Once again, I'm going without a net. No real plans or advanced set ups. Just writing what comes when it comes, and it's fairly annoying lol. I can't update this normally, as I am bouncing from chapter to chapter. Also the fact that I know I'm going to go back and hit this up again, to add things like descriptions, fix some of the dragging and so on.
Still, I'll update what I can and what not, and we'll see how it comes. We're 13 days in, I'm taking a break from writing today's portion (I'm at a total of 23,944 words - almost half way to the goal) and it's going very slow, but I'm not complaining.
So here's the prologue to "Herowin" (holding title) and we'll go from there, eh? It's apparently a straight fantasy, with witches and what not, which despite my gaming preference with fantasy settings is something I don't write, and so this is new to me. Enjoy? Maybe? Yeah, why not, enjoy~
Prologue
His mouth was dry, and his ass
was sore. This was the least of his pains. Thankfully his pony was
capable or carrying him, now that it had something to drink and a
long rest. He thought to himself that perhaps he shouldn't have let
the thing have the last of the water, but he quickly silenced such
arguments from his mind with the assurance that he would have passed
out long ago, and further back, had the horse not been here to carry
him. Besides, this was his favorite horse, that's why he took it to
begin with. How could he selfishly let it suffer like that, just for
a bit of comfort?
It wasn't just comfort of
course, no. He knew he was getting close to falling off. He didn't
think he was dangerously close, not yet at least, but he knew if he
couldn't find a source of water he would be soon. Clean water would
be preferred, but he started reaching the point where he'd take the
brackish mud of a shoat puddle in the shade.
It had been two days in this
aggressive sun since he left the shadows of the Westerline mountains,
and it was obvious why civilization encroached only at the mouth of
the dreaded flatland's entrances. It looked hospitable enough, and he
himself thought it would be, despite all the warnings. Man eating
grass made up of green knives, he had heard of, but always thought it
embellishment. Vines that awaited for unwary victims to asphyxiate in
their sleep, but again it must be legend. Insects, surely a myth,
that would form into one gigantic beast to devour entire horses
before it could fall to the ground dead. After all, the creatures in
his own homeland, the plants he had grown up beside and the waters he
would bathe and swim in were said to have some unrealistic quality by
those he had come across while traveling the Westerline.
A small town just miles out of
sight of his own had inquired of him the great birds who would carry
away sheep, the red tailed rocs, tall as a man with beak and talons
of bronze. He assured them they were more the size of an older child
not yet a man, a larger eagle than most. That the only bronze to be
found on them were the occasional fixings on hoods some falconers
would affix on them to tame the beasts. Still, when as he drew closer
to the lands of the fells and hills, between this dreaded land he
found himself in now and the Westerline mountains, he expected to
hear less fantastical things about what he'd cross, but instead found
them more fantastical.
Tales of man eating grass made
up of knives were replaced with roaring hordes of living grass that
hunted the lands for fresh meat. Those vines that strangled the
sleeping became a monstrous creature infatuated with violating it's
victims and tearing them apart with it's viney coils. Things only
seemed to become more and more impossible as he listened to the tales
and traveled ever eastward.
Turns out things were not quite
as fantastical as he had heard, but that was of little comfort. The
grass didn't actually hunt, nor was it secretly green knives, but he
saw where that myth could have started. The grass was sharp, enough
so that he had to stop on occasion to wrap his pony's lower legs in
cloth, and hope the bleeding wouldn't turn to infection. It was
difficult to find a spot to rest, as the insects did seem to swarm
quickly. Little black things with elongated bodies, scurrying on six
long legs. They indeed seemed to cover the horse's, and even his own
legs in mounds of dark shiny fidgeting things, and their bites were
most painful. They seemed to have nests scattered almost randomly
about, with little or no regard for any consistency. Shade? In direct
sun? Under or even in the tree? An out cropping of rocks? These
ghastly bugs sat everywhere, waiting.
By the second day they had done
quite a bit of damage. The time before last he rested, when he
dismounted he came to put his foot over one such randomly applied
nest, and found the angry swarm quick to defend itself. As he and the
horse fled, he tried to undo the boot around his left foot, for they
had gotten in. Now he was without a boot, and feared he might lose
two of his toes if he didn't find a safe place to stop.
