THE STRANGELIGHT WORKSHOP
WICKED WAYS
MATTHEW D. WILSON
MICHAEL G. RYAN
ZACHARY C. PARKER
DOUGLAS SEACAT
MATT GOETZ
AND
AERYN RUDEL
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Privateer Press, Inc.
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ISBN 978-1-943693-60-3
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Cover Design by Mike Vaillancourt
— CONTENTS —
THE END OF THE BEGINNING
MURDER IN THE MAJESTIC PLAYHOUSE
THE MADHOUSE DISAPPEARANCES
THE CURSE OF CASTLE RAELTHORNE
THE REAPING
SHADOWS OVER ELSINBERG
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
— PROLOGUE —
THE END OF THE BEGINNING
By Matthew D. Wilson
My dearest Ethelyn and darling Tabitha,
These years apart from you have not been easy, but they have not been spent in vain. My pursuits of a modern remedy for the preservation of perishables did, in fact, yield fruit—pun intended, of course! The long-term validity of my vapor compression refrigeration system was demonstrated in the voyage from Mercir to the tip of Zu and back again. The trial proved out, substantiating my claims that the exotic fruits and meats of the new world could be reliably brought to the kingdoms without the usual spoilage or degradation. All those who have sampled the unequalled sweetness of Zu’s tropical sunberries will forever be my champions! Admittedly, the cost of the system remains a bit excessive, but that will be solved in due course.
I only regret the storm that separated us prevented you from witnessing this triumph. Not a day goes by when I do not reflect on that encounter on the docks, that moment when I stared fate in the eyes and flinched. Had I read the signs correctly, our time apart would have been unpleasant but only temporary.
The hag that beseeched us seemed commonplace at the time. An old crone with a gift for storytelling and prognostication hardly warrants a second look on the bustling wharfs of Ceryl, but lo, how I rue the day I discounted her warning. Even now, I wonder if it was truly meant to dissuade me from bringing the two of you on the voyage with me, or if she knew all along that I would and that the message had only served as a calling card for later.
I have seen no equal to the tempest that took us, even after a half-dozen excursions to and from the mysterious new continent. But the consequence of that first passage cannot be measured, so despondent am I to hear the lyrical sounds of your voices once again. Had I only known what the morrow held, I should have thrown myself into the eye of the storm and spared myself the pain of what lay ahead.
Fate had other plans, however, and even decades later, I am conflicted over how I feel about what has transpired. The hag and her clicking nails would visit me again upon my return to Cygnar. This time it was no chance encounter—I realized she had sought me out for a purpose. Click-Clack, I would come to call her, after the unnerving sound her bizarre metal hands made. I suspect I know her true identify, if the old northern stories are to be believed, but she offered no name at the time and seemed to have no preference one way or the other, so the moniker stuck. She possessed a passing sympathy for my loss, but I soon realized her true interest was in my patents, or more precisely, the technology behind them. At first, I worried she was an agent of my competition, as absurd as the notion might seem from her appearance. But in time, I came to trust that her strange motives were free of materialism and what she sought was a solution to a problem I was uniquely equipped and driven to facilitate.
The success of my run from Cygnar to Zu and back again had not gone unnoticed. To the contrary, the achievement was publicized loudly and widely, perhaps to greater acclaim than it deserved; at times, I wondered if unseen forces were not working to my advantage. In the wake of success, I negotiated a significant sum for my proven technology and related patents and committed every gain toward my newfound cause.
My first investment was a long-abandoned estate just outside the urban proper of Ceryl, the infamous Blackwell Hall. It is monolithic, dark, damp, and cavernous—everything you both would despise. But the grounds the manor occupies possess properties I cannot yet explain, and the old crone believed they would be critical to our mission. While I cannot say Blackwell Hall resembles anything I would once have called home, I have developed an affinity for the place, as if I share its longing for another time and space, one devoid of the death and strife the great house has borne witness to. In the end, I feel that suffering its dark atmosphere is more than worthwhile, should the effort bring me closer to you.
Despite the estate’s tangible oppressiveness, my founding of a new enterprise has attracted a variety of residents to Blackwell Hall that appear to indulge in exactly that which would keep common, god-fearing folk at bay. The very ground beneath the manor draws the essence of wayward spirits to the site like a magnet attracts iron filings, and with them comes an odd assortment of people possessing a greater curiosity than a sense of self-preservation. Academics, artisans, mechaniks, and souls as lost as those who dwell in the caverns below now occupy the library, the guest quarters, and the parlors throughout the mansion. They have each come here for a different reason—some to satisfy a thirst for obscure knowledge, others to face the demons of their past. The atmosphere of this place seems a boon to such esoteric studies and research. These people serve bravely as my agents, conducting investigations far and wide across the kingdoms, wherever the veil between this world and the next has been pierced. Each foray into the realm of paranormal phenomenon yields new intelligence and data with which I toil to assemble the formulae that will decode the greatest mystery of mortal man. I owe everything to the discovery of one madman in particular.
