Evalon's Precursor

Chevalier Reon has left the marines to their duties. The second legion was destroyed, near the primitive settlement of your people. Not one of your people made it back.

I am grave to tell you this, my master and most honorable of kings, but the day that I stood upon that field to gaze up at a sun striped and bleeding black, I saw with my own eyes a fear upon none other.

Alone, and on the drifts it came. A massacre that was livid in all my days near passing the great stream of life that flows beneath this earth. A monster. A demon, of the south and cold lays of Evalon's fall.

I fear before I right this that the one who is responsible for slaughtering the people of the Kervint prospect, was your son. Tears I bear for the maker who sets against us our time and hate, and settles our minds down upon our knees to the earth, in a cry of disdain. My condolences to you, most honorable among merchants.

With dearest apologies, your colleague, fellow businessman, and friend,

Aven

The day had sped like any other. It was a quiet remorse that distilled the wanting of anyone who cared for streets of snow along the banks of the lake. It had frozen over, and peaks of translucent ice towers had remained here for days on end now, the birds nesting in their mock castle walls made of ice and twigs. It was a castle, actually, but in the frame of one. And as the sun rose in its December wind, the light leveled out the sight of a real castle as the shadow of the ice copy.

Alain felt that chill. It broke out along his skin like frosty fingers that bring your heart from the shock of your relatives death. Tears would not creep this hardened young man though. He was too intent on the distant horizon that should have been there, but wasn’t. You see, there was a sun when morning came, but as it gradually moved higher, it disappeared beneath the cover of the gray threatening cloud just as soon as it had come. It was akin to the torture to all the creatures of Kervint.

Alain adjusted his coat so that it would block the oncoming wind, and pulled up his hood. He didn’t want to see the sky today. Not today of all days…

And then as he turned, he saw the man just barely, almost missing him save the accidental gap in the collar of his leather-jacket and cloaked-hood. A hand pushed up the hood, and there was a black dot in the distance of white and grey. Squinting in the needled wind, Alain could make out that it was a human-figure, and not some animal. It was odd though. Kervint never had visitors during the winter. Usually the trade began in the summer time, and as the second commander, to Alain that meant that he was here for something. Caution kept him, and although he knew it ridiculous, he was ready to leap down those stairs if the sight of a larger group followed that dot in the invisible horizon.

Yet instead, after watching and yielding no threat, Alain descended the stairs that led to the ant-chamber of the front gates. He watched through small window, in the dimly lit room that held one of the two gate keepers. From afar, the figure could be seen traipsing now up one of the hills that held the graves of thousands, ages ago. No weapon could be seen from this distance, and yet Alain was sure that no man would be fool enough to contest the winter in the wilds of Kervint. Adjusting the gloves that were only just making his hands even more frozen, he whispered to the guard to open the gate, then descended the other set of stairs that had been behind him.

Coming around the corner of the doorway, he entered the main road that led to the plaza. It was completely empty now, as it normally always is during this whole half of the year. The enormous gates that held the entrance loomed and shadowed him from the torrent of snow that fell lightly all around. Alain jumped a little, for the sound of the rumbling and creaking gates broke like a sharp crack of lightning through this white silence. As they lowered, Alain, for the first time in his bored mind, had actually considered a meandering thought. It was simple, and thorough as the wind crashing against the outside walls like constant tides.

He meant to wait for the man.

The hours encroached on, and used to the cold’s pressing livid texture, Alain felt his heat leave him anyway. There was something…some cold feeling that was slowly but surely rising through his soul with every step that this stranger in the distance took. He squinted again in the wind to see, and found something odd of his demeanor. Whoever this man was, from this distance, his form was unrecognizable in color as well as stature.

When in clearer sight the form began to welcome the recognition of a long haired, weary traveler. The effect that shook Alain was that his clothing was short. There was absolutely no way that he could have survived traveling in this weather with such thin habliments. A small, thin object was strapped to his back, and Alain could distinctly make out the shape of sandals pulling and trudging from beneath the layers of cold white.

In its impossibility, Alain made up his mind quickly, and took off in his direction. This man needed help, and in haste, for the winter plains of Kervint had always been unmerciful to those travelers who died in its depths.