Chapter 1 - Prelude.md

The crows had fallen silent. Even they, drunk on the day's feast, would not settle near the boulder where Alwyn sat. His eyes were unfocused, green irises reflecting the dying light of day. Of one better forgotten. The stone he sat on was old — much older than the kingdoms that now bled into its shadow. His hand trembled against the rough surface of the rock. It was still not satisfied. His need for carnage. His desire to drown.

Camp followers moved across the field like carrion beetles, stripping the dead. This place once was a great plain, fruitful and home to many barns and fields. Now it was barren, its fertility drowned in blood. Gusts of wind carried the thick smell of burnt flesh, sweet and terrible, weaving the foul stench into his matted golden hair. Is that all there is left — burning it, everything, to ash? The smell brought back Aleth's voice: "Sweet mercy, Alwyn, I'd rather take a bath in our cesspit than breathe this!" His friend had clutched his stomach in mocking agony after their first battle, making the younger soldiers laugh despite the horrors around them. That was before Aleth learned that some stenches never wash away. Before one place laid bare what loss truly meant.

The dying horses had been screaming. Now they weren't. Alwyn did not look up, but he knew someone was approaching, not by sound, for the stranger made little, but by the way that his surroundings held their breath. Even the looters seemed to pause in their grim work, though perhaps they did not know why. The footsteps stopped. He could sense him, maybe a few swords' lengths away. But he did not raise his head. Why bother?

"...Alwyn, is it?" the man asked. "What do you want?" Alwyn replied, eyes bent on the grass below his feet. "I bring something, a package from Sir Elmhold." The messenger's voice was steady, almost gentle. Rovena's father eh... that stupid girl. Now what does he want of me? "Hand it over and be gone." For a little instant, his sword hand twitched. One quick thrust, barely any effort and he could be free. Indulging the things that taunted him, seduced him. Surrender.

The messenger dropped an object, veiled in gray cloth. It was a small bag, lying at his feet, right where his eyes stared into nothingness. A few moments of silence passed. The messenger made no attempt to leave. "Leave!". The newcomer stood still, looking with indifference at Alwyn's downtrodden self.

Alwyn reached for his flask, seeking to relief the struggle in his mind with the elixir he had left. He raised it to drink, but his hand closed on empty air. The metal's weight simply... vanished. The flask was in the messenger's hand. Alwyn had not seen him move. The air between them showed no sign of disturbance nor settling of dust. Alwyn sprang up. Not the theft itself, nay the mere thought of being patronised was enough. The trigger he yearned for.

His hand reached for the pommel of his sword. Drawing the sword from its sheath, he looked now, for the first time, into the eyes of the stranger: something calm, as if they were trying to tame him. You wretch are pitying me?

Clenching the hilt of his sword, his knuckles cracked, fingers turning white. A subtle movement of his wrist. He pointed his sword against the messenger's throat, until — The messenger did not flinch. Nor did his expression change. There was no threat about him, more so was he dwarfed in stature by Alwyn. Yet at that very moment, the messenger appeared as something large, like a giant, before him. Something unyielding, eternal. He paused. For a little while they stood there. His rage was subsiding, slowly, then suddenly, like a crashing wave. These eyes, they held no pity — only a terrible and ancient sadness. And they were ever so lucid. Eyes that looked beyond what Alwyn could see. Yes, he had felt them before, but the memory was veiled. "I am bound to witness this delivered and opened. Then my task ends."

Alwyn sank back on the rock, frustrated with his own weakness. Opening the thread that bound the gray cloth, he reached inside and noticed some parchment between his fingers. The parchment was brief, written in Beor's cramped hand:

"Time is upon me. What I searched for now for passes to you. Find what I could not see. —B.E."

The messenger watched him. Finally he spoke again, a silent but a stern voice. "Sir Elmhold warned me. You have become a herald of death. Grass withers where you walk. Whether you do what he asks is none of my concern — though it may change more than you, or I, want."

What I want? ...

The sun was setting, yet it seemed to linger, unwilling to wholly abandon the two to the dark of night. A soft breeze began to brush against his face. Like her touch, ever so gentle. Alwyn's jaw tightened. There was only one thing that would demand such secrecy. Further opening the cloth bag, he enclosed a round object in his hand. A black orb lay cold in his palm. Within it, gray shadows moved, drawing shapes which appeared almost as words — in a tongue long forgotten. It was a peculiar thing. A relic of the clouded past, one wrought by the elves and of no use to man. It contained that which unaware eyes were not meant, or rather unable, to see. A relic whose ownership was punishable by death. The Gesta. And why does this selfish bastard now place his curse unto me?

"You — what is your name?" Alwyn asked, gaze locked on the everlasting dance of shadows. "Carys of Tywyll," the messenger answered. With that, he turned and left. That place was a week's ride from here. Yet Alwyn saw no horse that would belong to the strange messenger.

Alwyn felt the orb grow heavy. The Tywyll Plains. Where armies bled into soil a year past. Where they seized Dorthem's elixir grounds. The place where Aleth fell. Where Alwyn's sword found his friend's heart. Where the earth itself refused the blood — turned it to dark mirrors. And in them, a stranger's face. His own. Where Rovena... Where everything ended.