Warender Chronicles: The Shadowvale Conspiracy (Prologue)

“So, this is them?” Tibereus asked, looking to Mavaret

“Patience, my lord.”

The Emperor had been losing his patience with his Drow Regent. The gray streaks in his short-kept fiery red hair were growing thicker, and he didn’t have time to waste on false hopes. He had an Empire now, and needed to secure it’s borders before rival nations had the chance to undermine what he’d built. For many years now, the gangly-built Elf had been filling his head with ideas of the ‘perfect’ soldier – one whose physical prowess would exponentially outweigh those of normal troops.

Today, that promise was to finally be filled, and Tibereus was not one for patience. The room that he’d been led to by the Sorcerer’s guards was in the lower levels of his tower, somewhere underground. The room was poorly lit, and was reminiscent of an interrogation chamber. To his right the Sorcerer stood patiently. Finally, a door opened fifteen or thirty feet below them on the opposite side of the cylindrical room. Through a rather large viewing window, Tibereus watched as light flooded into the lower area for a moment, then became partially blocked as several figures walked though. After a few moments, the door closed behind them, bathing the area below in darkness once again.

Mavaret reached over and pressed a small switch that was apparently embedded into the wall. The small light centered well above the large area but below the window Tibereus was viewing everything from came on, giving just enough light to make out the eight figures below.

Five of them were guards, each wearing standard body armor and black tactical gear. They would likely have one or two handguns strapped to them somewhere, along with assorted combat knives and stun batons.

The other three however, didn’t have a ‘standard’ look to them at all.

The biggest one of them had light blonde hair and pale blue eyes. He had a look of determination, like it was his job to protect the other two.

There was a female. She had an unassuming build, with brown hair and eyes.

Tibereus let a slight smirk show as he glance briefly at the Drow, whose onyx eyes were trained on the people below. Knowing him, she would probably be the most dangerous.

Then Tibereus took a look at the third one, and his jaw dropped a bit.

“I didn’t know one of them was a Drow..”

Mavaret shook his head; his silvery-white hair swaying with his movements.

“He’s not; that one is a half-breed.”

Tibereus cocked his head to the side, acknowledging the fact. That particular young man also had a very non-combat build about him, but there was an … intensity, in his eyes. Tibereus had implemented a Decree several years ago naming Half-Breeds within the Empire traitors. One small town was even razed. Even so, maybe there was reason to keep a handful of them around..

“You know, you promised ten-to-one odds,” Tibereus pointed out half-jokingly.

Mavaret grinned, and wave his hand at one of the guards. The man nodded and opened the door, letting five more guards in. Another nod from the Sorcerer had everyone take their positions – the guards surrounding the trio in a circular formation.

“On your command sire,” the Drow replied.

After a moment’s pause, Tibereus gave the lead guard a nod and the demonstration began.

As the guards drew handguns, the three teenagers stood back-to-back-to-back. Then after a split-second’s pause, the three attacked with blinding speed.

The biggest one rushed a guard; the man barely having time to realize what was happening before his own weapon was firing through his chin and brain.

Simultaneously, the other two made their moves: the female rushed, sliding under one guard. As she slid between the man’s legs he flung her arms outward, causing the guard to tumble head first into the hard concrete floor.

The Half-breed’s attack was the quickest of the three; he rushed into the guard, swiped one of his knives, and slit the man’s throat in the time it took the poor guard to pull the trigger. As the guard to his immediate right aimed his weapon at the half-breed, the young man threw the knife, lodging it in the guards forehead.

As the other guards reacted, Tibereus struggled to follow the teenager’s movements.

“Having a hard time?” Mavaret asked.

“I can track them, but barely,” the man replied, his lips forming a wide grin as he spoke.

“Technically, this is only three-to-one odds..”

Looking back at the demonstration, the three experiments were quickly evening the odds. The female had moved in the same direction as the Half-breed, forcing down the guard to her right with sheer strength, snapping his neck as he landed on his rear in a seated position.

The large one had stayed in place, placing a shot into the temple of the man the female had previously tripped. As the guard to his left fired a shot, he leaned back, avoiding the bullet. At the same time he fired again, placing a round into the man’s side.

Several holes opened up in the ceiling, taking Tibereus’ attention off of the fight.