How strange it is to write it, but it was Click-Clack that pointed me in the right direction. While you, Ethelyn and Tabitha, inspire my very reason for being and have made my mission clear, it is the strange old hag that has acted as my lodestar when all else seemed lost. I have seen her on only a few occasions, each brief, but each time, in a few words, she has helped unravel a perplexing mystery and set me to the next. From priests to grave robbers, surgeons to necromancers, I culled every shred of knowledge and experience from anyone I could find who had ever been in the presence of a soul as it crossed between worlds. When it looked as though I had exhausted all avenues and would get no closer to the answers I desired, Click-Clack
appeared to me once more, unexpectedly and from the shadows. With one crude talon she scratched a pair of words into a dark cobblestone: Hyrum Ules.
I would carry that cobblestone with me for three years before I would find the man who owned that name. His trail would lead me through the black markets of Five Fingers and the Undercity of Corvis and ultimately to an asylum for the insane located on the frozen cliffs near Skrovenberg. By the time I met him, Mr. Ules barely had hold of his beautifully broken mind. His mechanikal brilliance had led him to invent a most extraordinary device capable of illuminating a subject and distorting its appearance in a phantasmagoria of light and optical illusions. But he did not possess the vision to understand what he had created. Indeed, he had no vision at all at that point, his eyes having been cauterized to milky white orbs by exposure to his light after so many years. In that time, he had sought to profit from the bizarre machine, using it for no other purpose than as a sideshow attraction in his traveling carnival of curiosities and oddities. But over the years, Hyrum Ules saw things that few others would ever have the fortitude to behold. With his mysterious illuminating device, he had gazed into the abyss and the things that looked back had taken his mind.
Equipped now with the knowledge I had gathered, I saw Hyrum Ules’ invention for what it was: an apparatus for exposing the metaphysical essence that exists all around us but goes unseen by the unaided eye. But it was critically flawed, hampered by a propensity to quickly overheat, sometimes with catastrophic consequences. Was it coincidence or fate that it was I, the inventor of portable refrigeration, who found him? We’ll never know, but within moments of examining his machines, I knew my own technologies were the perfect solution to the issues that plagued Ules’ device. I knew I could make it work.
With this strange light, I could track the invisible, reveal the true nature of anyone and anything, and most important, observe that most elusive of all phenomenon, the moment when a soul recently freed from its vessel crosses over from the physical realm into Urcaen. This was the closest I had come to a victorious moment since I had begun this joyless quest. And in time, I knew I would be able to build upon this technology for the purpose of fulfilling my ultimate goal.
It took some convincing, and I am not proud to say, some subterfuge on my part to liberate the machine from Mr. Ules’ possession. The device had become a crutch for the poor man’s failing sanity, but he was far past the point of ever hoping to enjoy a day’s happiness again. And I’m afraid my goals left no room for moral qualms in this regard. I required his invention, and in his hands, it would accomplish nothing.
And so, with key in hand, I set off on my return to Blackwell Hall, determined to unlock that gate which denied me the rapture of your presence. But nothing about my quest has ever been simple. Though I held the key, by the time I realized the intricacies and nuance of its design, the lock it would fit had never seemed further away. I realized I could not, in the lifetime I had left, complete my mission without help. I required more information, data, and test subjects in order to produce the solution I was after. And for that, I would need others.
Based on the invention obtained from Hyrum Ules, augmented by my own proprietary technology and countless developments to come, the Strangelight Workshop was formed and has grown. Dedicated to the study of the occult and the otherworldly, the Strangelight Workshop offers its services to those in need of solutions to supernatural and paranormal complications. Restless spirits, vengeful haunts, meddling gremlins, and dark possessions are but a few of the quandaries the Workshop’s investigative teams are prepared to confront. We have learned how to filter and refine the Strangelight, to capture and analyze the wondrous sights it has revealed to us.
This and the many other technological achievements it has inspired have enabled our investigators to locate and identify the roots of problems to which mortal eyes are blind. With each case, solved or unsolved, more information has been harvested, narrowing the possibilities I must examine and focusing my efforts toward the goal. We have solved and gained insight into many profound mysteries besides, ones of greater interest to my peers than to me. I indulge them, for it is this atmosphere of discovery that lets us get closer to truth. Alas, the enterprise is far from profitable. Despite the prolificacy of such supernatural occurrences and those willing to pay for our services, the Strangelight Workshop remains a fringe service, one with costs that outweigh its income. But while my fortune holds, the Workshop will continue, and I shall remain resolute.
