本帖最后由 bright_helm 于 2011-9-5 14:54 编辑
二楼例行，SAMMY帝的英文输入。
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The Rituals of the Order - Part One: The Veil of Knowledge
by Jeff Tidball
Lucy Jennings examined herself in the mirror in her room. A few weeks ago, when she'd left home in New York to spend the summer with family friends, the Tremaines, she'd packed this moderately scandalous dress in the hopes that an event just like the high-society ** she was invited to would find its way onto her social calendar.
She adjusted a lock of hair and smiled at her reflection. At least one interesting thing was going to happen in Arkham this summer.
* * *
Lucy and her friend Sally Tremaine were met at the door to the Garfield mansion by a squadron of servants. One collected their invitations, another their wraps. They passed through the archway into the grand ballroom, where the ** was already in full swing.
A dapper young man broke away from the crowd as they passed through the doorway. "Miss Jennings, I'm delighted you could come." He took her hand in both of his own and rested a kiss on her knuckles. Lucy's cheeks dimpled.
"This is my friend Sally Tremaine," Lucy said. "This is Mr. Dart," Lucy informed Sally.
"Councilman Dart?" Sally asked, impressed.
"I'm charmed to know you," Dart said.
Dart took Lucy's arm and led them into the whirlwind of high society that made up the guest list.
Although Jeb Garfield, aged scion of the great family, was nowhere to be seen, there was more than one knot of old money present, sharing cigars and drinking cognac from leaded glasses that tinkled against their ornate rings, a chorus of privilege and money.
Lucy's ears heard tantalizing fragments of gossip as Dart led her around the room.
"...is just his type, don't you think...?"
"...for the distinguished professor to visit next week..."
"...won't be able to afford it without our help, of course..."
Lucy wasn't sure what to think of the pair of Middle-Eastern guests in their strange garb, or the African man in a tuxedo who praised Lucy's radiance through an obsequious interpreter.
A doctor from Vermont recognized Lucy's family name; her father ran a successful chain of drug stores. Her family was new money, but money nonetheless.
After an interval that could have been five minutes as easily as an hour - Lucy's head spun with all the introductions Dart had made - Lucy and Sally found themselves at the edge of the room, Dart having been accosted by a pair of older men from the Arkham city council with some business to discuss.
Lucy led her friend out of the ballroom in search of fresh air. They passed the open door to a library. Lucy poked her head inside and saw that its volumes rose three stories inside a massive room open to a dome high above. It had rolling ladders, brown leather chairs, and the smell of pipe-smoke. Lucy, who'd always been a bibliophile, thought it magnificent.
"Lucy!" hissed Sally.
Lucy shushed her friend and stepped inside.
"Lucy, we haven't been invited!"
"Go back then," said Lucy, unwilling to turn over more than a fragment of her attention to her timid friend.
She ran her hand along the spines of old, gilded volumes, skimming the titles as she went, sensing the breadth of the collection.
Histories, legends, studies of myth...
She thought she could hear whispered discussions among learned men, but when she looked, no one was there. She looked back, but Sally had gone.
Folklore, astronomy, ancient religions...
It seemed like it had grown darker since she'd entered. A trick of the light in the stacks, she felt sure.
Witchcraft, pagan rites, ritual magic...
Lucy took down a volume entitled The Esoteric Commandments of the Order of the Silver Key, which bore a key-shaped glyph on its cover.
She blew dust off the tome, opened its cover, and...
* * *
Lucy woke with a start, still wearing the dress she'd worn last night, morning sunlight streaming through the windows of her room at the Tremaines' estate. She hadn't the faintest idea how she'd arrived back in her room.
She blinked. A distant exchange of conversation breezed past the corners of her mind, her own voice and Mr. Dart's:
"A library can be a very dangerous place," Dart said with a twinkle.
"I've been told knowledge is the most valuable of a11 currencies," Lucy responded.
"Knowledge is a two-edged sword," Dart replied flatly. "Certain things can't be unlearned."
Lucy suddenly sat up straight - Sally.
She raced downstairs and found her friend drinking tea and laughing gaily at some antic on the newspaper's page of entertainments.
Sally ignored Lucy's state of dress and the state of her hair. "I had so much fun last night, dear," she enthused. "The dancing, the music...it was all so wonderful. And that Mr. Dart," added Sally with a wink. "Thank you again for bringing me along."
