This was wrote before I came to the forum. But, not when I was young so it's interesting to see how my writing was prior to coming here and how much I think I've come on since then. What is interesting though in particular barring the other faults, is how much more there is of my writing for a given scene compared to how I write now.
There's so much I could do to improve this though I don't think it's worth it as the story is crap in my mind. For starters without touching punctuation, I could make a lot of the sentences shorter and remove a lot of -ly words, along with things such as 'as it was'. Not to mention other things.
Prelude
The jail door opened with its metal frame making a grating sound as it was scraped along the dirty, concrete floor. Within the cell, Grenack saw the former shell of a man before him as he entered into the cell proper from the dark and damp corridor.The man was gaunt and pale skinned, wearing nothing but mere rags that covered his body. The fine outline of his ribcage underneath the rags could be seen and his cheekbones were visible when Grenack looked at his face. His eyes appeared as though they were bulging out from their sockets and looked as though they very well could as the man shivered in one of the dark corners of the cell.
“Close the door and wait outside lad,” said Grenack looking over his shoulder to the guardsman. The guardsman nodded his head and closed the cell door behind him making the scraping sound of metal upon concrete echo throughout the jail’s walls.
Grenack didn’t know what to think of the man but he knew the question on his mind was what could have happened to make him like this. He watched him as he rocked back and forth with his back against the wall whilst having his arms wrapped around his legs in a sitting position. What few strands of grey hair he had left on his balding head, swayed ever so gently over his ears and face due to the rocking back and forth constantly. “Can you hear me?” asked Grenack not taking the slightest bit of care to speak in a low voice. “Can you hear me?” he asked again even louder causing the gaunt man in rags to stop rocking back and forth whilst slowly raising his head to look at him. A drop of water fell from the dull ceiling into a puddle at Grenack’s feet as the prisoner looked at him splashing water onto his brown leather boots as it echoed throughout the jail.
“Yesss…. yesss, I can hear you alright,” hissed the prisoner not sounding anything like a normal human being would. As the prisoner’s icy blue eyes stared at Grenack, he could feel his heart beating fast in his chest under the gaze. He felt scared in truth, which wasn’t often at all. He became even more unearthed when the prisoner rose to his feet, with his back hunched over. He was tall and that only added to the uneasy feeling Grenack now had. He wanted to tell the guardsman to open the door so he could leave as quickly as he could but found himself strangely enough stepping forwards with a swallow. “Come closer, that’s right.”
As Grenack stepped towards the prisoner to close the distance even more, he felt his hand going reflexively to the hilt of the long sword sheathed at his side. He could see the prisoner’s thin lips curling up in an odd and grotesque smile that revealed his crooked yellow teeth, some of which were missing. “What are you?” he found himself asking quietly and partly to himself.
“What am I? I’ll tell you what I am,” replied the prisoner shambling onwards towards Grenack now. “I am the coming of death to you all,” he carried on still smiling moving ever closer towards Grenack.
“The coming of our death?” asked Grenack stopping dead in his tracks sceptically and still unearthed as the prisoner came ever closer towards him. He found his left hand drawing the sword from its scabbard on his right hand side unconsciously yet he only drew it partly stopping before it was fully drawn. He couldn’t think straight, he didn’t know whether he should draw the sword or not but felt it best to have the sword ready and had no idea if whatever this prisoner was had even noticed he was getting ready to draw his sword. If the prisoner had noticed, he wasn’t scared in the slightest as he kept on moving forwards slowly closing even more the small amount of space they had separating each other.
“Yesss… your death!” said the prisoner loudly hissing as his bony hands leapt for Grenack’s throat quickly almost at the speed of light. Just before the prisoner’s hands had reached his throat, Grenack had landed his right hand shaped into a fist square on his jaw knocking him down to the floor heavily. Teeth, saliva and blood lay scattered across the floor beside the prisoner’s body yet the prisoner started rising seemingly unaffected by having received a hard punch to his jaw whilst laughing like a mad man. He managed to pull himself up so he could sit as upright as his frame would allow him, but didn’t rise any further than that before proceeding to rock back and forth yet again.
“What the hell are you?” yelled Grenack as he slid the sword back in its sheath and turned his back on the gaunt former shell of a man. At this point of time he knew it was pointless questioning whatever this prisoner was, as he wouldn’t get any answers at all apart from mad ramblings. “Open the door!” he yelled commandingly to the guardsman outside with his heart beating ever faster.
The door opened rather quickly and Grenack moved almost as fast as lightening to get out of the jail cell and away from the prisoner. The prisoner’s laughing echoed throughout the dark and damp passageways of the prison, almost seeming like it was following him though he breathed out a huge sigh of relief as the door was shut and locked behind him. He could hear the prisoner rambling on rather loudly as his laughter continued to bellow out. “The lord of Dun’Mok will leave nothing standing! He will leave nothing standing I say!”
