Dylan Saccoccio [The Tale of The Boy

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.He flung them at the fleeing citizenry.The fireballs exploded into crowds of people, setting their bursting limbs ablaze, ejecting chunks of their burning sinews in all directions.The cloaked figure turned his focus back upon the woman and her two children.The mother’s poise was fractured by distress.“I long for your souls to haunt me,” he called out to them.“That I may best you over and over again for all of time!”He heaved a fireball at them.The shockwave from its detonation blew his hair back and illuminated the whole square with a bright orange glow.When the flames subsided, scattered corpses lay gnarled over the cobblestones.Their clothes were singed off their unrecognizable bodies and their bald flesh was glossy like melted wax.The tragedy of all things being equal in Nordic Elfin society, on this day, was that the cloaked figure also saw all things as being equal.There was no king to seek out and execute publicly, no leaders to make examples of.There were no statesmen to despoil or houses of parliament to burn.It was all or nothing, and so he chose to destroy it all.______________________________IT HAD BEEN LIFETIMES since Woden Caliph used the power of The Trivium to destroy Che’el De’Trezen.Burning slag no longer charred the city, the clouds were no longer the color of charcoal, but now the color of pearls, and the streets were no longer gardens of dead bodies.Everything else was just as Woden had left it, lifeless, only now the crumbled statues and ruined buildings were covered in snow and what little vegetation this time of year yielded.A boy, not quite an adult but old enough to fend for himself, stood in the same footing as Woden did in the city’s plaza, when he brought fire down from the heavens and lobbed it at innocent victims.A cold chill gave him goosebumps all over his body as he stood in the eerie stillness, scanning his desolate surroundings.Nature is the fairest of judges.It is equally cruel to all things.It left Che’el De’Trezen vacant and seemingly bereft of life, now, just as it did all those years ago.The boy wondered if anything dwelled in the blackness beyond the shattered windows or the dark halls beyond the porticos and colonnades of the abandoned buildings.He equipped his bow and nocked an arrow.“Just in case,” he told himself.“Just in case.”He’d never been this far north before, but it somehow felt familiar.Something about the ancient city resonated with him.Even in its ruins, the layout of Che’el De’Trezen was mathematically perfect.As much as he wanted to stay and explore it, he was alone without a guide, and this was the last place he wanted to be when dusk swallowed the light.The boy walked away from the plaza and left the residual effects of Woden’s energy behind.There were answers up ahead, on the other side of the city, beyond the reaches of its annihilation.All he had to do was make it through, and then he would be closer to the truth than ever before.CHAPTER 1A Drink to the PastA WOMAN BOWED TO her husband and his guest, then politely retreated into the shadows of the archway and out of the room.Her midnight-blue silk gown and platinum, waterfall braided hair drifted gracefully from the wake of her fast-paced walk through the hallways of her estate.Her emotions began to crack the chinks in her façade and overwhelm her ability to control them.Her breaths grew deep and frantic, yet even with her head held high and the tears streaming down her face, there was no denying her illustrious beauty.She ran up a staircase and then into her bedroom and locked the door behind her.How could it be that this day had finally come, that this bastard, this disgrace was still alive and how did he find them? Did he come to tear her family apart? Would he succeed? No, she couldn’t let that happen.She would kill him with her own hands before she would let that happen.She broke into a full-on sob.“What have I done?” she cried.“What have I done to deserve this?”She sat on her bed, rocking back and forth with her face buried in her palms.Her temples throbbed so badly that the pain forced her to stop weeping.As her whimpers subsided and she caught her breath, she thought of the one thing that had always brought her peace whenever she was terrorized by the loneliness of being away from her husband.It was his personal journal that recounted his experiences from the time he was young and lost her till the time he found her again.It told of his perilous quests and everything he wanted her to know in case he didn’t survive them.The strength of their relationship had been tested countless times through the years, but they had always kept it together.There were times in their youth when neither of them knew if they were going to see the other alive again.On the night of their wedding, he gave her the journal.She found some of her greatest comfort and strength by reading it.She delicately walked over to a shelf and picked up what looked like a black leather casing fit for a book.The casing had engravings carved into it that had been suffused by melted silver.“Tesso uns’aa dosst statha,” she commanded.The engravings glowed as the leather case retracted enough to reveal the common shape of a leatherback book, eager to obey the woman’s command and tell her its story.The woman opened it.The pages did not have written words on them.Instead, beautifully scribed sigils were etched into each page.As she touched the first sigil, the ink sparkled with multi-colored light and painted her face with a rainbow glow.She heard her husband’s voice.We have journeyed to infinite worlds, you and I.We have lost and found each other so many times that all the words in every civilization would not be enough to recount their tales.The majority of my life is over here and I am still without you.Perhaps I won’t find you in this realm again.Perhaps it’s not possible.You wander the halls of my dreams and take me to our favorite places that I’ve not yet been to in this life, to remind me what it is I live for.The people I encounter have dreams of you as well, often side by side with me, your ethereal eyes burning ever so bright.I decided to tell the story of one of our lives together, that if you’re still alive here you may read it one day and find me again, that my tale shall be my distress signal and you my deliverer.I wrote this to help you remember what you are, what you stood for, and why you’ve come here.I wrote it selfishly, that if my Onora is never to be found again, I might at least bethink what it was like to have her while I drift towards oblivion.If my shot is never heard, or my signal never seen, I shall depart this world knowing I said all I mean.______________________________THE HEARTH FIRE CRACKLED in the dark room.A man sat tucked away in his plush chair.It was not quite a throne, but it was certainly fit for royalty.He wrapped himself in the pelt of a beast.His hair was long and his beard overgrown.His face was hardened from the steep and treacherous paths of his life.The man’s eyes were the color of fountains mixed with dirt and blood.They chased the memories of his youth.He searched the great outdoors through a cloudy window that was large enough for any adult to walk upright through were there no glass to block him.It was embedded in a wall of granite bricks and engraved by dusty, golden latticework.He watched the snowflakes fall like angels from heaven, their broken wings causing them to drift wildly.The wind howled over the frozen tundra outside.It screamed at all those with shelter to remain, warning that Mother Nature would eradicate the god-written title of every person’s life that was exposed to her breath.“I’m quite impressed you stood alone against the world up here, in the ruins of Che’el De’Trezen,” the man said.“Less than half the age of the man who destroyed it [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Pokrewne