• Prologue:
    Sacrifices


    Each step was a new peril for the young figure dancing to the hastening drumbeats.

    A raucous crack resounded about the dank cavern walls, followed by an excruciated scream. Dark droplets splattered the stones where, mere moments before, the dancer’s feet had caressed them. A second crack followed the first, with another after that and another soon after, each with its own scream as a vibrant undertone and a fresh rain of glossy fluid.

    The tempo, already hasty, quickened until the dancer’s nimble feet stumbled over themselves in an effort to keep up with the drumbeats. His heart fluttered wildly in his chest, as if begging to be set loose from its tormented cage. His eyes grew wide and feral, glossed over feverishly.

    Soon the young dancer was panting, his breathing grown erratic from the fierceness of the music. Voices, their owners doused in shadow, cheered viciously as the boy’s footwork faltered, nearly sending him sprawling to the stones his feet kissed. But the dancer saved himself and kept up the dance, though his steps became messy and careless.

    A sharp twang and rush of air severed the thick air and the dancer’s final heart-wrenching yell shattered against the rough stone floor. With a sickening splash, the dancer’s feet slid awkwardly and his body rushed to meet the floor. The pool in which he had been dancing rippled around his writhing body, staining his flesh red where it touched. His body went still, his wide eyes vacant. His ravaged back shone with sweat and blood, and the fletching of the arrow embedded there stood out grimly in the dim light of the hanging lantern strung high above the heads of the onlookers.

    A figure stepped forward, tiny and childlike, smaller even than the dancer himself, dull eyes glinting in the light. It bore forward a goblet, which it dipped ceremoniously into the still pool. A keening broke the silence, causing the robed figure to start, as another shape darted forward, similarly small and thin, but this one was subdued, dragged back roughly and hastily. The high wailing continued until two more cracks, followed by a muffled cry, splintered the air.

    The one with the goblet stepped back then, turning toward a mass of twisting shapes and shadow as the lantern flickered out, concealing the body of the child who lay in the shallow pool his dance had created. One of muddy water and his own blood and sweat. His body seemed to shiver as the light shuddered out, as if with a last vestige of his life.