So this is a WiP story I've been sat staring at for a week now. I've not done anything to it, and I know it isn't all that much. I do have plans to add to what little there is, particularly the action scene, as well as broadening the vocabulary and hopefully getting everything into the right tense for once.
Tear it to shreds folks, criticisms, praise (if any) and ideas are welcomed. I'd be greatful if you could point out any errors, particularly tense as I have a bad habit of switching between past & present tense when writing.
Cheers
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Kiernan Luvakar sat down at the wooden table beside the window, ignoring the splinters that littered the surface and placed his meal of bread, cheese and porridge oats down upon the table, all the while looking out the window towards the stars and the full moon. He knew deep inside that a night without any clouds was always a bad sign, it always had been in the kingdom of Fernakarn.
In the Kingdom itself, magic was illegal, bar that of the Watchers and the Kings personal Sorcerers and Magi. The Watchers were the enforcers of the magical law; no magic, bar that of the Kings. Anyone using magic would alert the Watchers who would then subdue the target and take them away. None were ever seen again once the Watchers got a hold on them.
Grimacing at the sludge-like porridge mixture slid down his throat, Kiernan tore his eyes away from the window and looked around the small post he had control over as a Lieutenant. They were posted in the city of Junbar near the east gate. The post itself was thirty men strong with eight men watching the gate in eight hour shifts. Six others including Kiernan sat around the small barracks that housed them filled with bunks as well as a few tables and chairs scattered with plates, cards and empty tankards and goblets.
The final sixteen men patrolled around the nearby streets and alleyways within a half mile radius. Beyond that, the patrols fell to the inner city guard, a garrison of some four hundred troops. More had been promised soon as local rebel activity had increased over the past month. Supply columns ambushed, patrols butchered, more locals from within the city missing, most likely joining the rebellion and their cause.
Kiernan sneered as he drank deeply from his goblet, wiping his mouth with a gloved hand and belching loudly after. As the bread left his plate, Kiernans' eyes rose to the doorway where one of the night patrol had just barged through, sword drawn and eyes alert. His Prussian blue tabard fluttered about as the breeze outside picked up, the silver insignia of angel wings catching the moonlight that poured in through the window near Kiernan.
The mans mail rustled against his body with each step, thick leather boots thudding down on the wooden boards below his feet as the man made his way towards Kiernan, all eyes within the barracks resting upon him.
As the man drew level with Kiernan he raised a fist to his heart and half-bowed to Kiernan. Kiernan raised an eyebrow at the salute, but let it slide. Ignoring the night guards' sword as it knocked his helmet nearer the edge of the table, Kiernan stared at the man as his mouth opened and words exited.
"Lieutenant, activity has been reported not four street blocks from here. Heavy magic has been detected. The Watchers have requested aid." Kiernan frowned as he stood, leaving his meal and instead laying both of his hands upon his helmet. The helmet was a darkened silver colour, the head of the helmet formed into a Ravens head. The faceguard was the same tarnished sliver colour, but Kiernan left it up and turned towards the doorway.
"Why are we summoned to help? Surely the Watchers can deal with some whelp? All the magic detected these days is that of children, no more a threat than a puppy and yet, they're... removed."
"Sir, resistance is strong from whomever the Watchers are attempting to subdue. My patrol is already there and more Watchers have arrived since I let, they still require aid." The mans voice seemed more urgent and as Kiernan faced him once more, he could see the fear in his eyes. The moonlight continued to beam through the window and it was then that Kiernans' eyes caught sight of the blood splattered across the mans tunic and the chainmail atop his head.
"Very well. Come. You, lead the way." Kiernan beckoned the other five men about the room and nudged the patrolman towards the door. Each of the guards drew their sword and followed Kiernan out the door into the night at a run. Drawing his own sword, Kiernan followed the man from the patrol, boots pounding onto the earthen path beneath his feet and dust flying into the air as he skidded around the first corner.
