Last Rank

Chapter 1

Part 1

The Maid and the Count

- Jake -

Jake didn't remember a lot of things about his mother. She had never been the doting kind. One thing he did remember though, was a bedtime story she used to tell him on days he had been mean to the servants.

Once upon a time lived a Count in the darkest part of the great forests to the north. He was cruel and terrifying and possessed by a grotesque demon. Every now and then he would visit the villages and towns of the lands he owned to devour the children, who had been naughty, to satisfy the hunger of his demon.

Well, Jake didn't know about eating children, but to reach his goals he had done plenty cruel things and played so many terrifying schemes that sometimes he could indeed hardly imagine a more befitting depiction for himself. He had not expected, however, how easily the people believed that a bedtime story had become blood and flesh to haunt the lands for real.

"You are making that face again," Nathaniel said in his annoying voice.

Jake glanced at the figure of a man that demon pretended to be.

Towering tall and scrawny limbs, almost too long for being comfortable in the limited space in the carriage. Dressed entirely in fine black garments, black hair neatly slicked back, sitting so still it wasn't humanly possible, he looked like a deadly spider, waiting for prey to get trapped in his net.

Jake wouldn't. He knew Nathaniel meant to upset him in some way out of boredom, but Jake wasn't in the mood, and he was upset enough already. They had been on the road for way too long and his shoulders were stiff and sore from the travels.

He looked back out through the hazy window lined in red satin curtains of the fine carriage he had won in a rigged game of cards a few nights back. 

Up ahead the little town lay between soft mountain tops and rich forests, peacefully quiet like a painting of a fairy tale setting in a children's picture book. To the south there was a lake, in the north the castle oversaw the small houses and farms. It stood tall like a fortress, with long brick-built walls protecting it, yet it somehow had the feeling of a family home to it. One side was overgrown with plants, olive green tendrils crawled the building up onto the red scaled roof, on the other side of the castle fine gold ornaments were clear to see even from the distance.

"I hope the Baron has as much money as you say he does," Jake eventually grumbled. 

It wasn't unlikely for men of power to put a glamour to show while their subjects already suffered famine. The memory of the town of New Hamsville they had recently visited, where the Lord wouldn't even offer sickbeds to his people dying from a horrible disease, darkened Jake's face even more.

"Contrary to what you might believe, I do not enjoy it when you are in a bad mood, so leave your thoughts be or say what's haunting you already," Nathaniel remarked rather uninterested.

"Liar," Jake said.

The demon smirked.

The carriage rattled when they reached cobbled streets instead of the muddy forest paths they had been travelling before. First houses passed by the window and Jake glimpsed at people stopping their daily chores to ogle their high visitor. A butcher's shop, a hairdresser, a clockmaker, a blacksmith, the little town seemed to run good in business, no sick children dying on the streets either.