Prologue to my novel

[Lady_Macbeth]

This is a prologue to a fantasy story that I'm currently working on. It came out a little messier than I would have liked, but it's only the first draft. Anywho if you have any feedback/criticism you'd like to offer, be my guest!

Prologue
The Begging and The End
Krystella Rydsynd awoke that night to a cacophony of screams. She sat up in her bed and clutched the silken bedcovers to her chest with clawed hands, her breath catching in her throat from the smoke that was seeping into the room. It took half a second for the last of sleep’s gentle tide to flow away from her and leave her wholly awake and entirely aware of the maelstrom of chaos which lie just outside her bedroom walls. Father, she thought, Father said it couldn’t happen, there was no way, they could never even come this close…Father…Yes, Father, Mother, her brother, Sir Alagar, she had to find one of them, they would know what was going on and they would keep her safe.

Without another thought she flung her silken bedcovers off of her and gracefully vaulted her thin legs over her and onto the cold stone floor of Erial Fortress, or the “Castle in the Sky”, as it was so often called. Krystella was never fond of the Fortress. It was a stronghold which the royal families of the realm held for generations. Ever cold and austere, it stood atop the highest cliff above Erial Canyon, the tips of its battlements and spires touching the very heavens. Below it, all was a desolate abyss of sharp rocks and waterways so tiny from the view above that they looked no larger than rivulets of rain trickling down a window glass. The fortress was near impervious to enemy siege. Until now, she thought, praying that it was only that, a folly of her sudden panic-stricken mind.
Knowing the world as it had been for the past year, she knew better. So much of her world had been turned upside down within the past twelve months, it seemed that every single thing she thought she knew, all she had trusted, and every comforting whisper of “it will all be alright” had been destroyed in this horrendous civil war, along with so much of her kingdom. It had been a fortnight since her family and much of her royal guard had packed up and moved to the Castle in the Sky by the order of her father, and every day that had passed she missed her home at Cross Castle with more passion. There was her old room, the warm and fragrant air of Nosydeh, with its vast gardens and woods, always just a stone’s throw away from the golden shores of the sea. There was her home, and there were her friends, whom she hoped beyond hope had not been harmed in the crossfire of this nine times damned war. Her heart ached so much for home, but she dared not show it. “Be brave for me, Krystella,” her mother had said. “We all must hold strong, dear. You’re hardly a little girl anymore. You are a Princess and nearly a woman grown, and you must hold yourself together.”

Remembering her mother’s words, she steeled herself. She had to go, had to go find Mother or Father or Sir Alagar or anyone who could help. Quickly, she scurried to the door, gently running the back of her hand down the wood to check if it was hot with flame. Cool. The flames must have not reached her floor yet. She took one last look around the room, scanning over all her precious possessions she took with her from Cross Castle; her wardrobe rich with silks and jewel spangled frocks, her collection of porcelain dolls her mother had gotten her from the strange and beautiful Eastern isles of Xarephath, storybooks filled with all her favorite tales and songs (those had been her only solace since the day she’d been holed up in this cold and lonely place), and there were her jewels and trinkets and of course Binka, the threadbare, love-worn, stuffed horse that she kept close to her heart since the day of her birth (but would never in a million years give away the fact that she held it to her every night as she went to sleep).

A pang of regret ached her heart, knowing that she would have to leave all her precious things behind, but now was not the time to fret over it, that was a child’s way and she was a child no longer. She turned to open the door when a flash of silver caught her eye. It was the gift her older brother had given her on her birthday, nearly a whole year ago, and had been training her how to use properly ever since. She walked over and carefully picked it up by the hilt, and the memory attached to it came back to her in a flash.

Her mother looked as if she could have boxed Tobin’s ears right then and there, she remembered, but being the ever reserved and austere Lady that she was, spoke to him in daggers far sharper than the one Tobin had gifted her. That is no suitable gift for a young Lady, her mother had gritted through clenched teeth. Always and forever putting emphasis on the word Lady. Her mother had been grooming her for the role of proper Lady since she was old enough to curtsey, and her brother, being the aspiring expert swordsman that he was, had been grooming her for the role of tomboy since she was old enough to throw a fist. She took a fair amount of enjoyment in each, but it was not tea parties with the other daughters of high Ladies nor the swordplay training fields where her heart lay, but rather in the castle library, for she was always a bookish and pedantic child. From fairytales and poetry to philosophy and history she could spend hours pouring over texts, forgetting the world around her and immersing herself in the magic of the written word.

