In a last-ditch attempt to gather interest, here is the second chapter. Please read
- 2 -
The world seemed almost to be collapsing around him, everything a blur of red, orange, and yellow floating on an ocean of grey. The ground rushed at him as he stumbled, a tidal wave, choking his lungs with dust and caking his face with black mud.
And then, silence. He lay there breathing for a while, soaking it all in.
The birds, the water lapping up against his raft parked on the shoreline. The wind cried sweetly through the rustling trees, caressing his hair as Lara had so many weeks ago when they first met. "My betrothed...our meeting has been a long time in coming, has it not?" Five years, in fact.
Five years that mean nothing now, thought Aric. Lara had a strange demeanor; she was the definition of a lady but seemed to have little space for the formalities of royal life under her skin. And so beautiful, so,
so beautiful, he remembered. Since Ragnar's arrival Lara was the last bastion of reality in a world of falsehoods.
But Aric had left that behind in the night. This was his world now, and he had to get used to it. And staring at the ground with dirt in his eyes did nothing.
Peeling his face off the earth, the storm of colors began to take shape into things he could recognize. The fiery hues were the leaves of trees and the ocean of grey was the sky above him, with rays of light striving for room to breathe through the thick clouds. The ground he fell on was a mixture of thick, sopping mud and leaves from the countless tall trees around him, ancient oaks and maples and elms that had stood there in the forest for ages.
Next came his body, aching from the long journey downriver. Aric rose slowly and deliberately to get used to standing again. It had been uneventful save for the past few hours, when he could have sworn he saw a boat in the distance with his father's crimson and blue flag. Surely they wouldn't have thought of that? Aric had planned this whole thing very carefully, and was positive no one saw him sneak out via the Underdock. Besides, it was virtually unattended that time of night. Reflective of his father's newfound confidence, it seemed. Regardless of the true nature of what he saw, it meant he had to go faster. His arms ached from paddling and poling off of the riverbank to avoid crashing his amateurly assembled raft.
He was safe now though, he assumed.
Aric shuffled over to the raft, still slightly out of breath from his hours-long panic. The mud mixed in with the fallen leaves and clung to the soles of his boots, splotching hungrily, almost desperately trying to hold him down. In front of him was the raft, floating gently on the shallow water near the bank, exactly as he had left it. The Turion family heirloom, a chest encrusted with rubies and sapphires and plated with silver but worn by age, sat tied down to the raft. Inside Aric had packed the bare necessities; some saltbeef from the castle kitchens, a compass, some stale bread, tinder, and, most importantly, maps he had taken from the castle library. There were several sets there so as to confuse Rickard if he went looking to see what was missing.
He unsheathed his sword. Seraphim, Rickard had christened it, a gift for his first and eldest son.
Awfully fitting for a man like Father to give me a sword for my sixteenth birthday, he thought. But it was a fine piece of work, that could not be argued. A Fellforged steel blade blended effortlessly with a pommel bearing the Turiellan panther sigil that had stood as a symbol for the Turion family for three-hundred years now.
Tough fires breed tough swords, Rickard had told him.
Three-hundred years, thought Aric. With all the worry on his mind he had forgotten about the Tricentennial events today. Oddly enough, it was not his father he yearned for...rather it was little Emile and her bright smile and carefree attitude, or Rogan and the way he lovingly mimicked almost everything Aric did, and the pretend-swordfights they had together in the castle halls, dodging servants and guests as they took the battle down stairs and through corridors. Most of all though, he wanted Lara. He had only seen her twice before, but her presence was almost intoxicating. Her voice, her smell, the feel of her hands...it was like an escape from the boundaries of his life.
My one regret, he thought.
But one of the many things I'll have to sacrifice. The blade still felt awkward in his hands as he cut the rope binding the chest in one swift stroke. The impact caused the raft to stutter slightly in the water. Aric placed the chest down on the bank unceremoniously and reached down to drink and splash his face. The dirt ran off of him and formed murky clouds in the clear water of the Great River, mingling with sediment from the riverbed. The water was truly the kingdom’s lifeblood; it ran under the castle, where it was siphoned for the people; it ran through the borders, where it linked Turiel with the world; now, it cleansed and washed away the worries of Aric.