“What’s this?”

“The next group of men, of course,” Mavaret replied, not taking his eyes off of the teenagers below.

As the three saw the additional guards begin their rappel down, they quickly looked at each other as the remaining four guards on the ground opened fire.

The half-breed moved quickly enough to grab additional knives from the guard near his feet before he was forced to jump toward the staircase tracing the wall nearest him. The Big one continued his rate of fire, disabling or killing the three to his left while the female took a glancing shot to her arm as she closed in on the last guard, punching him in the jaw.

Tibereus winced slightly as the crack of the man’s spine reverberated through the area.

“How much training have they had?” the Emperor asked.

“None,” The Sorcerer chuckled.

“Right now, they’re running on pure instinct.”

As the reinforcements got mid-way down their ropes, the experiments sprang into action. The half-breed leaped toward the closest rope, cutting it in two. As the guard begin his descent to his doom, the young man spun around so his other arm now faced the next rope. He launched the knife with deadly accuracy, severing that rope as well.

The female grabbed two ropes that were near her, and yanked them downward will all her strength, sending the four men on those ropes plummeting downward. The Blonde young man grabbed another hand gun and climbed one of the ropes, covering several feet with every reach. As he reached the guards sliding downward, he yanked the mean from the rope, sending them toward the floor.

As the last of the guards hit the floor with a sickening thud, the two male experiments landed deftly, causing no sound.

Mavaret grinned, and locked his eyes on the Emperor as he flicked the light switch off. The door at ground level opened again, and another round of armed guards poured in, equipped with some kind of scope on their assault rifles.

“You may notice the red dots in the area. That’s our experiments, and despite being easy to spot… well, you’ll see.”

Tibereus looked out into the area, eager to see what the Drow was talking about.

As the guards shuffled about the area taking firing positions, the red eyes flickered out. Gunfire immediately erupted as screams of terror and anguish filled the room.

“Twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine..” Mavaret counted off. As a final gunshot went off, the Drow nodded and flicked the light back on.

The scene set out before the Emperor was both terrifying and exhilarating. The teenagers had – almost silently – made a temporary wall will the bodies of the previous guards. When the rifle team had fired, they only hit corpses. That apparently gave the three the time they needed to obliterate the enemy force, as the three now stood about ten freshly killed bodies, with the corpse wall creating a kind of back drop to the whole thing.

“Remarkable,” The Emperor muttered as he headed down the stairs to the three.

“Well done, the lot of you. I look forward to-”

The strong one interrupted Tibereus as he was unclasping his hands to offer a handshake of congratulation.

“We know how well we did, sire. We will now retire. Thank you.”

Before the Emperor could reply, the three left through the door they had entered the room in just minutes before, keeping the weapons they took from the guards.

“We’re going to have to work on that a bit,” Tibereus replied as he turned to Mavaret, who was now standing directly behind him.

“As I was about to repeat, they’ve had zero training. All of what we just is them before the proper indoctrination.”

“What do you call them?” Tibereus asked, highly impressed with the skills they showed, despite the discipline problem.

“Warenders.”

“Simply amazing. I want more!”

“It will be some time, My lord. I have to acquire some rare materials, not the least of which is the Red Dragon’s blood.”

Tibereus and his Regent started up the stairs.

“What did you do to them?”

Mavaret chuckled. He’d spent decade trying to prefect the formula; the ironic simplicity of the solution to all of their failures wasn’t lost on him in the slightest.

“It’s a simple injection – the blood, along with some performance enhancing chemicals, and something to alter their independence a bit perhaps – and of course, if they survive, voila – you have the perfect soldier.”

Tibereus laughed as he patted the Drow on the back. “You have your work cut out for you then.”

the day to digital release is coming soon! With that in mind, I wanted to post a new quote to twitter, but this one is awfully long winded. Anyway, I know that there’s those of you who might be asking yourselves the following question:

We’ve seen evil before. What about your antagonists makes then stand out?

Well, to be honest, this:

“What’s so amusing about death?” Mavaret asked as his soldier’s disguise melted away, revealing his long white hair that now almost went to his waist, along with his usual black robes, dark skin and staff. Through his hair his extremely long elven ears stood on end, eclipsing the rest of him by several inches.

