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Chapter 1 "The Festival/The Beginning" |
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The sky was a clear and beautiful blue with the occasional cloud racing by as if in a hurry to get somewhere. The twin suns blazed down an appreciated warmth onto the crisp, green grass while a light breeze danced in the light. It couldn’t have been a more perfect day for the seasonal festival if the Gods themselves had descended from their thrones and personally blessed the small province of Vashanna.
Anthony stood in silence with his eyes closed and let the breeze play in his hair. He remembered being told as a child by his mother that if you stood still and let the breeze play with your hair you would sometimes find that a wind sprite had gotten tangled in your hair and if you could catch one they would grant you a wish in exchange for their freedom. Anthony was now 17 and knew better than to believe in such things, but it was a nice excuse to think of his mother and he absorbed every moment of it that he could.
With his eyes closed he could hear everyone laughing at the festival and he smiled slightly. The tall stocks of Dasso from the nearby grain farm seemed almost to be making music for the passerby’s as the breeze danced through it.
“Are you OK brother?”
Anthony opened his eyes slowly and smiled over at his younger brother. Kyle was 11 and knew of Anthony as the only parent he had ever had. It made sense really, it was Anthony after all that had raised him since the age of 2. Anthony seriously doubted if his younger brother even remembered what their parents faces looked like, but didn‘t blame him for it. If the truth were to be told, Anthony wasn’t sure that anyone existed to blame.
“Yea, I’m fine Kyle. Just taking it all in. Enjoying the world.”
“Sometimes I think you’re really weird, you know that?”
Anthony laughed out loud and started walking towards the fair without another word. He knew that Kyle was excited, he always was. There was only one festival that Anthony remembered being to before their parents died and he remembered being excited as well.
Walking beside Anthony was his friend Elizabeth. Anthony and her had been friends since before they left the womb, at least that’s what her mother said. They were born the same day and only about an hour apart. Their parents had been friends and joked often while both Anthony and Elizabeth had been young that they were destined to be tied together at the waist.
Elizabeth was about 5’3“, 5 inches shorter than Anthony and only an inch taller than Kyle, with strait, black hair that came down to the small of her back. A lot of the guys in town chased after her wildly only to get punched in the nose if they tried to ask her out. Anthony always found it fairly amusing to watch the expression on the guys face as he suddenly realized that he had gotten his nose broken by someone they just wanted to roll in the barn with.
As if she knew that Anthony had been thinking about her, Elizabeth turned and looked at him with her piercing green eyes and smiled. Anthony knew that, despite her age, she was excited for the festival as well. Usually he would be just as happy to go too, but something was different this time. For some reason he felt on edge despite his attempts to close his eyes and relax, as if all of his senses were peaking and running rampant, but he couldn’t understand the source of the sensation and shrugged it off.
The 3rd season festival was always in the same place, half a mile from Forlyth Creek (where Anthony had gone swimming with a pretty little thing from the neighboring province during the last 4th season festival, neither of them having a stitch of clothing on their bodies) and just outside of the Zell Farm limits. It was a nice, grassy place with a hill just outside of the fair from which you could see most of Vashanna. It was, in fact, the only hill for miles. Just a random plot of raised land in the middle of nowhere. Poor Mr. Zell was a bitter man and often grunted towards the hill after insisting that the Gods must have needed to drop some stress before returning to their thrones and that they must have decided to do it right outside of Vashanna.
Vashanna was a farming community down the Eastern Slopes, west of the Alansic Cliffs and corresponding ocean. If you followed the cliffs south you came to the Great Moon Desert and past that was the jungles of the Chupra, a race of man that was dangerous but usually kind as long as you came for nothing more than trade.
To the north of Vashanna was a land that Anthony had only heard of in stories from the elders during late night campfires and lots of drinking. The land was supposedly overrun with forests and inhabited by a wild man that the elders called The Poilel. Anthony knew very little about the Poilel, except that they were a timid people and rarely seen. The only time that Anthony knew of which one had been seen was when it came out of the woods in a northern farming province and spoke to a farmer about a growing darkness in the west, then it left without another word. Supposedly several people called the farmer insane until the entire western border which lied at the base of the Allician Mountains was mysteriously burnt to the ground over night.
To the west of Vashanna were those same mountains, the wild Allician Mountains. Nobody knew what lived there or what was beyond them. Anyone who had dared to venture that far had never been seen again. Elizabeth’s mother tended to look towards those mountains with a mixture of longing and sadness on those nights when she wasn’t careful enough to watch the drink. Anthony once asked her why she looked at the mountains like that and she had said something about a brother, then promptly back handed him and told him to never ask that again… he never did. Even during the celebrations of the 3rd season festival those mountains looked down on Vashanna and sometimes, just sometimes, Elizabeth’s mother would look back.
“You’re doing it again.”
“Wha?” Anthony turned and saw Elizabeth looking at him with a smirk on her face. He had been thinking about that time with her mother and had started staring at the Allicians. “Oh, sorry. Just feeling a little strange today. I’m not sure why.”
“Well, you’d better start feeling better. Kyle’s already hounding Mr. Creavey for some of his Sweet Cobs.”