With this Strangelight, the unseen can hide from us no longer. And with my efforts multiplied by the activities of the Workshop, Strangelight is the key that will unlock the secrets I seek. I am close, so very close! And soon I will seek out Click-Clack to bring this journey full circle. She has sworn that once I have achieved the mechanism to overcome the barrier between us, she will help me find you. I will hold her to this promise. No matter the cost, I will bring you back.
Be patient, my loves. Hell shall not keep us apart for long.
Eternally yours,
J
• • •
JACOB STRATHMOORE PLACED THE QUILL into the inkpot on his desk and combed his fingers once through his thinning strands of white hair. He rose from the desk, straightening his stiff limbs and spine, coughing once from the effort. He was a man of small stature, a bit thick around the middle, and possessed of a weary countenance that suggested his age was even older than his actual sixty-three years.
He closed the valve on the gas lamp that was supported by the pipe protruding from the wall above his desk. Only the dwindling orange glow from the open vents of the potbelly stove illuminated the small study. Shelves of books lined the gray stone walls, and piles of more books formed haphazard barriers in front of them. One wall of the study was not stone but was constructed from riveted plates of iron. In its center was a thick metal door with rounded corners, supported by heavy hinges and held shut by a steel latch set with a padlock.
Strathmoore walked slowly toward the door, removing a white handkerchief from the pocket of his vest. Unfurling the handkerchief with a few flicks of his wrist, he wiped a wet sheet of condensation from the glass surface of a ship’s porthole set in the top half of the metal door and leaned forward to gaze longingly at what rested on the other side.
Beyond the porthole was a square, gray room, its walls lined with meandering clumps of ice crystals formed around a complex network of thin brass pipes. White vapor rolled across the floor of the room. And in its center sat a pair of rectangular metal boxes, each one capped by a half-cylinder of glass. Even through the thin layer of fog upon the glass, the contents of the cylinders were clear. In one, upon a quilted bed of fine silk, was a woman, some thirty years Strathmoore’s junior. In the cylinder beside her, a girl no more than nine years old. Side by side, they rested in the frozen chamber, eyes closed with hands folded upon their chests, as still as the glass cylinders they lay within.
Strathmoore coughed quietly then walked back to his desk. He stacked the pages of his letter and folded them in thirds before inserting them into a parchment envelope. With a metal die heated on the surface of the stove, he pressed a lump of wax onto the flap of the envelope to seal it. He then pulled open a drawer in his desk containing dozens of similar envelopes bearing wax seals. Touching the letter to his lips, he placed it in the drawer and shut it slowly.
“Soon, my loves,” he whispered.
— CASE 1 —
MURDER IN THE MAJESTIC PLAYHOUSE
By Michael G. Ryan
Ceryl, northeastern Cygnar, late summer 611 AR
“DON’T GO IN THERE,” the frightened man said to Kincaid. “They’ll kill you.”
They stood together at the bottom of the wide stairs that descended from the manor house’s veranda. Kincaid looked up at the mansion, its tall windows dark like dead eyes, its pillars and balconies faded by old paint. Located not far from a city noted for its shining architectural beauty, Blackwell Hall loomed like a sinister shadow atop a l
ow hill, surrounded by expansive windswept grounds enclosed by a gated fence. Nothing stirred in the mansion’s façade, as if the house were abandoned, though Kincaid knew he was expected. The dour-faced man at the outer gate had said nothing as he opened the mechanism to allow his wagon entry, a wagon that had been sent for Kincaid and guided by a similarly taciturn driver. He’d brought his mechanik’s toolkit and had the repair orders in his pouch. He’d dropped the metal toolkit when the burly man had bolted down the stairs and run directly into him.
“I’m here to fix the furnace,” Kincaid said. “Nobody’ll kill me until that’s done or else they’ll be damned cold, don’t you think?”
The other man, his eyes wild, backed down the cobbled walkway away from the mansion. He trembled like the naked trees that swayed on the nearby hillside in the chill wind. “I’m out. That’s it. I thought I could do this, but I can’t. I won’t. The coin doesn’t matter. You can’t spend it from the grave.”
Kincaid wasn’t sure how to respond, so he simply smiled dimly and watched the man retreat all the way to the stables, where a man was waiting with his horse. When he had climbed astride and made his escape, riding off down the road to the main gate, Kincaid sighed, knelt down, and retrieved his toolkit.
“The coin matters,” he muttered after the fleeing man. “You still gotta pay for that grave, you know.”
Once he’d reached the top of the stairs, he paused to look around for a bell or a knocker to let the residents know he’d arrived, but there was nothing all along the veranda. As he prepared to rap on the pair of sizable entryway doors, one of them suddenly opened, and a woman stepped out onto the porch beside him. Various ropes and straps crisscrossed her body, and tools hanging from multiple belts around her waist and middle clattered as she moved. He’d seen this sort of attire before—on mountain climbers and cat burglars.
Wicked Ways: An Iron Kingdoms Chronicles Anthology Page 1