She had begged for her mother to let her keep the dagger, (she wasn’t really all that into weaponry, but it was a beautiful, intricately decorated thing, no doubt made from the finest steel in all the realm and garnished with deep blue sapphires on the hilt. It was sure to make a rather interesting conversation piece among her friends.) and finally it was her father that came to her defense. Come now dearest, a little training in the art of combat won’t kill the girl, her father had argued. Let her keep it and let her brother show her how to put it to good use.

And it wasn’t until now that she read the meaning between his words; A little training in the art of combat wouldn’t kill her, but lack of it just might. For her father, King of the realm, had sensed the tidings of revolt and mutiny looming in all about them long before anyone else; before what started as a small circle of wealthy Lords that had once sat on his council became the plague which would ravage her Kingdom forever, before the first men began to murder those of her kind, and long before entire regions fell before the rebels.

They called themselves the Circle of Order, her father had told her when the first battles had begun, but they stood for anything but. She had been but a whelp when her father had dismissed them from court and council, but whispers of future dark and grizzly consequences of the act had been on every gossiper, doomsayer, and warhound’s lips ever since. She had heard their talk when she went riding about the town, at first only in seldom whispers, but as the years came and went and the revolt began, it became the subject on the tip of everyone’s tongue.

It was an ill thing to turn them away they said, a very ill thing, for they had power, dark power, and they could use it whether they had a seat at the King’s right hand or no. What power they actually had, Krystella did not know back then. For she heard townsfolk say that they were anything from Sorcerers to Spirits from other worlds who’d taken human forms. Humans had no real magic, thought Krystella. The only power they had was to inspire fear with their silly hysterical drivel about doom lurking behind every corner and destruction just a stones’ throw away, just like the damned Circle had done. It’s my kind alone that the Infinite One deemed fit to bestow the gift of magic upon. Yet it was her kind that the Circle managed to turn the people of the realm against, with the spellbinding power of their lies, and soon enough it was those of her kind, who’s heads sat on pikes.

Some had gossiped that the reason her father cast the Circle of Order out of court was because he was too proud to accept their council. It made Krystella happy, in her own childish way. For she had a great deal of pride too. She was not only proud to be of the silver-blooded kind but even prouder to be a Rydsynd. Pride cometh before the fall she had read in one of her books once, but the words had never held any reality for her, until now. To puff out your chest with pride and to hold your head high with honor were lovely things…when the flame and bloodshed were but the frenzied words of radicals and village loons. When the chaos lie outside your bedroom door, pride’s sweet taste started to sour on your tongue a bit.

Those are cowards’ thoughts Krysty. Father did what was right and that’s all that matters. He did nothing more than tell a bunch of foolish old humans that he didn’t need them to tell him how to run his kingdom. We are the Rydsynds, we are a strong family and a proud one, and this is the price of pride. She glared at the reinforced wood and steel door before her and summoned every fiber of courage in her body. She was ready. And with that she tore open the door that was hinged between safety and destruction, and threw herself into bedlam.

Before she could so much as take a breath she was nearly run down by a moving heap of flames speeding past her. It was not until she took a closer look that she realized it was a man on fire. With horror she watched as the smoldering man ran down the corridor, vainly yelling and screaming, as every agonized breath and scream that escaped his lips was devoured by the flames which consumed his flesh. When he reached the end of the hall he did what Krystella could have imagined was the only way out of such a situation; he threw himself out the window and let himself plummet to the rocky abyss below. Utterly mesmerized by the gruesome scene which had just played out before her, it was all Krystella could do to just stand there petrified and gaping. Keep it together, her mother’s words echoed within her head, just keep it together.

It was the clang of steel on steel that broke her trance. Further down the hall towards the main tower she could hear the clash of swords, accompanied by battle cries. A flash of metal dashed across the hall towards the din, and she followed. When she reached the threshold of what had been the common room of the fortress, she looked to her right to find five men bedecked head to toe in ebony armor, donning full helms that covered their entire faces, locked in battle with two silvery blue armored men of her own royal guard, and to her left she found her brother Tobin, brandishing his longsword, preparing to join the fray. Dagger in hand, she dashed to her brother.

“Tobin! I’m coming!”, she shouted as she ran. Her brother took half a seconds’ glance at her, then back at the fight.

“Krystella, this is no place for you. Get out of here.”

“This hardly seems a place for anyone wanting to keep their head on their shoulders.”, she replied, in the coolest and most unafraid voice she could manage to muster. “I shall fight beside you.”

