Excerpt: OVERTURE

PROLOGUE

Bodies of dead children littered the streets of the slums of Aurelia – ravaged, hacked, laid to waste in the gutter. Few of them were even missing limbs, snatched by other, hungry citizens of the slums. As he made his way through the street, he queasily noticed a man gnawing viciously on the leg of a young girl on the ground whose stomach had been crudely impaled by a spear.

Swallowing hard, he stepped backwards, shocked by the macabre display that unfolded in front of him. The man soon noticed him and stopped chewing on the girl’s leg to momentarily glance at him. After a beat, he just shrugged and returned to his meal, ignoring the man in front of him.

Hastily, Rimuro Vidri continued on his way, trying his hardest to forget that particular scene while he strained to avoid the puddles of blood that had started to form on the pavement.

The corpses looked as if they had fallen down during a grotesque dance of some kind – their limbs still stretched in awkward positions. Some looked like they had died while attempting to crawl away – the trail of red behind them a simple giveaway. Others lay eerily quiet on their sides and backs with only the blood on their clothes and bodies betraying their ultimate end.

A fearsome stench hung over the streets as they rotted away – the imperial force didn’t even bother to clear out the bodies immediately.

Glancing at the northern exit to the slums, he could clearly see several imperial soldiers stomping their way back up to the second level – undoubtedly where cleaners waited to clear out the bodies and cover up the massacre.

He passed the soldiers who stood there, vigilantly guarding the stairs in case someone from the slums dared to try to ascend to the second level. It didn’t happen often, but when it did, resistance was futile. The imperials vastly outnumbered the escapees who were soon killed and dragged to the town’s square in the middle of the slums.

Slaughtered, they’d be put on display as a warning to everyone: This is what happens to the unfortunate souls desperate enough to go against Aurelian law. All troublemakers would be executed.

Rimuro made his way through the sea of dead, holding his sleeve in front of his nose in a failed attempt to block out the smell. As he stepped on top of a broken piece of pavement, he nearly slipped on the blood that coated it. Struggling to regain his equilibrium, Rimuro accidentally stepped on the corpse of a man that lay just farther ahead.

Horrified, Rimuro removed his foot and arranged the man against the wall, folding the already cold hands in the man’s lap as he quickly recited a prayer.

The people on the second level had told him about the attack, how hundreds of imperial soldiers went down to the slums and killed helpless, homeless children in order to create more space in the slums for the new citizens that wanted to come. He had expected many things, but to see the children lying broken on the dirty ground was more than he could handle. No one was spared.

He had talked to some of these children, sang songs and told them stories to distract them from their suffering and offer them a moment of peace. He wasn’t able to give them much more than some food that he could conjure out of thin air, or the few cloaks he brought along with him during the harsh winters. Yet, for the children it was enough.

Rimuro left the street he had been walking through and stepped onto a crossing point. No matter where he looked, dead bodies were everywhere. They were as common as the fleas that infested the slums.

Silently praying that at least one child was alive in the district, he continued his search with grim determination. He swore to bring any survivors of the massacre back with him to the second level and offer them a better life than what they had now.

But his search was long and fruitless.

As he stepped into the last street of the Dohle district, all of his hope was smothered. The soldiers had been quick and thorough, even daring to enter the shabby houses to get the job done.

He stepped into the least dilapidated one and glanced around the single room.

Several loose pieces of wood laid on the floor, half nailed to the ground in an attempt to camouflage the rotting floor that creaked ominously beneath him. The only pieces of furniture he noticed were in horrible condition and probably stolen from the second level’s garbage pile.

Even from a distance, he could clearly see rodents moving over the small, unused stove in the joke that tried to pass as a kitchen. He couldn’t see any other kitchen appliances but it didn’t surprise him. Few people had the money to buy food and fewer still had houses with electricity.

He turned to see if anyone was still in the house, perhaps hiding in the closet that he had briefly glimpsed as he entered. But when Rimuro started to turn to the closet, his attention was immediately stolen by the blood-soaked bed and the deformed figure on it. Rimuro stepped closer to the body, intrigued and horrified at the same time. Standing in front of the bed, he realized it had once been a young woman.

Big, blue eyes were opened in horror – glassy and lifeless as they stared at the decrepit ceiling. Her cold hands clung onto the bed, stilled in action like the rest of her body. It was almost as if she was a portrait – frozen in time.

Yet, she hadn’t been prettily preserved like a portrait. By the looks of the jagged pieces of flesh that were once part of her stomach, her belly had been cut open ruthlessly. Half of her intestines had spilled out and creamy-white maggots feasted in the open wound.

Rimuro stumbled backwards, breathing harshly as he fought hard to keep the insides of his bowels where they belonged. When his back hit the wall, he immediately sensed that something was amiss and spun around, finding the wall completely saturated in blood.

He could already feel the cold fluid seeping into his clothes as he moved away from the wall. Trying to ignore the sensation of blood on him, he stepped forward to the unlucky victim and closed her eyes. He shivered as he felt the blood on his back drip onto the floor and took his shirt off, glancing around for a bin. Finding none, he folded the shirt up and held it in his arms.

Rimuro made his way out of the house – grateful that he was still wearing his undershirt that provided some shelter from the wind – and observed the perimeter. He could hear nothing save for the wind that blew through the lifeless streets. Exhaling softly, he glanced around the area one last time, desperate for any sign of life but the only thing that greeted him was deafening silence.

Endless rows of the same houses lined up in perfect order. They looked fragile and weathered, most of them without a roof anymore. If they even had them to begin with, they were now torn away by the harsh storms of winter. Deep cracks adorned the walls of every house, matching the ones on the ground.

Numbly, Rimuro noted that the crack lines across the pavement looked like collapsed veins, with all the spilled blood running into them. Debris was everywhere and small pieces of the concrete were scattered everywhere, as if a giant hammer had smashed directly into them, flinging them all over the street.

The rats, now outnumbering the slums’ living population, didn’t care either way. They ruled the area now and freely roamed the streets, some even passing by as he stood there.

He was about to turn back and leave this doomed district when he heard a strained cough somewhere behind him. Eyes widened in shock and renewed hope. Rimuro ran towards the source of the sound.

Rimuro turned around a corner, finding yet another street flowing with corpses, but this time, he was sure there was still hope left. He ran from body to body, inspecting all of them. Another cough came from the right and Rimuro spun around, locating the source of it.

Hastily, he made his way to a boy that lay underneath the body of an older man whose arms were firmly wrapped around the youth in what looked like a protective gesture.

The boy’s blond hair was streaked with tell-tale signs of red and a large cut ran over his cheek – blood still oozing out of the wound. An impressive array of wounds adorned the one arm that was still visible to Rimuro. Sighing softly, he fell down to his knees.

“Can you hear me?” he whispered, hesitant to talk loudly.

The boy didn’t move for a couple of frightening seconds and Rimuro feared that he had just died in front of him, but the child moved again and his eyes managed to flutter open this time. He managed a weak nod before his eyes rolled back and he fell unconscious again.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Rimuro moved the older man’s stiff body off the boy, inspecting him for any other wounds. He lifted him up in his arms and wrapped his bloodied shirt around the boy’s gaunt shoulders, figuring that he could use some protection from the cool wind.

The child was underfed, he noted, as the boy hardly weighed anything in his arms. Quickly, he made his way to the stairs that led to the second level of Aurelia, praying to anyone watching over them that he’d be in time to help the boy out.