The Leader of house Chu'rook was very displeased. He had paid a substantial amount to get a job done, and it hadn't been done. And the implication of the job not being done, well, were displeasing. Could no one cause the fall of the Hero Of The Plains? He was displeased because he needed Benedict Likan dead to continue his plans. Well, perhaps needed was the wrong word. He wanted Benedict dead, because if Benedict hears that Chu'rook had murdered the leaders of Wizen'ed and Lethr, Chu'rook would be as dead as surely as the assassin had assured Chu'rook that Benedict would be. 'Oh well,' Chu'rook sighed to himself, 'It never was going to be a walk in the park.'
He walked forwards, exactly 2.33 meters, and held his breath. Still no traps sprung up around him. He consulted the piece of parchment in his hand, and old and shriveled leaf, lost until three months ago, when Chu'rook, at the cost of many lives, had found this little leaf of parchment, hardly a hand's area, but what was written on the piece of paper would be worth more than the lives of the thirty or forty humans that had died retrieving it for him. He stepped left twice, then braced himself for a flat-footed jump.
The room Chu'rook was in would have turned even the most contented dragon's eye. Piles and piles of gold filled the room, but could not be reached. Racks of gems, thousands of Rungs worth of valuable items, artifacts that could topple empires, scrolls telling of lost spells and summonings, many of which were the last copies, but Chu'rook didn't even look at these. The only thing he was looking at was the half-cog at the end of the room. He jumped, his toes only just landing on the bottom stairs of the massive altar the half-cog was resting on.
Many people would have gone for the enchanted armor, or weapons, or summonings or spells, but Chu'rook knew they were all peripheral, all those items could give him the leverage this cog would. Well, this half-cog.
The stairs took no time to scale, Chu'rook's eagerness taking him up those stairs than his legs ever could. He picked up the cog, and bent his knees at the weight. It was about thirty centimeters in diameter, or it would have been if the other part was present. 'The legendary Half-Cog of Anamenthaya,' breathed Chu'rook, placing in the bag that swung at his hip.
He turned, and, not even batting an eyelid at the other powerful artifacts in the room, he walked from the altar to the door, not worried at the traps that have certainly reduced him to just another treasure hunter that had perished looking for the Half-Cog of Anamethaya before he had picked it up. An equal amount of treasure hunters had never returned form their venture looking for the Half-Cog of Agamentya, the half-cog's other half.
The Cog had always been an obsession for Chu'rook, ever since he had read a scroll about it as a child. Now, after an intense decade of half-burned manuscripts and dead ends, he had the Half-cog; the proof that he wasn't like the fool everyone thought he had been, his leverage in the council and in the coming war, and proof to that miserable, insufferable, Likan.
The Beings were much like many of the ancient religions. There was a particular Being for each aspect of life. The Being that represents lycanthropy truly does justice to the title. There is no other species but 'Being' for it was like nothing the other Beings had created. All the reckless power of a werewolf, with none of the wisdom, or physical restraints. Nothing could stop this terrible beast, it would have plagued Earth and Avalon until no life remained, and then he would have turned of the other Beings. A plan was hatched to stop the beast, a sleep so deep and so peaceful that a thousand earthquakes may resound around him and he would not stir. There was one thing to guard Lycanthropus, a cloud of grief and hate that fed off emotions, stealing them from nearby life forms. One thing could wake Lycanthropus, a bell forged from Mythril, which required exactly one-hundred-and-forty-nine cogs all in the right place, all the right size, to toll. It currently sported one-hundred-and-forty-eight. The Half-Cog of Anamenthaya, the Being word for female, and the Half-Cog of Agamentya, the Being word for male, made up the Lost Cog of The Bell of Mythril. Now clan Chu'rook had the female half, and his trusty second was retrieving the male half.
Chu'rook would have stopped to admire the treasure room of Cetis, the sea-dragon king, but he was on a schedule. Cetis would return soon, and though Chu'rook didn't doubt the dragon would be no match for his skills, he didn't want to fight the creature. No, it was not a schedule set by Hafestus' comings and goings. It was a schedule set by the self-proclaimed king of the humans, Frederik. They would meet in three hours, and if they were deals to be struck, Chu'rook did not want to miss the opportunity.
