Rowan Hart

This is a prologue I've been working on for a fantasy story and am about to re-draft to iron out the creases in sentance structure. All comments welcomed.





Battles end.

Spent, the westerning sun sank wearily into the rocky bosom of distant auburn hills, hiding it’s anguished face in the horizon’s maternal embrace. There it lingered, for a time, reluctant in it’s retreat, writing it’s epitaph across the stone toothed vista in fire - a glorious blaze of yellow and scarlet, vermillion and gold. All too brief before heaven’s conflagration flickered to naught, the sun fleeing the circles of earth. Relinquishing the war ravaged land to the dead.

And those who brought death.

Dusk’s pall crept across the sepulchral gardens, questing fingers of shadow be-gloved in a fine, icy mist. A gossamer shroud drawn tenderly about the pallid, hewn corpses strewn broken amongst overgrown, unkempt shrubbery.

Taking dusk as it’s mute signal, over the sanguine field of the slain a new host descended, heralded by the snapping of wings. Thier garb was tribute to the lengthening gloom, pennants of ebony arrayed before them in challenge for the fallens spilled dignity. Voices harsh in the fogs deepening cowl they vent thier lust for flesh in a conflict no less brutal than the one which had laid this bounty before them.
Covertous, gluttonous, they duelled with thrusting rapier beaks and lancing talons. On the fields of the Gides of Ghennon, the carrion warred.

The Gides of Ghennon. God’s garden, vault of the Ark of Heavenly virtues wherein lay the Octate, His commandments. Nestled in the Lindon foothills they sprawled for six leagues to each point of the compass from their loftiest, most hallowed height, the echo cwm. About their circumference marched a tall granite wall, accessed to the east by a ramped causeway carved in stone in the likeness of a down thrust swan’s neck, paved in white marble cunningly chiseled to resemble feathers. Atop the causeway the neck broadened through the Gides gate, the portal itself heartshaped and overshadowed by immense upswept wings. The mute gates, reknowned in legend for their stark beauty, through which no sound would carry save the music of the east winds.

Beyond the gates the path continued, flaring into a majestic, pristine white tail which fanned across the gradient of the Gides hills before dissapearing into the folds of the landscape. From a distance, looking west, the illusion was complete, an enormous swan landing atop the plateau, it’s winds unfurling, framing the sanctified bowl of Echo Cwm.

Ghennon’s walls towered forty spans in ivy etched, rough hewn blocks at whose summit the gardens met at a level. A giant oval plateau dominating the hilly region.The gardens rose steadily from their walled border, through terraced hills surmounted by marble pillared collonades supporting disks of cracked granite or basalt. These were overgrown and overhung with trailing shrubs which cascaded to the ground like emerald waterfalls. The terraces themselves were havens for every flowering plant concievable, a wild miasma of smell and riotous colour alive with the soft dance of butterflies. Beneath each expanse of level terrace marched finely carved colomns of pink or blue veined marble depicting stone climing plants, cunningly etched flowers or fantastical, mythical creatures. These formed roofed, shady walkways, flagstoned and inset with benched harbours, from where pilgrims could relax after the long climb up the swan neck causeway and view vistas of immeasurable beauty and tranquility.

A haven of serenity, a wonder of the ancient world in existence before mankind hammered his mark on the unspoilt wilderness. Before war had shattered that tranquility and left the Gides a charnal house, it’s beds now sown with the debris of death.

At the centre of the gardens, rising in a shallow sweep from a second great wall, through willow stands dipping their weeping boughs into crystal pools, stood the hill of the Echo Cwm. Emperors long dust had trod the crushed chalk path from the gates of the Octate at the foot of the hill to it’s menhir crowned peak. There, beneath the broad girth of the treee of witness, ancient, primeval, gnarled, they had bent their proud knee to God - to pledge eternal covenant unto and beyond the grave to His glory, His majesty, cocked an ear to the wind to descern but the whisper of an echo of the celestial music, the murmur of creations breath.

