9:31 Dragon, Spring

Samantha woke with a start. It wasn't a nightmare or Corbinian tapping on her window.

It was a loud, thunderous boom.

She sat straight up in bed, gripping the locket around her neck. All was quiet. The noise sounded familiar, and she prayed to the Maker that she hadn't heard what she knew she just had. She let out another yelp, gripping the blankets of her bed when another loud boom erupted from somewhere in the city.

Fighting through the fear of both the known and the unknown, Samantha found the courage to get out of bed and tiptoe down the hallway. It was dark, but she could see lights flickering under the door of Innley's old room, though they did not seem to originate within–rather, they were coming from outside.

She crept inside, and darted towards the large window from which she could see across town, and, as her fingers met the cold windowsill, she could only stand there, frozen somewhere between panic and awe.

The Circle Tower was on fire. Smoke blacker than the night and as thick as honey poured upwards from its windows, heavy with cloudy sinew, like the fire wasn't natural. The smoke was so thick that she wasn't sure if it was produced by fire until a jut of flame stabbed at the air outside one of the windows—almost as if a dragon had breathed it—lighting up the sky and the tops of buildings all across the city for the split second, until the billowing smoke swallowed it back up again.

Her thoughts randomly shifted, lit by panic. Was she safe here? Where were her parents? Was Innley caught in the fire? Was Corbinian suited up in his armor, ready to charge into the tower, or was he already there? She tried to see the city below, looking for movement, but the smoke pouring out of the tower seemed to snake through all the streets, obscuring any hope of visibility.

Tinkle tinkle.

Her hand rested on the glass as she pressed forward, trying to get a better look at the streets below when Samantha heard the sound. She couldn't focus on what it was, but rather where it came from. It came from the hallway. She heard something else, something that sounded like glass rolling over a smooth surface. These sounds were both familiar but unfamiliar, because what could make those sounds? And they were in the house…

She turned her back to the window, leaning against it, trying to stay away from the doorway that led to the hall. She knew something was wrong. Something was very wrong. Another boom from the Circle bellowed out across the city and she felt the shockwave through the window rattle her straight to the heart. The fear started to spread its roots through her limbs, and she wanted to cry.

Then she heard a soft whimper. And it wasn't hers.

Grasping the curtains, Samantha moved along the wall around the room which was still dark, only partially illuminated every time a stab of fire escaped the Circle to light up Starkhaven. Moving as fast as she could, which was actually quite slowly, Samantha inched towards the door, her bare feet padding on the plush rug of Innley's old room, reaching the doorway and gripping the side of the door for resolve, afraid if she let go of anything, she would simply fall and never stop. She didn't step into the hallway right away, only leaning around the corner to see clear to the opposite end before ducking back into the shadows. Although it was dark, there was a faint yellow glow coming from the room at the very end of the corridor. Her parents' room.

Tinkle tinkle.

What was that? Feelings of dread crept into her throat and perhaps as some kind of mental defense, her mind started to invent stories as she convinced herself to move down the hallway. Maybe her father had left their bedroom to find Samantha, and her mother had stayed behind, lighting a candle while she waited, explaining the soft light. But, of course, her father would find her bed empty. When she passed her bedroom and found it undisturbed, she knew that story was wrong. Everything was just as she had left it.

She passed by the stairs and briefly looked down. The darkness blanketed everything with transparent fuzz and it was difficult to see, but there were no guards. No servants. It was empty. She heard that sound again: the glass rolling. Followed by another whimper.

That small, barely audible sound gripped her and didn't let go. Her hands began to tremble, and her body wanted to stop—was screaming and shaking for her to stop—and she wanted Corbinian. She wished he was here protecting her instead of the city as the Oath of Starkhaven demanded. She had a fleeting thought that maybe she should leave her house, run to the royal estate and find solace under the protection of the royal guard. But if she couldn't move down the hallway of her own house, how did she expect to move through a city under the siege of magic where the very streets caused blindness? No, she couldn't leave. She knew she must continue because whatever lay at the end of the hall, she couldn't in good conscience leave her parents alone with it.

Another boom sounded from somewhere in the city and Samantha could tell from the sound that it wasn't the Circle. It was somewhere else. Somewhere closer. Something was out there, and she hoped to the Maker and back that Corbinian was beating the holy hell out of it.

Taking a breath, her hand found the wall which became her new guide as she drifted towards the soft light, past the portraits and the picture of flowers where Innley had once been, past the lounges and the tables and finally to the open doorway where the scene inside revealed itself as she rounded the corner, like a curtain being drawn back.

The soft light was coming from the center of the room, or so she thought. Her eyes found the location but the source was concealed by a person blocking her view. She must have made some noise or something, because the man spun around and it was at that moment that she thought she was going to lose it.

"Innley?" she whispered incredulously, certain she was going mad.

"Well, hello there." He glared at her with eyes that glowed a poisonous green.

Tears spilled out, skipping off her cheeks like stones. "Wh-what are you doing here?"

