“

Three is a magical number. Many things come in three: three happy friends, three candles on a cake, three miscarriages, three weeks of starvation, three sins to repent.

We were with three people, yet none of my companions noticed me. 

On the third day we went our separate ways, unaware of each other's path.

I wonder if this time, the third time, will be any different.

”

Droplets of water splashed against an unwashed face. Upon feeling the soft impact of water on its surface, it rose up to face a small mirror. The reflection that was looking back from the safety of the mirror wasn’t happy. Its thin mustache was gray and withered, cutting through it were the scars of war and sickness. Its beard wasn’t faring much better, as it was unevenly shaven and overall messy. The hair that came up to the shoulders, which held the head on a sickly excuse of a neck, was giving off an unnatural purple glow.

How much time has passed since their capture? How many days have passed once they started undergoing experiments? How much more will they have to suffer in these dungeons? 

The face screamed, but no voice came out. Instead, throughout the entire facility, a low growl could be heard. No one has bet an eye on it, no one noticed its suffering, no one decided to free it from its pain. The cobblestone that paved the road above the facility remained as cold as ever.

The Middle Layer, or the Meridian, was known to house the vast majority of the Islands’ population and due to that, the most known landscape of it was an endless sea of box-shaped houses with tiny rooms, each consisting of a window, a bed, a table, several cabinets and sanitary utilities. Kitchens and storage rooms were usually collective due to the overall lack of space on the Layer. The underground part of the Layer was riddled with communal cellars and various passageways which were constructed in order to make the movements of the masses of people through the severely overcrowded Layer at least a bit more bearable. The underground was also home to the Ratkin, a type of beastmen with the features, and usually the attitude, of rats and mice. Those lived in closed communes underground and only rarely came to the surface to purchase supplies. They were, mostly, tasked with the maintenance of the underground constructions, which fit perfectly with their lifestyle.

Other beastmen, who were the largest population group in the Middle Layer, lived in the already mentioned tiny rooms within high-rising blocks of housing accommodation. These houses were so high, that rumors started circulating that at a certain moment one of them would reach the Upper Layer. 

Unlike most people living in the Upper Layer, the people of the Meridian were way more miserable. Legitimate jobs were few, so people had to resort to working with criminal syndicates for income. This was also a perfect hotbed for various unsavory biases and prejudices to spring into life and corrupt the entire Layer to its very core. Beastmen are criminals, humans are rich and arrogant, the elves only live in ivory towers, these sentiments walked alongside the small people of the Meridian and grew together with the rampant overpopulation. 

This was why seeing a mansion with a relatively large amount of free space here, of all places, was weird to me. Not only that, the mansion didn’t seem to have any walls or protective magic cast onto it and yet there were no pedestrians, couch drivers or even beggars near it. The only person in sight was, unsurprisingly, the Head Inquisitor. 

She seemed to have changed her usual attire for one that would have been proper at a meeting of ministers or in an office in the Upper Layer. The coat got exchanged for a sleeveless suit top. Her casual clothes she wore under the coat, for a white shirt and a medium-long black skirt that covered her knees, probably to match the suit top. Her hair, while remaining mostly the same, was combed back a bit, revealing more of her forehead, with one of the bangs still hanging over one of her eyes.

Me in the meantime… Let us say that I didn’t have the time to dress all too properly for the occasion. I was also, at no point, informed about the type of job we were expected to do, so I decided just to go with what I would usually wear. That being said…

“It really doesn’t suit you”, my thoughts left my lips as swiftly as the wind would play with fallen autumn leaves.

“Yes, I know, but I had nothing else to put on.”, she answered. Only now I could see a glimpse of quiet exasperation on her face. “I was originally meant to become a secretary of sorts, so I bought some clothes to match that function, but then yesterday I came to hear that they already got a secretary and I’m going to be assigned some other job. What am I going to do now?”

Looks like she has it tough in her own way. However, there was no time to think about it as a man that looked like a butler approached us.

