E.M. Dash Web Novels
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Chapter 001 A Lesson in Dying Slowly
🕑 Added 2025-07-24 07:35:41 +0000 UTCThe saying ‘The quill is mightier than the sword’ might inspire naive scribes, but a forty-one-year-old Apprentice Scribe with a damaged arm, a ruined eye, and half-scorched lungs should’ve known better.
How pathetic. I’M FUCKING PATHETIC! Jack’s mind screamed.
He gasped as searing pain radiated from his gut. He felt his own poisoned dagger being twisted and ripped free. His eyes trembled from the pain as he clenched his teeth so tight they creaked.
Just a scratch would’ve been enough to kill the murdering basta…
His pitiful thoughts were cut short as the blade plunged back into his gut. Jack convulsed, breath hitching in shallow, rapid gasps. He gritted his teeth to stifle the cries of agony that threatened to escape. White globs of thick spittle spat from his tight lips as the unbearable pain forced muffled grunts from his throat.
I should’ve died in the fire.
His killer, Viscount Greaves, was savouring every moment of his torment. After the Viscount disarmed him with almost supernatural precision, the old noble had severed the tendons and muscles in both arms. The counterattack had been so swift and surgical, Jack hadn’t even had time to register the movement before he was bleeding, crippled, and helpless.
Now, Jack’s arms hung useless at his sides, incapable of forming a fist.
Greaves’ thick left hand remained locked around Jack’s neck while his right hand wielded the assassin’s dagger. Jack’s back was crushed against the rough alley wall. His feet dangled above the cobbles, twitching, useless, and powerless.
In his weakening state, all he could manage were feeble, futile kicks against the Viscount’s flabby stomach. There was no hope. The poison, his own damn poison, would kill him within a quarter-hour.
How is he so damn strong? he thought. He’s a bloody library administrator. Not a warrior. Not a… not this?
For twenty years, Jack had dreamed of killing the bastard who had murdered his family. But as a weak Apprentice Scribe with no fighting skills, he might as well have been a pathetic mouse challenging a mighty tiger. His failed assassination attempt had yielded nothing noteworthy. Not even a ruffle in the Viscount’s wispy blond hair.
He was a lamb biting at a lion. And now the lion had torn out his throat and was grinning at him with a bloody maw.
The noble was a sixty-year-old man draped in a fine woollen suit and top hat, its silk band stained with arrogance. But none of that mattered now. Jack’s fate was sealed. He was a dead man awaiting the next available appointment with Thanatos, the God of Death.
“Impressive weapon,” Viscount Greaves said as he examined the assassin’s dagger. The blade steamed, reeking of blood and shit. “How did a peasant get their filthy hands on a drow blade?”
Still holding Jack aloft with one hand, Greaves wiped the blade clean on the sleeve of Jack’s cheap leather armour, slicing a fresh gash into his forearm with ease. The dull glow from the aether lantern the Viscount had dropped during the attack made the weapon appear even deadlier. Its runes glowed in the light.
Jack winced at the fresh cut and vowed, I won’t… I won’t give him the satisfaction. Trying to block out the pain, his thoughts turned to the years wasted on scrounging for coin in backrooms and filthy taverns. His days spent inscribing spell scrolls under a haze of despair and depression. His evenings, a fog of cheap ale to drown out the cruel nightmares that burnt him most nights. All to save enough for the two things that might make justice possible.
The drow dagger and poison. Forged by drow hands, and enchanted with powerful runes to pierce armour and pass through most magical protections.
Ten years of coin and twenty years of hate, all poured into a single point of drow steel dripping in vengeance. Jack had placed all his hopes in the assassin’s blade and poison; he had believed it would give him an easy time killing a fat, lazy noble. A noble whose role was administering the Ancient Texts Department of the Royal Library.
Despite his cheap armour, he had convinced himself he’d over-prepared. He’d been mistaken, the drow blade had only drawn Jack’s blood… and, with it, his life.
Jack’s strength ebbed away as blood loss and poison took their toll. The world swam in and out of focus, his consciousness slipping away only to be dragged back by searing pain. All he longed for was to fade into oblivion and escape the humiliation and red-hot agony.
Noticing Jack’s lapses into unconsciousness, the Viscount drove the dagger into his shoulder and twisted it with deliberate malice. “Try to stay alert. You have questions to answer before you die,” he commanded, his tone as cold as his smile was sadistic. “Clearly, you don’t have the assassin class… I’d be dead now if you were a true assassin.” Amused by the failure of this middle-aged pretender, he scoffed, “So, who sent you to your pointless death?” His frown conveyed genuine insult at being confronted by such a poor imitation of an assassin.
Despite the question, the Viscount did not loosen the grip on Jack’s neck.
Amid the haze of pain, Jack’s thoughts stumbled for any hope of killing Greaves. In desperation, he rifled through his scribe skills for anything that could help him.
[Class Screen-Internal View]
Class: Apprentice Scribe (31)
Compatibility: 5%
- Copy Text (4)
- Translate Text (3)
- Draughtsmanship (4)
- Perfect Recall (4)
- Create Cypher/Decipher (3)
- Inscribe Spell (5)
- Bind Book (2)
All useless, non-combat skills.
Fuck! I’m so injured… my compatibility has dropped so low! Wait… Inscribe Spell.