They ran through the shadows, some of the guards weary eyes scanning the buildings that lined the street for activity. The rebels had gotten bolder of late, launching ambushes from the shadows within the walls of the city itself. As Kiernan and his troops turned another corner, the faint sounds of battle reached their eyes. Odd words were screamed into the night, mixing with screams of death, roars of agony and the clashing of steel as bursts of coloured light lit up the night.
Adrenaline raced around his body as the man from the patrol led Kiernan and the other five troops around the final corner, his feet stumbling for all of a second at the sight before him.
What remained of the other mans patrol lay outside the butchers shop where all the lights were bursting from, holes in the roof as fire ate away at it, bathing the front of the building in an eerie orange glow. Three of the bodies were blackened and burnt, steam pouring off one of them, blood oozing out his empty eye sockets with his sword embedded diagonally through his ribcage.
One of Kiernans men retched at the sight while the others raced into the building itself, ignoring the three men in elegant silver robes racing down the street towards them; the Watchers were still arriving.
Inside the doorway lay two more bodies from the patrol, each one impaled upon the others sword, blood pooling around them. Kiernan ducked a sizzling bolt of orange light that screamed past his head, rocketing out into the night and striking one of the three corpses outside. The body exploded, limbs, organs, blood and bone spraying everywhere. With a gut-wrenching scream one of Kiernans' men fell, bone fragments littered his back and the side of his face as he tried to dive out of way.
Anger surged into Kierans' face, eyes thinning as he bared his teeth, finally catching sight of the men whom the watchers were trying to subdue, nay, kill.
The figure was in a crimson cloak that seemed to fly about his person, attached only at the neck by two ghostly whispers of wool. Four Watchers were duelling the man and he was matching their magic with his own, if not besting them. One Watcher roared out a foul sounding string of words in a dialect Kiernan didn't understand, launching a crackling black orb from his fingertips towards the man.
The crimson cloaked fellow used his stave to bat a flashing blue ball back towards one of the Watchers, rolling under another spell and thrusting his fist out towards the crackling orb rapidly shooting towards him. His mouth barely moved and a green gel surrounded his fist, squelching into place and dripping onto the floor just as the spell connected. The ooze leapt from the figures hand onto the spell, crushing the magic and turning it into a sickly yellow colour.
The now sickly yellow bolt roared around the crimson figure as he swung his now ooze-free hand towards the Watcher who'd cast the spell. The ball of magic zoomed back at the Watcher as the Crimson cloaked man cried out in pain, a pink dart skimming his arm wrenching flesh and muscle from bone before it impacted into the nearby stairs and caused them to implode.
The spell hit the Watcher before he could react and he imply ignited from the inside out. Fire burst forth from his ears, his nose, mouth and eyes, instantly burst from the pressure and his screams died before they could ever escape, his throat incinerated as what remained of his body crumpled to the ground.
Coming to his senses, Kiernan ordered his men to attack the cloaked stranger, drawing his own sword. As his men charged forward, the cloaked figure clicked his fingers and suddenly two pellets shot out of his sleeve, exploding in the faces of two men of coughed and heaved as they inhaled the powder from the pellets.
The two guards turned on their comrades, one running the final man from the patrol through while his companion decapitated another of Kierans' men with one swift strike. Eyes widening in horror as one of his own men turned his blade on him, Kieran raised his sword and parried the blow, ducking under the punch aimed at him and taking a swipe at his own soldiers throat. The man avoided the blow by jumping backwards before launching himself again at Kieran, blade aimed low.
Parrying the blow again, Kieran began to duel for his life with one of the men he'd been patrolling with for six months. Sparks flew as their weapons clashed again and again, grunts coming from both of them as they tried in vain to mortally wound the other. Kiernan saw his chance as he avoided an over-stretched blow from the man. His sword stuck in the floor as his strike missed, the man turned towards Kiernan just as Kiernans' sword ripped through him.
