Chapter One

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. FUCK.

Pan’s mind was shaken, and he was unable to form a coherent thought, aside from mental screams of pain and a few nonsensical strings of curse words. Everything had gone terribly wrong since the moment he had awoken. He remembered waking to the screams of his family, and the smell of smoke. He had burst out of his room in a flurry of rage and anger only to be seized by the skeletal hands of some unseen assailant. He had felt a painful blow to the back of his head, and the next thing he knew, he was here.

When his eyes opened he realized he was held aloft by some manacles shackled to his wrists and had a rag stuffed into his mouth. He struggled for only half moment before he realized that his thrashing only caused severe pain in his overexerted shoulders. He was hanging in the air after all. Looking around, Pan hoped to find some way to escape his current predicament. What his eyes landed on, however, was what he could only assume was his captor, as well as obviously a necromancer.

His profession was made clear by the skeletal assistants flanking him as he stirred what Pan could only guess was the vilest of concoctions. The skeletons were handing him ingredients as he called for them, all with predictably dreadful names. He was pretty sure the Elves Ears the cruel man called for were not the leaves of the vines often found crawling up old trees. And there was no other way to interpret the man's call for a Heart of Man. Pan was sufficiently disturbed by the sight of the man leaching the alchemical properties from such detestable ingredients, and was even more concerned when he considered whatever was being made was probably intended for him.

When Pan looked down he saw his feet dangled only inches over some strange formation that was carved into the unnaturally flat rock beneath his feet. At the center of the runic design was a small red gem. He felt some sort of energy emanating from the small marble, but before he could study it closer he heard a whistling sound and an excited laugh come from the direction of the necromancer. He looked over and saw the man was grinning madly, or at least the part Pan could see past his deep cowl. The mage, who looked almost as skeletal as his minions, started towards him. With a flick of his wrist, two skeletons started carrying the cauldron full of the result of whatever ghastly recipe the man had followed.

The man started checking the lines on the glyph below Pan’s feet. After checking the entirety of the twenty-foot diameter formation, he nodded and the skeletons slowly poured the concoction into the grooves. The fluid coming from the cauldron was a sickly red, and very thin. Despite this, it was entirely opaque and exuded an aura of dread. Pan knew he didn’t want that fluid anywhere near him, but he was helpless.

Suddenly, he was grabbed by the skeletal hands of his captor’s undead puppets, and his ankles were trapped in chains as well. Then they undid his wrists, as they hoisted him into the air by his feet. At the end of this maneuver, he found he was staring down at the gem, inches from his nose if he craned his neck to peer at it.

When he looked back up he could see the necromancer was sprinkling a powder along the lines of the rune. When he finished he went to a stone altar that was directly in from of Pan. The man opened an old tome that lay on the altar and started chanting in a twisting guttural tongue that Pan couldn’t even make out the sounds of. The words seemed to fall from his memory just as fast as the man spoke them. As the man chanted he could see a glow encompass the book. It was a deep red, like rotten blood, with black flecks in it. A similar aura started to leach out of the lines in the rune, and the liquid turned a brighter and more vibrant red.

The chant reached a crescendo, and the mage drew a dagger and slashed his wrist. He let the blood fall into a silver bowl one of his dutiful skeletons held for him. When he was done, another bandaged his wrist, as the one with the bowl approached Pan. The necromancer followed close behind, his bleeding stopped, and continued chanting. Another skeleton brought a stand for the bowl over by Pan’s head. He started thrashing now, his eyes wild with fear, as a primal instinct told him now was not the time to remain still. The mage cast a quick spell without breaking his chant, paralyzing Pan.

The man crouched in front of his face, cradled his head with a bony hand, and slashed his throat with the dagger. Pan’s world darkened in a flurry of blood and pain. He had no idea how the ritual proceeded after that, he was dead after all.