“Death… isn’t what’s funny,” the girl the retorted.

“He knew… somehow, that you were behind all of this.”

Mavaret nodded sarcastically as he knelt down and plunged his arm through the girl’s chest.

“Well then, you two can laugh about it in the hereafter.”

The girl tried to respond but couldn’t as her life faded from her eyes.

In other news:

I put the Histories e book on hold while I finished the manuscript. Now that that’s done, I will soon pin myself down and run through the six stories in Volume I, flesh them out really well, and sned those up for immediate availability online.

Thanks again for all your patience, and I hope you folks enjoy this stuff!

Later!

So this week has grown fairly interesting:

I reached the halfway mark in my final-final-FINAL edit of the Warenders Novel. I’ve found lots of subplots that will be discovered as the series develops, and I hope you like them.

I have started the process for pulling together all of the pages of the Reikean Histories Volume I Novel together, and I’m going to re edit those and publish them in the very near future.

I have also started uploading some short stories and Artwork to HITRecord, and feedback is starting to trickle in from there: http://www.hitrecord.org/users/mutinytrev

Anyway, hope allof you are enjoying your week as well!

First off lemme apologize for the way the Cash Longshot story has gone. I’m going to shelve the series for now and revisit it next year.
As for this, site, I am going to start a slight redesign on it and center everything on Reikea. So Warenders, the Map, Reikean Histories, all that stuff is going to be front and center once this is all said and done.

Speaking of which, I am going through the final edit of the first warenders novel, and plan on releasing some artwork related to it in the near future.

The planned start date for everything new / updated will be the first week of September. In the meantime, I’ll keep you all posted on development as it happens.

Thanks!

How is this going go go down? Pretty much like this: I will post episode 5 of Cash Luckshot on Monday. After that, there will be a two week break. During this rbeak, I will be writing both Cash Longshot 6 – 10 and will also be converting the First Novel of Warender Chronicles into a first season web novella (I’m guessing that means ‘short novel’ like the episodes I’ve been doing anyway?) In the same fashion. I will also be drawing up some manga characters for an upcoming convention here in phoenix, and putting up character bios as well.

Once publishing resumes (on 7/23), you will see Cash on Monday, then Character Bio / Artwork on Wednesday, then Warenders on Friday. I may (or may not) also be doing a short manga book set in Reikea – time will tell.

Anyway, that’s what’s going on out here, and feel free to tell your friends all about the goings on!

Later!

*Prob’ly tryin’ to compose yerself?* He thought to himself, hoping she was still listening.

“Something like that,” she replied as Jack heard the squeal of metal chair legs being dragged toward him. After a few more moments, the woman’s face came into full view. She was actually quite fetching: long blonde hair, gentle (if cold) blue eyes, and a warm smile that almost brought Jack’s defenses down on sight.

Almost.

“So… what are we doing here?”

“Deciding your fate, and the fate of those you hope to save,” she replied, keeping her reaction dead-pan.

“Howzat?”

“Well, for starters, we have traget another three thousand people for termination, due to their intimate knowledge of projects that we cannot afford to let leak out to the public.”

When Jack didn’t immediately reply, she knew she had his attention.

“I take it you’re listening. Now, what we have is a new device that can be used to harmlessly wipe away any knowledge of our dealings rom anyone’s mind. We’ve been searching for test subjects, but they all seem to balk at the risk involved.”

“What risk?”

“Well, it could completely wipe your mind, effectively killing you. It could also not work at all, which would require us to kill you. If it does work, and you learn about us in the future, or your memories come back, then we-”

“Have to kill me; I get it. Three thousand? Really?”

The woman nodded. “Unfortunately, yes.”

Jack contemplated for a moment. There was no way for him to protect three thousand people, even if they were all in this city, which they probably weren’t. This Halifax thing, whatever it was, was big.

“Looks like I don’t have much choice, but I have one condition for ya.”

The woman laughed out loud! How was this man in a position to request anything?

“I can’t make any promises, but what is it?”

“If this does work, I don’t want to remember anything about Halifax – not the stuff from the war, not my friends you turned on me – nothing.”

Thw oman nodded. “That can be arranged. Are you ready?”

*As ready as I can be..* he thought to himself as he nodded.

“Please look at the light.”

