Warrior of Darkness

SCGAThrawn

Prologue: Defiance

They were his. As far as the eye could see, as far as the mountains stretched, all was his.

And he was not happy.

The nightmare figure of the dark warrior stood silently on the edge of the cliff, a silent, threatening sentinel. The travelers in the pass shot anxious, fearful glances at the armored silhouette.

It wasn't for nothing that this place had been renamed Death Pass after the warrior's takeover of the mountains a century earlier.

No one was quite sure what the people who fell to the man's blade had done to anger him, but they did know one thing; they had no wish to suffer the same fate.

The warrior himself, though, knew exactly what those people had done. They had challenged and defied him. Not openly, not aloud, but challenged him all the same. Looking at him too long, being rebellious, thinking that he could not see their actions from his post on the cliff high above them.

They were wrong.

Cursed with immortality, unable to die even by blade or poison, the warrior could not defy the sorcerer who had done this to him by departing from the realm of the living. The sorcerer had wanted him to live forever; the warrior had wanted to die with his loved ones.

The magician had wanted a bodyguard and servant who could not die, an immortal puppet. The warrior had tried to defy him by dying, but had failed.

If the dark man couldn't defy the hated magician, though, no one would defy him. He showed no mercy.

At least the people he struck could die. It was kinder than his fate had been.