Prologue pt 1 – Black Fingers
The esteemed Mage Hanselman noticed a signal assert itself on his charmed map seven years later than he had expected it to appear. There was clearly no time to be spared. He gathered his high council with no explanation, and the two young mages and two old traveled to a nearly uninhabited area of Norway. Mage Hanselman led them to a small house, barely visible under the snow. None, not even Hanselman himself knew what to expect, and none were prepared for what they would find.
Normally when confronted with the sight that met these Mages, one would expect a smell, but the smell had frozen away. Mage Sebastian Sesling was the first to investigate. He rolled over a severed head with his foot.
“There must be quite a story behind this,” he remarked. Mage Maclean pointed past the older Mage.
“Maybe she can tell us.” His voice was no more than a strangled whisper, for what the others had failed to notice until this moment was a girl standing, alive, among seven frozen bodies, one without its head. Mage Hanselman was the first to approach the girl.
Mage Maclean struggled with his stomach and his conscience, each telling him different and completely opposing courses of action. Mage Sesling studied his surroundings, picking things up and moving them around judiciously. Mage Cicero stood stock still, staring only at
the girl. Hanselman knelt next to the girl, successfully ignoring the arm with dead black fingers reaching out behind him.
“What is your name?” he asked softly. A normal seven-year-old might be screaming or crying or running or in fact be doing anything, showing any expression on her face. This girl showed none. This girl did nothing.
“Sandry,” she answered in a flat voice, her eyes falling nowhere, not on the bodies around her and not on Hanselman himself. Hanselman continued as softly as he began.
“What happened, Sandry?” The expression on Sandry’s face was unexpected and alarming to all but Sesling, who seemed more interested in the carnage than the girl. To Hanselman’s inquiry she showed only anger.
“I hurt them. All of them.” Maclean, watching the girl carefully, saw for a moment only an expression of pure agony, quickly replaced by anger, then, nothing. He glanced at Hanselman to see if he had glimpsed the same, but Hanselman would look nowhere but at the girl.
“Will you come with us, Sandry?” he asked. Maclean expected a wisecrack from Sesling about the girl’s lack of choice in the matter, but Sesling, who was watching Sandry in an uncharacteristically serious way, said nothing. “We can teach you not to hurt people. If that’s what you want.”
It was impossible to tell where she looked, if she looked anywhere at all as she considered, or seemed to consider Hanselman’s offer. After a few long moments, she nodded slowly and sullenly. Mage Maclean, still fighting the battle between his stomach and his heart, led the way out and Sandry began to follow, but as she crossed the threshold, Mage Sebastian Sesling leaned down and pulled a small, round ordinary-looking rock from the frozen-solid ground outside the door and held it out to Sandry.
“Never forget where you came from, girl,” he advised. She looked at him for a few long seconds and took the stone, sliding it into her pocket. But she never looked back as she left behind the only home she had ever known.
Nihilistic Porcupine 