As Jack looked upward to the single light inn the room, it flashed, and then everything seemed to melt away.

“I am sorry, Jack.” It was a woman’s voice, but not one Jack recognized.

“What for?”

Without saying another word, the woman fired her weapon. The bullet went through both temples, and the great detective was dead. The device had worked, but he would have figured it out all over again.

“You did what had to be done,” Sam announced in a grim tone.

The woman nodded, but said nothing, slumping into Sam’s embrace.

“This was the fifth time; he would have figured it out all over again, no matter how many times we tried to cover it up.”

“So? Shouldn’t at least one of them know the truth about Halifax?”

“Maybe one day. For now, we’re just batteries to them, and anyone that tries to pull back the curtain has to go away, or get their mind wiped. It’s our job to make it happen; that’s what we’re programmed for – right down to those digital tears of yours.”

“And you’re a bastard – right down to your false concern for my emotional state,” the woman replied, he blond hair masking her tears.

Sam’s expression went from arrogance to concern, but his voice didn’t portray it.

“Do you honestly think this changes anything?”

Jack’s smirk disappeared when he notice Sam’s tongue shuffling about the inside of his cheek. This was something h’d seen some German officers do during the war.

“No you don’t!” He yelled, drawing his weapon and firing with a speed and accuracy he thought he’d long since lost.

Jack’s aim was true; the bullet penetrated Sam’s right thigh, causing blood to gush out of the entry and exit wounds.

“RAAA!” Sam yelled out in pain as a small white orb fell from his mouth. Before the double agent could even think to try and re swallow the tablet, Jack brought him to the ground and restrained him. Once Sam was handcuffed, one of the officers applied a field bandage to stop the bleeding. Soon after the ambulance arrived and Sam was loaded into the back for transportation. Jack followed it to the hospital, cautiously optimistic about finally getting some answers.

Jack followed the ambulance closely – watching very carefully in case same tried to make some kind of escape. Luckily, the drive to the hospital was quiet. When they arrived, Jack rushed out of his car to catch up with the gurney Sam was being wheeled in on. This hospital was known as ‘Metro General’ and was typically crowded with emergency patients, and gunshot victims with doctors and nurses rushing about the place like they’d all lost their valuables.

Not tonight, however. When they walked into the Emergency Ward, Jack was perplexed by how empty the room was. As he slowed his pace, he noticed the medics pick up their pace, and Sam had this odd look on his face; like he was expecting something to happen. Even the lights had been turned off. This was supposed to be a 24 hour operation – why were the ligh-

“Aww hell,” the detective complained as a sudden realization came over him.

“We tried to warn you, Jack…” Sam’s voice trailed off as the gurney disappeared into the shadowy distance.

Not long after that, a single figure stepped into the light. He was dressed in surgical scrubs, complete with shower cap, face mask and latex gloves. In one hand he held a hypodermic needle that was filled with some sort of clear-ish fluid.

“Just what do you think yer gonna,” Jack started to ask as he was cutoff by several mean rushing from the surrounding darkness to grab and restrain him. Jack tried to fight them off, but there was just too many of them, and they seemed to know what they were doing.

“Believe it or not son, this is your lucky day,” the doctor said as he eased up to Jack and inserted the needle, pushing the plunger all the way down. The doctor stepped away and the men let Jack go. He tried to stand, but the drug was already having it’s way with him – his muscles were far too lax, and he could barely stand. Within moments, Jack lost consciousness, and his world faded into nothing.

When Jack woke up, he was confined to a recliner by leather straps at the chest, wrists and ankles. If it hadn’t been so comfortable, the contraption would have been easily mistaken for an electric chair. The lights were incredibly dim, and he could hardly see past the chair he was stuck in. As his wits came about him, Jack realized that he wasn’t alone, wherever he was.

“Hello?” he yelled, getting no reply.

“HELLO?” he repeated, much louder this time. Still no response.

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU PLAYING AT?” he screamed. This time, a door opened in front of him from about six feet away. The intense light that emanated from the doorway all but blinded Jack as he closed his eyes reflexively.

“Sir, I can assure you that this is no game. You have a real problem here.”

The voice caught Jack off guard; he wasn’t expecting to deal with a woman in this kind of situation. Sure; this was the modern era, but it was still considered extremely rude for a man and woman to be in a room alone without being married.

