Sometimes I write fiction. And by write fiction, I mean I get about 2 pages into a novel that I never pick-up again. Instead of just letting them molder on my hard-drive, I’ve decided to start a feature on Dang Dude, What the Heck? where I occasionally publish these beginnings. In doing so I’m offering them up to the public. Feel free to use them to start writing your own stories. Take whatever part of them you like, if any, and use it as your own. I won’t tell. Or just read them and take them for what they are. Here’s the second one. The Montraven Affair
Chapter One
The Montraven mansion rotted against the moonlit sky. Its crumbling arches, lichen-covered buttresses, and cracked turrets all emanated the same dry-death grave odor that found its way into Olivia Hasden’s nostrils. The handkerchief wrapped around her face to protect against the scent did nothing. Olivia double-checked the leather tie keeping her jet-black hair in place. In doing this she confirmed that the spell woven into the tie’s fibers remained ready to go if the need arose. She then tapped the peregrine falcon tattoo on her left wrist for good luck and unsheathed a 6-inch knife from the hidden scabbard on her back.
Olivia studied the cellar door for a second. Sliding the knife between the locking mechanism and jamb, she popped the wooden latch holding it shut. The door opened. Hinges turned red from rust and underuse threatened to squeal but Olivia dampened the sound with a simple tweak of her fingers and a slight draw upon her power. Silent as the moon, she stepped into the darkness of the cellar.
Astonishingly, the smell dissipated once Olivia entered the basement. It faded away, remaining only as a faint undertone. Anyone entering this house soon started to feel as if they had visited a poisoned bog after a rainstorm. To Olivia’s nose a bog was miles better than the rotted corpse stench of outside the house. Olivia removed the faded blue handkerchief from her face and re-tied it around her neck. She thought it gave her a more debonair look, like a member of the Council, or a Guild Grandmaster. She looked around the cellar. This provided Olivia with two pieces of information. One, that the house had a serious rat problem. Two, that she had seriously underestimated the amount of skulls one could fit in one room. Skulls had invaded the room. Human, rat, horse, turtle, possibly a shark’s. Skulls stretched into eldritch proportions sat on shelves, warped and twisted into new dry-white shapes. Copper-plated skulls, skulls carved of wood, skulls seemingly dipped into liquid gold, they all mingled together on bookcases, chest of drawers, in vats. She couldn’t turn the skulls into easy cash and didn’t directly affect her mission, so she filed away this information for later. Moving through the fell reliquary Olivia moved up the stairs, knife still in hand. She hoped she had stolen an accurate diagram of the mansion.
As Olivia reached the top of the stairs a grinning portrait of the man she meant to kill greeted her. The portrait reached from the floor to the ceiling and Count Gashen’s imposing face stared down at her, in all its magnified glory. His visage, which an uncommonly kind person might describe as craggy, leered at Olivia seemingly attempting to burn a hole into her head. His hands held an astrolabe and some sort of compass, as if the painter had taken extra pains to impress upon the viewer the erudition of their subject. A deep black paint covered the rest of the painting mottled here and there with deep greens and purples. This highlighted the viper like nature of Gashen’s face and induced a wooziness within Olivia. Olivia shook her head once to clear the painting from her mind and subconsciously tapped her good-luck charm.
Turning right towards her target’s bedroom, she slunk down the carpet lined hallway. The carpet frayed at the edges, its hem worn down by time and use. Olivia used it as a sound buffer, walking down the thickest sections in order to muffle any possible creak of her footsteps.
She had almost turned down this assignment. Murder hardly ranked number one on her to-do list. Fortunately for her client, money and jobs were tough to find in Belhaven. Olivia’s spells didn’t come cheap and hiding from the constables and the Council took more resources than she really wanted to admit. The price of avoiding conscription into one of the Guilds rose ever higher. The Council’s recent crackdown on all-purpose contractors such as Olivia had made job offers fewer and farther in-between. In addition, losing her access to the University’s stores had been a bigger hit than she realized. So, when a letter and a picture, as well as a healthy stack of gold marks had appeared at one of her several hideouts in the city Olivia hadn’t asked a lot of questions. She had tried to track down her employer, but every trail had gone cold the second she started down it. Gold, even mystery gold, went far in Belhaven, and Olivia had plans.
Olivia continued down the hallway, stopping every two steps or so to check for traps and admire the portraits of Gashen’s descendants that lined the walls. After several agonizing minutes Olivia reached the fifth door on the left. Sending up a prayer to Gurta, goddess of luck, that the door wouldn’t squeak Olivia slowly turned the handle. Her luck held. She breathed a sigh of relief and stepped into the room.
A wave of fetid air hit her. She gagged. The room stunk of death. Gashen’s corpse lay on the bed, throat slashed and limbs akimbo. Rats scattered to their holes when she lit the candelabra with a snap of her fingers. Olivia moved to the bed and felt the body. The body held no warmth and had been there for at least two days if not more.
“Fuck.”
Olivia scanned the room looking for any sign of forced entry. Nothing popped out so she scraped her fingers across her eyes willing them to see. Her vision blurred, and then cleared, her eyes now seeing through the purple tint of her magic. Something triggered her magic, flaring bright lilac underneath Gashen’s left hand. A piece of paper. She undid the spell and reached for the folded scrap. The note had been left on the same parchment as her original contract: thick, ivory-colored, and hand made. The writer had left only a few small words.
Miss Hasden,
A pleasure to make your acquaintance. If you would be so kind as to meet me on the 13th of Garn at 45 Downhall Road as near the stroke of midnight as possible, I would be honored. I have what you seek.
Yours,
Viscount Iona
Stunned, Olivia put the note in her pocket and turned toward the window, eager to escape the putrid room. She couldn’t remember later if she had heard the doorknob turn or not, but she felt an awful crack on the back of her head and then everything went black.