Chapter 1: A Glorious Morning

The glowing shine of morning graced Cotwick Alley in the early hours of the day, and with it, the beginnings of movement revealed itself as the street prepared for the great deal of business it would soon receive.

A stranger to the town mightn’t have thought Cotwick Alley would be a particularly busy place, with its cramped walkway, barely wide enough for two men to walk shoulder to shoulder, and looming buildings casting shadows on pedestrians even when the sun reaches its zenith. That stranger would be wrong, of course; Cotwick Alley was home to all manner of wizards, witches, and practitioners of the arcane arts and as such, was a bustling hub of activity at times.

Every day starts the same: first, the sole baker of the street, a heavyset man with broad shoulders and an easy laugh, returns with two large sacks of flour he had gone out for earlier. Walking through his door alongside the morning sun signals to the rest of the street to awaken. First Alchemical Cures and Remedies puts out an Open doorplate alongside its neighbour Academical Chemicals, then the new apprentice of Odelore the Great, a timid boy of 14 ambles up to the latter to restock on various supplies he used practicing his spellcraft the previous day. On Saturdays, he stops by the bakery on the way back to buy bread, though the baker always includes a pastry, if any remained unsold the previous day. Next, the enchanter opens up shop, then the positively ancient wizard, who folks say discovered the secret to immortality 50 years too late rises. Soon, over the span of five or so odd minutes, the entire street is packed with apprentices, servants and runners, all doing morning errands before regular business starts.

From every door, tired apprentices or shopkeepers would emerge and populate the street to go about their early morning business preparing for the day. Well, every door but one. On a normal day, the dilapidated remains of some old alchemist’s shop remained empty, devoid of activity since a magical fire had scorched the beautiful enchanted pine timbers of the lower floor black and green. The upper floor slouched over the street below in a comfortable stoop as was common with the local architecture. On a normal day, this abandoned shop was quietly indifferent to the morning throng.

Today though, was not a normal morning. Everything started right: the baker, the apprentices, and the herb shops, but as the hubbub of morning filled the air, a most peculiar sound could be heard from the second floor of this abandoned shop and it filled the air over the noise of the street below. A yowl of a cat whose tail has been trodden upon combined with the hopeless scream of a young woman would be a good way of describing this sound, for it is not a sound so easily described with words.

Such unusualness was not totally unexpected in Cotwick Alley, and it gave those passing by pause, but most shrugged it off, preferring to keep their noses out of other peoples’ business in hopes that others might return their courtesy. Poking around into someone else’s secrets was greatly frowned upon around these parts, and many arcane practitioners clutched their secrets with such fervour that not even death could force them to impart their knowledge.

If someone were to venture into the house, and climb the stairs the still intact stairs, they would encounter, flopping around on the floor like fish trying to walk, a man and a woman, both unclothed, and both thoroughly startled by their predicament, and it is here, in this abandoned shop where the story starts.