Chapter 0: The Setup

Three agents from Uglu and a reluctant guide

(For the preamble and premise, start here) 

"No chance, forget it." 

Vizrin Kyre, Fleetmaster and captain of the Hel's Claw, mused wryly that his days of defiant protestations should have been behind him, but here he was, in a smokey dive in a forgotten corner of Cinderfall, sat across a motley collection of Uglu emigres, protesting anyway. He knew it would do no good. 

The other three stared wordlessly back at him, or at least the Hag Queen called Morgwaeth did, and intensely too, a twitchy fanaticism somehow coloring her every expression. Of the remaining pair, the Tenebrael Shroud's face was concealed beneath a dark hood, while the Mistweaver Saih's was inscrutable behind a mirror-sheen mask. 

"I dropped everything, when I was summoned. I brought you here from Uglu, as you paid me to. I found this place - " and here his broad sweeping gesture encompassed his indignation as well as his bafflement "- for you whatever gods-known reason. I've told you everything I know about what's going on. I can help you no more. This is where we part ways; I have a business to run!" 

The Hag Queen smiled icily. "You speak as if it's our choice, or yours. It is not; it is preordained. Look," she says, and points over the elf pirate's shoulder. 

As Kyre turned to look, the sound of revelry at the other end of the bar rose to an exultant cry, as a one-eyed dwarf in a yellow cap triumphantly lifted a strange amulet over his head. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a strange glimmering light coming from somewhere behind the bar. As he turned for a better view, he saw it coalesce into a large oculus, a terrible eye with a pupil of utter darkness. From that darkness came a horrible shriek of laughter and a searing blast of blue fire. 

The dwarf screamed in agony as the flames writhed over his flesh. The unnatural conflagration transformed him in a matter of moments to a bubbling pool of skin and bone writhing pitifully on the floor. The amulet he’d held aloft skittered across the floor, landing right at Kyre's feet. He stared at it, vaguely aware that several others were also looking down at the object. Seized by an unstoppable desire, he reached for it, but a blinding flash of light threw him back. The flash heralded a glimmering eldritch portal, a rift hanging unnaturally in space where there was nothing at all a moment before. A figure in the shape of a man stepped  through the opening, his inhuman eyes fixated upon the dwarf’s amulet. At a gesture, the amuled floated gently and inoxerably through the air, landing in his clawed hand. 

Kyre rose, and heard the trio from Uglu doing the same behind him. His hand burned where he had grasped the amulet; pausing to look, he found a strange pulsating rune mark etched on his hand. 

He looked up again to see a group of warriors in strange avian masks stepping through the portal behind the sorcerer a moment before it closes, brandishing their blades as the wizard darted out the doorway and into the streets of Cinderfall. Kyre drew his cutlass and prepared to do battle, sensing his new companions preparing themselves as well. "No choice, indeed," Kyre mused to himself bitterly, as he moved towards his chosen foe. 

The Aelves prepare to fight their way out of the tavern, while the Magister flees