Scribblings

Ten riders stood atop a hill, looking east.  On the horizon, smoke was rising from the small outpost they left three days earlier.  By now, the dragon hordes were hammering the walls of Shieldhead to rubble.  It would only be a matter of time before the outpost fell and the hordes started their way down the pass towards Asery and into the Empire of Talimos.  After a brief moment, the riders turned and headed northwest off the hill.

Palenon slept uneasily.  The chair wasn’t comfortable, but he was exhausted.  Being chased through the Citadel of Kunir by the Lord Commander of the Citadel, pinned to a door by a long knife through the shoulder, and coming face to face with the copper-haired woman who haunted his dreams was too much.

As he slipped into sleep, a soft female voice spoke to him.  “Palenon, rest easily within these walls.  You have a long journey ahead.”  He drifted to sleep as a pair of eyes opened in his dreams and bore into him.  He twisted and moaned in his sleep.  The eyes blinked and the pupils elongated into reptilian slits, flaming with anger.  Palenon could sense the anger and rage, but for some reason they were distant and did not bother him as much as in the past.

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Four riders approached the southern gate of Asery.  The gate guards took one look at the first of the four riders and immediately sank to one knee as she passed.   As the last rider passed unchallenged into Asery, the guards started whispering about the other people who were accompanying the Lady Oracle.

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A stableboy appeared as the riders approached the stables.  Upon seeing the Lady Oracle accompanied by three other riders, he ran across the yard and pulled on a rope several times before returning and holding the reins of the Lady Oracle’s horse.  Three more stablehands appeared to assist the other riders in dismounting.  As the riders walked into the Citadel of Kunir, the stablehands started whispering amongst themselves.

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Palenon dressed in the plain robes that were hanging in the wardrobe.  He had no clothes of his own aside from the riding clothes he had received in Biqam and those were filthy.  When he had looked in the wardrobe that first night in the Citadel, he had found a half dozen plain robes hanging there.  After bathing that night, he had slept in one of the robes and had a long, dreamless rest.

Leaving his room, he had wandered the Citadel aimlessly, trying to learn his way around the massive fortress.  It had taken several candle-marks but he had found the library, the eating hall, and the main chapel.  While the library was rather useless to him, since he couldn’t read, it was a place of peace and quiet.  On the other hand, the eating hall was rather important, especially in the mind of an alley-rat and former prisoner.  The main chapel was also very quiet most of the time, but it was also awe-inspiring.  Massive stained glass windows let in the light of from the rising sun, bathing the chapel in brilliant color.

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Najal and Ardel rode in silence as they approached the manor house.  Despite Najal’s cheerfulness earlier, she had grown quite as soon as they had sighted the manor from a nearby hill.  When they dismounted at the gate, there was another horse already grazing in the front yard.  Najal shook her head.  Her father would not be particularly happy about that.  Looping the reins over the gate, Najal and Ardel walked up towards the front door.  To one side, Ardel noted a large indentation in the ground.  “Is that where?” he asked, tentatively.  She nodded.  “Yes.  That’s where Grandfather Corus held me hands as I killed my first person,” she said sadly.  “That was also the day I left here and went to the Academy.”  They walked up to the door and Najal knocked on the door with her staff.

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A rider sat upon his horse on a hill overlooking Asery.  He wondered what brought him here.  There were less populated places that he could hide in.  There were more populated places that he could lose himself in.  So what brought him to Asery?  He gazed at walls of the fortified town and grimaced.  There may be many places he could escape to, but only Asery held the Citadel of Kunir and that was his destination.  Two ten-days after being pelted by rain and hail, he was no longer a prisoner, yet still not free.  His dreams had returned in full force.  The draconic eyes of his former Mistress still haunted him.  The copper-haired girl still chased her away and stood over him.  The only place he had rested comfortably and without dreams had been the Santuary of Kunir in Biqam.  He could not, however, stay there.  It was too close to Ardosrian’s lands and he couldn’t bring himself to stay so close to the disaster.  The horror of that place was unbearable.

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A woman with white and black hair rode through the gates of Aturoane and immediately headed towards the northern gates of the town.  Her progress was slowed near the center of town by a small scuffle that spilled out of a tavern and into the street.  People were shouting and yelling as two people struggled in the middle of the crowd.  She stopped at the edge of the crowd that had gathered and waited calmly.  As the guards approached, some of the people turned around and tried blocking the progress of the guards.  When the guards raised truncheons and began to push their way through, the woman slowly started pushing into the crowd on her horse.  As people saw her pushing through, some of them started whispering and pulling the people around them out of her path.  She made it into the middle of the crowd well before the guards did.  There, she simply coughed twice and silence flowed over the crowd like a wave.  The guards quickly forced their way to the middle as the two men continued to struggle against each other.  She coughed again and the guards snapped to attention.