He stood again, cleaner now, at least in the face, and felt the wind run through his hair again. Reaching down Aric rustled through the contents of the chest until he found a particular map, unfurling it to get his bearings straight.
The kingdom’s river had led him south into a place that was not wholly unfamiliar. Most of the world was foreign to Aric because of the way Turiel was structured; a world inside a ring of mountains whose power paradoxically extended over even the highest peaks. Aric had been much further south to see Lara and visit the Diamond Coast with his father before, passing through Ashdanar.
However Ashdanar was not as splendid as he remembered. Perhaps the season was to blame, but Aric remembered it as being lush and vibrant, alive with light and shadow and vegetation. There was light and shadow here, and plenty of trees to spare, but they lacked life and yet, at the same time, seemed completely living.
The sentinel trees were dark and tall, but through them Aric could discern the dim silhouettes of distant mountains, mountains that were foreign to him and not as sharp and violent as the ones that bordered Turiel.
It was still hungry, the ground, and tugged at him as he pulled the raft ashore. He doubted he would need it in the future, but he was unsure if Ashdanar and Turiel were on good terms; such was the degree of his lack of exposure to the world outside, and such was his father’s madness. Slipping Seraphim into its sheath and carrying the mud-spotted Turion chest under his arm, Aric started up the embankment and into the thickness of the trees.
The branches of the trees crisscrossed above his head as he walked, their shadows playing with the dullness of his clothing and blending with the sunshine creeping in from the gaps in the forest ceiling. The ground was drier here, thankfully, and made the journey into the wild more controlled. For a boy who grew up in a world of stone walls and golden thrones, the earthy tones of Ashdanar’s forests were almost unsettling.
As if to rebel against his sense of security, however, the skies began to weep. For him, for Turiel, or for Ashdanar and how it would soon be swept up in the conflict, he didn’t know. Either way, the gods and the heavens and even the earth itself would have reason to mourn.
A cave. Aric was thankful for it being buried in the hillside in precisely this location. He still didn’t have his bearings entirely straight, and he was very averse to the steadily building rainstorm. The sound of thunder soon joined it in a massive cacophony that swallowed the former silence whole.
He set the chest down on the smooth floor of his new shelter, and stared out into the rain. Forgetting his fears, Aric decided that sleeping out the storm was a preferable decision at the moment; he was afraid of losing his way in the rain and was wet enough already from paddling the raft all night.
The peace was soon disrupted, however, when Aric saw a flash of green amidst the mist and the rainfall. Quick as a fox, it darted between two trees, but he caught it regardless. Clutching the chest to himself pointlessly, he waited for its return with bated breathing. Green wasn’t even part of Turiel’s sigil, but perhaps that was what was intended to confuse him…
The rain was falling harder now, and a thin layer of mist began to form over the ground. Ever so cautiously Aric sat the chest down and peered out from the cave, struggling to see the same green flash in the blinding rain. It had disappeared, vanishing into the sea of trees and mist.
Paranoia still running high, Aric sunk back into the cave, almost as fearful as he had been the night before, working with all his might to move the raft as fast as possible down the river. But there was no path for him to follow away from this fear, from this danger; the cave led nowhere and the outside world was filled to bursting with ambiguities and uncertainty.
And so he stayed his ground, quivering with cold and fear. Seraphim was laying across his lap like a pet cat, and Aric even began to caress it gently, seeking desperately to relieve the tension that was coursing through his body like fire. He stopped when the blade opened his finger just enough to bring him back to reality, and he sucked on the wound like a child.
At that moment, Aric realized he still was a child. He was almost a man according to the standards of society, but a man would never be so apprehensive, so afraid. For a moment he considered rushing out of the cave and giving himself to the wilderness or the green-cloaked figure or his father’s men, whatever got to him first…but he couldn’t. The world outside the walls of Castle Turiel was a wild and reckless place, and he would have to adapt if he wanted to save those same walls that had sheltered him for so long.
But there were no walls here. Only the stone and the tears of the heavens beating down outside. Their rhythm lulled Aric to sleep as he sat against the wall and temporarily cast his thoughts aside as his body fell to rest.
