Ok, so I thought I had lost these stories forever ago, but truth be told. I haven't (YAY YAY YA!!!!) so, I am going to post them here for you to read. This is the beginning of one of my novels entitled "Backstory" it is a compilation of all of my character backgrounds from role playing games (Dungeons and Dragons, Shadowrun, Veren5, Werewolf and Vampire) and I am very excited about finding it again. I will continue to write on it and I will post new chapters as they are finished. I hope you enjoy it!
Backstory: Chapter One
A woman with surpassingly bright purple eyes steps onto the path in front of me. She is faster than I am, and before I can react she slides cold steel into my stomach. Or is it steel? No, it's ice, a cloud of ice. It's draining the life from me, I can't move. I always thought I would panic when it was time for me to die, or that it would happen so quickly I wouldn't even know it had happened. I fall to the ground, only a few yards away from the camp of some one who could help me, a warlock, but he can't see us. The woman smiles at me and sits down. She is going to watch me die...
I look at her from my icy prison, the shards digging through me now, they will shred my insides, but they leave no outward visible mark.
"So, little half-elf. Tell me your story, I'm bored." she says this with a disdain that is uncanny. I've never encountered a person so uncaring. She's killing me for no reason, and now she wants me to entertain her!!!!! But...someone should know my story...
I close my eyes, and take a painful, stinging breath.
"I was born in Validan, the daughter of Theriath Fallan, the Archer Marshall of the Elven Kingdom. My mother was a human, Cathien...I never knew my mothers true last name." my chest clenches and I gasp in pain. She smiles. "When I was four, my mother ran away with another human. She left me with my father..." the pain becomes too much for me as the icy splinters began to burrow into my lungs, and my heart. I double over on the ground, my legs muscles have started to cramp and black spots are popping in and out of my vision. Blood begins to trickle from my mouth, it chokes me. She laughs.
"Perhaps you will be entertaining" her voice is musical, like crystalline bells, it's a beautiful as she is."But save your breath, I will collect your story. I have a journal you see, I like to know the people that I kill." she pulls a small scroll from her pouch and reads it aloud, I don't understand the words, but....
"AAAAAAAAGGGGHHH!!!!!" the scream eviscerates my throat and vocal chords as it is ripped from me, it is the most unendurable agony I have ever felt. There is a hand in my brain! I can feel my memories, draining from me, through my eyes, blood pours through my tear ducts, I see flashes of my family, my friends, my scimitars....
The petite frame of the half-elf girl falls prone, the blood memory drain has finally finished her off. The purple-eyed woman looks down at the scroll, the fresh letters and words that are scrolling there of their own will are written in the dead girls blood. The woman blows on the sinister ink to make sure it doesn't smudge, she settles herself across from the dead body at the foot of tree. She begins to read:
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The sun-light cut through the heavy forest canopy on that late summer afternoon giving a golden edge to the leaves that were already bursting out with autumn hues. A butterfly lifted itself up into the gentle breeze that caused the trees to dance and sway in contentment. And then the quiet was shattered as squirrels and birds rushed to get higher, chattering and scolding amidst the scratching and flapping of wings, and under it all was a wailing that chilled the heart.
That wailing originated from the small but powerful lungs of a young girl. She appeared to be around ten years old, and she was weeping. Each string of tears was accompanied by that deep and harrowing call that was almost a scream and punctuated with dry, retching sobs. The girl is curled on the moss covered roots of a very old and gnarled tree. Her hair, which seems to change from gold to a fierce orange-red depending on how the light hits it, hangs in tangles and knots around her knees which are currently supporting her shoulders and her entire body is heaving in and out as she cries, accented by a continuous trembling. It seems her body is weary of such pain and as she tires her wailing becomes hoarse and quiet until it is no more than a strangled moan, and then small quiet sobbing. A man steps out of the trees in front of her and gazes at her intently.
"Sedara" his voice is smooth and deep, but not low. He speaks softly to her, and kneels down, placing a hand on her head.