“Welcome to our estate”, he said in a calm, warm voice, “I assume that you two are the ones who were supposed to take on the newly vacated jobs, yes?”

“Y-yes, exactly”, the Head Inquisitor answered.

“Then let’s not stand here for too long. Let me guide you inside where both of you will be shown to your places of work.”

We humbly followed the butler through the small flower garden and into the estate’s main building.

The day passed so quickly that it felt like it was morning just a second ago. I was wandering through the mansion with nothing left to do but to be amazed by its sheer size and the collection of weird, yet beautiful, in a strange and warped way, paintings and sculptures which could be encountered every few steps throughout the vast hallways, as if they were trying to accompany the guest to their destination. The wooden floors creaked and cracked here and there, but looked new, probably due to a recent restoration. The walls were adorned by windows from beautiful colored glass on one side and mirrors on the other, creating an overflow of light even if just a tiny portion of the moon was gifting its ghastly shine to the world below it.

As much as I wanted to enjoy the beauty of the mansion, I was tired. Turned out that I had to work in the butchery, as a butcher. Half of a day of cutting dead cattle into large pieces for the chefs, who would then refine them into actually usable portions later, and half a day free. This combined with the fact that we also got accommodation, food, water and clothing made it sound like not a bad deal. Basically, we landed ourselves a live-in job, something most of the people in the Meridian would kill to get hold of.

Having to see and smell animal guts for all this time, however, made me exhausted in both body and mind, so I decided that it would do me good to ignore the reason I was sent here, the spying mission, for the time being so that I can adjust to the workplace. I also visited the bathing area that was available to the people working in the mansion. The baths were so huge that a dozen people could easily get into one at the same time, the water smelled of bathing salts and its temperature didn’t seem to fluctuate. No one wondered about the workings of the bath, for, as they said, some things in this place were simply unexplainable and since it’d probably hurt more to know then to remain blissfully unaware, it’s better not to dig too deep.

There were quite a few fishy smelling things about this mansion, however. For one, the Black Hand was a major player in the meat industry and had affiliated shops pretty much everywhere, but the reason to have one right here escaped me. When I tried to ask the butler who led me to where I could find my uniform and lodgings, as the Head Inquisitor was taken away by some lady in a yellow dress, the only answer I was given was “Such was the Master’s will”. 

So here I was, smelling of odd bath salts, walking through the endless hallways of this mansion, only to come to a sudden realization. I was lost.

“You never were particularly good at orientation, weren’t you, dear brother of mine?”, the dark void that resided in my shadow asked teasingly.

“I truly didn’t change from back then, did I?” My rhetorical question was answered by a giggle that was almost impossible to hear. 

“Don’t worry, I’m sure that if you check around that corner, you’d find where to go. It’s just.. It doesn’t look like you’ll get any rest anytime soon, they’re waiting for you.”, the void’s voice now sounded more concerned instead of joking, “Please… Don’t overwork yourself.”

“That is not up to you to decide. As for not getting rest, I’ve been like that for years already, it’ll be fine.”

Slightly revitalized after the short conversation with myself, I managed a few steps forward. Upon turning the corner into a corridor which seemed to be a bit more modest than the main halls, I saw the butler from this morning walking towards me. Having noticed my presence almost immediately, he greeted me with a short bow.

“Ah, sir, I have been searching for you, but since you didn’t make it to your quarters I was forced into using some of this mansion’s tricks to locate your whereabouts. I would like to kindly ask you to accompany me to the main study, for it is time that you meet this household’s head.”

A feeling of panic has entered the back of my consciousness. “Did they catch onto us already?”, I thought, “Have they seen through our plan? Did they catch the Head Inquisitor? It’s just the first day, dammit!”. But no matter how hard and loud I screamed internally, I couldn’t show even a speck of those feelings to the outside world, otherwise it could be over even faster if I was just overthinking it. I nodded to the butler and followed him in complete silence.