Creations breath now sang a courser tune, through the squabbling, harsh throats of hooded jackdaws fencing for trophies plucked from the dead.

Resting on the blood slicked ground, grass churned by thundering hooves and iron shod boots, he watched the carrion spar. Slumped against a rune encrusted menhir, his arm thrown limp atop the hewn corpse of a roan destrier, his blood-shot grey eyes following numbly a crows victory over some glistening, grisly prize. The flower of Arandorian chivalry cast broken amongst the dirt to feed the gluttony of base carrion. Through cracked lips he breathed a ragged sigh, a flacid utterance of horror at his orders ignoble demise.

Natures sin of greed, this conflict before him, for here was a banquet for all the worlds scavengers of flesh, a bounty only the wars of man could leave in it’s violent wake.God could forgive this sin, he mused, weakly beating clenched fist to breast, the traditional gesture of fealty to Him.This was but the way of things, to strive for more in the face of plenty. As nothing this duel of crows, to the sins of those who wrought this slaughter.

This is my doing. He cast weary eyes across the ruin of man. Me! I am the one who has brought so low my fellow man, to once more mock reason - to shed in abandon our brothers life blood! Nausea and disgust caused him to slump against his arm, feeling damp from tears the cold slab of flesh against his cheek.

" My most trusted friend, this fallen beast." His voice cracked with emotion, rasping harsh in the fog, a counterpoint to the carrions course calls.

" My Hullion.My brother!" Fingers sore in his segmented gauntlets, swollen from battles continuous, relentless melee - to take life, to preserve life, ran tenderly across the warhorses torn hide. No tears sprang scalding now, that bottomless well of sorrow drawn dry this hour past, though the pain in his raw eyes seemed as intense as the weeping wound beneath his battered cuirass. Where her blade had punched through the tempered steel. One final wet, lingering, farewell kiss.

Through the agony, physical and emotional both, he almost laughed.

" Always was your tongue sharp woman. Though today..." He hacked damply, wincing as he spasmed, "...today it cut me to the core." Such a parting kiss!

Her blade!

He reached, face contorted against an agony which threatened to claim his sanity, to probe with quivering fingers the rent below his pauldron. His forefinger quested beyond punctured metal and quilted gamberson into the warm, wet puckered hole in his breast.

Her blade! My phrophet....my love! How true this ring you place about my finger, wounds exchanged like betrothal bands. Would that your arm be truer, my instincts more addled, that I lay fallen and you sat idle and grieved. Oh!, how I greave!

Closing his swollen eyes against the pain he lived again that frenzied exchange of blows, the air alive with the calls of battle, reeking of loosed bowels, bile and parted flesh. Of piss and sweat and blood. A clarity of purpose accompanied his duel, a melding of heart and senses, each laboured breath euthoric, each second of life more joyful than the last, more miraculous. Death awaited beyond an error in judgement, beyond a mis-step or fault in stance. A broken blade or weak parry. His eyes met hers, transfixed a fateful moment mid thrust, the pupils dilated against fathomless green. They danced their deadly steps, eyes locked against the glory of a red etched sky, her breath throaty, course.

Then her serpent swift ripost, a thrust and that lance of pain as his guard failed - the tiniest of grunts from her cherry lips, wind exhaled slowly, her widened eyes travelling down the length of his out-thrust arm. To where Paeghennon slid from her crimson breast. Love, it seemed, had a truer edge than hatred.

He trembled as shock consumed his body, nerves fraught. Again he witnessed the surprise in her eyes - those eyes so pure in their hatred for the man who had held her in his arms, who she had loved as no other. Who had loved her in return beyond anything mortal man could tolerate and remain whole, in mind and body and soul. He saw anew the surprise and drank in the horror, as in death the silvery sheen of her halo flickered and faded also. With it the hopes of humanity, all it’s petty dreams and aspirations. Sightless now those eyes screamed betrayal, endlessly without remorse. And would so until death came to claim him.

