The Trident Society

Prologue-A tyranny ago
The dawn sky was stained with blood.
Masked scanned the sky sharply.
A kestrel was being tormented by the slaughtering gales.
He transfixed his sockets on it.
Relaxing his belt, he clutched the poniard suspended from it.
Five gruelling marks of crimson from afresh were the source of the corpses sprawled ruthlessly over his shoulders.
They were the ruins of the evidence.
They were the ones that would warn the Authorities of his breeding vengeance on the prophesised heir.
Already Cleavestone had been assassinated whilst at the banquet room, Masked threatening a trusted man of the Veiled Five to forge a betrayal by stabbing him in the back by surprise. Later the man, Moranin, a secretive disciple of Masked had broken out of the Roshcvain Prisons and, once again, threatened lethally by Masked, united into Masked’s thriving forces.
He held its blade up to the sun luringly.
Greed filled the kestrel’s eyes.
It swooped.
Its beak was unlatched, a ravenous forked tongue rearing at the kill.
The kestrel had torn apart the dishwater mist that overhung the hilltops.
It further descended from the skies.
Masked whistled fluently over the warring storm.
After a slowing, fluttering motion it perched itself over Masked’s shoulder.
The kestrel’s beak seemed to cringe aback, uncomfortable, but then grappled the kill with greed-filled eyes.
Masked had starved it for the last fortnight, depriving it for its failure of gathering the Locket.
After it had satisfied its hunger, it plummeted to the ground and shape shifted into the Albino Bengal Tiger he preferred to use as his form.
“Gladiatorial,” he hissed softly, “where is the Locket.”
The cat prodded a chained ornament forward.
Masked unfastened the lid.
There basked the legendary Shaman’s Recipe upon his gauntlet.
“I have been a golem-bound far too long. The Tongue will be my name; Wolftongue. All will fear my presence and I will avenge the one whose Ancestor has sculpted me as a mere library of stone, a golem. He is the descendant of John Murder, Cleavestone. But he is tragically dead. I unfortunately did not get to do the honours. But I am determined to. I made a miscalculation-his wife’s pregnancy. But I could work this to my advantage; the heir to the throne will be the one to assassinate myself and fulfil my vengeance. The Shaman’s Recipe will be destroyed. All’s hope of rebelling against my prolonged vengeance will be in vain,” he cocked his bicorne arrogantly.
Masked sheathed his poniard, dwarfed by a larger rapier skinning the air.
A grin was evident through the slitted iron mask.
He plunged the rapier downward into the shrieking parchment. It perished into ashen remains.
After a blinding flare of radiance besieging the shire, all the surroundings were turned to forbidding stone-cold wastelands.
But Masked’s soulless statue was all that stood stone-bound. His soul possessed a ruler, an avenger. The iron-faced Tongue…