Twisted Worlds

Before I begin, I just want to note that the people called Cimmerians in this book are NOT my creations. They are part of Greek mythology, and they were a people believed to live in perpetual darkness. So I can't take credit for coming up with their race, all I can account for are the characters in this story who are my creations. This story is strictly fiction, and has nothing to with any persons alive or dead. If you don't believe me about the whole Cimmerian thing, look up the word on Dictionary.com and you'll see I'm not lying! Please enjoy!

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"Answer, me; are you afraid?"

Melna could not answer the man who was clad in armor and seated upon a jet-black horse who seemed to be blowing steam from his gigantic nostrils.

"I...I...." She stuttered. The other men surrounding her laughed mickingly. Two of them held her by the arms in front of the man who seemed to be the leader.

She did not know who they were, for they bore no crest of the King nor of any other royalty in the surrounding Kingdoms. But they were dressed in such wonderfully expensive looking armor and rode steeds of such rich color and pure breeding, so Melna guessed they had some sort of power in the community. Their accents suggested they were English, like herself... But they seemed so strange. All of them had pale skin, and most of them had light hair, except the man who rode the only black horse. He had long, perfectly straight black hair, and black eyes that seemed to stare at everything with hatred and contempt. His brow was furrowed in the light of the sun and his lips perced into an annoyed stance.

"Are you deaf? Stupid? Or both?" The man with long black hair asked and his hoard of equally broodish men chuckled again at her expense.

"No!" Melna belted. "I'm not afraid of you, any of you, and I'm most certainly not stupid!" As soon as the words escaped her mouth, she realized that most was stupid of her to say and she shrunk back slightly.

"Oh really?" The man on the black horse said. "We just slew all you camp members, and yet you aren't afraid?" He asked rather mockingly instead of with a tone suggesting he was impressed.

"No. I barely knew any of them. They weren't my friends."

"I see. Very well, you shall prove to be most usefull to us then. Tie her to the wagon, we must hurry back."

"What?! Where are you taking me?!" Melna shrieked. She kicked as the two men who held her were now dragging her to one of the wagons that was pulled by a horse. The wagon was full of things stolen from her camp and she was tied to it.

The wagon jerked her forward without any hesitation, and she almost had to jog behind it as it increased speed  and followed the trail of men through the woods. She looked back at the camp she had been living in for the past three months, it was a sad sight, even though it wasn't much better with life in it. The tents were burning, and dead people were laying about in the camp. At least she hadn't left behind much, no family or close friends. She had already lost all of that five years back. The only person Melna really felt like she was losing that day was an older man, who reminded her of her father in some ways. But she did not really know him, for he drank a lot. But when he was sober, she was comfortable around him. Now that was gone as well.

But still, she did not know why she was being captured, who these brutes who called themselves men were, and why they felt the need to slay all of the ones she was travelling with.

The went south, towards one of the populative cities, but turned off at the base of the Great Mountain and followed the trails that lead down the cliffs to the southern beaches. After a few hours of treading on rocks and sticks and thorny bushes with no shoes, Melna quickly became tired and started dragging. But the wagon kept on, going faster as they went down trail slopes. The only sign of civilization they had passed was a small farm about an hour back, and Melna knew not which direction they were going by the time the sun was in mid sky. It was hot a muggy, and her ckin itched constantly from grazing the trees.

Finally, they came to a waterfall that gushed out into the ocean, and Melna gawked at it's beauty since she had never seen a waterfall before. The wagon stopped and Melna looked ahead. Some of the men were dismounting their horses and leading them along a thin bank of sand that lined the pool of water the waterfall sprayed out into. Then, much to her surprise, they went behind the falling water, as if it was a curtain, and before she could have time to form an opinion about the situation the wagon jerked forward again and she followed. She looked down into the water which she was only inches from on the squishy sand, and saw corals lining the rocky sides of the pool. She caught a quick glimpse of some fish before the spray of the waterfall hit her face and she had to block it.

When behind the waterfall, another pool of water greeted them and she wondered where in the heck they were going until she saw a man standing in front of a large opening to the right of the pool of water. Torches were mounted on either side of the opening, which seemed to lead down into something. She could see the faint light of torches coming fron inside the opening and wondered with great astonishment as to what could be down there.

As they ventured into the opning, Melna looked all around at the hallway they were now in. There were drawing upon drawings of men battling and hunting animals on the stone of the walls that were lined by many torches. The ground was becoming colder at the descended further into the massive hallway of a cave.

And then, as they appeared into another opening, Melna was faced with a large, dome like ceiliing of the cave they were in, which had a hole in the top of it that let light shine down onto the ground below. Melna couldn't believe how large the cave ceiling was, and when she looked down from the high up ledge she was on, she was even more stunned to realize what was in this cave.