The Imperial Blade(ON HOLD)

The Imperial Blade

(This a story from when I was much younger but its still interesting enough, so enjoy)

Chapter 1

        My life was gone, blown away like leaves in the wind. My mother was all I had left, now nothing anymore. I wanted to blame it on somebody, but there wasn't anybody there to blame, even if there was somebody they would probably beat me. I was a orphan, a person without a loving person in their's life. My life was as empty as the bowl I ate at dinner.

        My mother and I were so poor to begin with, they had to wrap her with up a threadbare blanket as a shroud. I had to pay with our cow for this funeral, but my mother deserved to be buried long side her husband and my father on the churches hallowed ground. I walked home alone, a long lonely path down the dirt road.

        I left the graveyard, walking past Elder Monseoth's house and the old mill. As I walked past the fields, villager's I knew and had grown-up with, stopped and stared solemnly at me, their faces pale like a ghosts. Everybody in the village had loved my mother's quick wit and funny jokes, she was a single mother, a field worker, a healer, and the funniest person in the village.

        I reached the family cottage, my cottage, it was furnished but very old. A rotting wooden fence surrounded the right side of the cottage, protecting a small garden of cabbage and potatoes. Colin took a deep breath, and gagged, it smelled musty mixed with fresh cow paddies. 

 The original cottage had consisted of a beautiful oak walls,a straw roof, and a white stone chimney, now it looked to be made of all manner of things. The cottage looked almost abandoned and it was in need of desperate repair. Inside the cottage were two beds, with furs covering them, a uneven table and three chairs and a lot of useless old family trophies, centuries old.

         The only thing I wanted right now was sleep, and I fell into a dreamless sleep on my pallet on the ground next to the hearth. 

BANG! BANG! BANG!

        The door was being pounded with, what sounded like a battering ram.

        I groggily opened my eyes and lifted myself off the ground, straw and dirt falling off my clothes. The banging continued, I walked over to the door, opened the door and caught a old man with a large stick. 

"Sorry, Colin I didn't mean to wake you." the old man said.

 "That's okay, Brood" I replied, pushing him upright off me. 

"What did you want Brood anyway?" I asked. 

"Well, I have your parents will, so I'm here to read to you " said Brood quietly.

 I didn't know my parents could read or write, much less have a will, I thought. 

"Come on in then, Brood" I said.

        "I am leaving my beloved son Colin, our home,and everything in it, a small bag of 15 pieces of silver, and the family sword." said Brood, then pulled a bundle of cloth off his back. He unwrapped it, inside was a small ornate key, the silver coins and a old roman gladius, the handle was made of polished oak with a bronze pommel, the thick blade gleamed in the candlelight, and a serpent etched on the blade seemed to writhe and coil.

        Colin just stared at it, his eyes immersed in the sight of the wondrous blade, he had only seen once before, at his grandfather's side.

 Brood left quietly, closing the door behind him, I was amazed that the weapon, even had been recovered from his grandfather, after he fell in battle, against the old Pict's. 

  That battle had driven away all the old Pict's from their region, which brought new Pict's or civilized Pict's, who then set up a good trading system. Now this wondrous blade belonged to me, I could carry it around like my grandfather or I could polish it and hang it on the wall. I felt all excited, I NEEDED to use it. I wanted to use it, it needed.......Blood.

"Blood? That puzzled him, did I need it or did the sword?" Colin thought. "We needed it."

        I waited until night, when everybody was safe in their beds or so they thought. I opened a chest containing some of my families things,and i hardly blinked as I dressed in the armour of my family, a black leather vest, a dark red cape trailing behind me, black leather boots, dark red gauntlets and a black leather mask, a black cowl joined the cape, the eye slits were encircled in a reflecting leather. All in all I was a terrible sight, a nightmare, a Pict-ish beast, a shadow-man. 

        I left eager to please the blade's lust, I walked past Broods house then the priests house and arrived at the chiefs house, the rest I can't seem to even remember.The rest was a nightmare.

        The morning sun woke me up as it peeked through the straw roofs holes and I yawned, I sat up, my outfit and the blade were tucked away beneath the floorboards. Then I suddenly felt the guilt and was scared for myself and realised I didn't want this, the blade did. A low drum sounded from beneath floorboards and I knew the blade was cursed.    

        Brood walked down the road toward the chiefs house, he saw the slit throat of Griff the chiefs bodyguard, the door to the house was slightly open, so he pushed it all the way and hurled his breakfast all over the garden. By now other villagers had come to investigate, and many of those hurled their breakfast's, soon everybody knew about it, but nobody had answers and no one had the authority to call a village council, now that the chief was dead.

        Colin slept in and didn't bother answer the door when they knocked and knocked and knocked and then left him to fester in his guilt. 

         Colin sat on the ground, his knees folded near his face and rocked back and forth, whimpering and crying softly to himself. The chief was his friend and now he was dead, just like the rest of his family.

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