Sample of TALES OF THE IMMORTALI

[First 15 pages]

Pre-order here. Release date: June 7, 2026.

Copyright © 2026 by M.M. Orozco. All rights reserved. 

Prelude

It was sundown when Scherzo woke from his decapitation. The putrid stench jolted him awake first, then the sight that greeted him—a slack-jawed, maggot-infested face with glassy eyes. He screamed, scrambled back, and tumbled down the slope. The world twisted around him. Pink twilight sky and shadowed corpses flashed through his vision. Once he’d rolled to a stop, fresh out of curses to yell, he paused to gather his wits.

Where in the colored hells am I?

He dragged himself up and found he was standing in a wide, deep dirt pit. Slopes of corpses lined the walls. He assumed they were the bodies of criminals, the unclaimed, and those too poor to afford a proper burial. That meant he was far from town. Mortals never liked having the stench of death around them—or any reminders, for that matter.

He scanned the piles of decaying flesh and found one high enough to reach the lip of the pit. Realizing what he had to do, he grumbled another curse. At his feet, the corpse of a stern woman seemed to give him the stink eye. He flipped her a rude gesture and went to start his miserable task.

I have to get out of here before nightfall…

He peeled off his red doublet, hooked his linen shirt collar over his nose, and began climbing the mound. To distract himself from the empty eyes, the dried blood, and the unholy stench, he hummed a tune he’d been working on for the last few weeks. Just when he reached the chorus, the corpse under his boot slid away. He gasped. 

The whole pile shuddered. If it collapsed, he’d be trapped. No more shows, no more coin, no more wine—gods forbid! He scrambled up the slope as it crumbled. The edge of the pit stretched far above, taunting him. But he’d faced worse traps and trickery. Right as the corpses underneath fell away, he leaped, grabbed the edge, and heaved himself over.

Freedom! In a burst of ecstasy, he jumped up to dance and laugh at the corpses in the pit. “Fools!” he yelled. “Brittle bone and rotten flesh! No touch of death can end the era of immortali!”

With a whoop, he collapsed on the sweet, blessed dirt and sighed. Above him, white pinpoints dotted the deep plum sky. He closed his eyes and listened. Grass fields rustled nearby, and the whistling wind brought sounds from the town farther away. Six o’clock bells. Infants’ cries. The steady thumps of woodwork, the rattle of coaches and carriages, and the clops of hooves on cobbles. Slamming doors, creaky windows. Human voices.

A minute later, he rose. Fresca was probably waiting at their rendezvous point. And although the girl had the patience of a saint, he knew she’d worry if he weren’t back by the seventh nighttime hour. 

While walking, he whistled a tune back to the wind and kept an ear out for the footsteps or whispers of seguaci spies. But they were most likely celebrating his decapitation in their convent. “Cheers for the death of the immortale!” the white-robed priests would declare, praising the Divines for laying favor on their endeavors.

That morning, a whole squad of them had burst into the dilapidated bell tower he’d been using as a shelter with his sister. They’d caught sight of him immediately, and since they numbered a dozen, he knew the futility of attempting escape or retaliation. Instead, he glanced at Fresca before they could notice her. Run. I can handle them. She understood, slipping out of a hatch in the dark. Then he’d faced the hunting mob alone, with nothing but a grin and a welcome song.

They hadn’t appreciated the welcome song. They’d seized him and spewed the usual sermon—how his cursed nature rebelled against Divine law, how his presence embodied a bad omen for the town, among other kindhearted terms—before finally executing him with an axe blade to the neck. If they hadn’t been in such a hurry, he would’ve advised them to burn his body, too. Perhaps then it would’ve worked.

Not that they hadn’t tried before, of course. 

The yellow half-moon illuminated his path to the rendezvous point: the lone oak tree, north of the apple orchard at the edge of town. A horse-drawn cart waited for him, carrying a sizable supply of their collected coin and two wooden chests full of masks, doublets, jerkins, wool kirtles, linen shirts, and other garments.

A hooded figure stood at the foot of the cart. Though he was still a long way off, camouflaged among shadows and shrubs, she saw his form approaching and immediately broke into a run for him.

“Cherry!” she said gleefully. An eternal nickname, one almost as old as they were. She threw her arms wide for a hug, but once she caught a whiff of him, she ground to a halt two paces away. “Great Divines. You smell like death!”

