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Reishi.”
    Jataan was almost impressed, but he was even more concerned. The man he’d sent to kill Darius Valentine was a well-trained assassin and he’d failed. This young man was a poor excuse for a soldier. Clearly he would not succeed, and there was still the matter of the beast in the circle eyeing the young man intently.
    Phane stood. “I know that you do.” He looked almost touched by the show of loyalty.
    When the young soldier stood and stepped aside from the chair, Phane stepped into him, planted his bloody left hand on the soldier’s chest, and shoved him backward into the circle of horrors. Jataan stiffened imperceptibly.
    The young soldier fell into the waiting arms of the shadow beast trapped in the circle of blood. A look of shock and disbelief sprang to the young man’s face. Phane smiled warmly; Jataan’s blood ran cold as the insubstantial beast swirled into a dark and inky shadow that engulfed the soldier.
    Jataan P’Tal could see the dying man try to scream but no sound came out of the black vortex that surrounded him. Then the darkness began to flow into the soldier while his body stood limp as if it were being held up by puppeteer strings. When the darkness had completely invaded the soldier, his body fell in a heap on the ground.
    For a long moment he didn’t move. Then he slowly stood. What Jataan P’Tal saw behind those dark eyes was no longer human, no longer a thing of the world of life.
    “I have given you a soul, now you will do my bidding. Do you agree?” Phane asked the possessed corpse before him. The husk of the soldier replied with a sound that was not human, could not be human. Jataan didn’t understand but Phane seem satisfied with the response. “Very good. You will hunt and kill young Alexander Valentine. You may have any soul that gets in your way.” The man that was no longer a man began to tremble with anticipation.
    “Kludge!” Phane bellowed into the darkness around him; not a moment later the shadows coalesced into another creature of the netherworld. This one Jataan P’Tal recognized.
    It was an imp.
    His level of discomfort was rising with each new revelation about the character of his Prince. Jataan P’Tal was not a particularly good man but he wasn’t evil either. He was a man sworn to serve, trained from birth to be loyal to the Reishi line. He had never considered the true cost of that loyalty, until now.
    An imp was a creature of the netherworld, a being of malice and evil. Jataan P’Tal had never actually seen one before but he had seen renderings in old magical texts. He knew they only manifested in the world of the living when summoned as a familiar by a very powerful, and very evil, wizard.
    The little demon stood about a foot and a half tall with three clawed fingers on each hand. It had leathery batlike wings and a tail ending in a sharp black spike. Its hide was ashen grey leather that hung loosely on its humanoid form. Its head was bald and smooth and the skin of its face was pulled tight. Its nose was narrow and sharp but not as sharp as the row of dirty-looking, spike-like teeth behind its thin black lips. It wore only a loincloth with a small knife hanging from its belt.
    As distasteful as this little monster was, the thing that bothered Jataan the most was its hateful yellow eyes. When it looked at him, he could see the calculating malevolence behind those close-set nightmare eyes. All in all, the little beast made his skin crawl.
    “Ah … there you are, Kludge.” Phane smiled warmly at his familiar. “I have a task for you. Take this zombie demon through the netherworld and deliver it to Valentine Manor on the Isle of Ruatha. Do you understand?”
    “Yes, Master.” Its voice was gravelly and dripped with fawning subservience. Kludge nodded and wrung its hands while its little wings beat feverishly to keep it hovering at eye level with Prince Phane.
    Jataan P’Tal had seen plenty of magic in the course of his life but nothing like the