A Prologue for a Quest - Commission

The courtyard stretched back from the house a few hundred yards. Taika and Laika sat, hunched in their furs near the far end, while Father Jarvinem sat off to the side. They were far enough out that the warmth pumped up from the underground vents couldn’t well reach them, and so their breath frosted in the air.

Echoes of Old Kingdoms - 00

Still burdened with a headache, her stomach uneasy, Belka stumbled out into the harsh morning light. “What?” She asked, blinking. “Who?” Someone had been knocking.

A pair of soldiers with sheathed swords and the royal insignia painted on their breastplates stood on the landing outside of her apartment. “Are you Belka…?” Trying to read her last name from the sheet of paper in his left hand.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“You are hereby placed under arrest,” the leftmost soldier said.

Scholar's Knowledge

“What happened here?” Belka asked, as the man started along the table toward Belka and Kellja.

“What is happening,” he said, “is not over.” He started to trot, facing Belka as he came around the side of the table, lifting up his mace.

Disappointed, Belka swung to parry with her halberd, and as her halberd’s axehead struck the mace, a white flare overwhelmed Belka’s eyes. She cried out in alarm as her ears began to ring, and a moment later stumbled backward into a chair, tumbling onto her side. She heard another swing and a crack, and then turned herself over.

The Lords' Scholars

They crept along narrower tunnels. “These passages are older,” Kellja said, almost to herself. She held a torch forward, half tilted toward the dark ahead of them. “There are more memories here than elsewhere. The Scholars say it is more conducive to thought, to be in the presence of it.”

“Have you often spoken with Scholars?” Belka asked.

Guilt-Ridden Cavaliers

Belka faced the two cavaliers, halberd leveled. One wore a helmet and the other had a mad look in his eyes. Both were sullen, and their armor was spattered with blood. “Throw down your swords!” Belka called, gripping her halberd. She found she was shaking, to be subject to their maddened attention. Dust floated in the dark blue air of the fortress hallway.

The helmeted cavalier lurched forward with a swing, and Belka swatted his blade aside with the flat of the axehead. He stumbled, nearly falling, as the second cavalier approached. “And should we let another one through?” The helmetless cavalier called hoarsely to his fellow.

“I need to be through,” Belka said. “I’m not with the madfolk outside, I’m—”

The helmetless cavalier leapt toward her, and on instinct, she cut him down. Her axehead lodged in his side, and with a grunt he fell to his side. A line of blood trickled and stained the carpet on the granite floor as she wrenched the blade free.

The helmeted cavalier, still disarmed, ripped off her helmet—for it was a woman, and not a man as Belka had thought—and ran toward the body of her fellow cavalier. “Athalu!” She cried.

Belka stepped backward, uneasy.