“Aw, I thought you were glad to see me,” he retorted.

She uncovered her hood. It fell away, revealing an ancient face lined with wrinkles and warts. One of her favorite masks in their arsenal of disguises. She removed it now, and her true youthful features emerged—a twelve-year-old face framed by crimson curls shade for shade as his own. A pair of sharp hazel eyes took him in, and she gave a wobbly smile. “Glad to see you, just not glad to smell you.”

“A shame.” He inched closer. “Because I’m in the mood for a tight embrace with my beloved twin sister.”

She glimpsed the intention in his gaze, and when he lunged to grab her, she whirled and ran, laughing. He chased after her, though he knew it was useless. She had always been the faster runner, a trait credited to centuries of fleeing from their hunters. He preferred to deal with those hunters in a different way. A far more efficient and effective way, he thought, watching Fresca’s hair ripple in the wind, her bubbling laughter unchanged from three hundred years ago. 

Once they arrived at the cart, he hopped into it, popped open a chest, and started rummaging for new clothes.

Realizing he’d given up the chase, Fresca climbed into the cart with him. “What was it this time?”

With a finger, he made a quick slicing motion over his neck.

“Really? Again?” She chuckled. “That’s the fourth time this season.”

“Right? What baffles me is that they’re so sure it’ll work. Every single time. Anyway, they dumped me into a mass burial pit after that.”

“Oh. Explains the stench…”

“Isn’t there a Divine law forbidding you from insulting people?” Finding a fresh hose and a linen shirt, he climbed into the front seat and grabbed the reins. On the way to the next village, he’d wash himself in the first body of water they came across.

“That’s Divine law twenty-four,” Fresca said. “However, Divine law six states that one must speak the truth at all times.”

Scherzo cracked the reins, and the horse trotted forward. “Well, I apologize for spending most of my day lying around in a home for corpses. Come to think of it, I wonder how those seguaci found our shelter in the first place.”

He heard a light hum. Slowly, he looked over his shoulder. “Fres? Would you like to say something?”

She tilted her head back, suddenly fascinated by star patterns.

Scherzo looked ahead. “Silence is a form of deception too, Fres.”

“Okay…” Fresca sighed. “A poor mother and her daughter came to me asking for a place to sleep. You said you’d be drinking at the tavern the whole night, so I—”

“Led them straight to our door,” he rumbled. “The mortal tongue is fraught with falsehoods. How many times have you fallen for the same old trick? That’s how they got you.” How they got me.

Fresca snorted. “It’s not as if humans lie all the time, and you know that. They’ve done us plenty of favors in the past, so I only wanted to repay them. I remember last week—”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“Then… I’m sorry, Cherry. I swear on the Divines I’ll try better next time.”

An oath like that meant nothing to him. But he sighed through his nose and dropped the matter. “Unfortunate. I was just growing fond of Meladoro’s fire ale. Let’s hope we last longer in the next town. Now then, where shall we head next?”

Fresca’s voice brightened. “How about Lucerata, the seaside town? I hear they now have a beautiful cathedral.”

Lucerata. They’d performed a few shows there in their first century, but now, with its thriving market in the harbor and growth in population, it may as well have transformed into a new city altogether. Scherzo pulled out a map. Based on their current pace, they would arrive at its outskirts in an hour. He hoped its taverns were as bountiful as its seafood was rumored to be.

“Get some sleep, Fres,” he said. “We’ve got a show in the morning.”

Chapter 1

Fresca crushed the yellow ochre under her pestle until it turned to fine dust, then lined it in front of the wall. The brick facade rose far above her—a massive, blank canvas of wet lime plaster, lined by grids of scaffolding, waiting to be sown with threads of color. She’d made sure to thank the servants who had woken early that morning to set up the scaffolding and mix and trowel the layers of plaster onto the wall.

She cast a glance at Scherzo, who was busy talking with Signor Verratti. If she were tasked to paint the barone, she would have used azalea yellow to puff his thinning hair, and a deep cherry red for his laughing lips. She sent a quick prayer of thanks to the Divines for giving them a patron within an hour of entering Lucerata. In his own words, he was honored to have the legendary twin immortali themselves perform at his home. Curious about their conversation, she came closer to hear them.

Scherzo, in his most business-like voice, was saying, “It’s almost time, Signor. I trust your attendants have…?” 

