Prologue:
Memento Mori
It was only the very most foolish of people that dared to ignore the warnings that surrounded the darkest reaches of the Outer Rim's northernmost corner.
Everyone knew the legends—ghost stories, they were called, and perhaps rightly so—but everyone knew about them, and everyone abided by them.
But…
Life wasn't worth much, if people didn't make mistakes, even the most horrible mistakes, from time to time. When no one forgot the warnings and no one thought himself about the rules…
Well, things just weren't very interesting at all…
The run from the Mid-Rim base to the Outer Rim and back had been difficult, to say the least. The merchant vessel Arrcadia had encountered numerous obstacles during the course of its journey—more so than ever before, the captain and crew had long-since realized.
The military check-points had been abnormally suspicious and edgy: nigh on attacking anyone who passed by with vicious interrogations. This was owed to the fact that there had been more than a scant few points of recent political friction between the Empire's various planets and sectors. Peace was becoming a novelty now.
There was no war—not yet, at any rate—but there was no peace.
Also beleaguering the weary captain and his crew were the various personal grudges and contentions between the merchants themselves, their suppliers, and those who received the shipments. Then the Arrcadia had been caught within the rough edge of a meteor storm, and two of its ionic combustion retainers had ruptured, causing a ship-wide radioactive contamination scare.
Captain M'Tevv and his crew were ready to return home.
The vessel's auto-pilot had been switched on for the night by the captain, who had fulfilled his duties and left the helm in the capable hands of the first-officer and the ship's computer itself. And thus it was that the hour of midnight found Jarath M'Tevv—a compact and muscular man of medium height, with weathered skin and shrewd dark eyes that saw everything and missed nothing—striding down the ship's narrow main corridor, heading towards his personal quarters with the intention of turning in for the night.
It had been a long day, but it was over, at long last.
Soon he would report in to his superiors, receive his pay, and be permitted to return to his home and wife. It was a time-consuming and many-a-time difficult job…an occupation that caused him to wonder, sometimes, why he wasted his time with it at all. There were so many things that men were forced to do in the shipping business—ugly, brutal, and unscrupulous things that niggled in the back of one's memory and haunted one's vision of the future. It was not a savory occupation, sometimes, by any means
Yet evil and corruption did not cause the universe to cease moving
A wonder, indeed…
The captain passed by a window as he strode down the ship's coldly metallic, echoing corridor, and absently noticed an icily flawless jewel of a planet—clouds of vibrant sapphire and emerald swirling over its surface—hanging within the sky. 'How very stunning', he thought to himself, and continued on
Then he slammed himself to a halt.
There wasn't supposed to be any planet where they were!
M'Tevv froze where he was and stared out the thick plexiglass window, his dark eyes riveted to the ghostly pale glow of the globe. Though he had never given any credence to them, he had heard the tales—the hushed talk of half-intrigued and half-fearful souls—of a phantom planet, a sphere that appeared and then vanished at random, haunting the outer corners of the galaxy. No one ever knew where it would be seen, yet everyone knew that it existed.
It was the wraith-world, he had heard the people whisper. A ghost-planet, where a sinister force waited to drag its unsuspecting victims down to a terrible fate.
No…!
"It—can't—possibly—be—!" M'Tevv managed to gasp, through lips that could scarcely form the breathless words as he quavered in unspeakable, incomprehensible, and unexplainable fear. It couldn't possibly be…it was impossible…!
All the same, he found himself suddenly wheeling and tearing back to the bridge, running as if all the darkest and vilest creatures of the abyss were behind him, snapping at his heels. When he reached his command seat, he found that the rest of his crew was in a similar state of petrified terror. Every man was pale as moonlight, a nameless fear burning in their hollow gaze. M'Tevv turned to his second-in-command.
"There was…no planet here!" he finally stammered. "We were to cross the path of no such place on our course—tell me this is true!"
The other man motioned listlessly to the star charts.
"No…we were not…" he replied.