I should have died with her, he thought, swallowing bitter bile as it threatened to spill from his throat. Her disiples slew with renewed vigour to reach their fallen phrophet, dancing with brutal, efficient abandon through the Arandorian knights. A frenzy of silver zweini blades, their four and a half feet of tempered Naradi steel scolloped and sharpened to a razor kiss along both edges. Giant war angels from myth clad in ivory plate armour, enamelled and fluted to turn even the surest blade; acid etched with climbing black briars with needle thorns which wound around greaves and sabaton, cuirass, bracer and basinet. Their midnight hued cloaks, hooded and frayed from long campeign, swept through the rain of spilled blood as they whirled and spun, cracking sharply with each precise, economical movement. Displayed proudly along these cloaks length and across broad shoulders, the phrophets personal blazon, the argent harp sigil.

Beserk in their anguish they bayed like rabid hounds to the winds as they sowed death amongst Ghennons beds, a litany of pain and torment terrible to witness. He had been close as they cleaved their bloody trail - faced them from a span through the narrow crossed slits of their great helms. He knew they had wept also.

Oh yes, I should have died. Were it not for loyal Hullion, named in homage to the strength of the north wind. He caressed the warhorses cold neck, tugging at a knot in it’s mane. Remembered how the stallion had stepped into the path of falling blades as he lay stunned at the phrophets breathless side. How those hacking blows had hewn brave Hullion to bloody ruin in their bloodlusting desperation to avenge their phrophet. A warrior and friend true until the utmost end, flailing iron shod hooves staving in the screaming face of the closest disiple.
How unfit I was to sit your back. Never a surer, truer steed !

In the distance, muted by mist and topography, faint noises of rout could be heard in the gathering dusk, above the cries of the carrion. The army of Elizabeth retreating in disarray to their fortified redoubts in the Lindon hills. Leaderless, bloodied and their moral as dead as their phrophet. Thirty thousand corpses they left to rot atop the Gides, their banners solomn grave markers forlornly flapping in the breeze.Beyond the mute gates more zealots were marshalled, held at bay by the massed phalanxs of Baron Morvwyn, hound of Hest - denied their relief of the Gides occupation host under the phrophet. Somewhere east the piping call of horns signalled a charge, a thin sound with distance. The prince and his retainers in the lower reaches of Ghennon harrying the fleeing Bethican infantry, securing a resounding victory.

His victory.

Yet here, cloaked in remorse on the hill of echoes amongst so many fallen paladins, that victory seemed most hollow. Here where magpies, white bibbed for the feast, plucked at noble Cartha’s glazed eyes; where hooded jackdaws hopped to gorge on the steaming entrails of Malathon, most devout of men, cast cooling amongst the weeds. Where Duccas, bannerman - in death defiant still, refusing to relinquish the orders lion rampant standard - stank of loosed bowels, the zweini which had ended his life washed in his spilled faeces along its silvery length. So many holy knights, twisted in the ignominy of sudden, violent death.

Here with Hullion, stout weissa named Hullion - nothing more than a rest for his wounded, grieving carcass!

War! Man’s legacy, his most profane idiocy. So much blood spilled in the name of ideology, to repress through force a suggestion of tyranny. He fought back a manic cackle at the irony of that. To end Elizabeth’s madness with a madness of his own. The hypocracy!





That's the first section, the second part of the prologue to follow soon. Hope you enjoyed.

Danny77

For an opening prologue, your pen is quite bold...too bold, I should say. Within just a few paragraphs you brandished such words as 'pallid, gossamer, sepulchral, vermillion,' and many more um...'difficult' words. Your average person probably doesn't even know what they mean.

Not that they aren't to be used, but save them for later, and keep them sparse.

Secondly, there's nothing wrong with starting off with a blaze of description, but again, keep it to a minimum. something must happen to grab my attention - as beautiful as the horizon may be, I'm not there, and have no previous background of this story for it to change my mood with a possible dramatic scene.

Also, with your heavy descriptions, well, they're kind of hard to swallow, like a tough steak. It has potential, but don't weigh it down with an abundance of over-flowery words. It gives me the idea that 'you know big words and how to use them', and diverts me away from the writing itself.