"Making them seeeeee…"

Samantha felt terrified by his tone. He didn't sound like Innley. His voice was somewhere deeper, creepier, almost like it echoed inside his body before it left his mouth. He sounded like a— She didn't need to say it. She thought it and that was enough. Innley started to laugh.

"Figured it all out, sister?" He gave her a wide, crooked smile. His teeth were black and Samantha's mouth opened as she silently gasped for air, frozen with fear. "Did you come here to rescue them, then?"

Innley who was not Innley bore his horrible eyes into her and she couldn't think of anything else to say except, "Where are our parents…?"

"They are not my parents." Was that Innley? Speaking with another's voice? "They told me so! The Templars came and dragged me away and they asked for my name and they said Innley and that was it. Innley of Starkhaven. That's what I have become."

Is that what he had become? His eyes glowed monstrously, and she could see that both his teeth and his tongue were black as death itself. From somewhere inside his mouth where the sounds were coming from, there an underlying growl as though somewhere inside Innley lay a vicious animal and all it had to do was get mad enough and it would stretch through his body, cracking bone and muscle until it was free from the confines of its flesh prison.

Innley took a step towards her. "They replaced all the pictures on the walls. They never visited me."

"I visited…" Her voice failed her, an echo of her courage.

"Yeeeeees." He drew out the word like a knife. "My pretty older sister did visit. With the help of her boyfriend. Now I remember."

He remembered? Had he forgotten? No, it's not Innley – it's not Innley! The very realization that he was not himself, that he was something else so very dark and from an entirely different realm of existence, those beings that the Grand Cleric always warned about, made Samantha nearly lose the semblance of control she had left. She was near hyperventilating now.

He took another step, and she heard the glass rolling again. "I didn't appreciate those visits."

Tinkle tinkle.

Samantha's stomach started to tremor as she cried, little sobs that she was trying to hold in escaped and she couldn't look away from his horrible green glowing eyes.

He tilted his head and shifted his weight and it was then that she saw the light source. It was a sconce sitting atop a thick staff in Innley's hands. On the bottom of the staff was a small globe of obsidian and when he moved, the globe dragged across the floor producing a noise. The rolling glass.

Then the whimper, pitiful and agonizing and it was coming from above. Samantha's eyes instinctively turned upwards and when she did, all the air fled her lungs at once when she saw her parents, hanging – no not hanging – floating, suspended just beneath the crystal chandelier that hung majestically from the high ceiling. The crystal chandelier.

Tinkle tinkle.

"You're hurting them..."

"Why shouldn't I? They abandoned me! They left me to die in that tower!" His movements were sporadic as he thrust his arm upwards, pointing towards their family.

"Please stop…" Samantha shook her head; she had no defense for them. She couldn't deny that they had made her angry at their actions as well.

"They will suffer! Just as I have suffered!"

"They don't know—!"

His eyes went wide, and in the dim light, she could see a swirling in his green pupils, something like liquid metal. "You are no different than them!"

"I tried—!"

"You tried to do what? Aside from summon me whenever you felt guilty enough to visit!"

She let out a small whimper, shaking her head.

"Have you one thought in that pretty little head that isn't selfish?" The hand that wasn't gripping the staff balled into a fist. "Did you ever consider that your visits were inconvenient? That they were insulting?"

Samantha took a step backwards, but he followed.

"You acted like nothing had changed but everything had changed!" Innley screamed. "I put up with your visits because I had no other choice!"

"I didn't—!"

"No." He cut her off with finality that time, standing up tall with his terrible eyes blazing. "You didn't and you still don't know the horrors of that place. Perhaps you should be punished as well! You knew what they were doing to me and still you did nothing!"

"That's not—!"

"LIAR!" He reached out and grasped her neck hard in one hand, making her locket cut into her skin, and suddenly the air was gone, her body frozen in its last breath.

Samantha's hands went up to his as he pushed her back against the wall, hard, knocking the breath from her. She scratched and struggled, trying to reach his face as he bared his teeth, growling at her like an animal. He lifted her higher and she kicked at the air until her vision began to blur... and then he let her go.

Her hands and knees hit the floor hard and, coughing through a raw throat, Samantha felt the incipient bruise on her throat where her locket had been pressed into her jugular. Her lungs burned as she tried and failed to breathe and cough at the same time, suddenly reduced to her base instincts of trying to survive and nearly collapsing from the exhaustion of learning how.

Innley lowered himself to one knee, hissing into her ear: "He wants to spare you, but you are a selfish, shallow waste of a life. He will understand."

Samantha could only cough again and again, believing that these breaths were probably going to be her last. Innley, or whoever this was, was going to kill her. After he killed her parents. She heard the rolling glass and looked up to see Innley's back.

"Who should I punish first?" he asked, as if it were an academic question, one that didn't involve pain and torture.

Samantha tried to speak, but her voice was raked over rocks.

"Do you think...?" He looked back at her over his shoulder, his head back-lit by the glow of his staff and he moved a little to his right, the obsidian ball rolling along the floor as he came to a stop underneath her father.