Anthony looked around for a second before spotting a very disheveled Mr. Creavey looking down on a very hopeful and knowing Kyle. Kyle’s smile was still on his face when Mr. Creavey’s fist landed on the top of Kyle’s head.
“Get out ’ere you ’ittle b*****d! I ’ot’s a ’ivin to make ya know!”
Kyle came running towards Anthony and Elizabeth laughing jovially. Anthony couldn’t help but smile too. When they were both younger Anthony was the one that taught Kyle how easily Mr. Creavey was to anger when asked for free handouts.
“Brother! Can we go ride ‘The Drop’?”
Anthony pretended to consider saying no while inwardly laughing at the exasperated look on Kyle’s face. “The Drop” was nothing more than a carriage pulled up a chute by Haurse and Carriage to the top, which was about 50 feet up, and then unhooked so it could slide back down the chute and into a large pool of water. It had always been Kyle’s favorite ride.
“I’ll tell you what brat, you’re going to be turning 12 this season, so why don’t you go ride it without me. Consider it an early present.”
Kyle’s eyes got wide and he left at a run without another word. Anthony stood silently on the grass and watched him go.
“I’ll go with him just to make sure he’s ok. Don’t worry! I won’t let him know I’m keeping an eye on him.”
Anthony looked over at Elizabeth as she walked away. Apparently he looked concerned and she had thought it was over his younger brother going to his favorite ride by himself. What Elizabeth had forgotten, or thought that Anthony had forgotten, was that it was Kyle by himself who had fended off 3 significantly larger kids at classes who were trying to take the new bag that Anthony had made him. Kyle was quite capable of taking care of himself if trouble arose.
Slowly Anthony walked towards the back of Mr. Creavey’s festival shop and sat in the shady grass with his back against the dark Ash Wood, face turned back to the sky. He closed his eyes and let the breeze play with his hair again, gradually letting his whole body relax. The breeze teased his long blonde bangs and he imagined a small winged thing with a tuft of his hair in each hand as it wore a ridiculously large smile on it’s fat, round face. He had kept his hair of the same fashion since he was 13. It was then that he had found a sketch picture of his father and the hairstyle his father had when he was Anthony’s age. It was kind of a silent tribute to his father to wear the same hairstyle. His hair hung down to the bottom of his ears with his bangs coming down to his chin. He remembered both of his parents having blonde hair and neither he nor his brother were any different. He had some contempt for them, but until the night that they had left he had never known a moment that wasn’t pleasant with his parents.
His mind shifted as he remembered watching his parents walk out of their house hand in hand as he cried for them to come back. Him and Kyle had been sleeping and Anthony only woke because of a bad dream. He was on his way to the kitchen area to get some of his mother’s tea when he had seen them close the front door. He ran for the door and swung it open wildly only to see them walking away into the night and he had screamed for them to come back. He screamed, and screamed, and screamed.
Anthony’s eyes flashed open as he swore he heard screaming. He sat there quite still, back against the Ash Wood , realizing that he had fallen asleep and started dreaming when he heard another scream and the ground shook ferociously beneath him. He leapt to his feet and spun around the festival shop. Eyes wide he looked to where there had been laughing and talking.
“I’m still dreaming. I must still be dreaming…”Anthony said.
Towering over the festival grounds was a dark mass. It looked to the sky and let out an ear-piercing shriek that made Anthony drop to his knees and cover his ears. Eyes watering from the sound he looked back up at the thing. It easily stood at twice the size of “The Drop” and looked over the scene with eyes burning a brighter blue than the sky itself could ever dare burn. It’s body was covered in some kind of dark reddish metal and Anthony could make out what looked like black flesh in the joints.
Just as Anthony had begun to wonder what monstrosity the Gods had sent to them he turned towards another of the shrieks and his mouth hung open. There were two more of the things making there way through the festival. The metal on these looked was of your average dark and elemental variety, only less reflective. Slowly, Anthony turned back towards the first of the monsters and horror struck him like a hard blow to the side of his head. The first monster’s armor wasn’t actually red, it was covered in blood. Anthony watched , frozen in place, as the monster reached down into the festival and picked someone up. Before the scream bubbling in Anthony’s throat could come to surface and add to the chaos hanging in the air, the person exploded as the thing squeezed as if they were nothing more than a soft fruit.
Eyes wide Anthony looked around for Kyle.
“Kyle? KYLE?!”
The air had started to smell of burning wood as the first wafts of smoke made their way towards Anthony. He ran in the direction of the ride that Kyle had so loved ignoring the smell. His mind raced with worries for both his younger brother and his oldest friend. She had said that she would watch Kyle for him, for HIM. If either of them was hurt then it was his fault. He was to blame.
As Anthony ran he could feel the smoke and ash in the air start to burn in his chest. The world around him and become thick with it all. One of the monsters must have kicked over a fire that lit onto one of the shops. The smell was thick and sweet, but something wretched and rank was mixing with it, and yet Anthony kept running. Nothing would stop him from getting his brother back home safely, least of all some unknown scents in the air.
