“Ravenwood is my home. It was my father’s home and his fathers before him. And by the gods my children will inherit my lands. We were here before this evil came. Before these monsters took over the night. I want to know whats coming.”
A young woman sat opposite me at a round table mid shuffle of a deck of cards. Expertly she cut the deck, shuffled, and set it down.
“I supposed this is the part where you ask me to pick a card?”
She grinned.
“No. Asking you to pick a card implies that you have a choice. You have no choice about what is coming.”
She scooped up the cards, reconstituted the deck, shuffled and drew a single card from the top of the pile. Without looking at it she flicked it in my direction. The card spun in the air and landed near the edge of the table, face up.
An ivory skull adorned on the card looked back at me with its dead empty eyes. Its skeleton body held a bloodied sword above its hand and behind it piles and piles of corpses. Beneath the skull hung lettering as black as night.
DEATH.