Unfinished, nameless story, so don’t judge

Prologue

Seven dead bodies littered the corridors of Mecester Palace that night, one belonging to the king. The culprit of all seven crimes stood staring at a beautiful piece of crystal, the Stone of the Arch Mage. It was supposedly created by the first Arch Mage, Eldrian, but he, along with the magic he practised, were nothing more than legend now. There were a few who still believed in the ancient arts, but none knew of them, as these solitary magicians studied alone in caves and crypts. One of these magicians, Hadeon, has now come out of hiding to wreak havoc upon the country that had laughed at his talent in magic and banished him from the cities as a madman. Behind Hadeon stood a pair of young twins, brother and sister. They stood silently not wanting to disturb their master, but both were clearly impatient to get it over and done with.

"Quick, protect yourselves."

The twins muttered a spell under their breath and a veil of pale smoke formed around them.

Hadeon started uttering words too faint to hear, but gradually they grew louder, and a melody started to form. It was beautiful, the twins felt themselves go into a trance listening to the song, but it was sad, as if the person who made it knew they were doing wrong. The spell contained no coherent words, just images of the total chaos it would create that were sent flying into the minds of any who heard it. Images of mutated beings and the death that would surely follow.

Suddenly the music stopped. Hadeon, looking at his right hand, smiled. "It worked." he said, and thrust his hand onto the crystal.

Chapter 1

The wagon was stacked full of supplies and wares to be sold in Cordon. The owner sat at the front, guiding the horses at a slow trot through the gate to the fort which straddled the border between Skyhall, the mountainous country he was entering, and Scalgon, his industrial homeland. The blacksmith nodded his head to the soldiers manning the fort, and thanked the young man who had opened the gate for him. The young soldier replied politely that it was his pleasure and swung the door shut. The very short and fairly squat blacksmith nudged his horses forward a bit faster, as he was keen to sell all he could and bring home the money to his family. The fort was new, and path through the fort hadn't been worn much so the horses had difficulty gripping the freshly laid cobbles, rattling the metal in the back and drawing the attention of the nearby soldiers as they went by. He tried to ignore the inquisitive looks which he knew were aimed at his height. Measuring only 4 feet 10 inches from head to toe, the blacksmith was used to the questioning glances that came his way, but they still irritated him as he straightened his back and tried to sit as high as he could in his seat.

As he passed through the open gate that marked the border between Skyhall and Scalgon, the blacksmith noticed that even though the soldiers of the fort passed freely through the gate, there were fewer of the familiar leather tunics with crocodile scale shoulder guards and more of the goat hide and eagle feather cladding of the soldiers from Skyhall. Then it happened.

All around the fort soldiers were turning round to face the gate the blacksmith had just come through. The blacksmith, too, turned round and looked at the sky. In the distance, roughly in the direction of the capital, a small black dome had appeared. It was slowly growing larger, and the closer it got to the fort, the more ominous it looked.”What is it?” soldiers were asking, only to be answered by whimpers and shrugs. In a matter of seconds it had reached the fort and was swallowing up the soldiers he had just greeted. His horses had ignored his command to stop as he turned around in the saddle to look and bolted just as it reached the border carried him halfway towards the exit into Skyhall. The dome was a stone's throw away from the blacksmith when it seemed to dissolve in front of his eyes and disappeared as if nothing had happened.

Hopping off the wagon, he cautiously took a step forward, and then a few more towards the border. He could hear screams and hesitated for a second, but then curiosity overcame him and he picked his way towards the border, eyes peeled for any suspicious movement. He saw Skyhall soldiers sprinting like mad in every direction and stole towards them, careful not to be seen by anyone lest he be mistaken for an enemy. He heard a sword being drawn and looked in the direction of the sound to see a terrified young soldier slashing at a strange looking man with pale grey skin and a strangely vacant look on his face. He had no pupils and his mouth was hanging open as strange guttural noises came from the throat. He had no weapons other than his hands, and the soldier had managed to slice one of them off, but if he was in pain he didn’t show it. The soldier managed to kill the peculiar man who had attacked the soldier by decapitating him, but had collapsed with the exhaustion a few seconds later. Running over to him, the blacksmith tried to wake him up and get him to his feet, he could hear more of the groaning men coming nearer and the soldier was not safe lying in the middle of the path. The soldier however would not wake so the blacksmith dragged behind a building and went to find some bread and his water skin to revive the soldier with from his wagon.

