SIX
The harsh, rocky cavern was silent by design.
Twelve out of fifteen Black Cloaks sat along the curved stone tiers of the underground amphitheater like living statues.
Barely more than shadows shaped like flesh, no pulse beat among them, and their lungs never drew air.
They were merely meatsuits wrapped in cloaks, waiting for orders.
At the center of the chamber lay an obsidian floor so dark its mirror polish swallowed all reflections of a realm that didn’t exist.
Katarra rose from the obsidian floor as if stepping out of a black lake in a shimmer of dark matter. His black-and-crimson cloak settled around him like a living thing. “We lost too many last night.”
His words were mild, but effective enough to ripple through the collective.
Katarra felt them all. He always did. After all, they were mere extensions of his will, bound by stolen essence and sustained by the souls they consumed.
With every kill, they fed him. And with every life drained, his power deepened.
That is how it always worked.
Until last night.
“I felt the Vanguard strike back,” Katarra continued, turning the obsidian ring that he wore on his right hand’s little finger, “and three of you vanished. That’s a trinity unmade.
” His voice stayed mild. “Someone took a complete number from me. And that was not part of the plan. What made me curious”—a sensation Katarra hadn’t felt in so long—“is that something-something is new. I did not feel your deaths. I only felt the return of power, but there was no return of ash to the collective.”
That was how they were created, instruments of his design, to serve only him and his needs.
“Now isn’t that something indeed.” He stopped at the center of the circle, the Black Cloaks still like statues.
“You die, you turn to ash, and then you return.” That was the cycle he’d created. A beautifully calculated system he’d mathematically perfected over the centuries. Only this time, the trinity did not return.
And that was the problem.
One of the Black Cloaks inclined its head. “Sire… the Vanguard retaliated. They hunt us harder since losing one of their own.”
Katarra smiled thinly, turning the obsidian ring on his finger. “They always do. Something, if anything, is that they are predictable.”
He began walking, hands clasped behind his back.
“But this is a new something-something.” And he wasn’t fond of those kinds of somethings.
“When one of you falls, I know. One is everything. It is where all things begin. And, as the magician of one—the original alchemist and the only one of my kind worth knowing—I always know. Your pain feeds me and it strengthens me. Now that is something.” And what he felt was the extra magick bristling within his bones that he shared with the collective.
He turned slowly, eyes burning red beneath the hood. “Last night, I felt an absence, along with the return of power, and not the body. The something was missing.”
It unsettled him enough to fuel his curiosity. For some things were many things to pull, push, lift, turn, and reshape into something he could use. Something-somethings could become something remarkable indeed.
“Send one to search for answers at their last location,” Katarra turned the ring on his little finger as the numbers aligned in his mind. “Find what changed.”
One of the Black Cloaks disappeared to carry out his command that left Katarra to face the remaining eleven members of his collective.
Eleven spoke of justice—when it was an injustice for independence, when he wanted the collective power of fifteen.
His number, the occultist’s fifteen, and the Devil’s card in tarot. Now that was something indeed.
“If the Vanguard have found a way to kill you without returning your essence to me, well…” Then this was something he would not stand for. Not when he had a much bigger plan in motion.
“So tonight, you will feed heavily and replenish what we have lost. Just know that something interfered last night, so be wary in your hunt.” Katarra almost sounded like he cared for his collective that held no emotions.
But there were severed ends where three of his creations had been cut away by a something. And it had been a long time since he’d felt a loss or had a something-something interfere.
But it wasn’t done by the Vanguard’s blades. No, this was something else entirely, something that had unmade his work without feeding him in return. This something-something might become a problem.
For the first time in centuries, he felt the edge of something he couldn’t control. A variable he hadn’t accounted for. He liked to keep count, so this was a something-something worth knowing.
Katarra’s fingers curled into fists.
“Find whatever destroyed our three and bring me answers.”