Instead, paint us a picture with more familiar descriptors. Put us in the scene. Don't treat us as ignorant step-children. :p

This isn't bad writing, but it needs to become more reader friendly.

__________________
The Salad Bar Game

A-L

The descriptive words you used were good, but maybe just a bit too much for the beginning of a story, other than that i can see little wrong with it, its good. Try mine. http://www.writingforums.com/fiction...n-fantasy.html

domoarigato206

Poetic and bold; a work to be completed.

Rowan Hart

Thank you for the critiques, all welcome. Actualy this is only half of the prologue, the rest to follow.

Danny77 - What you say is bang on the money and I am already in the process of watering this section down. The prologue is intended to be bold though, archaic in fact, as it takes place at the end of an era of Man where one set of moral and ethical codes are superceeded by another.
I have a habit of backwards engineering a piece, especially a prologue; I write it as it comes then re-draft into a more manageable form - again this is what I am in the process of doing.
The bulk of the actual ' Doings' is to follow, so feel free to be as honest with this section as the first as constructive honesty is always welcome!

A-L same applies, the wording intended to portray an elder age with an antiquated sense of speaking... imagine reading the magna carta or the American constitution and then something more contemporary. Missed this somewhat but will endeavour to set it right in the re-draft. Again, thanks...and will read and comment on your work soon.

Domoarigato - I'm no poet my friend, but the compliment is well received so thank you. I am bold though and the story becomes bolder still, so please, read on dear reader!....

Rowan Hart

Somewhere through the curtain of mist, macabre in it’s ululating keening, another horn sounded - banshee like, the call of a midnight prowler hunting the damned souls who haunted the field of battle. As if it were a herald proclaiming his approach, over the crest of the hill strode the figure of a man, tall and gaunt, sillohetted between the menhir standing sentinel beside the chalk path. A darker clot of shadow against the cloth of night.

A murmur of breeze disturbed the fog and saw him bathed in moonlight, the fingers of heaven glittering in the firmament above his hooded head - some celestial crown washing his sombre attire with a glimmer of majesty. Brief only, before again heavens light became obscured, leaving the man once more a deeper shade, clad as the carrion in cracked, worn black leathers. He paused momentarily, surveying the sanguine detritus strewn about the cwm of echoes, before resuming his stride to the dull thud of a sun bleached oaken staff, it’s tips bound with braided leather thong. In the damp air of the cwm, his travel worn garb creaked as he neared. A gallows sound. A wet noose sawing at it’s davit.

The wounded knight glared dolefully at the approaching figure, spitting a wad of bloody phlem between his sabatoned legs, breath wheezing.

" And so, here as I pass, death wears a face I know!" He rasped as the figure halted a pace from where he lay, regaurding him evenly with cold grey eyes, ancient and emotionless.

" Be still, Hastercian. Your doom is God’s alone to decree. I am but the vessel of it’s delivery. You chose to pay my direst warning no heed, Paragon. Thus, the abyss which yawns before you is the consequence of your dereliction of wisdom."

His voice was deep, rich - something to be savoured after its passing, reverberating in the cwm of echoes. A voice of power, as if the eternal music itself sprang from his lips. Each syllabel hung suspended in Hastercian’s mind after utterance, like dust motes suspended in a shaft of light. A strong voice, a terrible voice.

Hastercian closed gritty eyes, wiping blood from a minor gash across his greying scalp.

" Your council was unsound, Aurillian. You spoke of hope, of order. I forsaw tyranny under Elizabeth’s yoke, chaos. What she would create of the kingdoms of man could not be tolerated."

Though drained, the knights voice was empassioned, bordering on anger. He opened his eyes and gave truth to this emotion, glaring balefully at Aurillian. Tried to ignore the aurora surrounding the man, his halo majoris.

" I saw what you were insensitive to and acted. I was closer to her.....the sacrifice was necessary! I have wept, I shall weep no more!"
Aurillian glanced about him, his eyes penertrating the dense mists.

