Master Nagath put down his teacup, setting it upon the saucer with a delicate [i]clink[/i], and met the gaze of the monster across from him.

"Displeasure is expressed," said the Thing. Its voice was a flat, insectile buzz, and its mandibles did not move as it spoke. "Abelon also, a threat arising."

"We must position ourselves carefully," said Nagath, running a delicate hand over his black goatee. He was a tall man, broad chested and dark skinned, with the swirling brand of a Drathan Slave-Guild on his right cheek, a grisly scar so deep it revealed a white flash of cheek bone. Nagath was of course sufficiently accomplished in Fleshweaving that he could have healed that ancient wound if he so desired. But he did not wish his fellow Masters to forget his origins, nor that he now conversed with them as an equal in authority and in Art. "Abelon seeks to control the Spine as a buffer from the might of Sacrosanctum. Sacrosanctum seeks the Spine as a pathway into Tityos."

The Thing clicked its mouthparts, and coiled itself atop its tail like a huge, chitinous cobra, folding its spindly arms and legs flat against its flanks. "Tityos against Geryon, we must facilitate. The godling destroy the Forest and the Compelling City, can and should. With us enabling."

"My dear Uye," Nagath said with a slight smile, using the closest approximation of its name that a human could pronounce. "That is a remarkably dangerous suggestion, to bring Justinian so near. You know what the oldest Codexes say. You know what they imply."

"Time to mitigate implications remains. Danger and opportunity, a brood of two."

Nagath frowned, thoughtful and silent, gazing out over the darkening city. 

-

Gabul sauntered through the darkening Harbor District, still busy with the offloading of wares and slaves from ports across the all the southern sea. The Avenue of Tears, along which he strolled, was a broad street, lined by palms and empty market stalls pressed against square buildings of mudbrick and adobe. A little ways ahead, the road opened up to the dockyards proper, the masts of a thousand different ships outlined against the starry sky.

Gabul was a short man, and thin, wearing a dark cassock that denoted him as an Adept at the Great Library. His pale skin was painted in elegant tattooes, words in languages long left unspoken. A smouldering pipe jutted from the corner of his mouth, and one hand rested on the pommel of his shortsword. The Masters' thugs kept good enough order during the day, but night along the Harbor of Chains could be a dicey affair.

Ahead of him, a Ghuud was being carried by slaves on a curtained litter. The insectoid creature was immensely fat, pale flesh oozing between its dark chitin plates. Gabul nodded to it as he passed, meeting its many-eyed, unblinking gaze. The Ghuud clicked its mandibles and buzzed at him: a polite enough greeting recognizing Gabul as an equal. Then it reached one spindly claw into a bowl at its side, speared a  larva through the middle, and brought the squirming morsel to its considerable jaws, draining it of fluids, chittering with pleasure as it did so.

Gabul smiled. Some considered the Ghuud barbaric for their cannibalism. He found their honesty refreshing; their brutality lacked the artifice and pretense of the more humanoid races. Underneath, after all, everyone's a cannibal who isn't prey.

Pretense and artifice, alac, were to be his calling now. Master Nagath had given him a mission of some importance, an opportunity to prove his cunning and potentially attain the rank of Master for his own. 

He made his way to the docks, weaving through crowds of sailors, slavers, slaves and merchants still milling about by the light of torches and the stars above, to an elegant junk tied to a private berth. The [i]Almalexia[/i] was Master Nagath's ship, and it was to take him to Vitium.