Lucy wrinkled her brow. There hadn't been any dancing, nor music.
What had happened?
=================
The Rituals of the Order - Part Two: An Initiate of the Order
by Jeff Tidball
The ritual robe hung heavy on Lucy's naked skin. The others similarly clad -- stood in a circle around her, chanting in what sounded like Latin. She could only see a few of them at a time, her hood blocking most of her vision.
KEEP FAMILY BUSINESS TO SELF STOP
STRANGE MEN ASKING AROUND AND ABOUT YOU STOP
HOPE YOUR SUMMER IS SWELL FULL STOP
The telegram was from Lucy's older brother. She could hear the condescension in his voice and the disingenuousness in his wishes for her summer.
It arrived a week after the **. Lucy'd gotten no closure about the event's strange end, but enough people around Arkham had told her what a fun time she'd had that she almost accepted it.
Almost.
Lucy ran into Mr. Dart in Arkham the day after the telegraph came, literally bumping into him as he emerged from the barber shop, bringing with him a whiff of its leathery smells.
"My word!" he said, reaching out to steady her. "How clumsy of me."
Lucy laughed, flustered. As the two of them stood there, she felt the need to fill the silence.
"I had a wonderful time at the **," she said, "even though it was such a whirlwind I can't remember much about it."
"You'd be surprised how many of Garfield's soirees are like that," he said, smiling. But then his face turned more serious, and he shepherded her away from the door, out of the sidewalk thoroughfare.
"Speaking of old Garfield, Miss Jennings, he and a few of the others have asked if they might meet you again."
As Lucy drove the Tremaines' car over country roads to the Garfield estate, she worried.
It was entirely improper for her to visit on her own, but Dart had been clear. And anyway, the elder Garfield certainly didn't have romantic designs on her. The man was a pillar of the community (and nearly eighty!).
But who were "a few of the others?" It hadn't occurred to her to ask.
Lucy hoped she'd see Mr. Dart, at least.
The mansion was changed from the party - dim now, quiet - although the same butler who'd supervised the staff then ushered her inside now.
A phalanx of somber men and a few women awaited her in the ballroom, Garfield at their center. Lucy saw Mr. Dart among them, but the warm smile by which she knew him did not lighten his face now.
Lucy's stride faltered at the forbidding assemblage, the confident smile she'd put on outside falling from her face.
"Welcome, Miss Jennings,'' Garfield addressed her. "We're glad you've come."
The chant ended and two of the hooded figures stepped from the circle.
The first, a stooping figure with white hair who Lucy suspected was Garfield, took up a weathered tome from a lectern.
The other one produced, from the depths of his robe, a curving dagger of wicked aspect that gleamed and glinted in the flickering torchlight that was the room's only illumination.
Lucy sucked in her breath as the pair approached her and she caught Mr. Dart's features in the deep folds of the second man's hood.
"We're a very special group," Garfield said. "A very old society. Extremely selective. We stand for knowledge and for the authority it confers. The Arkham Lodge of the Order of Silver Twilight stands assembled before you."
Lucy hadn't realize how soft the old man's voice was until Mr. Dart spoke with booming contrasts: "You will make a fine addition to our number, Lucinda Church Jennings."
Dart raised the dagger.
Lucy took a step back, only to discover - when they grabbed her arms - that two men from the circle had approached her from behind.
Dart brought the dagger down in agonizing slow motion, its point seeking her breast...
... but then he simply pressed it flat against the front of her robe, and reached out with his other hand to trace the path where blood would have flown down her stomach. His touch - even through the robe - sent shivers through Lucy.
Garfield stepped forward and touched his book to her chest.
"By the hands of the Order is your old life ended, and by the Order's might is your new life begun. Into your hand is given the piercing blade of its dominion."
The men holding Lucy let go, and the entire group shouted another phrase in the strange language. Lucy jumped and thunder clapped outside.
Mr. Dart put the hood of his robe down, and Lucy saw that his smile had returned. "Welcome to the Order, Lucy. I'm pleased to inform you that I'll be your mentor."
"I look forward to..." She wasn't sure what to say, didn't know what was appropriate, what might be expected. Finally, she ended, "... to doing what's expected."
"That's good news," said Dart. "We have a very important task in mind."