She looks up at his touch, her porcelain face is a checkerboard of red splotches and dirty tear streaks that lead to her shocking grey-green eyes.
"Why?" her voice squeaks with the singular word and she topples sideways into the man, who opens his arms to receive her. For a moment they both just sit and listen to the rustle of returning wildlife. The little girl has finally stopped crying and she seems to be at peace there, in the mans arms.
"I don't know." his answer is soft and yet solid.
"Will she come back?"
"No, Sedara, honey. It's been six years, I know that doesn't seem very long to you or I, but you mother is a human, and six years is long enough for her to simply forget and move on." He hugs the child close to him, and then begins to gently rake his fingers through her mass of tangles, smoothing out her hair. She sits and allows him to comb out her hair, and she seems comfortable, like this is something they have done before.
"I love you dad." she whispers.
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A small trickle of blood trails down from an autumn colored hair-line, leaving a sticky red line in the dust that covers Sedara's face. Her training scimitars lay just out of reach having flown out of her hands when she fell after taking that blow to the head from the weapons master.
"Remember that aggression is never the best way to win a battle, young one." The buttery voice of Zerilin the Weapons Master of Validan floated over Sedara as she lay in dirt. She felt her cheeks flush with embarrassment at her overzealous mistake.
"I will remember, Weapons Master." she said softly but firmly as she lifted herself off the ground. Zerilin reached towards her face, his hands beginning to form the signs of healing in the air.
"No." she whispered, and he froze, his concentration broken, a look a bemused puzzlement on his face. "I wish to wear the scar, so that I can be reminded of this lesson."
"It will be one of the most valuable lessons you will ever learn. Good day young apprentice." his eyes smiled, even though his voice had gone flat with dissaproval of her choice. She watched him saunter away, and raised a hand to the cut on her forehead wiping away the already drying line of blood. She felt the small wound with her fingertips, wincing as it stung. Then she gathered her weapons and turned on her heel abruptly. The other students watched as she slowly left the training grounds, they were in awe of her, and her candor with the Master. She didn't notice.
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Koraine stood up from in between two large roots at the base of the tree and stretched herself. Her long black hair rippled into place over her silver tinted, custom formed feyleather armor. She carefully rolled the blood-inked scroll and replaced it in her pack and surveyed the dead girl in front of her. What to do with her now? she thought. She looked at her surroundings, the lush forest was full of places for her to easily hide her latest quarry, but somehow it just didn't seem fitting. Or entertaining, for that matter.
The crackling sound of small feet on the underbrush made her look up. A young boy was running to the nearby warlocks camp She smiled to herself, the warlock was more than entertaining, he was interesting. Well, his small companion was interesting, he was actually rather bland. However, one does what one must to achieve her goals. The girl was a traveling companion of his. The thought broke in her brain like a refreshing wave, she bent over the form of the little ranger and hauled her up over her shoulders. As quietly as possible she took her macabre package to the bass of a tree that faced the warlocks camp where she arranged the body into a gruesome imitation of a ranger on watch. And now to wait. Again she smiled to herself, getting this creature was going to be fun, she could tell.
Koraine swung her lithe body up into a lower branch of the tree her spiritless companion now leaned on. She thought of the warlock and how he had walked into that dilapidated hell-hole of a tavern and everyone noticed. It was like someone had come in waving a treasure chest over their head. All because he was talking to a ferret looking creature. Such a magnificent creature! she shifted her weight on the branch and leaned forward to lay over her victim.
While she waited, she began to think back over her own life. The dead half-elf's story had prompted her own memories. She was also from the Kingdom of the Elves, quite close to Validan actually. Only in proximity, in truth Validan was worlds apart from Serath the capital city center of the Eladrin. And her family had been it's shinning star, her father Kilthlan sat at the head of the council of Eladrin. He spoke visions for the future, he saw things, and could interpret them and many came to him for guidance. Her mother, Nicaley was a gifted healer, she was sought far and wide, by Eldarin and every other race on the planet for her skill. But the pride and joy of both of her parents had been Koraine and Nielith, their twin girls.
