DragonReborn

I'm starting over my book guys, I got too deep into the hole of "not explaining stuff". So here's the first half of prologue, I'd appreciate it if anyone put in a few words. Thanks!

Prologue
Rhiwyn just barely pulled his head up from the soft feather pillow, met by an orange and red sunrise just peeping up from its hiding place. As if a sunrise could really had fixed what had happened. A long night it has been, he thought as he let his head fall back. A very long night, in fact; the enemy had not let up. But they had fought. Oh, yes, they had fought.

The problem was not that Monnyn was defenseless, but that the enemy had come at an unexpected time. A riot had emerged from the northern part of the city, near the palace; as far as Rhiwyn knew, they still had not sought out what had caused it. Queen Maena had sent nearly a fourth of her guards to quell it. It was then that the beasts came, and they weren’t Dragonolls, as was expected; they were unknown, and where they had come from was still an uncertain matter.

He had never seen the Queen so tense. Not that he had seen her very much, anyway; usually he simply caught a glance of her when he was near the palace for any reason. But her face was worried, last time he saw her. It was as if she had expected the attacks. That could not be so.

He forced himself out of bed, despite the tugging of tiredness. Slipping into his dirty breeches from yesterday, he threw his once-white shirt—now stained with dirt from helping in any way he could from the attacks—over his shoulder and opened his door, being met by the smells of breakfast in his family’s inn. The Silver Cup was a small inn, with only a handful of rooms, yet they were all kept clean, and the service was often reported as great. The food was merely decent, but only because the old cook had died of old age and now Rhiwyn’s mother had to tackle that job and the laundry and keeping track of the finances. It would have been easier for Rhiwyn’s father, but he had died the year before. Rhiwyn was still attempting to recover.

He descended the creaking stairs, using the dusty rail as a guide so that he did not stumble down the stairs in his sleepiness. His eyes turned the corner went to the empty fireplace, causing him to sigh; he hated going out in the cold to get wood. He hated working, for that fact; his interest was in the Guard; since his father had died, fighting had been his hobby, it seemed. It often got him into trouble, but most of the time it wasn’t even his fault, he was usually protecting some poor defenseless child from the clutches of a bully.

Usually his mother or occasionally his sister would have gotten the wood for him already, but when they didn’t, he knew not to complain. Laziness, his mother called it.

Rhiwyn exited the small common room and went out the back door, pulling his shirt over him in the process. Being met by the thick, gray fog and the blast of autumn air made him wish he had his coat. Hurrying along the stony path that led to the wood shed, he ran into his sister, causing her to drop the firewood he had intended to get.

“Sorry,” he muttered to Ceni, his sister, younger by three years.

She sighed. “It’s all right.”

Inside, Rhiwyn smiled, despite being so tired. His sister was like that; so understanding, and so positive, too. He wished he could be that, a lot of times; he was quite the opposite, a fierce arguer and almost never one to say sorry, unless the other said it first.

“Is there any news?” Rhiwyn asked. “Have they figure out what caused the attack?”

“No,” replied Ceni. “None except they have wiped out all of the enemy, or so they think.”

Rhiwyn helped his sister pile up the rest of the wood, then continued to retrieve more. Nothing seemed out of place…
* * *

Captain Adraed strolled back and forth on top of the North Gate. To any man he would appear easy, or relaxed, but the man’s senses were on guard, sharper than ever since the day be fore’s attack. He fingered his sword at his side absent mindedly. It had been his father’s sword, given to him when his father had been killed in duty to the Queen. He did not intend to die for the Queen, however; he meant to live for her, yes, and fight for her, but never die; he felt that that was a form of…disrespect. It seemed it would be as if he hadn’t fought hard enough for her.

His hard black eyes showed only the smallest bit of emotions; anger, which they always openly displayed, and maybe a little surprise from last night’s attack. But what they were missing was trust. He trusted no one. He had trusted his wife, yet she had run away with his child. He had trusted his dear friend Brir, but he himself had betrayed him to the enemy’s army, back when two countries had been at war. And finally, he had trusted himself, yet the enemy had still come through the day before. In fact—

The beast came out of nowhere, seeming to blend into the fog, and it tackled Adraed to the slippery stone. Desperately the man fumbled for a dagger. As he shoved the monster off of him with his free hand, a cry of alarm rose from somewhere in the yard below. He turned back towards his foe, finally getting a decent glimpse at it.

It was gray, with a seemingly bent forward, with nothing but claws and teeth for weapons. Two beady black stones sat in its head, seemingly lost and staring into nothing, yet the Captain knew it was looking right at him. Adraed noticed the thick gray slime that seemingly covered its entire body.

Wiping some of that slime off onto a free rag he always carried for any reason, he let the dagger fly. It hit the vile creature square in the chest. Not bothering to even retrieve it, he turned to see what was the problem, his awareness quickly snapping up again.
He drew his sword immediately.

* * *
Pain ripped through Rhiwyn like a storm, and he fell to the ground with a yelp of surprise. His vision blurred for a moment, but the young man quickly came to his senses, and grabbed the biggest block of wood he could get his hands on. Twisting around, he hit his assailant in the face.
He heard a grunt of pain, and then spotted a grayish body fall to the pavement. Scrambling up on the stones, still wet from the morning’s dew, he strained to see through the fog; he was only met by silence, and no movement caught his eye. Slowly he backed away towards the inn, then turned to run for it, despite the fire in his back.

The back door began to form through the fog, but the pain in his spine caused him to slow down. His ears still picked up the sound of his enemy behind him, however, and the thought drove him from not stopping altogether; he had seen what had happened to men who had been killed by these monsters. They were merciless, and as far as they knew, without weakness.

Groping forward for the knob, he began to twist it, but he felt the door shatter, and splinters flew in ever direction. He flinched and run forward. Somehow, the beast had jumped over him and hit the strong wooden door; he hoped it would not get in to the common room where his sister waited. If that beast harmed her…

Ceni looked up from her reading and gasped. Her gaze was not on him, but over his head; looking up, he saw the beast clinging to the wall, a gray mass of slime and claws and teeth, and he dodged out of the way as it fell to where he had been standing.

His anger began to take control of him, and what was not really him was taking over. He fumbled the axe above the fireplace into his hands, then hacked wildly at the enemy figure; taken by surprise, it barely missed being chopped in half, but tried to regain its ground. Instead, Rhiwyn kicked out, nailing it in the stomach; he staggered back a little and he cut deep into its neck.

Rhiwyn had bent over, trying to catch his breath, when his sister yelled something that through his anger he couldn‘t hear. He looked up, attempting to catch a glimpse another monster. But her eyes were on his back. He remembered then; feeling up and down his spine, he attempted to find out how bad the cut was. He was surprised to find that it tore across his entire back.

He wavered in his mind. There was his sister, quickly throwing a few herbs in a pot, and his mother, rushing in to see all the commotion. Everything seemed…slow. Too slow. So very…

His vision filmed over, and he fell to the ground.

__________________
The lions sing and the hills take flight.
The moon by day, and the sun by night.
Blind woman, deaf man, jackdaw fool.
Let the Lord of Chaos rule.

There IS somone watching out for us...