所有的**都是 p a r t y
The Rituals of the Order - Part Three: The Obesssions of Dr. Cooke
注：Obesssions 疑为Obsessions 之误
by Jeff Tidball
Lucy sat in the small oaken lecture hall at Miskatonic University, packed cheek-to-jowl with rapt students and interested locals. At the front of the hall, the visiting scholar Dr. Gregory Cooke was conveying, with carefully staged detachment, the unfolding of a perverse aboriginal ritual he'd witnessed on a remote Philippine island. The rite, according to the portly and somewhat sweaty Dr. Cooke, was designed to appease the sinister godling whom the culture believed safeguarded forbidden knowledge.
Lucy smiled, and applauded with the rest of the audience as Cooke drew his tale to a close. It had been a fine presentation, but her work was just beginning.
* * *
The mixer following the presentation was populated by graduate students and faculty keen to share their academic insights, and to hear more of Cooke's. Lucy stood patiently as the white-haired chair of the Department of Anthropology shared some dearly held theory while Cooke nodded with feigned interest and wiped his brow. The visiting scholar, Lucy could tell, was already studying her, though she pretended to be looking elsewhere.
Lucy could see a history professor she recognized from Garfield's estate (the "Lodge," she reminded herself) watching her from the far side of the room. And then, Cooke was approaching her.
"Hello, my dear," he said extending his hand toward her. She offered hers in return. His skin was warm but not inviting - too hot. "You're aware that I'm Dr. Gregory Cooke, but I'm still unaware of the name of the beautiful young woman I noticed more than an hour ago in my audience."
Lucy looked away, a flirtatious move of her head. "Lucy Jennings," she said softly enough that he'd have to move his head closer to hear it. As he did, she saw his eyes plunge down her dress. "I enjoyed your lecture very much," she added.
"The dangers I've endured seem all the more worthwhile when I can share them with an intelligent audience in a civilized place," he said. The visiting professor's eyes amounted to the groping hands of an aging lech, but Lucy's heart was racing with her subterfuge; she had no time to be repulsed by the corpulent man's come-ons. "Let's find you another glass of wine," Cooke's voice cut through her preoccupations.
She smiled, her cheeks dimpling. "Yes, let's!" she enthused, allowing Cooke to take her arm and lead her off.
* * *
The thunderstorm was unplanned, but lent appropriate drama to the incident as Lucy "struggled" to get the engine compartment of the Tremaines' car open at the side of the road just outside Arkham's city limits. If she'd calculated his departure correctly, Cooke's car would be coming over the rise to rescue her just... about...
...and sure enough, a flash of lightning revealed his auto cresting the hill.
Lucy stepped into the lane to wave at his approaching car as the thunder rolled in the lightning's wake. Cooke's car rolled to a stop, and he nearly leapt out into the rain.
"Dr. Cooke, thank goodness!" Lucy said. "My car's stalled out!"
Cooke had already produced an umbrella and rushed to shelter her from the downpour. "Would you like me to have a look?" he asked, huffing.
"Not in all this," she replied. "If I could trouble you for a ride to a friend's house... Do you know the Garfield estate?" She pressed her body against his, shrinking under the umbrella as if trying to keep from getting further wet.
"It will be my pleasure," he said, escorting her back to his car as his eyes roved over the curves her wet dress revealed as it clung to her body.
* * *
The car's windshield wipers were almost entirely ineffective against the sheets of rain. "Was that the sign for the county road?'' Lucy asked, peering out the car's window. "That's the way to-"
"We'll go to the resort where I'm staying, I think - that makes much more sense. The suite the university's provided is quite fine." Cooke looked over at her, now completely incapable of keeping the naked lechery off his face.
"Doctor!" Lucy said. "I insist that you-"
She stopped. He was ignoring her.
"Dr. Cooke!"
He drove on.
Lucy's breath quickened. She reached for the door handle, but Cooke grabbed her wrist, and anyway, he was driving too fast to make bailing out remotely sensible.
"The only reasonable thing," he said firmly, "is to retire to my suite and wait for the storm to blow over."
Lucy bit her lip as the car drove further into the thunderstorm, putting the turn-off to the Lodge further and further behind them.
=================
The Rituals of the Order - Part Four: The Passing of Forbidden Knowledge
The Far Reaches Resort was well outside Arkham and into the countryside, a rural retreat for the well-to-do. Relatives of Lucy's had once summered there, she recalled as her mind raced frantic laps around her unforeseen situation.