“This is not the time nor place for childish games Krysty!”, He growled through grit teeth, never taking his eyes off the battling men just a few yards away. They had finished with the two guards, kicking around their lifeless bodies and glancing at the two mere children who stood opposite to them.

“I won’t leave you! There’s too many, you’ll be slaughtered!”

“As will you, if you don’t leave me right now and find Sir Alagar, or mom and dad or somebody! They’re tearing the place apart around our ears and they’ll tear you apart too if you don’t find help now!”

“Tobin…”, she wispered in despair, gently resting her hands on his arm.

“I said NOW!” And with that, he swatted his arm away with such force that she was flung onto the floor. She got the message. The last thing she saw before dashing out of the room was her brother charging at the dark armored men, outnumbered five to one. And that will probably be the last I’ll ever see of him, she thought.

Tears began to blur her vision as she dashed out
of the room and back into the corridor in desperate search of a familiar face. As she ran, she could hear the chaos mounting all around her. Battle cries and the clang of steel could be heard around every corner, and every now and then she could feel powerful impacts which shook the entire fortress to the core, though what caused them, she did not know. As the temperature rose higher and higher, sweat trickled down her face to meet the fresh rivulets of tears flowing down her cheeks. It wouldn’t be long before the fortress became a blazing inferno; she had to hurry, and so she ran.

Krystella’s heart leaped to her throat when further down the corridor she spied a figure donning the black armor of the enemy. She went to run, but some strange reaction caused her to double-take. It was his face; the face of Sir Gamelon. She always had a bit of a fear of Sir Gamelon, childish and unreasonable though it may be. His face was battle-scarred to the point where half his lower lip was missing, revealing a mouth full of rotten, yellow teeth. He seldom spoke, mostly just brooded and went about his duty, but for once in Krystella’s life, the sight of that hideous, disfigured face was the greatest boon she could have wished for. Why he was donning the ebony armor of the invaders, she could not say, but she ran to him in desperation all the same.

“Sir Gamelon! Sir Gamelon!”, she cried, dashing to him and grabbing his arm “Thank the Infinite! What’s going on? Where are my mother and father?”

“Your mother…” He growled out through his broken, rotten mouth. His breath was enough to make Krystella gag. His arm lashed out and grabbed hers, squeezing so tight she almost cried out in pain.

“What are you-“

“Mother…mother’s dead little girl, I killed her m’self. Not before I had myself o’ bit of pleasure with her first, please and thankya”, he flashed a malicious grin, putting his decaying teeth on display in all their repugnant glory. “Her cunny was a fine treat, but…, his voice faded to a whisper, making his sickening breath all the more potent “looks like I got m’self the finest treasure in the house here now..” He pulled her closer to him, but as he went to make his move, Krystella thrust her dagger into his leg with her free arm. He shrieked in pain and let her go, but as she turned to run he dove at her, just in time to grasp her foot mid-step, sending her falling forward, face smashing into the ground. Silver streams of blood poured from her nostrils as she struggled to get up, but before she knew Sir Gamelon had pinned her beneath him. He grabbed her arm and flung her body face up with such force it nearly ripped the limb from its socket.

“Cunt! He spat at her. When I put my dagger in you...heh heh, you won’t be walkin’ for a time either.” With that, he tore her skirts upward, revealing the small silken underclothes beneath her sleeping gown. He let his coarse, callused hand trail down her neck, and past her collarbone, stopping at one of her small childlike breasts to give it a squeeze, and further down it trailed, past her stomach and hips till it found the small nook between her legs. “Oooh yes…he cooed out in a throaty whisper, stroking the tiny mound between her legs while she shook, wide-eyed and barely breathing, “The finest treasure in the house, mayhap the whole realm.” He began to pull down her smallclothes when suddenly a flash of steel, quick and bright as a bolt of lightning swept into Sir Gamelon’s neck, lopping his revolting head right off his shoulders, and dousing Krystella in a wild, sputtering, splash of blood.

Broken out of the throws of complete terror, it was all Krystella could do to shriek and cry, her hysterical screams smothered suddenly by a man’s hand.

“Calm down kiddo, it’s only me.”

His voice may have well been a song from the Infinite himself, for all the relief it brought her, and when she looked up, she saw only him. Clad in his pure platinum armor, the Ryndsynd crest embossed across the breastplate, sword in hand, and long, auburn hair tossed wildly about his shoulders there he was; Sir Alagar, Lord Guardian of the royal family. Before she could so much as speak another impact shook the walls, this one more powerful than any of the previous. When the fort had settled Sir Alagar looked about nervously.

