Shards of darkness (watty awards 2012)

Prolouge

Prologue

Prologue

  He wrinkled his nose at the smell but that was all. He felt nothing for the dead he saw before him. He moved forward, stepping over the mangled carcase of an ox. His keen eyes rested on that for a moment then moved on. It wasn’t here. No. The unrelenting mid day sun beat down upon his neck and scores of biting flies tormented him. 

He turned his eyes once again on the slain animal, they hardened, and with the ferocity of a beast, he drove the pommel of his sword deep within to the rotting hide of the corpse. Such was his anger at the loss of the object it was his quest to find. He trudged back to his horse, oblivious to where he put his feet. Why should he care now? He could never return to Thrae for fear of the shame at the quests fail. He did not know where to go. Nowhere was truly safe from…

What was that? A movement. He turned, nothing. Just the wind rustling a war banner, still gripped in the hand of its fallen bearer. It looked familiar some how. It stirred a memory but as of yet, he could not remember its origin. He was some how drawn towards it as is a fish to bait. The dead man’s face was disfigured by scarring rot but not to such an extent so that his origin was unrecognisable. Astride his brow was carved a simple hexagon.

Fear consumed him. He tasted bile as gorge rose to his throat, filling his mouth and burning his tongue. He barely noticed… The mark was that of the greater force, the bane of life, it was of the origin of the dark God Horror. A human festerling. He blanched, his horse whinnied and bucked and kicked. Danger was afoot. He forced back the urge to flee, and so great it was. A festerling is a creature of pure malevolence and hate .  Conceived in hell and born in evil, its days of humanity had passed long ago. Captured, wretched prisoners would have been taken to the pool of souls where would begin the final rite to seal their fate. Once injected by the dead waters, they were doomed. Their minds would be broken so no fight remained, blinded and tortured until all recollection of a better life is lost. They are taught to kill and are given motives. Why should others be free while they languish in blood? And as the toxins from the venom takes hold, their forms shift. Neither alive nor purely dead, their skin rots away til all that is left is a festering wretch with a terrible lust for the blood that no longer flows through their veins. Festerling! Their bodies are warped and uneven. With long bandy arms attached to claws made for raking flesh. Hidden inside every talon resides toxic glands that spread their pestilence through contact. Few are great warriors and are made only for the convenience of cannon fodder and the fact that they are so hard to kill. Their eyes are dead and yet still grant sight even when gorged from their sockets…

Even as he looked, the façade of a man faded to the likeness of a leering skull.  It was a trap!  Fear fluttered in his breast. His horse reared, spittle flecked her lips as she screamed, her muzzle twisted in fear before she galloped away, leaving her rider in deeper peril. Suddenly the figure snatched at the air with a swipe of its claws. He had barely time to raise his shield before the talon reached him. There was a crash, a sickening crack of bone upon iron as one of the monsters hands shattered. The beast snarled and shrank back. Throwing his shield to disorientate the atrocity, he attempted a swipe at its face. To his surprise, the creature ignored the sword and lunged forward. Impaling itself on his sword and dying even as its evil was spread.  

Pain gripped him as never before. His vision clouded, the world span. The festerling’s claw embedded in to his flesh injected venom. He gasped, falling to his knees and writhing in the stagnant, blood soaked sand.   

He saw birds, crying and wheeling in the azure sky. Their black silhouettes suddenly filled his heart with dread. Carrion birds! Then, as one, like some dark twisted angel, they dropped from the sky. Down, down, down.

And so, Gilbert Brookeslee, The greatest swords man in Vansannon, died from that world…

Few live unscathed by the influences of the Horror.  The shadowed being that stalks the unwary, the un watchful. The warrior, killer, murderer, the creator of eternal darkness, a concentrated pool of void black evil. No one lived to remember a time not plagued with the pestilence itself. For thousands of years, knights pledged their lives to rid the planet of the destructive being. All have failed. All are lost. His name, the Horror, was neither given nor taken, it was instinctively branded in to the minds of the many that saw his armies and bowed before their might.

Some say the Horror is immortal, a creature born from within the bowls of the Earth with a forge fuelled with all the hate and fury and greed and misery and sorrow of the all world. Then when the time was right, like a worm, he burrowed out from within the murk. And the minuet his twisted fingers writhed out of the mud, corruption spread like wild fire. Many believe he came from beyond the stars. A fallen angel condemned for his crimes to forever languish upon the ground.  Others claim he is none other than the malevolence himself, Dekk or one of his satanic herds, even a demon sent by the lord almighty to punish men for their misdeeds. Whatever the reason, he was there.

 He took the chest of a man, the stance of a wolf, the tusks of a boar and the eyes of a fly. He had a tangled mane of wiry black hairs sprouting out of his head and shoulders like some unholy vegetable, and the greying skin of a corpse, he was truly hideous. He was of lean build but with sinuses mussels snaking their way around his grotesque form. His mind was quick and supple, with a clever tongue than could kill just as well as his might. He was the Darkness, the key to all evil. A torrent of everlasting pain and misery.  The one destruction of the galaxy.

 None who opposed him lived for long and for nigh over 300 years, he rampaged though the land intent on murder. Many would hear his screams, awful cries of corrupted souls that racked the world for years, mournful howls of neither animal nor man, terrifying shrieks that could stop even the bravest heart. Powerful yes and feared by almost every living being on the planet was not mad or foolish.

 Some worshiped his as a god and so his followers grew to an army. Men they were but when ever they heard his calls, they began to change. Some of strong minds and clever thoughts became legions to his army, horror warriors. But most of the bulk became Terror. Simple minded fiends with lithe supple bodies with sharp claws and horns. They were equipped with the terrible lust to kill; bloodlust. And so the threat of world domination by the force of evil grew and pity few were brave enough to halt the slaughter.

 But times changed, the Horror retreated to the depths of his kingdom in which to dwell. While his warriors minds cracked, and as banshees, they ravaged the world set on life’s destruction. But when no life could be found for all of sanity had hid, the Terror set upon themselves to fulfil their desire for bloodshed. The surviving humans and beasts saw that it was their time to attack and with ease, they cut down the marauding monsters. And so became the birth of the heroes of this world, and what an unlikely bunch they were…

Some say a star fell and hit their leader, Kaa. The horse warrior, respected to what a god would be. Noble, proud and beautiful. Brave, courageous and strong at heart yet dark and filled with mystery. He would take the form of a horse, a Tennessee water stallion with the power to stop hearts with one flick of his seductively dark, black eyes. His coat shimmered like spun gold as he charged upon the foes of hatred. Yet kind was his soul and he respected all by his moral code. His followers ranged far.  Many former Horror or Terror soldiers filled his ranks, creatures that would normally thought of as evil. There were worm warriors and their steeds, twisted creatures of legend whose ancestors were thought to be knucker and Cockatrice. There were also the steeds of both Horror and Terror, lizarders; lizards bred for their size and capability to carry vast loads and fight, Nightstallions and Nightmares, the horse spirits of darkness.

And so became Kaa’s eternal struggle to bring about evils destruction.

To end the planet’s plight.

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Honourable mentionings go to blackadder for the phrase 'satanic herds' (an extract from a line in the tudor blackadder)

I have now updated it!