When he got back the soldier had hauled himself into a sitting position and gladly ate the bread and drained the water skin. “We need to help the others, are you fit to fight?” the blacksmith said.

“I think so, at least we now know to go straight for head and not bother with the limbs.” the soldier almost joked as he replied to the question. Together they went back to the wagon to get a sword for the blacksmith, though he wouldn't be much help. They sprinted towards the sound of battle where a few brave soldiers were struggling to keep up with the group of enemies assailing them. "Take off their heads, it's the only way to kill them!" the soldier shouted.

The blacksmith ran up to the nearest man and swung his sword at his neck, missed, and swung again, this time hitting the target. With a thud the head fell to floor. Another thud signalled that the enemy was dead. "He's dead." a nearby soldier confirmed.

The soldiers then killed the enemies with easy strikes to the neck. The battle was soon over. The captain of the fort had been injured in the early stages of the battle and had fainted from blood loss, a herbalist was trying to revive him. In the meantime the lieutenant was ordering the soldiers to shut the gates and had set up a guard. The blacksmith was wandering around, staring at each body in shock. Deaths in his village were either of illness or simply old age, and they were never this brutal. He recognised the soldier who had welcomed him at the gate, and a young man who had been drinking some other soldiers. He was stumbling through a patch of the strange men when he stopped dead. The blacksmith stood above a woman's head, her body lying a couple of feet away in a crumpled heap. The face had been defiled and was almost unrecognisable, but the blacksmith knew who it was. The soldier he had befriended notice the blacksmith staring at the body, and walked over to him.

"You all right?" he asked, "The first deaths are always the hardest, but you'll get used to it sooner or later."

"What's your name?" the blacksmith ignored the soldier's question.

"Owyn, son of Baryn." The soldier gave the blacksmith a puzzled look.

"Do you know her name?" he asked, nodding at the woman.

"No?"

"She's Noura, my wife."

Silence.

They stood there.

Silence.

The sun was setting.

Silence.

It was getting cold.

Silence.

Until,

"What's your name?" the soldier asked, "It seems wrong that I know your wife's name but not yours."

"Ferron." he said, slightly pained. "She... she had come to wave me off at the gate." There were tears in his voice. "She... she was so beautiful, my light in the... the horrible darkness." his face was wet. "Someone made her... become... become the savage creature that was killed today. I will find whoever did this to her. I will find them and make them pay."

Midnight. No-one had slept a wink, the groaning coming from the other side of the gate wouldn't stop. Ferron was lying in the back of his cart, staring up at the stars. An image of Noura kept forming itself amidst the stars. She would smile at him, and he would smile back, saying her name, but then she would fade away back into the night.

At some point Ferron had fallen asleep, merely to be woken up again by the birds at sunrise. He had immediately gone to Owyn. He trusted him, and felt he needed to say goodbye, after the horrors of last night. Owyn was in his tent, putting on his leather chest guard. 

"I've come to say goodbye, I'm going to ask the king of Skyhall for help. Maybe he could send out an army, to try and stop whatever it is that has happened." Ferron said.

A few seconds passed, and then, "I'm coming with you," Owyn said it with such determination that Ferron just stood there. "And anyway, it will be a lot easier to persuade the king if there is a soldier like me there, and I'll... I'll keep you company, and you're good enough with a sword to go through the mountains on your own. There are all sorts of stories of travellers disappearing, or being swept off cliffs by ravenous birds,or worse."

"As long as you promise to train to be as close to you in skill as a can be." Ferron replied, "Are you ready?"

"I was ready before you came." He said with a glee smile.

Chapter 2

The huge wooden gates stood open, the beautiful carvings depicting the tales of many great kings. Images of brave men fighting off hordes of strange creatures. Ferron and Owyn stepped across the threshold, after four days and nights travelling, they had made it to Deagral, the capital of Skyhall. The city looked like it had fallen out of the mountain, a great tumble of stone buildings, resting on ledges jutting out the rock, all surrounded by a 3 meter thick wall of stone.

Finding their way through the maze of streets, they finally reached the steps up to the royal hall where two, identical, metal gates. The long vertical poles stretched up towards the sky, where they were cut off by a horizontal bar. There were six intimidating barbs on top of each gate, each a foot high, that stared down upon the people that passed through the gate each day. None, it appeared had passed through the gates this day, as there was a huge chain, with a rusty old lock, wrapped around the two gates.

"What should we do?"