“Grab on to my neck, sweets, let’s get you out of this shit storm, eh?”, Sir Alagar was never known for eloquent speech nor polished, courtly manners. He was a bastard from the slums of Smuggler’s Edge, but he was the swiftest hand to ever wield a sword since Cambrion the Terrible, her father had oft told her (and once you had seen him fight you’d be a fool to argue.) Though most high people of her court were put off by his rough spun and unrefined demeanor, his seemingly inexhaustible wit delivered through his swear-word ridden commoners speech was enough to lighten Krystella’s spirits even on her darkest days. She thought so highly of him that Tobin would even tease that she fancied him.

Tobin…the thought hit her like a smack in the face and felt like an icy hand gripping at her heart. He’s probably dead right now. The thought snapped her harshly back into reality, and she threw her arms around Sir Alagar’s neck. Quick as a fox he scooped Krystella up in his arms and dashed down the hall.

He ran down a maze of corridors, (for Sir Alagar knew the layout of the Castle in the Sky as if it were a second home) up a spiraling flight of stairs and directly left through a winding corridor. Where it lead, Krystella could only guess. They were almost through when they heard the clangor of metal clad footsteps. Sir Alagar looked back at a door they passed just a few feet back and darted toward it. Hiking Krystella up on his shoulder, he used his free hand to rip it open and threw the both of them inside, slamming the door shut the moment they were both in.

They had ducked into what appeared to be a small storage closet. There was no light in the room save through a small, barred window cut into the door, and for a moment or two the only sound Krystella could hear was Sir Alagar’s panting, until the hall outside the door exploded with the sounds of men at battle.

“Looks to be as if we’re stuck here for a while,” Sir Alagar said, taking a seat on the floor.

“The fortress is on fire!” Krystella cried, near panic-stricken.

“I’ve noticed,” he replied coolly, patting the ground with his hand as a gesture for her to sit with him, “but we’ll last longer in here than out there, backs to the wall and outnumbered Lord-knows-what to two.”

“How do you know we’re outnumbered?” She asked in a small voice, trying in vain to hide the fear in it. She slowly hunkered down beside him.

“Because I’m one out of about a hundred-odd knights out of the five hundred here who hasn’t sold themselves out to the Order.”

Her eyes widened and her body straightened with a start. “Sir Alagar, what are you talking about? That-that…can’t be..”, she trailed off, both stunned and confused.

“Nor could Erial Fortress fall to an enemy attack, but that didn’t stop anyone did it?”

Her eyes dropped to the floor, and met his once again.“Why?”, it was all she could think to say.

“Why does a man do anything?”

She looked down, her eyes shifting back and forth, searching for something to say.

“To survive, sweets, to survive. To live another day, to sleep sound of mind and full of stomach yet another night. To look forward to a future of peace and prosperity, without war or hunger or poverty, where every man has his own patch of land to farm, a woman to fuck, and nobody to give him no pain about it. Every oh-so-grand-and-wonderful piece of rainbow and fairy dust spangled shit that the Order’s been blowing up the people’s asses since the day they hopped up on their soap crates. But you know what these fools are really looking forward to?”

“What?”

He took in a breath, about to answer her, as something suddenly collided with the door with a loud crash, causing them both to jump. It slumped to the ground and lay just on the other side of the door, and through the tiny gap of space underneath it, a small puddle of liquid oozed in. Krystella nervously let her fingers skim its surface and hurriedly pulled them away, holding them slightly above her face. In the tiny ray of light coming through the hole in the door, she could see it was red. With a look of disgust on her face she hurriedly wiped them off on her sleeping gown.

“That, child,” he said, pointing at her stained fingers “Is exactly what the world is looking forward to, under the rule of the Order. You see, the Circle of Order’s been feeding people these promises for some time now-”

“I know all about the damn Circle and what they’ve done.”, Krystella interrupted. There was nothing she hated more than when people treated her like some dull, uninformed child.

“Really? Then I suppose you knew all about what they had in store for us tonight?”, he asked rhetorically, raising one of his ginger brows.

Krystella blushed and dropped her eyes. Sensing his slight annoyance, she took on a more respectful tone. “What sort of lies have they been telling the people?”