“Don’t flatter yourself, mister McDuff,” the woman seemed to reply as the door closed, keep her features a secret from him.

“Pardon?” Jack replied.

The woman sighed, and Jack could almost hear the woman slap one of her palms to her forehead.. “Some detective you are; I can read minds.”

*That’s what I was thinkin’*, Jack thought to himself, knowing for certain that she would hear him.

*If you don’t mind – man I need a beer – sorry. Let’s keep this little encounter in our heads – and a steak! damn I’m hungry! – sorry again. Ok?*

The woman sighed again, and Jack could hear her take a seat. This was going to be a long night.

As the time passed, the mysterious entity known as Halifax was never far from Jack’s mind. When he stopped to eat, he always read the day’s paper. When he read that paper, he wold comb through every article looking for some clue about Halifax. During that fateful interview with Harry, the poor bastard had said something that struck a cord:

“What…do you….hope to…do?”

At the time, Jack only knew that he wanted the killings to stop. Since then, there have been three times as many murders as there were this time last year. Jack knew part of it was because of the news – people hear about an anonymous shooter that wasn’t caught, and they think they can go around shooting folks and it’ll just get blamed on the guy that escaped -, but at some point, he knew there would be more deaths. Something like this…. it doesn’t just ‘stop’ all on it’s own. Someone had to make it stop.

So far, all of the would be mystery killers had been caught. They were either husbands who caught their wives cheating, just wanted out of a bad job / house / marriage / car loan; just your typical clowns thinking they could get away with murder. None of them were professionals.

Jack was snapped back to reality when he heard his police band radio go off. Standing up, Jack thanked the waitress, left a nice tip at the counter and left the outdoor sidewalk cafe, keeping his paper in hand. While he got situated, Jack listened as dispatch repeated the radio call. His car wasn’t anything fancy, just your standard issue nineteen thirty-nine four door. The only real difference was he had one of those mini lights instead of a whole bar of ‘em, and his car was painted jet black. Not exactly inconspicuous, especially when you add the two hundred plus pound white male wearing the stereotypical detective’s trench coat, but it got the job done.

“Calling One-Baker-Three-Five; please report to 1337 Hax Drive.”

“One-Baker-Three-Five – acknowledged and en route,” Jack replied as he hit the gas pedal and sped off toward what was likely the latest murder scene.

The location of the scene, like most downtown areas, seemed structured for the crime that occurred within them. In this area, the many empty parking garages and nearly empty high rise apartment buildings made prostitution, drug use and murder into crimes of convenience. When Jack arrived, several techs were already on scene processing the evidence. This particular crime occurred in one of the garages on the fifth floor.

“Hey Jack! Have a look at this.”

“Hey Sam….. wha’cha have?”

In all honesty, Jack was quite surprised Sam was there since h’d been assigned to vice. Maybe there were drugs involved.

“You see this wound? Right in the temple.”

Jack looked down at the body. Aside from the wound, she looked like she should just get up and walk away – her dress wasn’t messed up, and there weren’t even any runs in her stockings. As he knelt down for a closer look, something seemed…. off.

“You see the direction of the blood Sam? It goes from her temple to her chin. If she fell over right after being shot, the blood would be going down the side,” Jack explained, tracng invisible lines around the girls head while her eyes still stared at the ceiling.

“Damn, you are good,” Sam admitted, waving his hand at one of the techs.

“Well, it looks like you’re already working on the murder. I’m gonna check the place for narco. Just before the shooting I was tracing a lead in the area.”

Jack nodded in an almost dismissive fashion; his mind already working the murder. After a few minutes, Jack realized that the area had fallen completely silent. When he finally looked up, Sam was looking straight at him; his face stricken with sorrow.

“Sam…” Jack cautioned as he stood up. While Sam look as though he meant to intimidate the veteran detective, he still hadn’t drawn his weapon. He must have thought his stature and overtly apparent top physical condition would do the trick for him.

“This is too big, Jack. Even for you. Halifax is everywhere, and they’ll stop at nothing.”

Jack snickered. “That’s funny. I’ve been looking for them for weeks, and still haven’t found ‘em.”

“Then why are you in the exact same situation you were in just a few weeks ago? Coincidence?”