Hollow Empire: Episode 1 (Night of Knives)

By John McGuire and J Edward Neill

Once, the empire of Vhur was the world's most powerful. But that was before the Lichy plague. Now, twenty years and millions of dead later, only a few cities remain. The survivors walk a fine line between staying alive and crumbling into the grave.

Come the Night of Knives, even these last few might perish.

This Dark Fantasy Serial begins here and will be released over the course of the next 6 weekends.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John McGuire
• Release date: Sep 20, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310397455

John McGuire

John McGuire is an engineer by day and writer by night. He attended Georgia Tech to obtain a civil engineering degree. While his left brain absorbed information on E-mag, Calculus, Statics, Dynamics, Structures and Road Design; his right brain devoured the works of Jack London, Mark Twain, Anne Rice, Alan Moore, Kurt Busiek, and Mark Wade. Today, John is a registered professional engineer and professional writer.His love and collection of comic books began when he was 10, in a convenience store in Waycross, Georgia. It wasn’t long afterwards when he started writing his first comic related stories. This passion has continued throughout his adult life as he remains an avid comic book reader and collector.In 2002, he was a founding member of Terminus Media. It began as a writer’s collective in the back of the Dragon’s Horde Comic Book Store in Decatur, GA. Through the next decade Terminus, published anthologies in which John was both an editor and contributor. The Gilded Age, published in 2013, is his first on-going series. The relationship with Terminus also grew into some Work for Hire opportunities for both corporate and government entities.In 2009, John joined Headhunta Studios, a collective of Artists and Writers. In 2013, Tiger Style was published by Arena Comics. John currently has projects in production for Arena Comics.In 2010, John took the story telling skills that he had learned and applied them to the writing of novels and short stories. The Dark That Follows is John McGuire’s debut Novel.John McGuire currently resides in Suwanee Georgia with his wife, Courtney, and two cats: Westley, and Inigo.He maintains that he would have been a Marine biologist, if not for Jaws.

Book preview

Hollow Empire

Night of Knives

Episode 1

John R McGuire & J Edward Neill

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Hollow Empire – Night of Knives – Episode 1

Cover Design by http://amandamakepeace.com/

All rights reserved

To my parents for teaching me that an imagination is to be used and that to create new things is magical.

John R McGuire

To the night, without whom I’d have little reason to suffer the day.

J Edward Neill

Table of Contents

World Map

Prologue

Vadim

Nadya

Cassidy

Murgul

Ranier

And there were none who wept for any death, for everyone expected to die. And so many died, that everyone thought it to be the end of the world…

Agnolo di Tura,Cronaca Senese

You… none of you… are godly men.

If you were, you would not be seated here before me. The earth would be your chapel, and the worms your parishioners. For it is said no living man can truly know God, as no living man has chanced to meet him. And so the truth behind God’s word is plain. The closest we may come to Him is not here, kneeling on these floors of stone, but out there…in death.

I have read this in His gospels, and so I have come to understand. The veil of the living world obscures our view of God. It clouds us, distracts us, and fills our little heads with the currency of human weakness. Whereas death is freedom, life is imprisonment. We may find it hard to believe, hard to accept that our instinctual fears could be so wrong. But to the doubting man I would say; which of us is most at peace? The poor pitiful serf scratching out his days for the scraps off his master’s table or the long-dead soul sitting at God’s side, smiling contentedly for his utter lack of pain, hunger, or mortal want?

So ask yourselves, my servants; are you working in God’s name? By throwing coppers at the poor, by healing the sick just enough to survive, and by mourning the departed as though wishing to wrench them back into the world, are you truly bringing men closer to God…or are you tearing them farther away? Perhaps it is time you reconsider yourselves. Look down upon your hands and wonder whether you are wielders of His might or whether you have spent your lives building prisons for His people. Before you sleep tonight, consider it. Ask yourselves if you are the holiest men in Vhur…or the most corrupt.

For those who arrive at the obvious conclusion, I applaud your humility. For the rest, I advise you to rethink your position. For we have discussed it, God and I

And we agree there is no room for dissonance.

- Excerpt from the seven sermons of Ulka, High Pontiff of Vhur

Vadim

The splintering door shattered Vadim’s peaceful sleep. A booming voice ripped through the early morning tranquility.

You slept with my wife!

His instincts took over, and he threw himself to the floor beside the bed in an effort to avoid the oncoming blow… that never came. Furniture exploded, a man roared again, and yet Vadim’s room lay seemingly undisturbed. Daring himself to peek at the carnage, he raised his head up so that his eyes were above the lip of the bed, just over the edge of the sheets.

And saw only his guest from the previous evening…

Hilda? Rayne?

She met his blue-eyed gaze, Is there something amiss, milord?

I thought…, Vadim caught a glimpse of himself in the full-length mirror along the wall beside him and observed his predicament; his manhood exposed and him cowering on the floor. No way for one of the King’s Men to behave. He stood up allowing his six-foot frame to come to its full height. It was not the nudity that brought awkwardness, but his stumbling and fumbling about on the floor. In