Uncle Janos was always a peculiar man, slightly odd,
but not in a threatening way. Just dif ferent, you see – a
bit too intere sted in the macabre, perha ps, but no more
than the average bored scholar. You know how these
bookworms can be, i solated from reality, from the blood,
the stench, and the squalor. I have seen a lot of them in
my family circle. My mother was in many ways the same. She did not
even give birth to me, and therefore never physically experienced the
connection between life, pain, and blood. For her, bodily f luids would
instead be exclusively associated with unhealthy desire s and death.
Of course, it bothered me when my dear uncle started spending time
with the poets in the graveyard; they met at night, reciting poetry over
open , empty graves or, even worse, to the decay. From there, perha ps
it was not such a big leap to enter the mausoleums as well, and do
the same in the direct vicinity of the dead. Then something happened;
what I do not know. The City Watch was called to the burial grounds
after someone had dug open a grave; shortly thereafter, one of the
poets wa s found dead in an other wise em pty crypt. That was when
I decided to confront my uncle, and went to see him.
I found him emaciated, exhausted, showing signs of madness, with
brui ses on his hands and dirt under hi s fingernail s. Still, he ensured
me that he wa s well, and that he no longer had anything to do with
the poets. To verify whether he was telling the truth, I waited out side
his house, and a s suspected, he climbed out of hi s bedroom window
wearing nothing but his nightgow n. I called out to him, and a s he
turned toward me, I was petr ified. Believe me, the eyes staring back
at me from Uncle Janos’ eye sockets were not his own.
Liveta, Adept of the Order, in her report to the Black Cloaks