" Vision! You lack vision in this. You see, yet see nothing. What do you behold here? What augury is fulfilled in the ruin around you? Look man, proud Anamide, see! Are your eyes now witness to folly full wrought?"

Hastercian sneered. " I see naught. Save the mist which veils my wit, ice to my mortal wounds. Do you judge I should repent, is that what you condescend to see as just?"

His voice was the only heat in the fog, a contrast to it’s chill. Face twisted in wrath he pushed himself upright, fists clenched against the seering agony. Blood ran from his rent cuirass, tracing rivers through the valleys of it’s sculpted, ornate design. Wincing, he slumped back down, tenderly running blood encrusted fingers through Hullions lustreless mane.

" I repent not. In death I stand by my deeds."

Aurillian shook his head, expression bleak.

" Arrogant until the last breath. How your breed has fallen to so defy our Lord God! To turn, petulant and unheeding of His command, remiss in your conceit. Remember well the prime Octant; ‘obey with alacrity your Lord God before all others’."

" Aye, I remember it well, and it is a truism of my lifes endeavour - my Cote d’Passion is testament to my faith, my loyalty! Yet I hold true the Tennent, not your Octant - I hold to them and love my Lord God. I do as He commands. And you are not He!"

Hastercian paused as hacking coughs brought blood fecked spittle to his lips, which he wiped away roughly with his gauntleted fist.
" Arrogance claim you? Pride! My God’s words are wisps in the wind when spoken with your serpent tongue. I’d as soon as bend my ear to the council of Salech!"

He thought back to the spring morning seven years past when Aurillan had confronted him in the chapel of Baulmyn abbey - disturbing his prayers, then his dreams. The Aelingas had spoken at length of Gods chosen voice, his phrophet - the young daughter of a Hanuth exile. Of love yet to be realised, of a reaffirmation of the Anamide holy covenent.

Of hope.....

Aurillian had delivered his commandment then, uttered in The Penchastic voice of heaven, a voice woven with the Allegraic themes of the eternal music; that no paladin should bear arms against Elizabeth Hanuth, that her purpose was Gods will and beyond the ken of mortal understanding. Hastercian had scorned the command, when the phrophet had begun to undermine faith. Aurillian! The boundless conceit, to speak for God!

"The commandment you gave was as nothing - your surmisal alone divined through false sorcery and delivered in the voice of the cursed. My decision to halt the phrophets all too obvious evil is just. Her death is just, though it pains me all the same."
Aurillian snorted, a barrows noise, his ageless eyes boring intently into the paladin, stripping away his resolve layer after layer to expose small and naked his quaking soul. Outwardly, to ignorant observation, the tall lank haired man in dusty leathers and greatcloak seemed little more than any other. Hastercian knew more. Feared more. He had studied his histories, knew the race and creed of the being before him.

Could discern the halo majoris.

Aurillias Aelingas, shield bearer of Thar Huien, myth made flesh.

" Therein lies your arrogance. Aye, cursed am I, and yet He still shows forgiveness to one as wretched as I. By degree. My ear is still turned to Heaven’s whisper - know this for unadulterated truth. The commandment I bore was our Lord’s own, none of my artifice. This I warned you, yet your distrust closed your ears to my words. Serpent tongued am I ? Yes, mayhap, though both forks speak for Him."

Hastercian blanched, the import of those words striking home as Aurillian’s voice trembled in brief, unveiled anger.

" Here today, you have committed treason. Treason! To the phrophet who you swore on your oath as Paragon to protect. To your Lord God Himself! You disobeyed the letter of divine law. You disobeyed the prime Octant!"

Aurillian’s voice thundered, a raw barrage of palpable allegoraic power which dissipated the mists across the cwms orbit with it’s echoing reverberation. Across the hill, carrion took wing, fleeing their feast, leaving the night’s cowl to the word of Heaven.

Through pain, the ringing in his skull, Hastercian swallowed against a rising tide of panic, arming himself with defiance.

