Hello again! Here's another prologue for a book. I promise, another GRIM chapter and video are coming soon, I have them ready, I just need to finish editing. For now, though, here you have it:
Midsummer's Eve is a chronological epic set in the fantastical world of Aranor, where great powers are at each other's throats and a war is coming soon. The story follows the fall of the land at the hands of this war, exploring its many locations and inhabitants along the way.
Enjoy.
Midsummer’s Eve
There was never a good war,
or a bad peace.
-Benjamin Franklin
The Door to the Shadow
It was just past the fallen cast of
night when the paddle caressed the water, interrupting its mirror-still film.
The
oar was fashioned from ornate hemlock wood, about a grown man’s height with
designs of men scrawled into its surface. The water moved elegantly out of the
paddle’s path, a smooth ripple echoing into the vastness of the sea,
disappearing just a few feet away.
The boat was long and simple, but
beyond anything a man could have fashioned. It was wide in the center but
brought its ends to a perfect point, carved in such a way that even Mankind would marvel at its simple design. Gliding along the surface of the water so
lightly and so gracefully, even the fish could not detect it.
There was only one passenger of this
boat on that night, a man, his age perhaps a mere fifty Human years, sat within
the bow of the canoe, kneeling on the smooth wood and staring down into the shadowy
depths of the Sea of Providence. His hair was thick and curled at the ends, an
oily composition that filled his head within mere days following its cutting.
His skin, a pallid sort of white, was like that of a quartz or of a skull. His
nose was hooked, his lips were wide, thin, and cracked, and his veins were
large and obvious. This man was well-built and broad-shouldered. It was his
eyes that were perhaps the most prominent feature on his body, as they were a
brilliant forest green, with a sort of glow to them that enticed any who looked
upon their verdant pits.
This man’s name was Taranos.
General Taranos of the Northernmost
Darsein Empire, a proud and mighty man whose only seeking was that of wealth
and power. He was renowned throughout the Great Continent for his fearless ways
in battle and his brilliant strategic work.
He
was a legend.
However,
this man had a war-given name, one that he had earned long ago, in the fires of
battle: Brokenskull.
For he was a selfish and brutal man.
The whispers in the places of the land of Aranor spread far and wide from the
small northern Kenderkind villages to the Human cities near Forkwater, telling
of the General’s terrible lust for blood, and how he had relations with
beautiful women often, how he chained them to the icy stone walls of his tower
and kept them there. He would slay anyone that failed his bidding, and he would
burn at the stake those who envied him.
He
was a demon of a man.
His foul alias originated in combat
against the Kingdom of Man, in the Sundial Moutains just north of the Underland
Gate, when he went to war with Captain Victerell, of the Human city of
Garthell-Ny. It was the final battle of the war, and the Humans were coming to
a victory, their numbers greater and their magic strong. But Victerell, a great
chrome blade, called Muneron, in his hand, failed to recognize the abilites of
the Northernmost Darsein Empire.
General Taranos was learned in the
arts of wizardry, and a fire burned inside him that he tore his clothing and
drew a massive flail from the body of a felled Human. He battered the troops of
the Kingdom of Man’s Third Legion until their numbers had significantly
dwindled and they had to fall back. Taranos was a much greater, bigger,
stronger, more formidable man, and when he found Victerell, clad in full armor
and torn between surrendering and fighting until he was no more, Taranos called
upon a spell of darkness from the northern winds and shadowed the entirety of
the Sundial Mountains. The rest of the battle is unknown, because not even the
Seeing Winds could penetrate it, but once the darkness had cleared, Taranos
stood on the fells with the dead Captain in his hand, Victerell’s head
completely shattered. The Darsein had won, all because of their brutal and
wicked leader, the newly-dubbed General Brokenskull.
That war did not faze the Humans, however,
and they eventually drove the Darsein back to whence they came.
It was not just Brokenskull who was
in this boat, however. There was another. A much-more-important other.
This figure, while significant to
history, had gone unseen throughout time. Only those lucky enough could meet
him face-to-face, and even then, it was only for a short while. He was high and
slender, clad in a long, black cloak that stretched from the hood on his
shadowed head to the steel boots which he stood within. No man had ever seen
his face, for he had none. His only notable article of clothing, besides the
cloak, was his belt, made from a dark mail and with a sharpened blade cast from
Shadowglass and forged in the Mountain of Fire, deep within the haven of the
Elvenkind. No such blade was carried anywhere else.
This was no man. For he was Death
himself, the oldest known being in the land of Aranor. He was only spoken of in
quiet whispers, in ancient tales of fear and trembling bones. He was the
ferryman who carried the dead to one of two places, whether it be the sky-bound
entrance to beyond, located in the Highlands, or the Door to the Shadow, a
dreaded gate to a place where those who had failed to serve the Good were cast
forever.
And the Highlands could not be
accessed by this boat.
Taranos was dead. He was killed by
the disease known as the Northern Death, which brought about the dissolving of
bones and the melting of blood. A magic curse that followed those the Good
decided to release from the bonds of life.
“The famed Sea of Providence,” spoke
Taranos, his voice rocky and grave, but commanding all the same. He grinned a
bit and shifted his position so that he might face Death, who silently stroked
the water with his paddle. “I have never actually sailed its waves. Just think
what could be beyond such a great land.”
Taranos gazed out at the vast ocean
beyond him, quiet, ominous, great. The water was not like that of a normal sea,
for this sea stretched between lands, a sea that could not be accessed by any
man. It could only be touched by a man who had gained passage, usually through
Death. The Sea of Providence was, like both the men inside the boat, a legend.
