When a man lies broken in a pool of despair, his life slipping away before his very eyes, he will grasp the hand of any devil that offers him the illusion of hope.

 

Chapter 1: Eldermoor

 

Mercedes was accustomed to getting dressed in the dark. In the absence of light, her senses thrived, memory guiding where vision failed, allowing her fingers to deftly locate the old pair of boots propped under the bunk bed. She clenched her teeth as a cold tendril of shadow coiled around her wrist. The chill that ran up her arm made each stray hair on the back of her neck stand on end beneath the heavy knit cap she always wore. The Sparrow exhaled slowly as her gaze rose and focused on the ghostly mystic blue screen hovering in the air before her.

'Finally. It's here.'

Malevolent whispers stirred from the dark corners of the barrack’s room as the pale blue panel flickered out of view. Mercedes yanked her hand free and ignored the cold snickers that slithered back into the shadows of the void. She narrowed her pink eyes at the gleam of light filtering through the cracks of her unit’s barrack door, signaling the passing night patrol, and waited until the soldier and their lantern continued further down the lower fortress hallway.

Mercedes had joined the Sparrows of Unit 731 at the age of thirteen. Their numbers had dwindled over the past five years from the original commissioned thirty. Of the twelve bunk beds now crammed into the cold, damp castle barracks room, only seven contained a mattress currently occupied with the remnants of the closest thing she had to family.

The Sparrow knotted her boot strings and tucked the fraying cords snuggly beneath the brown leather lining. Her stiff limbs protested as she rose, careful to avoid the lower beam of the overhead bunk and grabbed her jacket from the corner of the bed's ladder. Mercedes shivered as she threaded each arm through the loose, weathered sleeves. The jacket was practically saturated with the damp, cold air that always clung to the castle walls.

The faded embroidery across the right chest pocket outlined her unit number, 731, while the left monogram contained only her first initial and a simple black sparrow silhouette. Just as she pulled her gloves from the pocket below the jacket's belt, a hand draped down from the top bed, knocking the Sparrow's knitted cap loose.

“What are you doing?” Christine, Mercedes's partner, mumbled as the Sparrow scrambled to pull the woolen hat over her loose, short white hair.

“It’s almost time for our shift.”

“Fuck!” the brunette hissed, thrashing her limbs beneath the coarse woolen blanket before turning her back to the younger Sparrow. “Just go without me.”

Mercedes sighed, ignoring her partner’s habitual tantrum as she collected her steel helmet and the Radiant Dawn Rifle at the foot of her bed. “If we're late again, we won’t get breakfast.” She let the threat hang in the air as she shifted the leather sling of the rifle over her shoulder.

The brunette thrashed again in silent protest, then rolled upright, grumbling as she stomped down the ladder. They spent the next ten minutes hunting for the left boot Christine had flung carelessly beneath a neighboring bunk after lights out.

Once fully dressed, the pair of Sparrows exited the barrack's room door, which bolted shut behind them with a heavy thud. The Hawk on night’s watch lifted his torch to examine their faces briefly, paused to confirm the door was secure, and then continued on his way.

Ever since the Dylan incident, all the fortress barracks' doors had been modified to bolt shut from the inside.

“Do you think they’ll have eggs?” Christine grumbled as she tightened the helmet strap under her chin. “Not that powdery shit but real eggs.”

“Not likely,” Mercedes said as she moved toward the faint glow of a torch that marked their exit.

“I’d kill for some actual food instead of the bird rations they feed us.”

“The Church’s envoy will be bringing fresh supplies sooner than you think,” the Sparrow replied with quiet reassurance as her heightened senses picked up the footsteps on the floor above them.

“Well, you would know, seeing as how close you’ve gotten with Raven Ray of late,” Christine retorted with a muffled yawn. “What exactly are you getting out of this relationship? He’s certainly not feeding you.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Who knew these priest types could get it up for a living corpse.”

“Drop it, Christine,” Mercedes snapped, stopping so abruptly that her partner crashed into her.

“Oww! Geeze, I was only joking! Why’d you go and stop like that?”

The Sparrow said nothing as two shapes materialized out of the darkness ahead of them. The male and female Sparrow glanced up and nodded as they shuffled past Mercedes and her partner toward the warm comfort of their beds.

“Leaving early, aren’t you?” Christine muttered after them with a scoff of disbelief.

“Raven Ray relieved us since you two were running late again,” the male Sparrow answered with a pointed glare in their direction. “He’s keeping watch. Best to not keep him waiting.”

“We’re not late!” Christine protested. “Are we?” Mercedes offered a noncommittal grunt as the brunette shoved past her and bolted up the stairwell.

Both Sparrows were slightly out of breath when they reached the fifth floor. Mercedes hugged her aching ribs as she joined Christine in shouldering the heavy oak door open, leading them out onto the narrow battlements, where they paused to adjust to the sudden brightness and foul night breeze.

There was no getting used to the vile stench of death, decay, and desolation. The Sparrow hastily pulled up the collar of her shirt as the unfiltered stagnant air around Eldermoor punched its way down her nose and throat with eviscerating tenacity.