Nielith was the older girl, her moon hung delicately over her right eye, and her golden hair curled around her exquisite feature. Koraine was around three minutes younger than Nielith, and she was her opposite in appearance: Black hair that hung in waves instead of curls, fair skin instead of olive-toned, and her deep purple eyes shown just a little too brightly, and were much more attention catching than her sisters sapphire blue ones. Perhaps the strangest difference had to be that Koraines tell-tale Eladrin moon mark hung in silver highlights in her hair rather than coming to appear on her skin as was the usual occurrence.
In personality they were different as well. Koraine was a fighter, she loved the feel of a longsword in her hands, but she excelled at the quarterstaff, and her focus in learning to wield the feywild magic had been in combat. Nielith was a peaceful creature, she took her delight in simple things, like gardening and weaving, but above all she was a songstress, a minstrel of sorts and her focus of the feywild was in that area. When she sang and told tales the entire audience would fall into a trance and Koraine had loved to listen to her older sister. She would come home at night and beg her for tales, and Nielith would laugh gaily and then settle into her bed across the room and spin the most magical tales of heroism and adventure for her sister. Koraine never made it to the end of these night time tales, she would drift to sleep somewhere in the middle and let the heroes and villains wander in and out of her dreams. She never told her sister, but it was the villains who were her favorites, they always seemed to have so much more power, they were just short on luck and sometimes, very short on skill. She would never have those problems, but she desired the power those evil men and women wielded more than anything else she could think of.
Koraine was sitting among the other young people of Serath, listening to her sisters latest creation. Nieliths voice spun out and through the ears and imaginations of her audience. It was a violent tale, a knight had come to kill the Eldarin king of old, the King was backed into a corner and the knight was preparing to land a killing stroke. Koraine felt a tingle in her brain, as the knight lifted his broadsword in the story, Koraine lifted her hand, and the air turned to ice. Nieliths eyes widened in terror and pain as she was surrounded by the chill air and then penetrated by it in fast moving splinters. Her eyes locked with Koraines, and her face paled as Koraine smiled sweetly at her. Nielith opened her mouth and the shards of frozen air rushed to fill the space. Blood gushed from between Nieliths lips, Koraine felt herself began to laugh, it was as if she were watching everything happen in slow motion. Someone screamed.
Koraines parents came running, her father spoke and the ice dissipated. Her mother rushed to Nielith. After three days of constant treatment, Nicoley emerged from her daughters side.
"She will live." her eyes bore into Koraine with a mixture of horror, sympathy, hate and love"But she will never speak again, I couldn't save her tongue."
Koraine watched as her mother turned on her heel and went back to her ailing daughter, then she turned her gaze to her father. His face looked as though it were made of stone. His eyes glazed over Koraine, as if she didn't exist. So Koraine fled his presence to sort out her feelings. I have to go. I don't belong here, I don't look like them, and I smiled when my sister was in danger. I put her in danger. And I felt like laughing. The realization had been too much. Koraine then gathered up her belongings, and without trying to hide it, she walked out of the family home. Past her mother in her sisters room, and past her rather, who still looked like a statue. She never saw them again.
She had traveled among the kingdoms of the Eladrin at first, for close to thirty years, she learned the magical arts, and mastered a weapon or two. But everywhere she went she could not escape her longing for more. Her need to hurt. So she had left the kingdom. And wandered into Orkney, and now, after 25 years of waiting, it seemed her life was going to get interesting.
The child had finished speaking to the warlock, and so Koraine sat up. As he turned in her direction she smiled. He looked at his traveling companion, and then up, at Koraine. She laughed and smiled for him. Then she joined him on the path. That creature would soon be hers. Her purple eyes sparkled gleefully at the thought as she walked down the path, she turned to look behind her only once more, and winked playfully at the corpse of the half-elf girl, Sedara as if to say "It seems you weren't so important to him after all."
Book Review: Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld
9 years ago
