LIAR OF WHISPERS

The second silence that fell after Marco's foreboding words was heavier with deeper dread. Luca's secret heritage hung over them, a cloud over their already dire destinies. The Serpent's Eye, which they also attacked as a tool to use against Marco, now lay with the awful power of discovery that would shatter Luca's very identity. What did he tell her, 'Vittorio was chosen'? Isabella emitted a whispery gasp, her breathless whisper, eyes wide with horror and grisly curiosity. Luca's head jerked back, trying to rid itself of the disagreeable possibilities of Marco's words. "Propaganda. To sow in my mind. My father was a self-made man, intelligent and perceptive." But a seed of doubt had been sown, a persistent question that buzzed like Marco's cancerous jibes. Down-to-earth Bianca had to interrupt the tense silence. "True or false, we cannot let him get the better of us. Marco is attempting to catch us off guard. We need to keep our wits about us in reaching the Serpent's Lair and the artifact first." Dante concurred. "The mountains are unsafe, and the Lair has been vacant for decades. Marco will have it staked out, waiting for us." As they left, a shadow of doom went before them. The weight of Legacy, the potential truths in the Serpent's Eye, loomed in the background, a somber witness to their dangerous mission. The journey into the deadly mountain chains was turbulent, roads hugging cliffsides. Dante, an experienced driver, tackled the dangerous roads with metallic resolve. The scenery grew barren, air thinner and cold. Having journeyed for hours, they had climbed to the tops of hills and were in a secret valley, veiled in mist and protected by standing, motionless pines that were ancient. In Bianca's fragmented memories from her grandfather's book, the Lair of the Serpent was in this secret valley. "The descriptions fit," Bianca whispered, looking out over the broken peaks that loomed around them. "A broken pillar of stone… fashioned to look like the head of a serpent." The further they descended into the valley, the darker the mood. There was a thick silence that surrounded them, and only very occasionally broken by the gentle sigh of wind through leaves. They were walking into a world which was long left behind, a savage land of nature. They walked to the base of the rock formation that resembled a serpent, its black black mouth open below. The opening to the Serpent's Lair. Dante used his lighter weaponry, gear and guns. "We must be careful. Marco would not have left this compound unguarded." As they neared the gate, out of the back of the black came the low rumble of a throat. Out of the black came two giant men, hate-seared eyes in darkened air. No enforcers Luca had ever seen – dark brooding giants, scored and gouged on muscle with spitting serpent tattoos, movement inhuman and deadly. "Guardians," Bianca breathed, her weapon in hand. "The book spoke of them. They're fanatically loyal to the secrets of the Lair." It was a ferocious fight. The guardians materialized out of nowhere, unexpectedly, considering their size, their attack wild and merciless. Luca, Bianca, and Isabella fought back-to-back, their actions choreographed by years of fighting in the underworld. Dante guarded their backs, his flames deadly and contained. They struggled and overpowered the guards, their huge bodies crashing against the frozen rock floor. The entrance to the Lair was still gaping, a mouth into darkness. They entered, the air thick with wet earth and metallic and ancient something. The Lair was a maze of twisting corridors, walls covered in strange carvings and writhing patterns. There were sounds in the dark, unnatural mutterings that scourged their nerves. More of Marco's men in the cornering corridors – savagely battle-hardened warriors for the Shadow Syndicate, with a loyalty to none wavering. Each gang had its tough trial of strength and endurance. They proceeded to it finally to the pedestal cave, the innermost sanctum of the Serpent's Lair. The Serpent's Eye was in the center of the cave, on a pedestal. It wasn't a gem, Bianca had seen, but an obsidian smooth ball, and with a gentle, inner glow. The whispering in the cave emanated from it, a gentle thrumming that called the edge of their minds. Before the pedestal, beneath the ominous glow of the Serpent's Eye, Marco would not back down. His father's gold-hilted sword was gripped in his hand, his eyes fixed on the obsidian orb. "Welcome, nephew," Marco intoned, voice echoing off cave walls. "I knew you could not resist your destiny." "This is not my heritage, Marco," Luca growled, sword in hand. "This madness ends here." Marco grinned, his gaze locked on the Serpent's Eye. "You don't get it, Luca. This power. it runs in your blood. It's in your veins." And with that, Marco stabbed the knife into the ball of obsidian. The cave seethed with living fire, the whispers a madhouse of shrieking horror. Luca's flesh was suffused with an unearthly sensation, a chill in his veins, a sense of being drawn towards the light of life. Imaginings wove in his mind – fleeting imaginings of ancient rite, shadowy figures possessed of unwholesome might, an ancient line, sharpened on the rocks of the underworld. And within the imaginings in the stark spaces, an elusive shape: a serpent crafted ritual, not curled around a shattered crown, but twisted around one watching eye. The light extinguished, and Marco was in front of the Serpent's Eye, whose face was now aflame with unearthly fire. The throbbing black sphere vibrated in time with the new ring of power around him. "Look, Luca," Marco ordered, his voice infused with supernatural compulsion. "The real legacy. Serpent's blood." But the biggest shock was not what Marco had been turned into, but what came next. As Luca moved forward in wonder towards the ball of light, a figure appeared behind Marco, stepping out of the darkness as if he had been there all along, hidden behind the light. Vittorio. Luca's father. But not the father Luca remembered as a child. This Vittorio's eyes blazed with the same otherworldly anger of Marco's, his face lined with wrinkles of some long-forgotten art. He was girded with the same ceremonial sword at his side, the point fixed in the Serpent's Eye. "Welcome home, my son," Vittorio said, and his words were repeated by the cold echo of knowing voices in the cave. "The Serpent awaits."