A quick drop of the fortress wall to their immediate right tapered down towards the sloped roofs of the castle’s fourth floor, which housed the private rooms of Eldermoor's Ravens and their Commanding Falcon. The interior grounds below were used as a training yard where the Sparrows formed up each morning and night to the screeching commands of the senior enlisted Hawks. To the left of the narrow walkway, the exterior fortress wall plummeted into a thirty-five-acre lake, which surrounded the dilapidated fortress like a mote.

Mercedes's gaze shifted restlessly toward the shadowed moon hovering above Eldermoor Keep like a vengeful wraith, casting an eerie green light over the slumbering castle and its stagnant lake.

A cacophony of death growls and groans reverberated from the shadowy, shambling figures of the undead that lurked beyond the castle’s natural watery barrier, their incessant, hungry cries a permanent reminder of the hellish world she lived in.

Eldermoor Keep was as far from human civilization as one could get, and it was constantly surrounded by the necrotic soldiers of Shadovar’s army.

Zombies, necromancers, and Shadovar’s Nameless Lich King, creatures of legends and myth, now living flesh and a constant waking nightmare for the survivors of the Elysian Empire.

The Long War, as the senior Hawks called it, had begun over a decade before Mercedes’s birth. The consuming zombie horde had appeared without warning and spread like the infernal tides of hell across the known world, swelling in size with each conquered kingdom that fell before the Lich King’s necromancers.

By all logical reasoning, Elysian itself should have fallen. And yet, their shrinking Empire had been snatched from the jaws of death by the High Priestess of Serenitus, an unknown god from another world who had taken pity on their grim plight.

When offered salvation, the last princess of Elysian’s Royal Family had fallen to her knees and embraced the power of faith and Serenitus’s radiant magic, which now served as the Empire’s strength and religion, turning the tide of war in their favor.

As this new religion spread through the ranks of the Elysian Army, so too had the appearance of its Acolytes and Ravens, soldiers who reported only to Elysian’s Radiant Church and the High Priestess, one of whom waited on the watchtower above them.

“Late again, Sparrows?” Raven Ray called down with only a hint of disapproval before he descended the tower ladder. “This won’t look good on your monthly review.”

“We came as fast as we could, Raven,” Christine protested as they watched the long tail of his black trench coat billowing around him like a priest’s robes in the night wind. “Besides, it’s not like we stand a chance at getting promoted,” she added with a note of sourness.

Ray skipped the last three rungs of the ladder and landed with a graceful thud before he turned to administer what Christine had dubbed his “priestly glare” on the sulking brunette. “I do not like your tone, Sparrow C731. Need I remind you of the tenants of our faith?”

“Benevolence, Purity—Faith and…”

“Sacrifice,” Ray finished with a faint click of his tongue. “Though in your case, Silence might be more attainable.”

Christine uttered a faint protesting exhale and then averted her gaze with a grimace of irritation.

“Thank you for holding our post, Raven Ray,” Mercedes said, if only to break the tense silence and move things along.

“Not at all,” Ray said with a flickering smile. He pulled a small paper bag from inside his jacket, immediately reclaiming the brunette’s attention. “I had a few hours before morning prayers and thought I might offer some resources to help two Sparrows get through their shift.”

The Raven looked less than pleased when Christine snatched the package from his hands and ripped it open, revealing the neat stack of tasteless hardtack biscuits. The brunette’s shoulders slumped in disappointment before she shoved the paper bag inside her jacket and then climbed the ladder, leaving her partner and a frowning Raven behind.

“Those are meant to be shared,” Ray growled after her, his annoyance palpable until he turned back to Mercedes with a benevolent smile, extending a second package to the waiting Sparrow. “I thought you might appreciate these more.”

Mercedes raised a pale brow at the surprising weight of her gift, noting the familiar stiff ridges that rolled against her fingers. “Ammunition?”

“You need to raise your kill count higher,” the Raven said, his tone grim as he stepped forward to place a hand on her shoulder. “Banquet preparations begin at dawn.”

“The High Priestess is almost here?”

He nodded. “I will need time to arrange a meeting but expect one before the evening banquet. Find me in my quarters after your second shift. I will have a new uniform waiting for you.” Ray removed his hand, rubbing his fingers together absently as his gray eyes ran over her visible cheeks and neck. “I’ll prepare a bath as well. First impressions are everything. You only get one opportunity to impress Serenitus’s envoy.”

“Understood,” Mercedes said as her grip tightened around the bag of magic-infused bullets. “I’ll make every shot count.”

“No need to hold back. Their numbers have thinned with the Blood Moon’s approach, but with enough noise, the shroom zombies will gather like flies to a corpse.”

The Sparrow nodded, though the idiom held little meaning here. Nothing survived in their corner of the world, not birds, flowers, trees, or even pesky mosquitoes. Only the dead thrived in the barren landscape that surrounded their isolated fortress, and Mercedes was as close to dead as one could get while still possessing a beating heart. She stiffened as the Raven reached out to tug at a loose strand of the pale white hair that curled beneath her right ear.