As Anthony made his way through the deserted fair grounds he started to notice that no one was running away from the things. Not one person had run past him and yet he could still hear the screams of people from where the monsters were now converging. He began wondering why everyone was staying there instead of running from the things that were the source of all the destruction and death. He glanced up as he ran and noticed that all of the armor clad monsters had now turned red with blood. How many people had died? As Anthony ran with his eyes transfixed on the nameless things that had destroyed the festivities he suddenly got the feeling of weightlessness as he tripped over something and fell to the ground.
Scrambling to his feet he turned to see what he had tripped on and his stomach wrenched. There on the ground at his feet was the head of Mr. Zell, the man who owned the farm that lay next to the fairgrounds, his eyes wide and lifeless. Blood covered the ground and Anthony looked down to his own blood covered hands and clothes. Never in his life had he seen so much blood, even when he had gone to visit the butchery with Elizabeth’s mother so that she could teach him hoe to pick out meats that were in good condition without being cheated.
Anthony’s breath rattled in his chest as he tried to breathe but couldn’t. Was everyone already dead? Was Kyle dead? Was Elizabeth dead? He looked up to the sky so that he wouldn’t have to look at the ground which had been soaked in the blood of his neighbors and friends as if it were drinking a rare wine, and began to regain his composer so that he could get to Kyle and take him to safety. As he looked away from the crimson stained ground he finally found his brother. There, above the festival, was Kyle’s terrified face. As he looked into his brother’s eyes Anthony’s face become a mixed picture of confusion and understanding all at once. One of the metal things had lifted Kyle in one of it‘s monstrous hands.
“KYLE! NOOOOOOOOOO!!!”
The monster that held Kyle looked in the direction of Anthony’s screams, eyes blazing blue behind a face of blood covered metal, and shrieked back in reply. Being closer to the thing amplified the sound exponentially and Anthony found himself without breath again. It was as if some invisible weight had dropped on him and was trying to press him into the ground which had become soft with blood. The air itself seemed to solidify all around him with the weight of a mountain. Anthony fought to move but the pressure was too much and his muscles wouldn‘t respond. Kyle’s screams carried over the wind, reaching Anthony’s ears and he suddenly found that the weight was gone. He looked up and saw that the monster had put Kyle in some kind of a cage with some others and was turning to leave. In the cage with Kyle was Elizabeth. Despite the distance Anthony could see the blood on her face as one of the women in the cage cradled her. Was she even alive, or was he too late?
As the monster turned to leave it shrieked again, but this time there was no unseen pressure and Anthony watched helplessly as it started to deteriorate and vanish into the smoke clogged air. It was as if the monster was turning into ash, mixing with the ashes of the blazing festival, and being carried away by the same wind. Anthony watched as first it’s shoulder disappeared, then it’s arm, then it’s wrist, then it’s hand and the cage it carried. As if from some distance away he felt the ground shake beneath him and heard another of the creatures shriek. Slowly he turned his head and saw one of the other two looking at him from nearby and starting to reach for him. Anthony looked at the blood soaked ground and felt the breeze catch his hair again. His eyes slowly closed and an inexplicable calm coursed through his body.
“No.”
The world suddenly erupted into a flash of red light and then gradually faded to black.
Slowly, Anthony opened his eyes. A bright light filled his vision and he could see nothing but the light. Everything was the light and the light was everything. He thought to himself that this must be what it’s like to be born… to emerge from darkness into an all-encompassing light. Then he thought of the complete opposite. Was this what it was like to die? Just as the question had formed in the dark recesses of his mind he heard a voice coming closer to him through the light.
“Get up, boy. Quick acting like you’re hurt.”
Anthony looked over and saw a man emerging through the light, like a messenger of the Gods, standing on what looked like burnt ground with an expression you could carve from stone. He had black hair that came down to his cheeks and wore a black scarf that flapped wildly in the wind. Tattoos of a dark red ran down his right arm to his gloved hand which was extended towards Anthony in an effort to help him up. This stranger, who was no more a messenger of the Gods than Anthony himself, wore black armor with silver etchings that matched his tattoos. Beside his left hand, tied to his waist with a red cloth, was a sword with a silver hilt and the same designs etched on the base of the blade.
“I said get up. You’re not dead, you’re not hurt, and I doubt this is the time to take a nap.”
Anthony slowly sat up feeling the pain from some unseen wounds that the stranger seemed not to know of and Anthony had no idea how he had gotten. He looked around and saw that the festival was gone, not in shambles, but gone! All that was left was a burnt crater consuming most of the town and filled with trails of smoke that reached for the sky and twisted in the breeze that had become a stronger wind. Anthony was lying in the middle of all this while the unknown man looked down on him and told him to get up with a perfectly calm voice, as if he had seen places like this his whole life. Anthony wondered if the stranger had been the cause.
“What happened,” Anthony asked as he rubbed his head. The man was wrong. Based on the tenderness of the back of his head, Anthony would guess that he got hit pretty hard. He looked up at the man who only looked back but didn’t reply. His dark eyes seeming to evaluate Anthony as a large creature might evaluate it’s prey.
“Fine. Who are you then?”
“My name… is Jurgen.”
 I x I - Stricken · Thu Mar 12, 2009 @ 03:41am · 1 Comments |
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