Summary: Anomir becomes Baneborn becomes Amaranth becomes Death becomes Genesis. The Fate our gods weave for us is nothing beside the path our blunders flatten out before us. My Fate, My Sire, my soul, my name. Among them, no less than three will come to naught. Kulhoac was always going to win.

Death, Inc.

Prologue

It would be inaccurate to call us assassins. Most of what we kill isn’t exactly alive to begin with. Nor are we assassins for hire because, implicitly, we only kill for one group of people. These men, these men of science, do not expose their faces, nor do we know where they are located. Or, at least, it is not in our records. Our few, elite clients besides the Scientists are all in our records. But I suppose the Grand Seer leaves it to the clients’ discretion or to the extent of the monetary reward.

Although I suspect them as merely a device of My Sire, the Scientists pay very well for their assassinations. The Grand Seer would have it no other way. To hear him tell it, the entire agency was created to do the Scientists’ bidding, or to be capable of such deeds.

Our tasks are of course to track down and use whatever means necessary to snuff out the life of those our clients deem no longer worthy of life.

But our prey is particularly dangerous. That’s why the price is particularly high. If we were risking merely our lives, we would have cut those prices in half.

As it is, we risk our very souls. Not something to do lightly. And so this is why we have allied ourselves with an entity to which none other on the land or sea would dare swear fealty. An ally of whom few even dare to whisper the name. An ally whom few in our agency have come face to face with, and one with whom only the Grand Seer speaks.

Kulhoac. The Gate. The Incinerator. The Chaos. The Fabric of Darkness.

Whichever name he goes by, whether it be epic in proportions or merely ominous in implications, it elicits the same response.

In everyone but for the Grand Seer. But then, few enjoy the prospect of coming face to face with Nathair either. How a man is regarded all comes down to what a man is willing to do, and the likes of Nathair’s deeds are none that a normal man would risk. Nathair is regarded as something as close to a demon as can walk on the earth without the very ground or the very elements protesting.

I…I am not brave enough to face the Grand Seer outside of the Company. It does not take bravery to do what I do; it takes an insane blankness of the mind and heart to do what I do.

Grand Seer, freeze my body to do what I must. Stop the very blood in my veins, for movement denotes life. And to do what I do, I must be as one dead.

It takes a god; it takes Kulhoac to hide us from the sight of those we hunt, his kin. From he who dwells in the Tierhothen, which is said to drift upwards of the Skysea itself. From those who hover on the border to Edgeworld, or who have rifted the world itself to create their own kingdoms.

I have never been to Tierhothen. Only one god dwells there. And there is only one rule in the Agency.

We do not touch The Jester.

Don't ask me about my other stories. My writer's block with concern to those storylines makes me want to scream. Well, no, not really. Suffice to say I have writer's block.