The Phenomenals: A Game of Ghouls Read Online Free Page A

surface of the lake. He allowed himself a moment
or two of self-indulgence as he recalled again the incredible sense of power that had engulfed him – yes, engulfed; there was no other word to describe the feeling – when, at his very
command, he had watched the Lurid of Axel Harpelaine assume the body of his living sister, Folly. It was a sight Leopold would never forget. It might have been a short-lived triumph, Jonah –
the ‘Brute’ – had made sure of that, but he still took great pleasure in knowing what it was like to have a Lurid completely under his control.
    He tutted and shook his head. Luck was a fickle lady and she had chosen that night of all nights to play with him. It was undoubtedly serendipity that the random Lurid he had summoned from the
horde out on the tar was Folly Harpelaine’s brother. This blood tie ensured that Folly could easily be used as a vessel for Axel’s restless spirit. In fact, she was even better than his
original choice, Vincent Verdigris. But then all this good fortune was countered by the fact that the Mangledore, the herbally steeped and ritually waxed severed hand of an executed criminal,
belonged to that very same brother. When the Brute had tossed it into the lake, Folly had been instantly released from Kamptulicon’s power.
    Who in Aether could ever have imagined such a twisted set of circumstances?
    ‘Only in Degringolade,’ muttered Leopold as he watched again in his mind’s eye the Mangledore sailing in a perfect arc through the air to land in the sticky sucking muck. And
as he re-imagined it sinking below the surface, so too his heart plummeted in his chest.
    Leopold blamed everything on Vincent, the thieving wretch with the metal arm. At the time he had been delighted to catch the young intruder in his underground Ergastirion, the workshop where he
kept his Supermundane paraphernalia, but the boy was proving to be more trouble than he was worth. True, it wasn’t Vincent who had actually tossed the Mangledore into the tar and thus ruined
all his plans, but he had masterminded it all; Leopold was convinced of it.
    ‘I should have killed him when I had him strapped up in my chair,’ he muttered. ‘Freezing his fingers off was far, far less than he deserved.’ On top of all that, Vincent
had stolen his book, his precious Omnia Intum.
    ‘And the one-handed cullion still has it,’ hissed the thwarted Cunningman, unable to hold in his venom any longer at the thought of the powerful book, a book even he did not fully
understand, in the hands of a lowly Vulgar. ‘I will get my book back,’ he vowed to the night, ‘if I have to throttle every domnable one of those Phenomenals.’
    Kamptulicon could feel the residual heat of the fires through the thick soles of his boots, so he started to walk along the shore. He went slowly, raking absent-mindedly through the detritus
with the metal-tipped point of his staff.
    It was a relatively new acquisition, supporting both his body and his ego. He thought it gave him a degree of gravitas. Kamptulicon was concerned that he had lost some of the respect he had
previously commanded, and undoubtedly deserved. Hadn’t he given Leucer what he had asked for, namely an embodied Lurid? And in doing so he had demonstrated that Leucer’s dream, a legion
of such Lurids under his sole command, utterly biddable and needing no earthly sustenance, was close to becoming reality. That still hadn’t stopped him grumbling (‘grummling,’
sniggered Leopold) about the subsequent farrago at the Tar Pit.
    As for Edgar Capodel, that louche fop, all he was interested in was gambling and drinking and being seen to be powerful. Well, there was a difference between having power and merely having its
appearance. One day Edgar Capodel would realize that. For now, he was oblivious to the fact that he was a mere puppet whose strings were being pulled by Leucer d’Avidus to gain access to the
facilities and chemicals at the Capodel