" What is done, is done. By my hand is Elizabeth slain and by hers will I join her soon. Afore long, I will meet God’s judgement."

A glint in Aurillina’s eye caused the shield of defiance to shatter, as insubstantial as the mist had been and of no greater protection.
" Were that this were so, fallen Paragon. I speak once more the charge. Treason!"

The word issued through the cwm with the force of proclamation, physically assaulting Hastercian’s very being, binding itself like twin syllabic shackles to his denuded soul.

" I speak here the judgement of our Lord, stripped of compassion for one so low; who even now girds himself in insolence to not writhe before sentence, a serpent in the blood soaked soil. You shall not bend your knee before His Forgiveness. Your punishment will be as was mine, for here today you have thrawted God’s design in His own sacred Gides. For that, there can be no parole, no forgiveness."

It began as an itch seated deep in his wounded flesh. Then his torso arched, bent like a strung bow at the point of breaking. A sob escaped his lips as the hurt sustained in battle mended, none too gently. Power, music derived and insensitive in it’s thrumming surge, pounded at his pain - beyond it, through it, a torrential torment beyond mortal endurance and comprehension which threatened permenent trauma to spirit, mind....body and soul. Too much. Too much! He realised he was screaming, yet the power had changed, his wounds now sealed, cauterised through sorcerous music. It now coursed in his veins, a vigour not known in youth, held barely beneath the thin parchment of his skin. A vigour, yet not euphoric - more something unclean, distasteful. Like bearing witness to ones every sin time and again without end.
Agony subsided, replaced with something more sinister, more emmense. More potent. He staggered to his feet, eyes wide with the realisation of his fate, mouth working wildly yet no words forming. How could one speak beyond such terror, words no mirror to new found and immutable tribulation.

No.

No! This cannot be! That deep seated panic again threatened, a cauldron boiling over inside. With supreme effort, he sought calm beyond the pall which began to gnaw at reason.

" I did as I saw best. I slew Elizabeth - as an abomination against God’s name. How could our loving father permit His chosen to commit such atrocities? She was evil, incarnate!"

He stepped closer to the Aelingas, clutching Aurillian’s worn sleeve, shaking.

" Evil I say, justifiably. How could she be doing God’s work, preparing His ministry? His commandment.....made no sense!"
Aurillian reached forward, clasping his six fingered hand about the fallen paladin’s head, drawing him roughly forwards. Towards the snarling ricus of his wrath filled face.

" Ours is not to question God’s plan! Ours is to obey! Remember the prime Octant!"

Hastercian fought the iron grip about his head, retreating before Aurillian’s unveiled temper.
" Then I share your miserable fate. I will never know the grace and peace of That Huien, nor death’s frigid embrace. Would now that I could weep for what I shall never know."

Something indeterminable in Aurillian’s eye gave him pause.

" There is more? For pitys sake!"

" Pity indeed," The Aelingas hissed, " weep the more proud Anamide. By your ill concieved deeds has the unthinkable transpired. The holy covenant is void! The children of Be’Kor shall suffer no longer God’s endless love, as once they did. Worse yet. The covenent was the sacred mortar for the pillars! Do you witness now what travesty your treachery has forged? Do you see the peril?"
Mute, Hastercian shook his head, as if the act of denial could erase truth.

" I have doomed mankind!" Tears did come now, hot burning tears of shame and anguish and sorrow.

" Yes," Aurillian intoned with venom, " sorry was the day the line of Anamus should see you slither from your mothers womb, to scourge the ancient covenent."

Hastercian felt himself swoon, the ground rushing to meet him. Dimly, he smelt urine and realised he had soiled himself, the hot rivulets cooling in a clammy trail against his steel clad leg. Light headed and sickened to his core, he pushed himself to sitting, clasping vambraced arms about his knees. There he rocked, chargrined as a child, weeping away sanity.

" And the pillars?" He peered through stinging eyes widened with horror at the stern countenance of the Aelingas.
" Is the world to end by my hand?"