The rain was still pouring, lightning and thunder barking back and forth in angry debate. Lucy sought the valet's eyes as Cooke got out of the car in the turnaround, but saw the doctor press a bill into the man's hand and whisper something into his ear. The valet stood by as Cooke began to walk around the car.
Her hopes for the valet's aid dashed, Lucy yanked open the passenger door and jumped into the rain, but Cooke was right there, his meaty hand grabbing her bicep firmly.
"My suite is this way," he said.
Lucy glanced in the front door, where bright lights burned in the lobby. "We'll take the side stair," Cooke added.
* * *
Cooke locked the door behind them, Lucy shivered, her dress soaked. The suite comprised a sitting room, and a bedroom beyond. A breeze came through - perhaps there was a patio off the bedroom?
How had she wound up here, all but a prisoner to the repellant Cooke? Lucy was supposed to be delivering the doctor to the Lodge, not doing...whatever was about to happen.
Cooke grunted as he loosened his tie, pulling it off as he disappeared into the bedroom.
Lucy shivered, hugging her arms to her chest.
Cook(疑漏e) re-appeared with a thick bathrobe.
"Why don't you get changed." A direction, not a question.
"I'll call my friend Sally," Lucy said. "She'll come pick me up, or send the butler."
Cooke grunted. It amounted to "No."
Lucy changed her tactic. She allowed the faintest edge of a flirtatious smile, but withheld: "I can't very well stay in your suite. What will be said?"
"The front desk man and the valet will say you stayed in a different room. They're reliable, for a price."
Cooke unbuttoned his collar.
"I enjoyed your presentation," Lucy spit out, to say anything. She held the bathrobe like a shield. "Tell me more about the god of forbidden knowledge. You seem to have learned quite a lot."
Cooke's eyes animated; the subject was apparently one he found legitimately exciting. "Even more than can be told in public," he said.
"Oh?"
"This deity, who the savages take pains never to name, not only safeguards the forbidden but also seeks out those who've stolen such learning, to snuff out their lives and close the circle once more."
Cooke was standing close enough now that Lucy could smell his stale breath. His eyes were still animated. "I've found an ancient text that contains an incantation - a spell - for invoking the god's name to do just that. To kill. To snuff out lives."
Bare weeks ago, Lucy would have dismissed such talk as madness. Now, she wasn't so sure.
Suddenly, Cooke lunged at her. She squirmed, but he grabbed her and continued to press his mouth onto her.
Her hands scrabbled as he pressed her against the wall. She found something on the end table and brought it forcefully against the side of Cooke's head. He spit a fine mist of blood or saliva across her cheek. Then, he fell hard against her and slid to the ground.
* * *
"You're late," hissed Dart when he alone met Cooke's car - Lucy driving, the doctor laid out in back - in front of the mansion, the rain still pounding. "As your mentor, let me advise you that tardiness is not a path to advancement in the Order."
"It's lucky I'm here at all," she replied peevishly.
* * *
Lucy and Dart struggled under the corpulent academic's unconscious weight.
Dart led her to a staircase off the main corridor that she hadn't noticed the night of the **, so ingeniously was it concealed.
As they maneuvered Cooke down the stone staircase beyond, Lucy mentioned to Dart what Cooke had confided to her. "He says he's nearly learned the spell to...well, to kill someone who's learned something forbidden." She ended her tale as they arrived before a stout wooden door with a small iron grille in it.
Dart looked at her sharply. "He told you that?"
Lucy nodded.
"Anything more?"
She shook her head.
Dart didn't do anything for a minute, then said, "Help one get him in here."
Lucy assisted Dart in maneuvering Cooke into what amounted to a dungeon cell. When they were done, Mr. Dart nodded, then said, "There's something I need to show you."
Dart led her further down the basement corridor. He thrust a key into the lock of another door and opened it. "There," he said, taking a torch from the wall and handing it to her.
Lucy took the light and stepped into the small, dark, empty room. "There's nothing-"
The door slammed behind her, and the key turned in the lock.
"Simon!" she cried, using Dart's Christian name, perhaps the first time she'd ever uttered it.
"Speaking of forbidden knowledge, you may also know too much, Miss Jennings," said Dart.
"What?!" she cried.
Dart pocketed his keys and retreated up the corridor, leaving Lucy in a dank cell, her torch already beginning to sputter.
"No!" she howled.
Dart didn't turn back.
