The Lost Hero - Prologue
Repost of the prologue of my full-length fantasy novel, The Lost Hero, available to paid subscribers only. Give it a read and let me know what you think!
The voice he had stolen gave a rasping gasp, catching in his throat. It was a struggle to breathe, to lift his arms, a familiar panic as his body died, yet again.
“Quickly, quickly!”
He sensed the acolytes, felt their presence close, the sickly glow of them. This one had failed him, hollowed, destroyed by the power it carried. Chanting droned under the crackle of torches, the smell of incense and earth and decay.
It was pathetic nonsense, evolved over generations of their secret worship. The words had no real power, only the lust for it. But if they wanted to indulge in this cultish playacting to flatter themselves, he did not mind. The closer it bound them to him, the better.
The world grew dim from more than flickering torchlight. Death was close, the separation and pain.
“Do it now!”
One presented itself. It prostrated, eagerness and fear in its eyes. They had some vain selection process, bickering amongst themselves, vying for power. Fools.
He forced his faltering vessel to stand, to take this new one close so he could sense what they dared offer him.
Strong enough. But more importantly, eager. Accepting.
It was an agony unlike anything the mortal could have imagined, anything it could possibly endure. Even the most slavering devotees edged back as he moved from the dead husk to the new. The old one’s soul had long since burned into nothingness and the fragile carcass collapsed, discarded.
Yet this one was hardly better.
How long since he had felt the might of old? How weak had men grown these past centuries? They would learn soon enough true power.
Youth, if not mighty strength, renewed his limbs. He flexed his hands, felt his chest, the features he had taken. It was taller than the other and moved with fluid grace. Some advantage he supposed. At least it was a man, a human, not some halfbreed scum.
The human’s pale memories cowered in the shadows. A leader? A country in turmoil? And the people, dirty and uncouth, but all the better to feed the hordes. Perhaps this body would be of some use after all, not just a vessel to endure until the boy could be found.
With now clear eyes, he looked over the dark room. The huddled forms of the acolytes, these slaves, of all races and kens, cowered before him. A few dozen, when once nations worshiped his might.
“Go,” he snarled. He gripped the nearest torch and threw it in the midst of them, scattering red sparks against the earthen floor. “Get out of my sight!”
They scrambled to escape his wrath. Useless, mewling vermin. Chanting in caves? Groveling behind masks! When the Chosen One walked free in the sun?
He tried to sense the boy, find his prize, but this body was just too weak. Gifted with magic, yes, but nothing to the power of old. He cursed it, even as he reveled in its prophesy. Men had grown weak and he had grown strong. He had only to endure until he found the boy. After hundreds of years, what was another few months?
He caught the last of the acolytes, cringing in the darkness. It cried out pathetically as he drained its life force into his own. Dropping the carcass, he straightened with increased strength.
He would be strong when the time came, strong enough to take back what was rightfully his. What they had stolen from him so long ago.
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