No…

The look on her face seemed to be a sadistic pleasure for him and he spun about, raising his hand in the air, and when he let out a loud yell, her father hit the floor hard. His eyes snapped open and when he focused on Innley, they said all there was to say. Terror. Abject terror. Innley sneered before he thrust the ball end of his staff through their father's chest.

She could hear the bones crunching, the muscles and flesh ripping, and the blood gushing forth. The noises her father made at that moment were worse than Samantha could have ever imagined and she covered her ears, curling up into a ball against the wall, her tears spilling out. She was certain she made noises of her own, trying not to hear her father's dying screams, the grunts and the gurgles under Innley's cruel laughter.

Samantha wailed then, covering her ears and her eyes and screaming something that she was certain resembled no and stop and please but he just laughed and eventually her father stopped making those terrible noises and she couldn't look. She couldn't look.

"One down…" She heard him hiss into her ear. "Two to go…"

She had to get out of there. She couldn't save her mother. She could only save herself or sit there and wait to die. This was the game. And there was only one way to play.

"Did you enjoy that?" he whispered and she could smell the death inside him, sweet and pungent like those decomposed rats that she and Innley had found in the cellar one year. "I can do other things. I can make them move if you want."

She would have to wait. She couldn't jump up now; he would have her in his hands, those disgusting bruised hands, before she made it to the stairs. She would have to wait and she hated that it was her mother's death that she would have to wait for.

"I can make her talk. What would you most like her to say?"

How long would this go on? How long would he draw out the torture of the moment to satiate his own desire for revenge? Samantha cracked open her eyes, but kept her body curled up again the wall.

Tinkle tinkle.

"Me?" He touched his chest lightly. "I think I want to hear the truth. Finally."

She could smell the decomposition receding as he stood up and she allowed herself to peek up as he moved towards the center of the room. The roll of the glass ball stopped when he was directly beneath her mother and he smiled his blackened smile, the saliva dribbling from the corners of his mouth, black as oil.

Her mother whined again; this time it was evident that she was aware of her surroundings, because she eked out Samantha's name like an arrow to the chest.

"Why did you leave me there?" Innley raged from beneath her, his voice rattling.

Samantha turned her eyes to the door, trying to gauge how far away she had been pushed from it.

"You were a shame to the family." Her mother's whisper was barely audible and Samantha looked up to see her face, tear-streaked and crumpled.

"You left me! You abandoned me! Did you ever think about me?" That sounded like Innley.

"I tried not to…"

"WHY?" His screaming was a raging pain drawn up from somewhere deep.

Tinkle tinkle.

"Because magic is a sin."

"No…" His voice changed back to the sadistic creature that was enjoying all of this. "Abandoning your child to torture and solitude is a sin."

Samantha stood up slowly, as quietly as she could, keeping her gaze fixed on Innley.

"He returns now to show you of the damage that has been done, and only now do you weep. When it is your life that has been so injured."

Her mother whined again.

"You think you are worthy of standing in judgment of me, of your own child, but you fail to judge yourself." He turned about beneath her, incredulous and accusatory. "And I'm supposed to be the evil one?"

Samantha held her breath as she reached her full height, placing a palm on the wall, hoping to give herself a push-off.

"You possess a soul. A heart. A life of emotion and dream and I am supposed to be the empty one. But if that's so, then tell me how it is that I can see the inhumanity in you?" His staff rolled across the floor as he turned again, never removing his eyes from the ceiling and her mother. "I will make you seeeee…"

As his blackened tongue hissed out the final sounds, he shot his arm upwards, his staff in hand and Lady Mayweather seized violently in mid-air. Samantha had to look away as Innley's arm swung around and their mother flew so forcefully through the air, her body slamming against the wall with a sickening crack as though her bones were crunched from the impact and it was at that moment that Samantha bolted for the door.

She couldn't hear anything but her own breathing as she made it into the hallway, knocking over a vase from a side table in her rush to turn the corner and she slid on the rug, her hands finding the banister of the stairs, swinging around and hurling herself down, her heels skipping along the steps. She crashed into the wall at the turn, but she didn't stop moving until she hit the door. She groped for the handle and pulled but it didn't move; she pulled again but it was locked and her hands fumbled with the latch until it turned. She heaved the door open and the night air filled her nose with its acrid smoke but it was who was standing on her doorstep that shocked Samantha into a full stop.

It was Corbinian.

He was wearing his golden armor but his sword, One-Cut, was damaged; the tip had been split down the middle and bent back in opposite directions in a most unnatural way. Long scratches littered his armor and there were several horrible-looking gashes on the side of his face. But he wasn't moving, nor did he seem to acknowledge her existence. He just stood there, his mouth agape and his eyes staring forward as if he were a walking corpse.

A creature stepped around the corner, with her purple horns and her metallic swirling eyes and that horrible girlish laughter that made Samantha realize that things in the city were much worse than she had thought.

And then everything turned black.