Prelude
#1 of Divinity
A bolt of storm light split the sky, rushing down as if the heated anger of the gods themselves, revealing a scene the captain would never forget as he tried to lash down the wheel to the bow of the ship. It had been folly to leave in this weather, but his patron had demanded it. A decision he regretted before he even made it. The lightning reached down to the forward mast, missing the ship. Another bolt streaked down, forking towards the central mast. His crew, he noticed with pride, had ignored the storm, and were furiously tying off rope and maintaining the deck, even as doom came upon them, creeping up as it seemed to the captain, though it was over in a matter of seconds.
The bolt split the mast dow the middle, racing down the length like it was made of metal. The roar deafened the captain, the blast dazzled his sights. They could still make it to shore, and damn the request to stay in this hellish storm! The ship groaned as gravity took over, a half of the mast falling to either side, ropes snapping in all directions as they lost the main sail. Crew hacked at the root of the main mast, trying to rid the ship of the useless driftwood that blocked the deck now, slowing down their escape from the storm's grasp as the wood dragged to either side through the water. The deck hatch opened up, a figure emerging from the bowels of the ship, revealing a hooded, robed figure. The customer. The Customer, the captain mentally corrected himself. Never mind that the bulky six foot tall man was a rat. Literally. A distant flash revealed the beady eyes, the snout, even the tip of his tail as the Customer rounded the stairs up to the wheel of the ship where the captain stood.
"Are you as daft as you are rich? Get below deck!" The captain roared. He pointed down for emphasis, almost losing grasp of the third knot he was tying in the process. The hooded man-rat shook his head, pointing off the ship, in to the distance, silent. Land peeked out from the horizon. The Customer ignored the captain now, climbing up the rigging with as much dexterity as one would expect from such a creature. Scampering up the ropes, he reached the top of one of the remaining two masts with ease, reaching within his robe, procuring a large, spherical object that seemed black even against the night sky. Lightning blinded the captain as it raced for the Idiot, he thought to himself. Thunder roared once more. The rat stood unharmed, gripping the very top of the mast with one hand, another reaching out and over it to hold up the object. Shore crawled closer, taking a lifetime to the captain to approach. Whatever the Customer had done, it had worked. They were saf-
The object returned the lightning to the sky. It would be more accurate, however, to say that it returned the opposite. A bolt of black lightning, absorbing and warping the light around it, shot up in to the sky, and the sky answered. The clouds began to break cleanly, as if a shattered pane of glass. The captain watched on with dread as light flickered from overhead, in all directions, racing back to echo with a thousand times the number of bolts, ten thousand times the strength of that single bolt. The egg took it all, bearing the hateful intensity of the entire storm's cry of anger. Then, there was silence, the clouds breaking apart, the rain slowly coming to a stop. The captain squinted through his blurry vision, watching the rat come down the mast. Once he was safely atop the deck, he slumped down, sitting on the deck. The captain rushed to him, patting the rat on the shoulder.
"Are you alright? Sir?" The captain demanded. The bastard better not have up and died on him before he could pay. The rat pulled back his hood, his right ear twitching. A slow nod. The captain more closely examined the situation. The rain had ceased now, but water still poured from the Customer's eyes. He hugged the inky black object tightly. The captain looked down. It... well, it was black. There was nothing he could put to mind to describe it. It had no texture. It seemed to be pulling the light in around it. It was simply a round, black, thing. The rat-man let it roll out of his hands as he stood up, placing a furred hand on the man's pale skinned shoulder. He whispered a word in his strange language, a word which, despite the language barrier, was clearly an apology. Then the egg detonated.