The main study was a spacious room, yet there was barely enough free space for two people if one was seated on the big chair behind the high bureau and the other standing in front of it. The reason for this anomalous lack of seating accommodation was the fact that over a dozen other, smaller but not less comfortable looking, chairs and two large tables had staples of books and paperwork put unto them. No one knew what the books and the papers were about, nor did anyone dare to try and clean the mess up or at least to sort them in some way or the other. On the bureau, a large mirror was set. Its sides were decorated by flower designs completed in gold and silver, while the crude wooden handles, used for the transportation of the mirror and therefore lacked any significant effort to decorate them, looked out of place in combination with the masterful craftsmanship of the metal flowers.

The wooden doors opened and closed without making a sound as two men walked through them and stood in front of the mirror. One of the men, a butler by profession, remained stationary by the door and nudged the other man to come closer to the mirror in front of them. The man, questioning the butler’s motives and fearing for his and his companion’s lives, took a step towards the mirror.

In the mirror, a reflection was looking back at the man. Its face was slim, its eyes weighted down by large dark circles underneath them, its skin a sickly tint of white. The eyes themselves, pale-green in color, looked like those of a dead fish and were half-covered by bangs of thick dark brown hair. The remaining hair was styled and combed back with some kind of oil that was applied to make the hair look more orderly. Despite the fact that he was looking like one of his feet was already in the grave, the man in the mirror had an aura of certainty, courage and determination to struggle. However…

“That… That is not my reflection, is it?”

The man in the mirror wasn’t the man who was standing in front of it. Or rather, it wasn’t anymore.

The man fell to the ground, holding his head with his hands while spears of light and lighting pierced his mind. His head filled itself with pain, regret, remorse. Pictures of the forgotten, no, erased past, the past that the man wished to have never been a part of, the anguish of misdeeds and inactions, tunneled right into the man’s mind. 

How could he have forgotten? How dared he, even though the reason for all this was so close, forget about his goal, his mission? How could he wield his weapon for any other purpose than the one that he had back then? How could he forget the face of his dear sister, captured and afraid?

“Eileesha…”, the name escaped his lips as he stood back up. While he did not change outwardly, the inner workings of the man changed almost instantly.

“Welcome back, master”, the butler kneeled behind the man.

“Welcome back, dear brother.”, said the void. Only now could he see a little girl, clothed in rags and long dark brown hair coming all the way to her nape, clinging in desperation to his reflection’s cloak.

“You knew”, he said to the butler, “You knew and said nothing.”

“It would have been not appropriate to tell you back then, then again, you yourself gave the instructions to wait until you would lower your guard for the mind-clouding to be undone successfully.”

He spoke the truth, the man has left many instructions upon his departure, which was not that long ago and yet the experiences the man has harnessed could fit entire decades.

“And I see that you followed those instructions quite well, I must say. Now then, what about that certain little project I left?”

“Why, yes, my sire, we have seen to its relative completion. Let me escort you to where it’s held, we had to relocate it a few times due to its growth rate so it’s in a different wing right now.”

The butler took a small device out of his pocket and waved it in a circular motion. For a second, the room was illuminated by a golden light, then it disappeared along with the two men.

The morning sun has not yet shown itself, not counting the few stray strands of light it managed to send through the still dark sky. As the sun rose from its slumber, more light shone on the floating swats of land called the Islands of Hope. Somewhere on the Meridian, the Middle Layer of the Islands, a crisis unfolded and a monstrosity, its form unseen and unknown by both the ancient race of the elves nor by the tired old gods who used to twist people’s lives to form stages for their cunning schemes, let out a violent growl that shook the entire Layer. 

The monster stood on the remains of an old mansion, the building where the top brass of the Black Hand crime syndicate resided.

The Head Inquisitor, her hair in disarray due the creature’s rather rude form of awakening the inhabitants of the house, and clothed into what should resemble an office ladies' outfit, she stood with disbelief in her eyes. Was this what the Black Hand has been hiding? Where did the people from the mansion go, and most importantly, where is Gavro?