Prologue

Donnell drew a deep breath after relaxing his arm, cigar in hand. The smoke wasn't calming him today. He sat in a lonely room, large beyond the standards of any landowner, his hind quarters and back aching from prolonged ruminating in the cold metal seat.

Before him was the apparatus dreamed up by his mentor, Dr. Tobias Kestrem. It was a surreal machine - towers of metal springs, conductive orbs and an endless lattice of wires. The air hung heavily about it, seeming to draw gravity tightly into its perimeter. Even as it was switched off, and days after the last experimental run, its idle use of power still made it very much alive.

Dr. Tobias was a genius, Donnell thought, someone he admired to no end. Electricity was still a work in progress when it came to public access, yet the objects in this chamber belied the primitive state of technology on Cairn. Centuries of advancement was sitting before Donnell, endlessly humming a morbid tune. This was Dr. Tobias' work, his crowning achievement. Never mind the rows of crystalline, man-sized tubes that outlined the chamber walls – these were just precautions, though of what use they could serve Donnell hadn't the foggiest.

Donnell, merely a student, lived a meager life before this appointment. Living in the cramped half of a duplex cottage in Hatherton, a respectably large township near the coast northeast of Malmouth and the Empire proper by more than a week of grueling land travel, he spent his entire youth tinkering with metal wire and crude batteries that required charging directly from lightning strikes. His family was none too thrilled with his hobbies, yet they earned him a place in a circle of diviners that seek progression in science.

Alone in this chamber, he was proud of the achievements before him, yet he was responsible for none of them. Even the three test-runs Tobias had executed previously did not include his presence. It was a large matter of patience and subtle requests that eventually allowed the student to gain audience to the task at hand. As of yet, Donnell still didn't understand the nature of the task at all, which calculated into part of the thrill.

A thundering echo rolled through the great stone room as another person entered and closed the reinforced door behind them.

"So, I suppose this is what you do for fun now," the burly voice of the Guard Captain teased.

Donnell took another drag of his cigar, feigning ignorance toward the visitor as he stared at the grotesque machine.

"More fun than hacking at a stuffed potato sack with your recruits, Efrim" Donnell retorted. "And I don't suppose you have clearance to be here?"

"Ne'er did well asking for permission," Efrim chuckled, his uniform ring mail jangling as he teetered on his heels like an impatient child.

Donnell finally broke his gaze on the machine and looked over his shoulder, taking in his friend's silly posture. "You never did well with anything," he playfully shot back, "not unless you count bossing me around and making girls eat slugs when we were ten."

Efrim cocked his head in concession, beaming from ear to ear. Donnell's face turned more serious then.

"I bet the Empire wouldn't take kindly to you snooping around in their laboratory," Donnell warned as he turned back to the machine.

"Piss on the Empire," Efrim said, annoyed. "Since when did you care about them suits anyway? We're days away from them even by boat, the only thing they have in connection with you is the money they sank into these gadgets. The rest is all in your hands!"

Donnell shook his head. "Dr. Tobias' hands," he corrected. "And he's paying for my new private home, plus all the expensive meals I'm treating Lucile to. So, I care."

Efrim smirked and shook his head. The machine suddenly loosed a deep cracking sound, a heavy pop of static electricity that had been welling from its idleness and discharged spontaneously. Surprised, Efrim gestured toward the device as though to inquire, but upon seeing his friend's stoic response he decided to leave well enough alone. Moments pass, neither of the childhood schoolmates gracing the time with words.

"How is Lucile?" Efrim finally asked, more to break the eery silence than to make small talk.

"She's well," Donnell answered, taking another drag from his cigar.

He no longer tried to connect further with his friend. His eyes were firmly in place, gazing on the contraption. His companion sensed the growing divide between Donnell's focus on the thing and his periphery, uncomfortable with the level of obsession. What did it matter to the budding scientist anyway? The machine was completely his mentor's creation; Donnell was more on par with a glorified minion.

Then Efrim remembered the news he meant to impart to his friend, or better yet his mentor if he was available.

"By the way," he began after clearing his throat, "I'm to bring word that group of Inquisitors will be arriving from the capital any day now."

Donnell took another puff of his cigar and laughed as the smoke seethed out between his teeth. "And here I thought you said the Empire was so far away from our affairs?" he goaded.

Efrim scowled. "I said they were days away by sail," he retorted venomously. "And they are setting sail today. True to my word, they will be here in three days' time."

Donnell's eyebrows cocked, unsurprised at the news and uncaring of why he must know. Inquisitors may be a deathly sight for many citizens in lower rungs of society, especially if they looked the part of cultists or have reportedly come into contact with any. For scientists, and more importantly those who hold a high station in their locale, an Inquisitor was at worst a foreboding presence, suggesting that malicious forces had nested in their surroundings. The men themselves were hardly a concern.

As the Guard Captain saw that his friend was unperturbed, he added a final piece that he thought would be otherwise irrelevant.

"They will be accompanied by The Flail."

Donnell's expression distorted as expected this time, if only for a brief second. The Flail was nearly a living legend in the Empire's employ. Unable to become an Inquisitor due to his past impurities, he is instead famed as one of very few reformed "witch hunters" - men and women who were taken by the occult in their youth who willingly gave their hearts back to the material world in its defense. Learned in the ways of summoning and chaotic energies, these witch hunters are trained by the guild of Nightblades to develop skills of stealth and secrecy. Whether purposed for assassination or infiltration or both, these people were the Inquisitors' prized weapons against unwanted elements.

But Donnell was unconvinced of this particular tool's legend. "The Flail" seemed a pretentious branding and wholly contradictory to the purpose of witch hunters - why give him a name that is meant to publicly evoke fear when he is meant to be an unseen spectre? He scoffed, flicking his cigar and kicking the small pile of ashes accruing by his foot across the stone floor.

He wasn't impressed at all, and Efrim noticed.

"Think what you want," he began in warning, "just don't let him catch you staring."

He held out a sealed missive to Donnell. But the young scientist wouldn't grasp it, instead gazing eerily at the machine, ideas of anomalous nature dancing between his ears as the world around him coalesced into a tunnel of incomprehensible echoes. Efrim then dropped the letter into his lap and left without another word.

He feared for his friend, for even though he knew the contents of that message relayed a benign purpose to investigate growing suspicions of Ch'thonian cultist activity, he also knew the Inquisitors' distrust of strange new sciences and such strange behavior that Donnell has been exhibiting. Oh, he most certainly feared for his poor, entranced friend.