Targoviste

The Order of the Dragon

Prologue

I went in search of death. This alley was the perfect place to find it. I didn't care in what guise it chose to come to me. The only thing I wanted, was an escape from the endless pain and suffering I had subjected myself to for the last six months.

I staggered into the rain drenched darkness; the wet brick walls rising on either side of me like the Red Sea had risen around the ill- fated Egyptians. Let them fall on me, let them crush me! I had nothing to ease the pain, nothing to take away the craving that made me wrap my arms around myself and shake uncontrollably like a dead tree in a wind storm.

I fell against the wall to my right next to an overflowing dumpster and slid down onto my knees into the foul smelling puddles of dirty water. The pumping bass from the club behind me was reverberating through the wall and vibrating my chest. Death knocking on my heart; come, I'll open the door for you!

I looked up at the street lamp overhead with the slanting rain silhouetted against the halo of light and stretched out my shaking arms in front of me. Scarred with the track marks of my addiction and painfully thin they were. Lost.., I am lost.

I went in search of death but it was something else entirely that found me.