On the other side of the boat,
Taranos could see in the distance the Mountains of Mystlandia, a mysterious and
eerie range of fells that lined the eastern edge of the Great Continent. Aranor
itself seemed just as quiet as the Sea of Providence.
Death did not speak to Taranos. He
only continued to paddle.
But the General who broke the skull
of the Kingdom of Man was not one to fall at the hands of a disease. He was a
conniving and relentless man, so he continued to speak to Death itself.
“Has word reached your ears,
Mephistus?” he inquired, calling Death by the name the Darsein know to speak.
It was not Death’s real name, but a faux one created to help the Darsein empires
feel as though they had conquered him.
Death ignored this.
“There is a prophecy that has been
spoken long ago,” continued Taranos. “One that speaks of a coming war that is
to end our land forever.”
Death did not listen. Brokenskull
was lying; there was no such prophecy.
“It says that someone is going to
climb the Wall.”
This caught Death’s attention, but
the faceless one did not show any sign of it.
The Wall was an ancient structure,
said to rise up at the edge of the World and stretch from edge to edge. Should
anyone climb it, the sun would set on this age, and a new one would rise,
giving birth to a new time under the dominion of the climber. This was less
than a legend. This was a myth.
But General Taranos Brokenskull did
not like to lose. So he continued to lie until finally Death himself spoke.
“One who has lost to the Northern
Death has no right to speak of what he does not know. Be silent, or a much more
terrible fate will befall you.”
Taranos raised an eyebrow. “Is that
so? What sort of fate?”
“I am sure the beasts that live in
the Sea of Providence will enjoy picking you apart piece by piece.”
Taranos continued to grin. That was
not as bad as he had thought.
“Starting with your genitals.”
This silenced Brokenskull. The
thought of such things made him cringe.
The boat moved in complete silence
for about another hour, and when Taranos considered jumping from the boat,
Death spoke again.
“We have arrived.”
Taranos looked ahead and saw before
him a tiny island, about the size of a bedroom. It was covered in vines and
leaves and grass, with not a single tree atop it. The boat slid up onto the
tiny shore, and it was then that Taranos could see the Door to the Shadow
itself. A wide, circular stone tablet, lying on top of the center of the
island. Beneath it was the blackest pit a man could ever see into.
“Take your last breaths of Aranor,”
whispered Death, tethering the boat to a single stone stake in the sand. “And
then get out of the boat.”
Taranos did not show emotion. He was
a bit afraid, he was willing to accept that, but even more, he was racking his
brain for possible ways to save himself from the void beneath his feet. He
stood up and stepped onto the shore, the bare skin on his feet tingling at the
touch of the soft but black grass.
“So this is the legendary Door to
the Shadow,” whispered Taranos, “Hardly legendary. ‘Tis merely a stone disc.”
Death waved his right hand, one made
of human bones with nothing in between, and uttered old words and spells in the
Tongues of the Ancients. Upon the stone of the Door appeared brilliant red
glyphs, runes of magic and prestige that had not been written on anything any
man could touch.
Taranos did not speak. Instead, he
lifted his wolf-life nose to the air and sniffed. He could smell the salt of
the sea, and the mist on the air, and it comforted him. He ran his fingers
through his black hair, and then felt the course cloth that comprised his
simple brown shirt and light tan trousers. He could see the white and red stars
that freckled the shadowy eastern night. He could taste the salty air of the
Sea of Providence on his lips. He could hear the waves on the shore of the
Great Continent in the distance. All was beautiful during what were to be his
last seconds in Aranor.
Death waved his hand again and the
Door to the Shadow slid slowly open, and despite its great stone structure, it
made not a sound as it moved, unearthing a deep pit that was filled with
darkness and silence.
General Taranos Brokenskull turned
to Death and nodded. He was ready.
Death quietly revealed a coil of
black chains from within the folds of his robes and held them at waist-level,
turning to Taranos. The General knew what they were for, held his arms out and
stared up at the sky. Then he heard a light whisper of the wind, and when he
glanced down at his body, he stood completely naked, the night air circling his
skin. Taranos stared at his cracked toes, as Death wrapped the chains around
him.
When Brokenskull had been bound, the
ferryman stood and stared him in the face, and the darkness from beneath his
hood snaked about the prisoner, into his soul and shooting fear through his
veins. Death was kind to those who deserved it.
“You, Taranos, with the flesh of
rocks and the eyes of arson, are going down into the depths of the void and
will never return. You will go to where there will crying and wailing and the
gnashing of teeth, where your skin will be eaten by worms and your limbs
devoured by reptiles. You will be alone and yet surrounded by many, you will be
hated but loved by the fires that engulf you.”
Brokenskull felt like an ant beneath
Death’s boot.
“May the shadows have mercy enough
to give you forty-eight lashes instead of fotry-nine,” hissed the great King of
the Underlands, and he yanked Taranos by the arm and dragged him to the Door to
the Shadow.
But it was when the chains were
freezing over with darkness that Taranos felt alive again. He stared Death in
the face and smiled, eerily, and when the ferryman cocked his head in slight
confusion, Brokenskull grabbed him by the neck and mustered all of his
strength, casting him into the pit and watching as Death himself plummeted into
the Door of the Shadow. Snarling triumphantly, he whispered one final thing
before jumping back into the boat.
“You should not have left my arms
free.”