In a flash of memory, Jack recalled the dozen combat spell scrolls he’d created with the assistance of elven mages. He had brought them as an emergency measure should his assassination plan falter; they remained out of reach in his backpack, wedged between him and the wall.
In his torment, he cursed his own idiocy. Why did I leave them in my pack? Gods, how could I be so damn stupid?
He should’ve carried at least one scroll in his free hand. He’d known full well that a noble like Greaves would possess enchanted items to absorb common mage spells. He could see a few brass pins adorning the Viscount’s fine tailored-suit, each inscribed with protective runes.
The enchanted drow blade had been his trump card. It would’ve punched through those protective items with ease. His blind confidence in the almost unstoppable drow blade and poison left no room for contingency plans. Even a single nick from the poisoned dagger would have killed the Viscount.
Greaves twisted the drow blade in Jack’s gut. “Stay with me,” the old noble said in a quiet, almost friendly voice. “Can’t have you falling asleep halfway through the show, now, can we?”
Jack whimpered as the razor-edged blade twisted once more, sending fire through his intestines. He tried to remain silent, to grit his teeth and deny his killer the pleasure, but the agony was too much. A pitiful moan escaped. Clenching his jaw, a single thought rose above the pain. I won’t speak. But he groaned again when the blade cut deeper. It felt like his organs were being shredded and boiled. His insides no longer belonged to him; they belonged to fire and steel.
Greaves smiled; the bastard smiled. There was a sick glow in Greaves’ eyes as he studied Jack’s suffering, as though he were admiring a beautiful piece of art. One drawn in pain and torment.
Desperation clawed at Jack. If he could break free or trick the murdering scum into activating the scrolls in his bag. He looked around for a weapon or way to fight back, but found none. He prayed to Tyche, the Goddess of luck, chance, and fortune, for a pack of stray dogs to run by and attack Greaves. Or for a lazy resident to empty their chamber pot out of a window, thereby creating a diversion.
The pipe dream was cut short when he recalled they were in Lundun. The capital, where the King decreed that anyone caught dumping shit from windows would face severe punishment. The court was sick of the stench of raw sewage after they’d started enjoying the use of magical toilets.
Jack had stalked Greaves for months, watching his every move before deciding this was the perfect location to enact his long-awaited revenge. The place where the murderer would die. Every Thursday night, like clockwork, the Viscount would pass through this narrow, shadowy alley on the way back from visiting an elven brothel. It was one of the few times he didn’t keep his two personal beastkin guards close at hand.
One of the reasons he had chosen this spot was that there was nothing the Viscount, or now Jack, could use to fight back. He’d spent over a dozen hours in this alley, planning his revenge. It was dark, narrow, and twisting, with only one way in and one way out. Few people lived here, and no doors opened into it. There were no possible weapons here: not even a loose brick in the walls or the cobbled ground. Even the newly installed aether-powered street lanterns failed to cut through its gloom.
A perfect location for an assassination attempt on almost any class, let alone a non-combatant like an administrator. The plan was simple. Hide in the shadows, wait for Greaves to pass, and stab the murderous mongrel in the back. He’d die like the backstabbing dog he was in life.
Jack would avenge his family’s murder, and maybe, just maybe, the cruel nightmares would at last end.
“Stay alert,” Greaves ordered, twisting the dagger again, drawing a broken whimper from Jack. “Who sent you?” his voice was low and menacing. “I can keep you alive for days… or end this swiftly.”
The pain was excruciating, but Jack refused to speak, stubbornness clinging to him like a shield. Gritting his teeth, he managed muffled grunts and whimpers with each twist of the blade, blood-flecked spittle dribbling from the corner of his mouth.
Greaves waved the drow blade before Jack’s face again. “At least tell me who sent me this fine gift,” he said with a smirk. “I’ll be sure to thank them in person.”
Jack groaned, his body trembling with the effort of enduring the pain, but he gave no answer. Blood trickled between clenched teeth. Salty and bitter sweat streamed down his pain-contorted and scarred face.
Viscount Greaves smiled as he studied Jack’s torment like a sculptor admiring his finest work, taking a perverse pleasure in watching his muse struggle against the agony. “You don’t want to die from a festering stomach wound…” Greaves whispered, the words almost tender. “It means days of unrelenting torment… and I can always patch you up just enough to keep you teetering at death’s edge for weeks. Even months.”
Greaves paused as though considering the idea. “Who knows?” he mused. “Give me what I want, and I might even spare your miserable life.” The Viscount leaned closer, eyes raking over Jack’s disfigured, burn-scarred face. “I could pay a Master Healer to fix those ugly burns… perhaps even restore your damaged eye.”
Then, with a laugh, he added, “You look like a half-melted candle.”
At the mention of his scars, Jack instinctively tried to raise his hood to hide the right side of his ruined face. But his arms were limp and useless.
You’re the bastard who gave me these scars. Hatred burned in him, every fibre of his being loathing Greaves for what he’d done, for what he’d taken. Jack pleaded for divine intervention. I swear by the Gods, if he dies, I’ll do anything in return. It was the same desperate prayer that had echoed in his heart for twenty years… unanswered, and unheeded.
A strange pulse fluttered in his abdomen as though the wounds were healing themselves.
