Onine/Chapter04prologue

The strange metalic noise of the broken rings that once held the silken drapes aloft in the massive resting chamber seemed almost deafening in the awkward silence that followed the sudden action. More rings pulled free as the young exalt tried to support his weight with the flimsy fabric clutched in his likewise silken sheathed hands. He slumped defeated, unable to see through the sea of red pain in his vision. He was conciously aware that in his shock he had smeared the torrents of blood across his eyes effectively blinding him and leaving him helpless and trembling before his quarry. The hunter had swiftly become the hunted.

He could hear the tinkle of her jewelery, the swirling ripping of her volumous robes, but above all, the steady drip drip drip of crimson blood from the knife she held in her delicate little hand. His blood. With the slightest gesture of her slender hand wreathed in its resplendant gold jewelery, the first age mechanisms in the rooms impenitrable orichalcum walls charged the light globes with essence lighting the night-darkened room in an instant. The sudden illumination did nothing to help the young man's vision and he slipped in the ever widening pool of his own blood. He cursed under his breath and rolled onto his back helpless and weak. He was through.

The woman stood over him sillouetted in the first age globes, a combination of his blood soaked eyes and the golden illumination wreathed the other exalt in a nimbus of searing orange. The light glistned off the intricately woven fabric that covered just enough of her voluptuous curves to be comfortable in the summer eve. She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, chiding the young man. Somehow, though it was so quiet it was still the only sound that seemed to gain steady purchase in the air. The gossamer curtains streamed around the two divine beings as the circulated air of the manse made its way through the chamber once more.

He had so carefully spent nearly three days navigating the complex traps of the manse, sometimes spending hours on end breathless, slowing his heart so that that mechanical eyes of the automaton defense systems could not detect him. He had been a theif in life, a failed dynast at best, an outcaste criminal at worst. The woman that now stood over him, her life was valued more in jade than he could ever count in a lifetime, that was the only reason he had accepted the task. The conspirators would likely kill him he knew, but the young rogue was certain he could escape on ingenuity alone. He had not counted on his own heart getting in the way, as if the strings of fate had tugged his mind to his conclusion even as he brought the blade down. That mistake had cost him more than he could ever pay.

At last she spoke and her voice was of crystal bells.

"Not one has ever stood so close to me in nigh hundreds of years, let alone hold a blade to my flesh." Any indignity that she had felt from having the young man press her helpless into the cushions with a knee on her chest had fled, the calm and indomitable superiority she was famed for shone through, further crushing the spirit of the young assassin.

"I was but so helpless, reclining within my sitting chamber curtains from which you sprung so determined to readily rake this blade upon my throat or plunge it within my breast." She looked over the blade almost bored as she spoke in strange ancient rhyme, studying the ragged piece of gore still impaled on its razor-sharp tip. Her next words bore the slightest hint of dignified confusion. She did not like being confused. In some ways she would prefer to have been dead than her expectations incorrect. She said the words that confused her carefully. "Yet hesitate you did..."

The woman flicked the bloodied mess off the blade and took three steps forward. She leant over him, her robes covering him up to the waist. The volumous sleeves brushed against his cheek as she rested the point of the dagger on his throat, balancing it with little more than a smooth fingertip, but the strength behind the carefree gesture was more than clear.

"..Why?" She asked, with her free hand yanking down the mask covering the man's mouth. "You came so close to killing me where all others have failed, and yet you faltered. I am... puzzled... in a way."

The young man murmered as best he could with the pin-point pain of the dagger on his throat and the woman frowned in response. "So you said..." She didnt need to add 'When you faltered.' "Do you really believe those words?"

The young exalt didn't answer. The woman locked her eyes on his, and with a rush of essence they glowed with a strange emerald and amber light. She looked deeply into his bloodied face, her powerful essence piercing into his young and simple mind, crushing barriers and overriding the weak defenses that his innate personal essence tried to place in her way. The mental shields were nothing but a simple matter for a being of her power to break past and soon his mind and soul were laid bare before her like a roadmap.

"You are not alone are you." She stated more than questioned and their voices whispered in unison as the answer broke the surface of his thoughts. "No..."

"Who." She demanded.

"House Iselsi..." They said, eyes vacant as their thoughts ran side by side, diving and leaping through other trains of thought like dolphins sloughing through ocean waves.

"And Mnemon?" The woman asked, though this time the answer did not rise to the surface like bubbles in wine, the man gagged and his eyes widened as she searched. "Mnemon." She demanded, her brow furrowing as she probed as deeply as she dared without risking the chance that her own essence would spiritually vapourise the channels in his soul. She didn't want him dead. Not yet at least. She smiled with a small measure of pride, Mnemon surely had her hand in at least part of this plot, but she had covered her tracks well.

The light faded from her eyes and the young exalt was released from her mental grasp, coughing and gasping as if he were a man nearly drowned. The blade did not move, and the woman considered what to do with the would-be assassin. She raised a perfect brow as a mildly amusing thought occured. To catch a snake, best to use an enemy's hand. She jabbed the sharp toe of her slipper into the young exalt's ribcage.

"You are the boldest individual threat that has ever faced me, and so shall it be that you will become my greatest servant." She removed the blade from the exalt's throat and stepped back from the bewildered man. "In exchange for your life, you will punish those behind this plot - and do so with my blessing. I have already gained enough eyes - you are now my hand." The woman smiled, showing perfect rows of ice-white teeth. "If you truly believe your own words you will do so on your own honour, and that of the Realm."

Weak, the young man rolled to his knees, one gloved hand clutched against the right side of his face looking at the divine woman with no small measure of bewilderment and surprise. She pressed her heel on the reddened chunk of flesh she shook from the assassin's dagger.

The empress smiled and crushed the bloodsoaked eye with an audiable wet pop. "You are mine now, Diamandus."