Megan Harlow watched, one hand on her hip, as money opened yet another door for her. Once she would have flushed with satisfaction at how easily she could leverage others' greed, but now she tapped her foot, barely checking her impatience as the guards counted bank notes and checked their authenticity.

Despite trying to get into this place for months, she didn't want to stay any longer than necessary. The Incantum's maximum security ward was a dank, dark place, eerily reminiscent of an ancient tomb. And the humidity; what torture! She smoothed her hair down again, wishing for a mirror to check her lipstick. Apparently they were too dangerous to keep down here, given the inmates' creativity and propensity for violence.

She thought it a moot point, given the maze of pocket dimensions one had to navigate to get in or out, but the Incantum was nothing if not extravagant.  Each member of the Council of Thirteen held a piece of the map that led to this place, and only by bringing them all together could they visit the man behind the door she now faced.

The False Prophet. Destroyer of Worlds.

She'd lost more men to this maze than she could count, but her fortune had changed abruptly last night when Lachlan Smith stumbled into her chambers, bloodied and filthy, brandishing a hastily drawn copy of the map. Five, long years had finally culminated in this moment.

The guards pocketed a year's worth of salary and departed, leaving the key hanging in the lock in a terribly convenient oversight.

Megan waved Lachlan forward, refusing to touch the grimy door handle. He heaved against the solid plate of iron, boots scraping on the stones. A yawning abyss opened up in the stone, threatening to swallow them whole.

Straightening her skirts, Megan held her head high and marched into the void.

Lachlan barely contained a derisive snort as the Councilwoman lifted the emerald encrusted hem of her robes, stepping over the threshold with an imperious air. She acted like she was the reigning Queen of the Incantum, not merely the Fourth member of its Council of Thirteen. It was honestly pathetic, though he supposed he ought to afford her some credit for infiltrating their illustrious ranks at the scant age of thirty. It made him feel slightly better for being outmaneuvered by her as well.

Just hold on a little longer, he thought, as if Matilda could hear him. It had been months since Megan had kidnapped her, since he'd held her in his arms.

It was for her that he stepped into the cavernous cell yet again, even though every nerve in his body warned against it. For her that he endured every splattering drop of water on the stones, explosively loud in the oppressive silence. The vile stench of rotting meat made his eyes water, and he shuddered at the crunch of small bones beneath Megan's slippers, wondering if she realised just what she was crushing underfoot.

"You simply must tell me," the Fourth called out, as if she was hollering to a friend across a busy café floor. "How did you manage to corrupt the most incorruptible guards in the Incantum? They were begging for money before I'd even offered the bribe!"

There was no reply; only a long, rattling breath. Megan's tattooed skin prickled, but she made a show of playing idly with one of her many rings, even affecting a bored sigh. It required all of Lachlan's stout willpower not to roll his eyes. She thought he'd only found this place last night, but he'd been coming here for weeks; if he wasn't desensitized to the horrors of this place yet, she was in for quite a shock.

"Light," somebody rasped from the heart of the darkness.

It wasn't a request. Megan glanced at Lachlan, as she always did when she was trying to avoid tapping her own reserves of energy. He grudgingly muttered the words, causing a tattoo on the palm of his hand to glow as he activated the spell he'd inked into his skin.

Within seconds a glowing sphere hovered over his splayed fingers, bathing them in a sickly green light. He fed it more energy, so that the light would reach even the furthest corners of the room, buoying the emerald mage-light up in the air.

They were standing at the bottom of a closed well, paved with moldering slabs of grey stone. Even more unsettling than their claustrophobic surroundings, however, was the man who'd been confined to them. They had to crane their necks to glimpse him, for he was crucified by chains, dressed in tattered rags.

Lachlan stared long and hard, trying to burn the image in his mind. The disgraced First, he thought, rifling through his photographic memory for the scroll Megan had made him study. Cursed to be forgotten for crimes against humanity.

It was powerful spell work, for Lachlan all but forgot the man existed unless something prompted him to retrieve his memory of that scroll. He knew he'd been here before, recalled the bargain he'd struck and the horrors he'd witnessed, but every time he tried to picture the man in chains his memory failed him. It was why he'd tattooed the date and time he'd read Megan's scroll on his wrist, so that curiosity would lead him to learn the First's history all over again. 

Henry Alderitch was in his forties, but his time in prison had left him with the body of a much older man. His bones threatened to puncture his skin, and his breathing was shallow and laboured, punctuated with a hitching whistle that didn't bode well for the state of his lungs. It was hard to trace those gaunt features back to the classically handsome man portrayed in the scroll, with curling brown hair and piercing blue eyes. To think he'd been the head of the Council of Thirteen, the Prophet that guided their every decision... Somebody Megan had looked up to, had all but worshipped. The most powerful man in the shadow world.

How far he'd fallen.

"I foretold the guard's future. His daughter's cancer treatment is going to be very expensive."

Megan flinched at the proximity of the voice. Lachlan noted the exact moment she realised another man was in the room, only a few feet from where they were standing. If the witless lump of flesh can still be considered a man, Lachlan thought grimly, no less disturbed by the forbidden magic on display for his recently acquired understanding of it. After digging through some ancient tomes, he'd made an educated guess that the First — having foreseen his current predicament —had spawned several children in his youth, with the explicit purpose of luring them to this dungeon, crippling their minds and puppeteering their flesh. It was a taboo, voodoo magic that relied on the flesh-and-blood link of a parent and child; the former could, presumably, treat the body of the latter as an extension of their own.

But it was taboo for a reason, and that reason was evident in the deteriorating body of the First's son. There was no telling what age he was; the flesh was slowly melting off his frame like candle wax. Soon only bones would be left to join the sprawling pile beneath his chair.

"Did you bring what I asked?" enquired the puppet.

"Of course," Megan scoffed, clinging to her bravado like a child clutching at their mother's skirts. "Show him, Lachlan."

With a reluctance he didn't fully understand, Lachlan reached into the inner lapel of his vest, pulling out a vial of blood. The liquid sloshed against the sides,  black under the garish green of his mage-light.

"Blood of the Nightshade line," he said, recalling the fearsome woman he'd procured it from. "This wasn't easy to come by. I expect to be rewarded for my efforts."

There was an awful, hacking sound from the man suspended in the air. It took the blood witches a moment to realise the False Prophet was laughing. Lachlan shuddered at the sight of his open mouth. He'd read about Henry's trial, had gone over his sanctions multiple times, but this was the first time he'd seen the stump were his tongue was supposed to be.

"Everything is preordained," said what remained of the False Prophet's son. "And everyone will get what they deserve."