Excerpt
“Hoot! Hoot! Hoot! Hoot!”
It keeps wailing in the night; the accursed bird sending shivers through my weary spine. I pace back and forth in my frail shelter, uneasy at the dreaded sound, wishing for it to stop. Yet, to no avail.
I instructed my retainers to shoo away those stygian beasts, for cannot stand their macabre emissions. The birds of Minerva scare me.
Yes, powerful Cardinal Lodovico Strigidi, shadow of the Pope, heir of the Ages, master of Rome, and defender of Holy Mother Church is afraid of an innocuous bird.
Innocuous? Ha! Maybe it is a harmless avian to the unwary mortals, but for me, descendant of Cain, and keeper of secrets, it represents doom and the End of Times. For I am a lich, an immortal thing.
I was reborn in the Year of Our Lord 1203, when venomous pain and unholy words sent me down the Abyss and brought me back to land of the living at the same time. I was powerful then, and was easily lured by the lust for more. It is said power corrupts. Perhaps it is true, but it is not power itself holding its sway on my already dark soul, for my unquenchable thirst for arcane knowledge was terrible even before my unholy transmogrification.
I’m even more powerful now, three-hundred years later, with gifts no mere mortal can comprehend, having rights of life and death in the Holy City. I can summon the storm, and part the shadow. I can converse with spirits beyond the veil of death. I can even command the dead to walk again!
“Hoot! Hoot! Hoot! Hoot!”
Cursed be you, odious bird, may the powers of Hell feast on your entrails! I’m alone, tonight, in this dismal tower, no servants, no guardians to accomplish my simple orders.
I killed all of them.