Grenack after he had found the courage to look up with his back to the cell, he found himself looking at a middle aged man whose hair was beginning to grey as his years wore on. He wore a long white robe, the type of which a priest would wear. Its length ran from his shoulders to his feet and a cowl lay at his back. Dangling from around his neck hung a necklace, which was shaped in the form of a shield with a sword engraved upon its surface. The sword and shield was the symbol of the Xantor religion, one of the biggest in the lands of Al’Cineva. The necklace was golden and made out of the finest ore that could be found from the Ever Peaks which lay in-between the Borderlands and Dun’Mok. It was intricately designed and the care that had been shown to it upon it’s crafting was obvious. Once Grenack actually focused and put the thoughts of the prisoner to the back of his mind, he recognised the hawkish looking face of the priest and knew him to be Father Daneal. “You listened and watched that Father?”
Grenack nodded proceeding to follow Daneal and the guardsman down the corridor. The guardsman once they reached the door, fiddled with the key ring and opened the wooden door, which wasn’t metal like the jail ones. Daneal and Grenack entered the room while the guardsman closed it behind them and stayed in the jail. The room they entered had a small table in the middle with a candle burning on top of it and several chairs were pulled neatly underneath it. A quill and ink well with some plain paper had been left on top of it and one of the pieces of paper appeared to be an unfinished letter, one that had only recently been started so the ink was still fresh. There were also several bookcases at the sides of the room though for the most part, their shelves were pretty empty. “Please sit,” said Daneal pulling one of the chairs out from underneath the table and sitting.
Grenack nodded and did as he was asked before staring at Daneal. “You mentioned that thing was a wight back there? I thought they kept to the frozen lands of Dun’Mok,” he asked showing his surprise.
Daneal nodded back in response and looked at Grenack. He looked at the scar upon his right cheek in particular; it ran down from just underneath his eye and ended just above his jaw. His face bore a rugged beard also, a black one yet his head was bald. He was average in height yet strongly built and he had to be to survive the rigors of battle which is something he’d seen quite a bit of over the years and in Grenack’s view, they hadn’t been that kind to him. “That would be correct. It is also why it is a surprise. Do you know of them Grenack?”
“Hardly, why the bloody hell would I know of them if I don’t need to fight them?” he said vehemently. “A daft question priest. I’d be lucky if I could read any of those books at all and I ain’t much of a talker.”
“Point taken,” responded Daneal and nodded as Grenack indicated the odd books that lined the walls. “The possessed do normally indeed hail from Dun’Mok and the extreme coldness of the lands there are perfect for them. It is very rare for one of them to cross the Ever Peaks over into the Borderlands but not entirely unheard of. The man’s soul has been touched tainting him so he’s like that and is mad. Corrupted, but definitely human still.”
Grenack scratched his chin pondering what was being said. The man was definitely mad yet the human comment he wasn’t sure of, he didn’t know how anything even resembling that prisoner closely could be described as a human. “At least in physical form eh? Even if it isn’t a natural one,” was all he could say highlighting the fact he didn’t share the priest’s comment regarding the prisoner being human.
Chapter 1
The freezing cold air outside the inn whistled it’s howling noise across the barren landscape upon the borders of Dun’Mok and the Ever Peak mountains that gave passage into that forsaken land. Karn’s acute hearing caught every whistle of the wind’s biting force even above the sounds of merry making below him in the inn’s common room. Snow was falling heavily from the heaven’s above making the white blanket of snow upon the ground even more prominent.
He had been in the village of Harklin for a while now, keeping his identity a secret and without his brother by his side who he was worried for. He had heard nothing from Vaneras yet he knew it was too soon for him to start worrying for his safety. He was late but not too late to say something had happened to his brother.
He let the grey curtain slide back across the room’s window and pulled the other side of the curtain across blotting the view of the outside world out. The room he had rented was small and dingy with the occasional patch of the ceiling and wall seeming in need of work. He got what he paid for he guessed however. To expect anything else with the amount of money he kept on him would have been rather foolish, especially considering that the borders of Dun’Mok and the Ever Peaks were home to the outcasts of society for whatever reasons.
He shivered slightly whilst picking up two short swords from the white blankets of his bed and sheathed them at his side, pulling the light green cloak he wore about him more tightly to try and keep the cold out. His throat was dry as he hadn’t drank for a while and had slept for the best part of the afternoon and evening before getting restless due to having a lot on his mind. He thought to get a drink to lessen his thirst and then head out into the cold wilderness to see where his wandering took him.
The door creaked rather quietly at least when compared to the noise from below, when Karn opened it and promptly shut it behind him. The hallway was rather average in length showing that the inn didn’t keep many rooms for people to rent. At the end of the hallway, a staircase led down into the common room, which he took.
The common room was well and truly packed when he reached the bottom of the staircase and high above the crowds of people hovered a chandelier spreading it’s light over the otherwise dimly lit room.