“Anything they wanted to hear, and then some. The Order’s plans have been in the making since the day your father threw them out on their asses, and years later when they finally had their shit together they came out of their hidey-holes, dusted off and made themselves pretty for the public and started preaching. They had everything they needed to bring the realm to its knees; the wealth, the weapons, all they needed was the manpower. So they went and they wooed the world over, town by town, region by region. Some responded well enough to promises, some needed a little help from fear, those who responded to neither needed to be bought, and those who couldn’t be bought needed to be mowed down.

“I know that, but…here!? In our homeland, the courtiers, council, and knights of our very castle!? They took an oath to protect us!”

“Doesn’t make them any less human, and for most of us humans, you’ll find much to your sorrow that when the shit hits the fan, the only loyalty we have is to ourselves and to ourselves only.”

“Humans…”, Krystella echoed. The word left a bitter taste on her tongue. Never before had she felt such disdain for the Other Kind.

You’re generalizing Krysty, her father’s voice chided in her head. Thinking in generalities was the way of the ignorant, he had often told her. Besides, Sir Alagar was human too, and he was the bravest, most valiant man she knew.

“Yes, whether it be in gold, land, or power, every man has his price”, he looked the floor and chuckled to himself for a moment. “Everyone but loons like me.”

Erial Fortress fallen, our kingdom traitors to the Order, attacked from the inside out by our own Knights. The facts exploded within her mind, yet they seemed as real to her as the shards of a terrible nightmare, broken by awakening. She hugged her knees to her chest, staring down blankly at the shimmer of her silver clawed toenails in the dim light, just trying as she may to take in the horror, searching for a single light of hope, yet finding none. She looked to Sir Alagar, and spoke in a voice scarcely more than a whisper.

“My family is dead, aren’t they?”

When Sir Alagar’s face went ashen and he turned his pale blue eyes away from her silver ones, it was all the answer she needed. Her blood turned to ice within her veins, leaving her body cold and trembling. Though when she thought she would surely break into hysterics, to her surprise, the tears never fell. The events of the night had made her emotions numb and her heart as cold and empty as the abyss of stone which lay beneath them. Sir Alagar, with a slightly trembling hand reached into the small leather satchel that he kept tied close to his sword sheath. Out from it he pulled a long, tightly rolled cigarette and a flint match. He lit the cigarette, inhaled deeply, closed his eyes and let thin tendrils of smoke escape his nose and mouth. She watched as the wisps floated upward, snaking and swirling, and eventually dispersing into nothing.

“I thought you quit those.”, she remarked hollowly. Surprised at the fact that she could even manage such insignificant banter, given the current situation.

Sir Alagar smirked. “I thought that I would want to see the age of ninety.” He took another drag, and let it out slowly. “Even if by some boon of the Infinite I manage to escape this place alive, I wish to be dead and buried before I’m cursed to see the Circle of Order’s plans, well…come full circle.

“How…how could my father have let this happen?”, She asked in a wavering voice.

“A king is only as powerful as is people allow him to be. In all his years as king, before this mess happened he held this realm together as fine as any. He was a great ruler, and an even greater man, but he let his pride get the best of him a lot of the time. If we had only stomped the Circle out when word came that they had become a small cult, when word came that it had become a group of rebels, fuck, when it was even just a small revolt it could have been handled, but we waited too long to take action. We had to wait till it was a goddamn civil war, till we were on the wrong side of the sword with more than half the damned population. Your father never took the Circle seriously, and in his folly they ripped his people out from under him with their lies.”

“It’s the end”, Krystella whispered. “It’s the end of my family, my kind, my kingdom, my people…”

“It’s the end of the world,” he spoke softly, through gossamer tendrils of cigarette smoke, “They just don’t know it yet.”

The temperature was growing hotter, and the mayhem outside was not letting up. They sat in silence for a few moments, Sir Alagar smoking, and Krystella lost in restless, fevered thoughts. Not knowing what else to do, and all words of death and catastrophe already spoken she wordlessly slid closer to Sir Alagar, holding out a trembling hand, the middle and index fingers slightly upraised from the rest. Sir Alagar gave her a puzzled look, then after a moment understood. He placed the cigarette in her outstretched fingers, and slowly she brought it to her lips. She drew the smoke in slowly, coughing slightly from the stinging feel of it on her virgin lungs. When she took the second drag though, she didn’t mind it so much at all. She leaned her head against Sir Alagar’s chainmail clad shoulder, and they sat silently in the barely lit stillness, passing a smoke back and forth and awaiting their fate.