“Yes, yes,” Signor Verratti replied. “As of now, they are spreading the news all over Lucerata. By the tenth daylight hour, Via San Niccolo shall be packed with an audience.”

Even now, half an hour before the bells of ten o’clock, a few curious children and their parents began to linger in the wide street. Catching sight of the twin immortali, three little ones gasped and chattered among themselves.

Fresca smiled as she approached them. Her gaze drifted over unruly dark hair and eyes sparkling like the ocean waves. Their oldest member couldn’t have been more than seven years old. 

“She’s here! Quiet down,” their designated leader hissed to the others.

Fresca began, “Hello! My name’s—”

“Immortale Fresca!” a girl, around five years old, burst. “Is it true you came out of a painting?”

“Hey, don’t bother her,” the leader said.

“It’s all right,” Fresca assured them. “Could I know your names?”

She listened intently to the children, tucking each name safe in her memory, and asked if they were excited to see the show. Their heads bobbed. “I’ll make it one to remember,” she promised.

“Gabriella!” A middle-aged woman marched to the group and yanked her daughter away by the arm, ignoring the little girl’s protests. She threw a heated glare over her shoulder. “Stay away from my child, demone.”

Fresca watched them leave. As the street filled with more people, she caught sight of sneers and hateful gazes among the smiles. An average mortal wouldn’t notice them, but her eyes could pick them out with an owl’s precision. She tried to offer a smile to the remaining children before they slipped back into the crowd. 

Scherzo, lute in hand, was waiting for her by the shiny, wet wall. Sunlight crested over a cotton cloud and lit up his fiery hair.

“You okay?” he asked her, though his gaze was resting on the audience. He must have seen the episode with Gabriella’s mother—or perhaps heard it among the voices of the crowd. Little could escape his ears.

“I’m very well, Cherry,” she replied.

“Don’t listen to them. Three hundred years of the same song, and they never get tired.”

“It’s good we are the same.”

Scherzo smirked, and in his hazel eyes—the same chestnut shade as her own—the flecks of green seemed to shimmer. Eternity was a long time, but Fresca was certain she would never grow tired of watching her brother’s eyes.

“It’s almost bell time,” he said. “Ready?”

She nodded, praying, Let this performance reach your thrones, o great Divines. 

As the first clangs of ten o’clock resounded from the cathedral, Scherzo stepped forward, facing the buzzing crowd. He played a vibrant melody on his lute. “People of Lucerata! We bid you a pleasant morning.”

Fresca scanned the crowd and counted a few dozen civilians, half of whom were children. They cheered once Scherzo began his opening spiel, and quickly silenced as he spoke.

“For three hundred years, my twin sister Fresca and I have wandered the lands of Cassaria.…”

Another line of melody, which he coupled with a spoken verse.

Legends say, legends spill

Of a windswept day upon a hill

When brushes birthed vibrant color,

And color birthed a vivid picture…

Fresca, taking her bowls of pigments, climbed the scaffolding with enough speed to elicit gasps from below. Once she arrived at the top, she glanced around the town. To her left, the ocean stretched as far as she could see. Lining the shore were the docks, with grand galleons and trading carracks moored to the harbor. To her right, Lucerata swept down a gentle slope—a tangled mass of brick mansions, shops, and houses with terracotta-tiled roofs. At the top of the slope, built near a high cliff, the cathedral towered above all. Its imposing marble facade caught Fresca’s attention immediately, and she noticed the slight sheen of the bronze hourly bell housed in its belfry. Attached to the cathedral was the convent, which held the sacred Divine chambers and the priests’ living quarters. Though its location atop the cliff was precarious, to say the least, it was tradition to build convents and cathedrals at the highest elevation possible. How else would humanity draw closer to Divinity? 

All at once, she knew what to paint.

Below, Scherzo continued his show, pacing from one end of the wall to the other. 

Legends say, legends weaved,

Of twin immortali children conceived:

One emerged from a painted wall,

The other awoke in a music hall…

Fresca picked up the largest paintbrush in her arsenal, dipped it in watery color, and fashioned the narrow steeple. In the art of fresco, time was a precious resource. It meant painting on wet plaster, in a wild race lasting a few hours. In doing so, the paint would set into the plaster as it dried, leaving a picture on the wall that would last centuries.

Fresca believed in two things. The power of the Divines and the magic they had gifted to the world. This was the latter.