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She felt wretched.  Nothing had gone the way she had wanted for the past week.  First, those bullies at the Academy forced her hand.  Then her great grandfather said she had to leave, though in not so many words.  So she did.  After the first day, she regretted it.  She didn’t have a lot of money and she ended up spending most of it on food and a room at the inn the first night outside Artina.  The next day, she had nearly been run over by a group of cavalry galloping away from the capital.  The next night she found that what little money she did have wasn’t enough for a room, so she slept in the stables.  She woke up that morning stiff and smelling of horse.  The next three days consisted of avoiding a small, but persistent, group of thugs that kept trying to catch her.  Fortunately, she had finally discouraged them by burying their leader up to his chest in dirt using her magic.  Unfortunately, the use of magic exhausted her even more and now, she was in Relaith without any money and looking as ragged and dirty as any common urchin.  But she had hope.  For the past hour she had been following an armored man who wasn’t keeping an eye on his coin pouch too well.  He was much older than she was.  She knew that old warriors were dangerous, after all they had a lot of experience, but she figured that if she let him get a few drinks in him, she might be able to snatch the pouch and run for it.  She watched him go into a tavern and snorted.  Here she was, a former student of the Academy of Force and Faith, great grand daughter of it’s headmaster, looking for all the world like a thief.  And acting like it, she grumbled quietly.

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A woman with long, raven-black hair knelt at the edge of the pool.  Her hair covered her completely, reaching all the way to the ground and spilling around her in a midnight black pool.  She had the tips of her fingers barely touching the surface of the ware and she was murmuring softly to herself.  A breeze rippled the water for moment and teased her hair, revealing that she was completely naked beneath her hair.  Ever so slightly, a mist rose from the water and an intangible glow formed around the woman.  As the glow brightened, the her murmuring increased in tempo.  Slowly, the mist coalesced into a perfect sphere hovering before her.

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Whistles blew and the filth-covered boy looked around, panicked.  He looked at the unconscious merchant, face-down at his feet and the purse in his hand before dashing down the alley.  Quickly leaping up on some crates piled in the alley, the alley-rat scaled the short wall.  Guards shouted from several streets over as the alley-rat leapt from the wall to a window sill and the up to the roof on the other side of the alley.  Scampering across the roofs, he leapt from roof to roof, heading towards the slums at the edge of the city.

By the time the guards reached the alley where the assault had taken place, the alley-rat was gone and the merchant had drowned in the puddle of filth he lay in.

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A young man stood in the center of a dirt circle, long staff held in the guard position.  Three men circled him, each carrying a broadsword.  One of the swordsmen stepped in and quickly struck but the young man blocked it.  Immediately the other two swordsmen attacked.

*clang* *clack* *clang* *thunk* *CRACK*

The young man blocked four quick strikes and then struck back with a quick, perfectly timed strike to the temple of one of the swordsmen.  He dropped like stone.  The other two swordsmen stepped back quickly as the young man knelt next to the fallen swordsman.

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“Papa! Papa!” a young girl shouts as she runs into the manor through the garden door.  “Papa!  I did it!”  An older gentleman stands as the little whirlwind of energy bounces into the library.  He smiles as she breathlessly stops in front of him.  “Papa!  I did it!  I finally did it!” she gasps.

“You did what, Najal?  Bring the angels of light down from the heavens?” he smiles at her.

“Papa!  Don’t be silly.   I can’t do that yet.  I summoned the wind though!  I concentrated real hard because I wanted the big apple from the top of the tree.  And then it was there!  In my hands!  I must have summoned the wind to knock it down, right? Right?”  she manages to gasp out in a single breath.

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The sound of combat woke him instantly.  Ardel slipped out of bed and grabbed his broadsword from the scabbard by his bed.  Quietly, he moved to the door of the barracks.  Opening the door, smoke billowed in and he coughed violently before rolling through and to the side of the open door.  It was lucky he did as a score of crossbow bolts ripped through the space he was standing in moments before.  The screams of his squad tore through the air as he lay on the ground trying to catch his breath.  Painfully, he pulled himself around the corner of the barracks and looked back the way he came.  Crossbowmen stood in a semi-circle in front of the barracks and a bonfire had been lit with green branches to create smoke.  When the door opened, the smoke was pulled in and that signaled the attackers to fire.  Now they were just firing as fast as they could.  Ardel saw one of his fellow soldiers crawl out of the door and look right at him.  Ardel motioned at him to stay down and crawl towards him.

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Welcome the Scribblings. This is a place where I jot down story ideas, chapters, and potentially entire stories. All content is copyrighted, but feel free to check it out.