Quickly withdrawing his blade, Kiernan ignored the man as he fell to the ground, coughing up blood and convulsing as his body realised it had lost its liver and now had a gaping hole where it once used to be. Glancing over, Kiernan saw the rest of his men were dead, hit by stray spells or killed by the other man who had turned. Whatever was in those pellets, Kiernan now knew that it would turn his own against him.
The stranger still lived, two more Watchers had fallen but had been replaced by the three whom Kiernan had spotted just before he and his men had entered the Butchers. Another Watcher fell screaming in pain as his left leg flew across the room before the stranger smashed his foot into the ground and with a sickeningly wet squelch, the Watchers head burst.
"Vernis-Kornzar!" the Crimson cloaked figure bellowed, two purple bolts burst from the end of his stave, orbiting around each other they hovered in place as the duel continued.
Next to Kiernan, white sparks and dust littered the ground as four symbols appeared in the air next to him; a half circle with a blind eye in the middle, the sign of the Watchers. As the half circles closed in on themselves and struck the eye, four figures appeared in the flash of blinding light from the resulting contact. Three more Watchers accompanied by a dark haired man with a beard down to his waist, dressed in an elegant green robes causing Kiernan to gasp.
"High Magi Lopen!" Kiernan used the same salute as the patrol man had used on him not ten minutes before as the green robed man waved his arm, a stave materialising and landing in his hand, odd runes etched into the side of it. Eyes glinting with power, the High Magi ran into the fray, ignoring Kiernans' greeting and sending a volley of rapid indigo darts towards the Crimson cloaked man.
During the High Magis' arrival, the stranger had dealt with the other three Watchers. One corpse lay in the same sate as those outside, blackened and scorched, steam pouring off of him. A bloody pool was all that remained of another while the third lay against the wall, his own left arm buried deep within his skull, a gaping hole in his chest oozing blood.
The man bowed under the High Magis' barrage and it was then that Kiernan saw that the stranger was protecting another, a small boy no older than six with dusty brown hair and grey eyes. The boy was quivering in a golden dome that simply absorbed the High Magis' barrage of bolts.
"High Magi Lopen... We meet at last." The stranger spoke, his voice was oily and quiet; Kiernan barely heard it over the roaring flames up above and the blasts of magic. The cloaked stranger reached into his pocket and threw whatever was in his pocket onto the floor. Kiernan saw several oddly marked stones, each one glowing a different colour.
Meanwhile the High Magi glared at the stones, eyes fiercely staring down the crimson cloaked figure. More magic tore from the High Magis' hand as the Crimson figure popped the bubble of golden protecting magic around the boy, swatting away the High Magis' spell with his own stave and ducking under a piercing maroon streak that nearly tore through his shoulder.
"NO! STOP HIM!" The High Magi screamed as the stranger bent down and broke two of the small coloured stones with his fist. The Watchers each bellowed out words again in the old dialect, three balls of jade coloured light bore down on the stranger and the boy, but with a flash of silver light they were gone and the three spells tore through the floorboards, instantly rotting the wood and causing a nearby barrel of salt to collapse through the floor.
Bar the flames that had eaten through the upper rooms, silence hung over the room like a thick cloud, the Watchers still stood with their arms out-stretched as the High Magi continued to glare at the stop where both the cloaked figure and the boy had vanished from. With a sudden turn, the High Magi beckoned Kiernan over as the Watchers each crafted the same symbol into the air that they had appeared from.
"Lieutenant, gather your men, even the gate guard and scower the Eastern region. I want that boy found, and take him alive. Do as you wish with the other, but find them and do it quietly. I must report to Lord Wogorn."
Kiernan nodded and sheathing his sword, sprinted off back towards his barracks. With his orders coming from a High Magi, Kiernan knew that to disobey them would mean a fate worse than death. Behind him, the Butchers shop finally collapsed in on itself as the fire ate through more of the supports and beams while the High Magi took a deep, calming breath before turning on the spot and vanished, leaving only a thin layer of silver dust where he had stood.