Critical Role: The Mighty Nein--The Nine Eyes of Lucien | Roux, Madeleine; Critical Role

Lange Beschreibung
Delve into the mind of Critical Role s most charming villain in this original novel that chronicles Lucien s early life and his fateful meeting with the Mighty Nein.
 
Lucien has always been able to spin a bad situation to his advantage. From his childhood on the dangerous streets of Shadycreek Run to his years living off the grid and learning blood magic from the Claret Orders, the charismatic blood hunter will find a way to get the upper hand.

When Lucien is on a job in the frozen wastelands of Eiselcross with his fellow mercenaries, a rough-and-tumble crew called the Tombtakers, fate leads him to a mysterious journal in the ruins of an ancient city. The book speaks of the Somnovem, nine beings who can grant Lucien power beyond imagining if he is able to find them and free them from captivity.

Intrigued by this opportunity, Lucien pores over the journal but the more he reads, the stranger things become. The nine whisper to him in dreams and waking visions. Time slips away, along with Lucien s grasp on reality. And tattoos of red eyes begin appearing on his skin. . . .

With the ability to reshape the world within his grasp, Lucien ignores all warning signs. He has always bent fortune to his will, and nothing not even death will stop him now.

Written by New York Times bestselling author Madeleine Roux, Critical Role: The Mighty Nein The Nine Eyes of Lucien explores the meteoric rise and fall of one of Critical Role s most notorious and tragic figures.

Buchausschnitt
Chapter 1

Shadycreek Run

822 PD

Lucien shoved open the cellar door and tumbled out into the sunlight. His stomach gurgled a desperate tune (priority one) and as he lifted his arms to stretch, he noted how light his pockets felt (priority two). Some enterprising so-­and-­so had left a twig crossed over a thistle in the dirt just outside the stone lip of the cellar. Crouching for a better look, Lucien discovered ten slapdash marks under the twig and thistle. Ten coppers. To a boy of twelve squatting in a cave-­cold cellar belonging to a retired madame, that was a lot of coin.

Priorities one and two, he smirked, were quickly getting sorted.

These little signs appeared outside the door from time to time, and only when someone on Clover Street had a job for an itinerant, broke, morally unbothered freelancer. Check, check, and check. Lucien swept up the pile of rubbish, inspected it, and discovered the stick had been dipped in mauve paint. That meant someone from the Mardoons was offering the work, and they tended to be good for whatever coin was promised. A beggar couldn t be a chooser in Shadycreek Run, so Lucien stuffed the twig and thistle in his pocket and locked the cellar door behind him. He didn t pocket the key, but instead tossed it to himself idly and whistled a made-­up song while he swung around to the front side of the townhouse.

Viewed from the street proper, Auntie Mama s two-­story shack listed drunkenly to the right, nearly leaning on the shoulder of the also precariously crooked building beside it. Auntie Mama s place always reminded him of a teakettle ­squat, tapered toward the foundation, and with a single tower that jutted out to the east like a spigot. Jammed between two swillholes of competingly ill repute, the stoop smelled alternately of piss and vomit.

A stiff, threatening wind blew down the lane, rattling the entire ramshackle block. That gust ran straight through Lucien s threadbare coat, slicing like a cutpurse s knife.

Auntie Mama was outside the door, not waiting for him, but sweeping a few stray leaves into a corner where the detritus would accumulate, a mushy bed for whatever wandering stray dog favored her that day. She named the mutts after jewels ­Jet, Emerald, Diamond ­never remembering which dog was which, but jangling her beringed fingers through the mangy, flea-ridden fur of the strays as if they were the king s own spaniels. The sun was well out, but the collective Shadycreek hangover meant only a handful of productive citizens wandered around ­a half-­elf baker dusted in flour, a pair of working girls half asleep on their feet after an all-­night shift, a knock-­kneed dwarf leaning against the back door of a tavern, pipe in one hand, chewed turkey leg in the other, the smell of which started an agonizing call-­and-­response between the food and Lucien s ravenous stomach.

He hung from the porch banister and sighed, watching the turkey disappear down the lane, waiting for Auntie Mama to notice him. It didn t take long. He felt her broom poke at his behind and he spun, laughing.

Another mutt darkens my door, she mumbled. A skinny, aimless orphan was no rare sight in the Run, though Lucien s combination of lavender skin, crimson eyes, curling horns, and deep-­purple hair was indeed striking. To Lucien s young eyes, Auntie Mama seemed impossibly old, which meant she had lived around fifty summers. If I live to be that old, he often thought, I ll be cramming my face with cold fruit in a hot bath, not raking leaves for strays. It was an easy thought to think, and it comforted him. Auntie Mama was a comfort in her own way, one of the only recurring roles in the rotating cast of characters that paraded through Lucien s days.

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