“Now, what story shall I tell?” Scherzo drawled in faux contemplation.

Screams from the younger audience rang out, citing their most famous tales—the one about the romantic sea voyage, the one about the village trickster’s elaborate pranks, the one about the young baroness turning into a dragon. The twins had sung and painted them all before, tales of death and love entwined by music and imagery. Tales that had caught the breeze and circulated through Cassaria by word of mouth, over bedtime hours and ginger ale. Tales of the immortali.

After each show, visitors from other towns would tour the site of their last performance and stare with wonder at the mural painting Fresca had left behind—a tangible, awe-striking feat of art. They never left anything behind but a fresco and a new story to tell.

Scherzo looked up and found her painting the cathedral. He turned back to the audience. “Ladies and gentlemen, listen carefully, for this story is set in a seaside town. You may find it familiar…” His lute sang with a twinkling phrase. “Say it with me. In three, two, one—”

“Lucerata!”

The gleeful shouts echoed to Fresca’s corner in the sky, and she smiled as she painted. Scherzo continued his tale, slipping effortlessly into song.

One silent, silent night,

A woman clothed in holy white

Fled the cathedral in cold fright—

For she had seen a dreadful sight…

Fresca dipped a brush in midnight blue for the night sky. Following Scherzo’s lead, she painted the woman in white fleeing the cathedral doors. As watery pigment dripped to the street and the story spilled from her brother’s lips, the crowd absorbed every trickle. Even those who had sneered just minutes before began to tilt their ears closer, hungry for the next verse.

Fresca danced across the scaffolding, letting her brush birth image into Scherzo’s tale. She barely felt the strain in her arms or the rising heat of the sun’s rays. The laughs and cheers from below boosted her energy, and there was always another face to paint. She was in complete sync with her brother—two souls bound by art, the legends would say.

Within two hours, she was standing on the street as the wall above her shone with vivid pictures. The story was nearly over.

As the woman traveled home,

A child approached her, all alone,

He stretched his hand for bits to eat,

And eyed her bag of sweetened treats.

“Will she give this stranger a treat?” Scherzo asked the audience, as he sometimes did during performances. Fresca knew he loved seeing them interact with the story.

A mix of replies met his question. Some children answered yes, she would! Meanwhile, the older audience expressed their wariness of the child, knowing the woman had enemies wishing for her demise.

“Are you certain?” Scherzo pressed, plucking his lute, then continued.

The woman clothed in clouds

Knew how her foes were proud.

She turned her back and went away

For it was a trick, as clear as day.

His requests were nothing more than lies,

For the child was a monster in disguise…

Fresca’s hand stilled. Her paintbrush halted in midair, having just finished the child’s pure blue eyes. Blue dripped from the brush and shattered on the cobblestones below like crystal shards.

She knew how to paint a monster. She’d done countless wolves, assassins, and snakes. She’d done shadowy figures with long, sharp claws, chasing the heroes down winding paths. It would take her no effort at all to paint that monster standing behind the child—a visual symbol of trickery. Yet…

“Fres?”

Blinking, she turned to find her brother standing beside her.

“What’s wrong?” Scherzo asked with concern.

In the corner of her eye, Fresca saw the crowd shift their feet, murmuring to each other. There had been no reports of the twin immortali stopping in the middle of a show.

“I can’t paint that,” she told him quietly. “You usually tell stories with real monsters in them. But this one—”

“It is a real monster.” Impatience quickened his words. “Listen, just paint what’s in the story. You don’t have to agree with it.”

“But we can’t teach this to the children.”

“Believe me, we’re doing them a favor.”

“Cherry, it’s not—”

“Is something the matter?” Signor Verratti asked from one side. He had put a voice to the audience’s thoughts.

Quick as the flip of a coin, Scherzo bared his teeth in a charming grin. He strode toward the crowd with a performer’s gait. “A short discussion, but all is settled. Shall we continue the story?”

Affirmative yells rang across Via San Niccolo.

“The show must go on!” Scherzo declared, with an edge in his tone meant just for her.

Fresca gripped her paintbrush tighter. She couldn’t leave such a bleak mark on this wall, knowing it would dry and last forever. So, as Scherzo went on, she did too. She painted the woman clothed in white reaching into her pouch and smiling sweetly at the child.