The Rituals of the Order - Part Five: A Prisoner of Knowing
by Jeff Tidball
Lucy sat alone in the dark cell beneath the Garfield mansion. Its floor was cold and damp but not quite wet. It smelled like dirt and worms. The torch she'd been carrying had lasted for a time - how could she possibly tell how long? - and then gone out unceremoniously.
She'd tried yelling, then screaming.
The torches in the hallway (she could see their faint light through the metal grille in the door) had also gone out eventually.
Lucy shivered, still wearing the dress she'd worn to Professor Cooke's presentation at the beginning of the night. The dress now seemed like it had lasted all summer.
Lucy eventually fell asleep. What else could she do?
* * *
"Wake up, dear," came a voice.
Lucy started awake, jumping halfway to readiness.
The voice chuckled. There was a light visible through the grille - flickering torchlight - and a face. She couldn't see the face clearly. She stood.
"Tell me what Cooke told you," the voice said.
"He didn't tell me anything. This is all a mistake."
"You told Mr. Dart that he told you something."
"Nothing noteworthy."
"Your mentor is mistaken?"
Lucy moved toward the door, the better to see the man to whom the voice belonged. He stepped back, a middle-aged man with a lantern. The man from Miskatonic, from the History Department. "To withhold knowledge from those of greater rank is punishable," he noted.
Lucy swallowed, "Mr. Dart must have misheard me. Or misunderstood."
The man nodded. He turned to leave.
"Wait!" called Lucy.
"We won't forget about you." said the man without turning back to her.
He said something else a moment after that. She thought it sounded like, "Twilight never forgets."
* * *
Lucy slept again. Had it been a day? Two? She began to fear thirst would drive her mad.
She tried screaming again, for help or even just attention.
She slept again.
* * *
Lucy woke to footsteps approaching and a faint light outside her cell. She jumped into a position low and behind where the door would open.
"We're going to open the cell," came the voice she'd spoken to earlier.
Lucy leapt out the door when it opened, grasping for the man, who recoiled, surprised, stumbling.
Lucy screeched, clawing at him, but something thick and black fell over her head and rough hands grabbed her from behind.
A blow fell onto her head.
* * *
Lucy came to in the chamber where she'd first been inducted, awakened by a bucket of cold water. She spasmed and gasped, discovering that she was shackled to the floor.
The Lodge surrounded her, clad in their robes. Dart stood next to Garfield and the man who'd questioned her.
Professor Cooke was dragged in, his face bruised, his arms lacerated. Two men shackled him near Lucy. Three of Cooke's fingers dripped blood where their nails had been ripped off. "He said nothing," reported one of the two.
"The mirror, then," said Garfield.
A pair of cultists produced what Lucy supposed was a mirrors covered in a cloth. They brought it to where Cooke lay. When he saw it, his eyes grew wide. He shook his head with a piteous lament and began to shiver.
"Brother White?" asked Garfield.
The man who'd questioned her - White, apparently - circled behind Cooke and stood there. Cooke threw himself onto the ground, facedown.
"Uncover it," said White. "Hold him," he directed to no one in particular.
While the two with the mirror pulled off its covering, two other cultists jumped from their places and grabbed Cooke, who fought desperately. White stood with his hands clasped behind his back while Cooke was dragged to his knees and the two with mirror adjusted it.
Cooke howled, bellowing louder than Lucy had imagined possible.
Lucy couldn't see into the mirror from where she was shackled, but as Cooke and White stared into it. Cooke's expression went slack and White's eyes opened impossibly wide.
Lucy saw White's hair blow back as though a gale had burst from the mirror, and she saw Cooke's face literally explode outward in a shower of blood and brain. Cooke's body fell limp, and the pair holding him let him fall with a wet thud. Lucy screamed.
After a moment, the wind abated. White looked at Dart, then at Garfield. Then he looked at Lucy.
"He told her of the spell." White said plainly.
Dart's gaze on her was like stone. "Return her to her cell," he said. "She holds knowledge in excess of her rank in our Order. She is sentenced."
"So be it," chanted those circling her, in unison.
* * *
Two strong men hauled Lucy between them down the corridor. She hung limply, her feet dragging on the stones of the floor. The pair turned to the doorway that led into the dungeons--and Lucy leapt! She shoved her body into one of the men with all her might, knocking him off balance and down the stairs. She grabbed the other's hair and smashed his head into the corner of the door frame. Then she turned and ran down the corridor and across the parquet of the ballroom.
