Midsummer's Eve Prologue

Midsummer's Eve Prologue

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.”

More to come soon!

c. Taylor Ward 2013. All rights reserved.