Cynorath was a short, bent man, with flesh the color of milk and the thinness of paper. His sunken eyes were as bloodshot as eyes could be. His lips were stained purple from imbibing too many of the occult elixirs his master fed him, and he moved strangely, one moment standing still, the next having crossed two strides in one step. As he stalked past torchlight, the edges of his form seemed to become hazy and unclear, as if exposure to the guttering flames was causing him to become unmoored from the world.
He moved down a hall of dark stone deep underground, far beneath Castle Gate in the farthest inhabited edge of the Duchy of Southreach. As he moved, his hairless head jerking from side to side at each fork in the hallway before he turned right, then at the next fork turning left, he whistled a warbling tune through his yellowed teeth that seemed to sharpen to points in the dim light. He was the Hand of Darkness, or, to the sunlit world, the Appointed Emissary of the Lord Gate.
He at last strode into a vast chamber, two hundred feet and thrice as far across, which was lit by a great fire that burned emerald. The phantasmal fire was contained within a circle of stones half as tall as the bent man, all of them carved with ancient and twisted runes that made most men nauseous when gazed upon. In front of the fire, facing away from Cynorath, stood the Master of the Sorcery Beneath, Warlock Lord of the South, the secret scheming mage who spent his nights in the labyrinth of ritual rooms he had established for himself long ago. Lord Solomon Gate was a tall man, over six feet tall, and his shadow seemed to bend and shift into a more monstrous form in the light of the blazing green fire. He was sixty years old, but looked in public to be half that age. In his private chambers far beneath the earth, he could cast off the form he wore among the pitiful creatures who called themselves lords and ladies, and reveal the many-limbed, shifting abomination he was in truth.
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Cynorath prostrated himself before the Lord, some two hundred feet away, and waited. He did not sweat anymore, not after the Lord’s many gifts, and he did not grow bored or weary easily. After more than an hour, the master ceased his chanting and turned in the direction of his most devoted servant. “Cynorath. I have gazed into the flames. The Exalted One across the sea has spoken to me through them. You must go to the Dreadhold, and to the town of Cinder, wherein you will find a child of the north who will spell great tribulation for the Armies of Night if they are allowed to take root. Find them and kill them before it is too late.”
Cynorath nodded furiously, still facing the ground, bent over so as to not allow his eyes to fall upon the holy visage of the master. “I will, I will find this foolish creature, Your Lordship. I will cut its throat and drink its blood, and I will bring it’s head back to you to show you that I have done well.”
Lord Gate smiled with a dozen mouths. “Good. Rise, my greatest servant, and go now to do my will. Make haste.”
In three breaths, Cynorath was off of the ground and sprinting back the way he came, at ten times the speed he had arrived.