He wondered how it was he
allowed himself to get caught up in this. Trying to think back he
remembered the dreams. A tall figure, imposing and awash with swathes
of green and red. A monstrous form reaching across the east before
turning his eyes to the west. His arms across the land, over the sky,
plunging into wars and famine wherever they touched down, including
his own home. The weapon, he couldn't remember it now, but he knew it
was somewhere. The one that would stop this evil. It had to be found,
in these lands.
He had always had the dreams, as
a child even, he would dream of wars and battles and seeing those he
knew fall to sword and spear and sometimes worse. Only a nightmare,
his parents would say, only a dream. Stop listening to the old story
tellers and their legends of battle and war. He became to detest
weapons, they scared him, for every night whether he would remember
it in the morning or not, he would see these things lead about an
unimaginable horror. Unimaginable to most of his home, that is, how
had never seen war.
Only the old story tellers, the
wrinkled, hunched and half blind things knew of such sights. Scars,
not from farming accidents and hog's tantrum, but from blade and club
and the sharp point of an arrow littered their flesh. Fingers gorged
away not from the bite of a wild stallion's bite, but from being
caught between the swings of a sword striking to disarm, caught
between pommel and blade. These were the only men and women, though
their number always small, who cared to hear the tales he would tell.
An omen, some said, but not all. Even among them who told tales of
rioting hordes of korr dwarfs and wildens not all found belief in
such implausibilities as omens.
Still, those he viewed as wisest
among them spoke of such things as omens, prophecies and fate. Travel
to the east, they would say, and find the weapon. Trust the birds
that fly in the sky, for they always seemed to fly away from danger
in his sleep visions. Seek the brown lake he would view on occasion,
and find fate's weapon which he felt strongly laid there. Something
evil was afoot, disastrous beyond mortal fears, they would murmur, so
evil that the spirits and the land itself urged him, for reasons
known only to them, and him alone to act. Begging to be saved from
this figure of the east.
He couldn't help but feel sour
about the advice now. Trust the birds that fly in the sky, he scoffed
to himself inwardly, for they will lead me away from danger? They had
led him away from danger, for no birds seemed to fly here int the
sky. He found many who hopped and scurried on the ground, but all
birds of flight seemed to leave back towards the Westerline, back
from whence he came.
Said brown lake was, to his
visions, a great thing. A large pool of still water, brown and
reddish in hue, but that explained all still water he had seen.
Though he hadn't seen any for over a day. He didn't trust the water
then, but licking his dry tongue against his even drier lips he knew
it was a mistake. Even if he did get sick, even if it caused disease
to swell in his stomach, it might have allowed him to travel at least
some distance further. Perhaps find some settlement. A hermit? There
was said to be many a hermit in these lands. Mystic folks who
practiced magics uncivilized. Maybe one would have taken pity on him?
Perhaps even healed him, though under this sun, with half his exposed
foot dangling near a stirrup, flies buzzing and continuing to gnaw at
the spots the ants chewed mostly away, he couldn't help but thought
they might be some way kinder to him. Even if he returned to the
Westerline, and found his home again, what kind of home would it
truly be?
A gimp, a cripple with maddened
dreams, who would take kindness on him? Perhaps the hermits, if ever
such existed here and now, might be kinder to end it all. To take
what surely these gnawing insects would want, his life. Even if he
could go home, he could never provide for a wife, for himself. He'd
be viewed as half mad, pushed towards the outskirts of the town,
beyond the wall, beyond pale fence even, there for kobolds to come
during a night raid and devour whatever these ants or bettles or
flies that continuously bite at him here in the valley migth have
left behind.
No, he couldn't turn around, and
he knew it. The sun was too hot. So hot he hadn't realized the pony's
head had dropped, that it's knees buckled and shook as it walked, nor
that it had fallen to it's knees. He only realized it once he himself
fell to the ground, and even then wasn't sure how long he stayed
there before he woke from his open eyed feverish state. The insects
were on him, biting and gnawing at his exposed flesh, they had gotten
into his clothing and underneath. His pony, the gift of his father's
when he had started his own farm, that he had raised all these years,
whimpered in pain and fear. It tried to rise, but fell faster than it
could, and soon it too was covered in the shivering blackness of
these infernal bugs.
He apologized, “I'm so sorry
Wilba.”
He then died.
He was devoured shortly there
after.
Wilba, the pony, took some time
longer.
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