Watchful Eyes

  The hooded figure stood hunched over the table. He dipped his long, bony index finger in the pasty mixture of blood and bone powder. Muttering the incantation, he instinctively drew the symbols of the seeing eye on the parchment before him.

  With a slithering sound, the symbols came to life. They started glowing in an eery blueish hue. The air around the parchment began to shimmer. Small tendrils of purple smoke started to rise from the parchment.

  The incantation stopped. The man inhaled the vapours deeply. His head snapped back. His eyes turned mirky white.

  “Now let’s see who intruded on my humble abode.”

  The gaunt man’s breath came shallow as the world around him turned dark. Before his inner eye, he could see a faint trace of light through the darkness. Suddenly, the picture tore through the dark fabric. He could see the ruins of his mansion. The picture was unsteady, disrupted by the winds of magic.

  “Ah, Mordheim, aren’t you a peculiar place? Yet another playing field,” he muttered, his eyes still opened wide.

  Behind him something stirred in the shadows. He knew well enough that he was not alone. These days he never was. But it did not bother him. Sometimes he wasn’t sure whether he was talking to himself or his guest. But that did not bother him either.

  From the outside it looked as if the man was blind or completely absent minded. Yet before his inner eye he could clearly see the inside of a mansion.

  “Now what do we have here?”

  Inside the mansion a group of rat-men could be seen, scavenging through his belongings. But the men did not feel anger. He raised an eyebrow and smiled.

  “Ah … one should never underestimate the ingenuity of these Skaven, getting through my defences! Well … well … let’s see how that unfolds.”

  But the visit of the Skaven did not last long; after raiding the stash of drugs and poisons, they streamed out into the street.

  The man turned his gaze and peered through the window. Outside the building, he could see figures moving. It seemed as though a fight was going on. Shouting. The clashing of steel.

  Fascinated, the man kept his vision on the streets.

  Soon it was over. He was about to withdraw his vision and return his senses to his physical location. But then he felt another intrusion into his mansion, but this time it was sheer force. Someone had bashed in the front door.

  He directed his vision towards the main entrance hall and saw two knights entering the building. They were followed by more than a dozen other men.

  “Oh … I did not expect that to happen. The knights of fair Bretonnia … ,“ he chuckled again. This time, a faint trace of anticipation lay in his voice.

  He could hear their voices, as if he were standing right next to them.

  “Alfred, give me a head count. Is anybody missing?” an armoured man with a nasty scar over his eye asked.

  The man he referred to went through the entrance hall and reported in “Ser it looks like nobody was wounded … Just, the dog Adalhard purchased, he was killed by the rat things”.

  They continued to argue about the fight that had ensued. It seemed that the Bretonnians had arrived at his mansion shortly after the Skaven. Yet the Skaven did not directly confront them, but chased another pray. Before the Bretonnians could reach them, they started fighting against the Hordes of the Undead.

  “Peculiar … I did not expect the Skaven to rush the van Clausemburg’s servants … I should put some more time in studying them.”

  From what the Bretonnians had seen, the Undead put up quite a fight. But in the end the Undead had routed. That was when the Bretonnians had caught up with the Skaven. One of the knights, carrying a sword and a mace, proclaimed, that he had driven off one of the Skaven. From the description the gaunt man deducted, it must have been one of the verminkin. Only a small loss, yet it was enough for the Skaven to withdraw, leaving the Bretonnians quite puzzled. Especially the man who had ordered the headcount was quite unhappy with the situation.

  “One can only admire these men for their devotion and strength of will,” the man whispered, as if the men he was watching could hear him.

  If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  He turned his vision and inspected each of them closely. Finally, his sight fell on a woman. He shuddered. Around her, the tides of magic stabilised, yet he could not perceive her clearly. He tried to draw closer, but something held his vision afoot.

  “Oh my … It is one of them,” he gasped.

  He made a long pause.

  “Oh, the possibilities … another conduit … she seems younger than the last one … a stronger resonance … maybe I can finally conclude my studies,” he rambled.

  His head hurt, maintaining the spell was draining him. Yet he did not want to withdraw, he could not.

  “Now let’s see how I can get their attention”.

  His hand started twitching, his fingers drawing circles and symbols into the air. They drew faint traces of purplish sparks.

  A sudden clanking noise filled the entrance hall. For a moment the Bretonnians seemed as if startled. But just for a moment. Within a heartbeat they had their weapons out and formed ranks to face whatever might have caused the sound.

  Soon they realized that at the end of the entry hall, a hidden staircase had been revealed.

  “Go on … let your curiosity get the best of you,” the man said.