" In the darkest pit of despair, heaven’s light shines still. All is not lost. On this hill where hope was first born aeons past to my kind, so too is it reborn for yours. The phrophet was with child, her term passed. You see? A pure blood, from whom will the covenent be re-forged in iron!" He turned from his scrutiny of the paladin to search the corpses for the phrophet.

" Only the blood of Be’Kor may petition That Huien for pardon, for covenent. ‘From the phrophet’s loins shall stride salvation’, so the oracle of Tyracant spoke, an age since. A forgotten augury yet one I recall well. Elizabeth’s child is our hope."

Behind, Hastercian let forth a howl of heart wrenching pain, a cry containing the measure of the worlds remorse.

" No! Alas anew! Elizabet died, her child unborn. My child unborn. Alas indeed, for this hope is usurped again by my hand!"

Snarling, Aurillian spun on the paladin, his oaken staff tracing a while arc of power as it swept to connect with his temple.

" Damn and curse you for eternity fool! At every turn you spit the venom of your treachery at our Lord!"

Thrown down by the blow, head torn and bloodied, Hastercian clawed his way unsteadily to standing, hands held before him imploring. Ignoring him, Aurillian strode to the phrophet’s broken corpse laying snarled in briars beneath a menhir, gazing in unmasked contempt at her lifeless form. A plain woman, Elizabeth’s divine aura had been replaced in death by the spread of her honey hair, fanned across the churned, thorny ground. Her trunk distended in the late stages of pregnancy.

" My lord," Aurillian intoned, drawing on the deepest wellspring of his faith, his love, " here it cannot end? I beg of you, let there be one last mercy! Allow this pitiful breed redemption, one to shackle the ancient beast."

He fell to his knees, back arched, arms splayed in supplication.

" My Lord! I who swore never to bend his knee, does so now. Hear my plea!"

.......Nothing. No miracle here on this hill of shattered hopes. Aurillian fell to his face, clutching the damp earth in his fingers. Nearby, Hastercian’s manic weeping, deranged and devoid of coherence, filled the cwm of echoes, repeating endlessly a mucus filled litany. Which hinted at words yet never delivered on the promise.

And there!

" So sorry...so sorry, so...sorry.....so sorry..." The fulfillment of that promise, pointless now as was continued hope, the act of drawing one breath after another. The Aelingas was surprised that he wept too, sobs filled with allegoraic power, ensorcelled.

Equally as fruitless as the mortals tears, yet as heartfelt.
And so the two wept, mournful counterpoints to the other, one mundane, one divine.

Both punctuated by the wails of an infant.....




Well, there's the 'meat' of the piece. As always please feel free to be as cruel as you need be because this is still a learning curve for me. I will endeavour to re-draft this over the next week and then you can compare the two forms. If anyone wishes to read more, I will post the first chapter which is complete at first draft and then the second, which is...um...not. All are weighty so will have to be posted over two or three posts, so bear with me.

Regaurds.

A-L

i must say that i love the way you style your words, some of the dialogue may be a bit confusing at times but it is beautfiul.

HippoHead

2 problems with this:

1) spelling errors and typos are frequent

2) i don't know what the hell is going on XD

i like it's style, and it makes me feel smart when i understand the big words, but seriously, now i just don't know what's happening.

better have ur target audience as smarty-pantsies!

__________________
Murder Me

Read it. It's awesome.

A-L

i'm pretty sure that there is alot more going on here than the reader is aware of, please post more.

Rowan Hart

Thanks for the vote of confidence A-L! The first chunk of the first chapter is now posted so you can see what happens at the start of the story proper.

Hippo - thankyou. Not rammed this through the spell check yet so yes, spelling errors will abound. Spotted some myself and typos also, which are being rectified in the re-draft. Sorry the continuity, description and dialogue didn't convey a real sense of the story to you. If this is the case, the re-draft will be more intensive as I attempt to sort this out.

Hope you all check out Chapter one as I post it - set roughly 500 years after the events of the prologue