First Blow-Alexander Lyre
Alexander Lyre stared sightlessly off the port bow, the glint of a cold gold coin flashing of the back of his left knuckles. His right hand performed an equally meaningless, but impressive, manipulation of the short player’s deck. Neither act achieved his intended purpose, as he was still bored. Not even this casual display of money had enticed any of the sailors to gamble with him. No games of cards, no games of dice, not even chess with the sailing master, quartermaster, or captain had happened. Aside from occasionally being lambasted by the bosun for occasionally pitching in with an inexpert effort, nothing had happened.
Even the impending mission had done nothing to clear away of the impatient tedium of the whole affair, the hell of an unending anticipation to get the whole thing started. If he had been a horse, he would have been chomping at the bit. Even drinking was off limits before his first group adventure. That was the part that niggled at the back of his brain in the stillness of the day, or the quiet dead of the night. It wasn’t the danger, but the group part that made him nervous. It was his first team in living memory, from the start of his break from the Free Holds, and old habits for survival died hard. The only problem is that what was beneficial on your own wasn’t normally the play when covering someone else. The color of the blood sea stared back at him, the gentle lapping of the red liquid against the hull of the ship. If he stared at it for long enough, even the natural noises of the ship became ominous. The creaking of the woods were shrill spectral screams, or the groaning of the ropes the waling of the damned. The mindless worry tingled in his hindbrain, and became just another insufficient distraction to ignore.
The gathering mist slowly crept across the waves and enveloped the ship in a suffocating white embrace. The chilled, foul stuff seemed to cling onto everything, swirling around the living with a hungry, jealous desire. The strange surrealism of the impossible fog over the blood sea slowly percolated through his torpid brain. The realization seemed to delay his response, as if the chill air was sapping his energy with an unholy need. It shocked him, and he sat up abruptly. While the coins and most of the deck vanished into one of the many pockets, a single lacquered card fell to the deck.
Alex flexed his fingers instinctively to check their flexibility, while bending over to pick up the last card. The slim, stiff square was facedown, and Alex uneasily flipped it over. The gloved fingers revealed one of the jokers with a snap, and he grimaced. A players deck had a few holdovers from the full deck, the one fortune tellers used to tell portents and omens. While the gambler had neither the talent, nor the inclination to learn to prophesize the future, the white clown and black jester were two signs of change. While nothing was certain without other cards to provide context, the black jester rarely meant anything good was looming in the future. The painted figure grinned maliciously behind the painted mask, balancing a knife on a finger, gripping a heavy rod for smiting in the other hand. In the dim diffuse light of the mist, he could almost see the black ink shift. He could almost see it move on the card. A frission of horror ran down his spine, and Alex failed to repress a shudder.
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Alex stared at the white eyes of the card as the crew slowly paddled the rowboat to shore. It stared back, smirking at him. Keeping secrets from beyond the grave… Unlike the rest of the mages who occasionally huddled next to Erasmus for a break from the unending, permeating horror of this place, the aura just grated against Alex’s nerves. Perhaps it was a personality quirk, or trick of the blood, but the magic simply kindled a matching raging sea of sullen anger, and it roiled in his gut. In his mind, the pounding of his heart was a war cry. The paddling oars drumbeats of an approaching army.
The row boat slid onto the shore with a bare crunch. The crew handed Maher Adonai a flare gun, and Alex tracked the crucial item with his eyes. For him, fighting his way out of this place was nothing but a bad beat, and he didn’t want to lose his escape key. Alex picked up the wide-brimmed hat with his left hand. The joker vanished into a pocket to join its companions, and Alex slowly stood up. Falling now would just be embarrassing, and possibly dangerous if he hit the water. Droplets of condensation flew off his hat as he tapped it against his thigh, and planted it on his head. His fingers ran across the brim, clearing the leftover dew, and flicked it clear. A pair of throwing knives appeared in his hands as if by magic, before vanishing again. He rolled his neck and stepped onto the shore.
His foot was swallowed by white, and he felt rather than saw the crunch of the river gravel beneath his boots. Gloved hands eased his coat back to loosen the pistols in his holsters, and check the twin swords in his hip drawing rig. His blue eyes surveyed the land slowly. Undead roots writhed in a twisted parody of nature. An occasional wail could be heard, echoing from some undead thing. The fog swirled into shapes, almost faces to whisper dark secrets and damnation. He felt something bounce off his boot, and looked down to see an undead gecko, missing skin and organs. The damned thing hissed at him before scampering off. Necromantic energy and corruption oozed from the very air and it set his teeth on edge. The presence wanted to kill everything living, and it felt like it hated him especially. “I hate this place already,” Alexander whispered to himself. Erasmus bent down to play with a root, no doubt curious about how to kill the place just like he was. Still, something niggled at him, just beyond the tip of his tongue. The answering flare from their contact erased any thought at the pulse of light and magic.
The anti-mage was the first to speak, advocating to move fast and stick together. Alex didn’t even have to eye the ghastly mists to agree that the latter was a necessity. Meanwhile the attractive red head murmured a prayer, and Alex shrugged minutely at the behavior. "Let's go. We can't risk missing her." He popped a throwing dagger into his left hand, and a single curved sword from his right hand in the other. The bark of a pistol might draw unwanted attention, especially given that everything here would hate him especially. The blood tingled in his veins as his heart began to pound just a little harder. Alex nodded, “Agreed.”