Prologue

The man couldn't move. He could feel ropes biting into the skin on his wrists, cutting off circulation. His feet were numb, legs pulled tight and bound similarly. He had no recollection of how he had gotten in this predicament. Gagged and blindfolded, he couldn't call out for help or see anything. He struggled against the bindings with all the strength he could muster. They didn't budge. He realized he could hear faint whispers of something. Not conversation, the voices were hushed and seemed to repeat after a bit. Someone touched his leg and he winced in spite of himself, letting out a small yelp through the gag.

"Shhhh." a feminine voice soothed him. "Be calm, it will all be over soon." She touched his leg again and he realized he wasn't wearing pants. Or any clothes it felt like for that matter. He struggled again, calling out through the gag impotently. "Let me give you something for the nerves." A quick stab of a needle in his shoulder startled him and he yelped again. The woman stroked his hair, cooing and shushing again. She pulled the blindfold up over his forehead and he was temporarily blinded by bright white light.

As his eyes adjusted he was able to take in his surroundings: a sterile white room with an incredibly bright overhead light. He strained his neck to find a door or a window but the room offered no escapes. His head was pulled back and he saw his detainer. A beautiful brunette, dark eyes, dark makeup. Also naked as a jaybird. He blushed and moved his eyes away from the swell of her chest and back to her eyes.

"Soon." She told him. "Soon you will have the pleasure, the privilege, of offering your essence to your Keeper. You will live forever through another, your life adding to the power given by the Numen." With a scrape of metal on metal, she picks up a knife from the table he was bound to. He screams his dissent through the gag, the ropes tearing his skin as he pulls ever more fervently at them. She moves the blindfold back over his eyes, covering the frantic looks and tears.

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He reels against the next touch. So sure was he that it would be a knife plunging between his ribs. While the touch was forceful, he didn't feel any pain from it. And it wasn't the woman touching him. The hand felt dry, scraping against his clammy skin. Another hand on his chest. And another on his ankle. Then the sensation of a hundred different hands all over his body. The sensation was foreign and overwhelming. He stopped writhing against the touch and just sobbed into the gag. The blindfold is suddenly ripped forcibly off of him and this time he is blinded by darkness, its like only know to moonless nights in the deep woods.

A sickly green light trickles in from a grate on the floor and he realizes that he had been moved during the assault of the hundred hands. He is now upright, his arms and legs bound anew as if crucified. In the dim light, he sees someone approaching him and he thinks it the woman. But this one is different, her skin bulging and sagging with age and sickness, her scalp home to frayed tufts and bloody patches. The one recognizable feature, her eyes still dark and darker still is the threat of violence shining through them. And the knife she wields. The man looks around frantically for escape and sees that his bindings are no longer rope but dozens of skeletal hands holding him tighter that the ropes.

The hands slowly start moving to engulf him as she approaches. He screams, the gag no longer enough to keep him silent.

"Soon." the woman says through gritted, broken teeth.

"NO! Please don't! I don't want to die!" The hands continue their progress, covering his nudity. The woman stops.

"Die? I told you." She says as she lifts the blade and draws it back. "You will live forever." She pushes the knife slowly into his heart. Cupping the running blood in her hands, she sips at it like it was water from a well. Greenish bolts of electricity arcing around the woman, now more beautiful than before, eyes glowing like embers.

That's the last thing the man sees before one hundred hands completely envelope him.