Pantheon Press

As we mentioned last week, our next book, Adversaries Almanac will be available on our store in the next few weeks. To pique your curiosity, we present an excerpt from the entry on "Emperor" Naron, a twisted sewer dweller who calls the vermin there his subjects. With art courtesy of Jesse Cutler. Enjoy!

EMPEROR NARON
The Naron family was blessed. Vodon Naron, head of the household and husband to Jelina Naron, was a very successful local politician. Many a district prospered under his fair representation. Jelina, daughter of a very influential shipping guild family, was an accomplished poet and artist whose works sold for not a tiny sum of money. When they were married their families rejoiced. What a great success this union would be! Truly their future was bright! They had three children all within a year of each other and all boys: Jerro, Piotr and Lorin. Jerro grew very tall and strong and aspired to be part of the military. Piotr was very smart and had a fierce curiosity for all things written. Then there was Lorin. He was...quiet. Lorin had no special skills or even had any ambitions to pursue any sort of career. Although his parents were very successful and his brothers were all coming along, Lorin never truly excelled. He was just not a part of the success of the Naron family. He seemed to choose not to succeed even when given every opportunity to do so. His parents and brothers were very disappointed in him. They told him so almost every day.

His studies were average at best. He had no desire to spend much time with any friends and it took monumental effort just to get him to speak to even his own family. But there were some things he did spend time with. When his family was hosting a garden party on their estate Lorin was often found in his family’s cellar feeding the rats, millipedes, and other vermin. After the family took a day trip to visit relatives, Lorin showed up at the coach dirty, stained, and smelling of dirt. This childhood phase became more and more of an obsession. Eventually he took to sneaking into the cellar to sleep, leaving the comfort of his opulent bedroom for the cold, musty dampness of the place he felt the most comfortable.

His brothers would tease him incessantly. They and their friends would sometimes find him outside under a tree petting and talking to an insect. When Lorin saw them coming he shooed the creature away and just sat there huddled with his arms wrapped around his knees as the taunts, punches, and pokes came. Eventually they would get bored and leave him. When he would return home, his mother naturally chided him for his being dirty and again banished him to his room after he got a painful scrubbing from her. Then the lecture from his father came. Again. As it always did. Speaking of success and how blessed he and his mother were and how his brothers showed great promise.

One day, things changed for Lorin and not in a very good way. As he was at a picnic with his family and relatives, he walked away from their spot and found a good-sized snail slowly inching across the roots of a large tree. He had a piece of bread with him that he crushed and moistened in a puddle nearby and placed it near the snail to see if he would perhaps enjoy eating it. Lorin sat near the creature against the tree to watch it. It was slow but it eventually reached the bread that was laid in its path and it slowly oozed onto it. Lorin, happy that his new friend was eating, relaxed and started to drift off to sleep in the cool shade of the tree. He was not asleep long when he awoke to a crunch. His brother Jerro stood over him, smiling. Piotr was not far behind, laughing so hard he was doubled over. Jerro lifted his foot and Lorin saw the crushed snail. Its greenish gray insides dripping down the root of the tree. Jerro quickly wiped his shoe on Lorin’s jacket as he sat in shocked despair. “Here is your friend, Lorin. You can keep him close to your heart, now.” Lorin looked down at the dripping ooze on his jacket then at the crunched snail shell, then at his cruel brothers laughing at him. Lorin, for the first time ever, stood up for himself. He launched furiously at Jerro, taking him off his guard and knocking him back onto the ground. Lorin punched and throttled his older brother with a fierceness no one ever though him capable. Piotr, shocked, tried to pull him off but Lorin would not be budged. As Jerro screamed, Piotr ran to tell the family. His father ran over and pulled Lorin off of his crying bloodied brother.

Incensed, his father slapped Lorin across the face. “You have disgraced your family for the last time!” He marched everyone abruptly away, ending the picnic, and headed home. When they arrived late in the evening, the servants had already gone home. As his wife tended to the injured Jerro, Vodon was alone in his study with Lorin. He told him that he would be notifying the headmaster at the military academy that Lorin would be their newest student. He was going to send Lorin away to be taught discipline and proper behavior. Come the morning, Lorin would no longer be a burden on his family and he will be whipped into shape by the sternest tutor in the academy.

As Lorin sat there, hearing his father scream and screech about sending him away he felt oddly soothed by a feeling of cold peace. He could have sworn he could hear chittering, scratching, and squeaking. What was even odder his father heard it too and looked around. As his father peered into his fireplace the sounds got louder and louder until a wave of rats, insects and other vermin vomited forth from the fireplace. Then from cracks in the floorboards. Then bubbling up from the first floor windows. They swarmed over Lorin’s father as he screamed and slapped at them uselessly. Lorin watched as their tiny mouths tore pieces from his father’s clothes and flesh, he stared as tiny stingers and mandibles pierced his father’s flesh and injected him with venoms a thousand times. Still feeling a cold sense of calm, Lorin stood up and listened. A cacophony of buzzing and squeaking among the sounds of muffled screams emanating from the vermin-choked mouths of his entire family filled the Naron home. His mother and brothers met the same fate as his father. He smiled a wicked smile as the swarms finished their work and, as if in celebration crawled to Lorin and amassed at his feet and simultaneously buzzed, clacked, clicked and squeaked as if cheering and paying respect to their lord and master. Among the carpet of vermin were two huge dire rats who placed tokens at his feet. They were somewhat crude but were adorned with the markings of Oloren, the Blackened. He was still laughing as he left his home forever, the bloody, swollen bodies of his family left in tortured death poses.