"Yet…here we are…and there it is…" breathed M'Tevv. They had been warned not to cross this place in the galaxy: the fearsome, unknown black reaches of the northern corner of the Outer Rim. They had been warned—but no one had listened.
No…
All eyes turned back to the waiting orb: it seemed to pulse with its ghastly pale light for a moment, and a peculiar tremor seemed to emanate from it, causing a low hum to resound within the bowls to the ship. The metal floor trembled beneath their booted feet. Only one crewmember dared to speak the words…
"What…is it?"
But they all knew—they knew, before the second officer had whispered the chilling syllables of its terrible name.
…For everyone knows death, when they have beheld it…
"Necropolis."
It is Necropolis, the World of the Dead.
Suddenly the ship gave a violent tremor; steel beams groaned and sparks flew, showering into the air like hissing fallen stars. The floor lurched as the sound of metal rending and scraping against itself assaulted the ears of every man. Captain M'Tevv nearly fell, and grabbed onto the nearest wall for support. The lights in the ceiling began to flicker: the ship itself was moaning in agony!
Then the alarms began to blare throughout the vessel, red lights flashing and sirens wailing. A collective cry went up throughout the ship as every man aboard realized his horrible danger—and then the lights went out, plunging everything into complete blackness. Suffocating darkness enshrouded them, the shuddering and convulsing of the floor ceased, but now there was a new sound…
Hissing, crackling.
M'Tevv pulled himself up from the floor, where he had finally collapsed, unable to keep his footing. Along with his crew, he stood unsteadily—and looked out of the main viewport, bound to the vision of the ghost-planet.
Necropolis.
The world of the dead…
"You have found Death…"
The words were breathed from the core of the darkness itself, M'Tevv was certain; his mind held no hallucination, no phantasm.
It was real…
The air that they breathed had turned cold. He could see the breath leaving his lungs in the little smoke-like puffs that left the mouths of his crew. The planet's eerie light glinted in the eyes of the men, making them seem like unearthly denizens of the grave. Hopeless. Doomed. Dead.
He looked down—the hissing and crackling sound that he had heard before—it had now grown louder, and when he moved his booted foot, it came away from the floor with a snapping sound. He put his hand out to the wall, to brace himself as he nearly lost his balance once more, at the same time that the second officer looked to the glass at the window nearby.
Ice.
Like a rapacious vine, it had covered the entire floor—coating every metallic surface in a veneer of shimmering white-blue—and now it was growing up the windows, fogging the clear glass and obscuring their sight of everything.
The alarms continued to sound. No one of them had set them off.
M'Tevv felt his heart begin to race—faster—faster—faster within his chest; suddenly, he could not think, he could not move. He could only feel.
And what he felt…was terror.
The ice spread, shooting its razor-sharp, dagger-like fingers into the rest of the ship, covering everything, and the Arrcadia groaned, like a gargantuan beast in its death-throes.
All at once, M'Tevv could only think of one thing: escape. He wheeled around, making a mad dash for the door of the bridge, shrieking for everyone to flee—
Cold white-blue lightning flashed, nearly blinding him—he skidded on the ice as he began to fall towards the door—
The darkness loomed before him, reaching for him with its frigid grasping talons—it was here for him—
Eyes—colder than the ice, more sinister and unforgiving and evil than the darkness—appeared before him. They were hollow, inhuman eyes, unearthly white-blue and glowing, flashing in the blackness.
And now they came towards him, the lightning crackling, as their owner—a huge, bat-winged black form—moved over the floor—
Then?
Nothing.
Memento Mori.
Remember, foolish mortals…
Remember
that you must die.
Introducing Part IV of the Travelers of Enchantment series,
a Conjunctive Effort on the parts of
Lady Kate
(also known as Kates)
and
Lady Adrienne
(also known as the Dunadan)
We give you
The Storytellers.
Two sisters. A mage. A werewolf.
Magic. Plots. Curses. Intrigue. Adventure.
True love.
Join us as the tale is spun, step into our world...
And IMAGINE.
Once upon a time...