Ghost Ascension – preview #1 of 3

(Fragments of a journal belonging to Rykonis of Malarae, found in the ruins of Caer Magia. Dated to the final years of the War of the Fourth Empire.)

I cannot stop thinking about the dead children. When I close my eyes, I see them. When I sleep, I cannot escape from their faces.

They died for nothing, for no reason.

And yet…and yet I think it could have been much worse.

I am a Ghost, a spy and assassin of the Emperor of Nighmar. The true Emperor of Nighmar, and not the puppet of the Magisterium that currently sits upon the Imperial throne. The circlemasters learned that the high magi planned to gather in their stronghold of Caer Magia, to plan their war against the true Emperor. The strongest magi of the Magisterium, gathered in one place. So the circlemasters sent me to spy upon them.

I arrived at the gates of Caer Magia, disguised as a peasant farmer come to sell his wares in the city’s market. I had my cover story prepared, a half-dozen knives beneath my clothes, and an escape route planned in case it became necessary.

But I didn’t need it. I didn’t need any of it.

The guards lay dead at the gate.

I could not find a mark upon them. No wound, no sign of illness, no trace of poison. I have seen hundreds of men die in hundreds of different ways. Yet I have never seen dead men like these, their bodies free unmarked by wound and illness. Like puppets whose strings had been cut, dropping to the ground in a tangled heap.

And as I examined the corpses, I became aware of the silence. A hundred thousand people lived in Caer Magia, and I should have been able to hear the rumble of carts on the flagstones, the murmur of conversation, shouting merchants, the bleat of sheep and the whinnying of horses. But instead I heard nothing.

Only silence.

I entered the city and found it filled with the dead.

Men lay where they had fallen, glassy eyes staring at the sky. Women lay sprawled in the markets, their purchases still in their hands. Horses and oxen slumped in their traces, still harnessed to the carts and carriages they had pulled

Children, dead at their games.

All of them, slain, and seemingly slain at once, without cause or reason.

I walked from one end of Caer Magia to another, at first silently, and then calling for someone, anyone, to answer. But no one ever did. The city was dead. The animals were dead. Even the leaves of the trees and the petals of the flowers from black and limp from brittle, crumbling branches.

And at last I came to the citadel of the magi.

Or, I tried to. I could not enter, I dared not enter. A strange green light seemed to fill the tower, and whenever I drew near, my heart faltered and my limbs trembled and my vision began to swim. As if the light itself were poisoned.

To this day, no one knows what happened to Caer Magia. The commoners believed that a curse had struck down Caer Magia and the high magi, a punishment from the gods for the hubris of the magi, and refused to enter the city. Even scavengers and looters refused to enter Caer Magia, fearing the plague, or perhaps the curse. The Emperor, the true Emperor, proclaimed that a plague had slain the high magi, and seized control of the Empire for himself.

But I believe neither.

I think the magi did it to themselves. I think they were making something, some great weapon, some fell thing of sorcery, to use in the War, and they accidentally turned it upon themselves.

And I fear what will happen if that weapon is ever found.

(The fragment ends here.)