“And burn that cap, Sparrow M731. No lie or deception will escape the High Priestess’s notice.”

Mercedes’s stomach knotted in response. She would soon find out how true that statement was.

“What’s in the bag?” Christine coughed out eagerly around a mouthful of hardened biscuit. “Food?”

“Something better,” Mercedes said as she opened the bag and added an additional five rounds to her rifle’s ten-round magazine before sliding the loading clip back into place.

Christine dragged a single heavy, weathered wooden stool over to the wall and sat down to refill her stomach, pausing between bites to mutter, “There’s something wrong with you.”

Mercedes ignored the comment as she slid an extra bullet into the chamber before locking the bolt into place. She had spent the first four years of her service polishing these rifles without firing a single shot.

Female Sparrows were never promoted due to their lack of battle experience. Their service records just couldn't compete with their male counterparts, whose contributions and achievements were more easily obtained and recognized. While male Sparrows spent every opportunity competing against each other for the highest number of confirmed zombie kills, female Sparrows spent their days cleaning.

They cleaned everything from rifles, latrines, muddy boots and floors, kitchen pots and pans, and the never-ending cycle of dirty uniforms that had to be washed, scrubbed, rinsed, hung out to dry, mended, and then folded and returned. Mercedes had once gone months without sunlight when she had been assigned the extra duty of bathing and dressing the fortress’s fallen soldiers in preparation for their final farewell at the funeral pyre.

She had always found it hypocritical that female Sparrows couldn’t be trusted to pull the trigger but were still deemed capable enough to survive being locked inside the mortuary with corpses that could turn at any moment. She had lived through more than one such harrowing experience. The still vivid memory of plunging the mortician’s organ knife through the freshly reanimated soldier's skull before the zombie could break free from its bindings had been Mercedes’s first officially recorded kill.

Other female Sparrows assigned to the detail had not been so lucky.

However, Mercedes’s current position atop the watch tower, while a hard-won victory, had been the direct result of the Dylan incident.

Sparrow Dylan had been one of Unit 731’s most promising soldiers until the day he concealed an infected bite that caused him to turn under the cover of darkness. At that time, only the male Sparrows were assigned rifles. While they easily outnumbered the enlisted female Sparrows, they were also bunked on opposite sides of the room, separated by a curtain, which made them the first victims of their infected male comrade.

For reasons that still remained a mystery, the soldiers who fell beneath Dylan’s rampage that night turned with shocking speed. The resulting chaos and panic had sent the rest of the male Sparrows scrambling for the door, many of them abandoning their rifles.

The first Sparrow to escape, Dylan’s partner, Richard, had bolted them in from the outside.

By the time the Hawks arrived with backup to open the door, Mercedes stood alone, surrounded by the corpses of ten turned zombies, an empty rifle in hand. The only other six surviving Sparrows cowered behind a hastily built fortress of bunk beds in the corner with one unfired rifle between them.

In the following investigation, Richard hastily rationalized his choices as necessary to prevent the deadly outbreak from spreading through the rest of the castle. The Hawks and even the Ravens had accepted his version of events and justification as reasonable. But Mercedes questioned how Richard could have missed any of the warning signs that would have accompanied his partner’s infection.

Even the mortician had been quick to point out the obvious bite on Dylan’s upper thigh, as well as the usual symptoms of discolored eyes and veins.

It was only after the fallen members of Unit 731 had been laid out on the funeral pyre that she remembered the upcoming annual promotion. Of the three male Sparrows in her unit who were considered eligible, the only one still breathing—was Richard.

With the investigation already closed, Mercedes had settled for voicing her suspicions to Christine. The brunette was quick to spread distrust and resentment throughout Unit 731’s traumatized and grieving survivors.

When Richard was found a few nights later, battered and unconscious in the dark lower castle halls with a broken leg that eliminated his otherwise certain promotion, no one uttered a voice of protest. The incident was quietly glossed over and wrapped up with a superficial investigation.

Raven Ray had taken charge of the Dylan incident and Richard's subsequent attack. He personally reorganized the remaining members of Unit 731 into shifts for the night watch, regardless of their battle experience or sex, and justified it with the loss in manpower. He also selected another male Sparrow, Charles, from Unit 728, to be promoted and take leadership of the remnants of Unit 731 while assigning Richard to a different unit.

All things considered, Mercedes had been surprised with Raven Ray's diplomatic handling of the matter. She didn’t understand why a Raven would go out of his way to smooth over any remaining animosity and whispers that followed her gruesome accomplishment. While the Sparrow’s life within the fortress walls had only marginally improved, at least now she slept with a loaded rifle at her side.

Still, Mercedes knew better than to put her trust and faith in the Raven's good intentions. She had learned from an early age to keep her expectations for others low.

'Faith is a luxury of those who have never experienced betrayal.’

None of that mattered to the albino anymore because today’s ending would be different. The quest screen, which had finally reappeared at dawn, marked the catalyst that would end her miserable existence in this dismal world—one way or the other.