Laughter sparked amid the crowd. The children, in innocent wonder, found it amusing how the painting differed from the story. She looked over her shoulder and gave the audience a wink. But she only needed half a second to catch the look Scherzo was giving her—shining with wrath. There and gone. When he faced the audience again, it had evaporated. He continued, caught up in his tale.

Fresca’s brush didn’t divert from the story’s path from then on. She had lost her prior quickness, but finished the mural nonetheless. She was just in time. The plaster had begun to dry, and the pigment with it.

Scherzo soaked in the crowd’s applause after the story’s finale. As was their tradition after every show, Fresca joined him at his side, held his hand, and bowed as he did. She beamed as her gaze swept over the cheering crowd. She was just about to give her brother’s hand a squeeze when he let go abruptly, casting a hostile glance in her direction. Fresca retreated a step. But by then, Scherzo had looked back to the crowd, ready for their gifts.

She walked to the image of the blue-eyed child, then collected her remaining pigments into a satchel. Behind her, she heard the clink of coins falling at her brother’s feet. She knew his face would light up at seeing the money—coins to be spent on their food and her paints, but a majority of the fund was spent in taverns. Fresca always stayed away from such offerings.

“Doesn’t it unnerve you?” she had asked him one day as he counted the spoils of their show. “It’s like… they see us as Divines. Offering these coins.”

“Why should I care?” her brother retorted, hazel eyes reflecting copper brown and green in the lamplight. “As long as it fills our pockets, I don’t care if they see us as emperors or beggars. They’ll still lick up our stories like honey.”

What satisfies you? she had wanted to ask. What do you do this for?

Waking from the memory, she put on her satchel and turned to the street. Most of the crowd had dispersed, talking animatedly about their favorite parts of the show or simply smiling, feeling lighter than they had when they first arrived. Meanwhile, Scherzo was busy collecting the coins into his own satchel and chatting with the audience that had remained.

“Immortale Scherzo, when will you hold your next show?” a young girl asked.

“Ah, when the sun rises in the west, and the tides shift east.”

“Where did you and your sister come from? How did you become immortali?”

“Weren’t you listening to the legend? Paintings and music birthed us from wreaths of art, and granted us the gift of life eternal.”

Lying again, Cherry, Fresca thought.

“Have you heard news of the immortale Granacci?” came a man’s voice.

At Granacci’s name, Fresca smiled. It had been a few years since they’d seen their friend—the only other immortale walking the land. Forever fifteen, the redheaded Granacci was a decade older than them by immortale years. Blessed with a tongue that could taste even slight changes in the air, he loved wandering the mountains especially, and had led the twins through the peaks many times. No explorer knew the mountain ranges like him.

“Nothing escapes my ears,” Scherzo declared. “Granacci has been our good friend since we began our shows—”

“He is dead, no?”

Grave murmurs of agreement bubbled from the group. Cold, ghostly fingers trailed up Fresca’s spine, but Scherzo laughed.

“Dead? We immortali play hide-and-seek with Death, and so far, the Bony Reaper has never found us.”

“I believe the Huntress brought back his head as proof.”

A woman’s voice agreed. “Yes! My cousin in Oltrarno told me she saw it herself. They say in recent times, no one has seen immortale Granacci in the mountain ranges. Not even in his usual peaks.”

“What do you make of this, immortale Scherzo?”

Fresca waited for a reassuring reply from her brother. His ears knew truth from lies, and his tongue could craft silver phrases like no other. But the fabled trickster immortale, master musician and lyrical storyteller, was silent. She looked over her shoulder to find him frozen in his place, pale.

Afraid?

Instantly, she moved with the wordless instinct of shielding him from the crowd, but a figure in an emerald cloak blocked her path.

“Immortale Fresca! I’ve had my eye on you for a long time. I’ve always loved your paintings.”

Fresca looked up. The young woman had kind brown eyes and straw blonde hair tied into twin braids. Following her usual practice, Fresca smiled at the woman and imagined how she would paint that face. Round cheeks, pinpoints of freckles like stars.

“I hope you enjoyed the show,” Fresca said. “Might I know your name?”

“Of course! You may know me as…” In one swift motion, the smiling woman whipped a flintlock pistol from her cloak and aimed it at Fresca’s eye. “…the Huntress.”

She pulled the trigger, and all went dark.

***

Tales of the Immortali will be released on June 7, 2026!