  He did not have to wait long until the Bretonnians moved out. He analysed their movement, fascinated by the way they moved. They were individual beings, yet under pressure, they started to move like one cohesive thing. A rather dangerous thing.

  Again, he tried to look at the women. Time and time again, he could not fully perceive her. When he tried too hard, he felt ripples through the warp, his vision came close to shattering. He had to withdraw. It was fascinating.

  They entered the chambers below the house, filled with his most prized possessions. At first, they were reluctant, but soon they started looting.

  “As I had suspected, in the presence of riches, even the most stalwart of men will take what is not theirs,” He analysed “but why … why are they not taking everything? What is their motivation?” “They don’t behave like other man … how unexpected. Fascinating.”

  He could not fathom why they did not blindly loot everything in his possession. He tried to analyse what they were taking. A silk cloak of the distant land of Cathay, some Healing Herbs, and a sword made of meteoric metal. All very usable, yet not the most valuable of things.

  “Anyways, you will soon find something that will truly interest you,” he said with an almost academic excitement.

  His head felt like a glass bowl holding a storm. The winds of magic howled around him. Yet he maintained the spell.

  They closed in on the final chamber. When he heard the woman’s voice. To his amazement it was distorted and hard for him to understand.

  Half expecting this, he thought of a workaround. Instead of focusing the spell on the woman, he spied on one of the commoners. Suddenly, the voice became clearer. A wide grind appeared on his face.

  “ … there is something wrong. I feel it. This place feels wrong. We must not pass this threshold …”

  For a moment he felt, panic.

  “The threshold must be crossed … the pattern needs to be completed,” he sighed as he twisted his fingers. Manipulating the warp energy infused in the building he shifted the mansion’s structure. Dust started rising from the floor to the ceiling, and for a moment sigils flashed on the masonry. Then, with a rumble, the corridor behind the Bretonnians collapsed.

  Satisfied, he watched the Bretonnians pass the threshold into his laboratory. Even more satisfied, he watched them take it the scenery before them. He started counting the time in his head, wondering how long it would take them to realize, what they were seeing.

  The room was filled with all sorts of contraptions, rows of books and tablets filled with baubles and vials. His vision was pinned to the far corner of the room. There she was, his most fascinating experiment. Contained in a stasis field made from runes etched into the stonework stood the now lifeless corpse of a Bretonnian Damsel.

  His thoughts went back to that day, when through intrigue and whispers, he had captured her. He started to smile.

  “In all fairness, I have to admit, there was a certain amount of luck involved. But after all, what is chance if not a parameter uncontrolled?”

  He was fascinated by her resilience. The way she was shielded against the powers of the warp. He did not want to destroy her; that would be a waste of resources. So, he started probing with lesser magic, but every time he tried, the winds of magic dissipated around her. He could not wrap his mind around it.

  With time, he grew less cautious with his test subject. It started to show. His subject kept defiant. She kept reciting prayers and asking the “The Lady” for strength and guidance. He knew from his studies that “The Lady” referred to by the locals as a deity. Surely it was some sort of regional manifestation, maybe even a warp anomaly.

  His final experiment on the subject was to try to syphon the forces of magic that surrounded her. He tried to disrupt the calm around her by inducing warp ripples. For a moment it seemed to work. But then flaring runes burned his mind. The pain drove him to the edge of madness, yet he recovered.

  He shielded himself, anticipating the raw warp energy to ignite the room. When he expected the howling of winds of magic, he received only silence.

  It was in that silence that his study subject passed.

  And with her passing, the magical anomaly was gone. At once, without any lingering trace. No residue of magic, no warp remnant.

  “No residue, no trace of the raw power. It was as if something had reached down and reclaimed the magic,” he muttered.

  He kept his inner eye affixed to the room, taking in the tiniest reactions of the Bretonnians. The one-eyed knight was the first to see her. Colour left his face upon realising what he was seeing.

  Suddenly, he felt a strong force pulling his sight away. He tried to resist but could not. The picture distorted before his eyes and splintered like a broken mirror. The man found himself in his chambers. Blood in his eyes clouded his vision.

  “Ah, so they found my dispel scrolls and are capable of using them … good.”

  From the shadows behind him, he heard echoes of voices. “The trajectories of possibilities have aligned. The wheels are in motion now.”

  The man wiped the blood from the corners of his eyes. Maintaining the spell had exhausted him. Yet he smiled.

  “The probability of a second conduit could not have been expected. It seems that my return to Mordheim is drawing nigh.”

  From the shadows, he could hear the echoes of voices agreeing with him. Then the shadows rippled and went still.

  The man smiled.