She gasped great lungs-full of air, every limb trembling from exertion, fatigue, and lack of nourishment. From behind her, she heard shouts of alarm.
She arrived at the main door and threw her body into it. She saw the free air beyond and ran into the night.
=================
The Rituals of the Order - Part Six: Grim Tests and Severe Consequences
by Jeff Tidball
Lucy knew there was a carriage house behind the main building and her first impulse was to race there to recover Cooke's car, but as she turned that way she realized she'd never get it started in time.
Lucy changed course to head for the tree line. It was nearly a hundred yards away over rolling fields, but it was dark (how many days and nights had passed?), and she thought that perhaps the darkness would hide her.
She glanced over her shoulder to see the first pursuers stop just outside the mansion's main entry. Lucy kicked her shoes away - once pretty, now worse than useless - and ducked her head as she ran, hoping a low profile would aid concealment.
There was shouting. Had they seen her?
She slowed to risk another glance over her shoulder. A knot of figures had accumulated outside the door. Then she heard a hound bays and her blood ran cold. Dogs.
Lucy had made the tree line without being spotted, but an hour later her plight was no less grave than it had been. The wood turned out to be small - less than an acre - and as nearly the only place she could have hidden and not already have been found, the cultists had surrounded the wood and then sent in teams with dogs.
Lucy pressed herself down into a low place and listened to the men in the search parties calling to each other. Her feet bled from running over the rocky ground.
She saw the group of three men and two dogs closest to her coming up on her trail. The men had rifles.
Lucy knew she couldn't stay still. She doubled back on her trail about twenty yards off from it, heading back in the direction she had come from. She managed to get past them, keeping a careful eye on their progress...
...but not paying enough attention to where she was putting her feet. Lucy stepped into a hole, rolling her ankle. Fire shot up her leg and she cried out.
The three men and their dogs were after her in an instant, the men fanning out and bringing their rifles up. Lucy bit her lip to prevent herself from crying out again when she tried to put weight on her foot. Tears rolled down her cheeks.
She crouched down as best she could in the hollow of a tree.
One of the three men approached...
...stepped past...
...and Lucy lunged, grabbing for his gun.
The man cried out, alerting his fellows, but Lucy managed to swing the barrel under his chin, and the man's own backpedaling jarred his finger on the trigger and sent an eruption of brain and gristle from the top of his head.
Lucy yanked the gun from his hands, but had only just managed to get her finger inside the trigger-guard when everything flared to white and she fell.
Lucy lay still in her cell. The same one as before, she imagined, although there was no telling.
It pained her to move - made her head ring, made her ankle scream, re-opened scabs on her bare feet.
After her capture in the wood, she had been brought directly to the ritual chamber and Garfield and the others hastily re-assembled, all of them dirty and indignant at her flight.
"Kill me, then, if that's your plan," Lucy had spat at them.
"There are far worse fates," Garfield had said. "And more useful."
Lucy had seen Cooke die, and shuddered to think what Garfield might suppose was worse.
Lucy heard footsteps approach in the hall outside her cell, but saw no light.
"It's your own fault it's come to this," Dart's voice hissed out of the darkness.
Lucy couldn't bring herself to respond.
Something clattered to the stones on the inside of her cell, something metal.
"One last kindness," he said. "Although you'd best act quickly." She heard Dart scamper away.
Lucy felt around on the floor until her fingers found the object - a dagger. To kill herself?
She had no doubt she'd be better off dead than live to see whatever fate awaited her.
Lucy took the dagger in both hands and put its point against her breast, exactly where Dart had lain the dagger used in her initiation.
(Was this that same weapon?)
Lucy steeled her will to end her life.
And it occurred to her suddenly, in a flash of insight, that perhaps she was being tested.
After all, would Dart truly provide her the means to take her own life in direct contradiction to whatever sentence had been pronounced on her?
A flash of memory came to her from that night in the library, the first night she'd come to this godforsaken mansion. A passage she'd read in the Esoteric Commandment:
"...and the initiates at each rank shall be tested before advancing to the next, grim tests and severe, to prove their loyalty beyond any doubt, and let those who fail the test fall to their ends..."
Lucy felt the dagger's sharp tip pressed against her flesh.
All was silent, but inside Lucy's head, battle raged - a war of thoughts between self-preservation and the sure knowledge that there was no such thing as sure knowledge.
Lucy wondered if she'd gone mad.
She gripped the knife, and...
