17 august 2014
The Drolesk Subterrane was alive. Three kilometers long and half that wide, it boasted the city of Storjid. Angular and beautiful, the city’s architecture was legend throughout Avalon. Drolesk was just a part of the cavern network that webbed underneath Avalon, a sort of “sitting room” for all the subterranean residence. It was the only cavern of it’s size, and that was why the vampires had pounced on it, claiming it as their home. Centuries of mining and abrasion had filed the city to a state of architectural perfection, and it was the pride of the vampires.
Though a few hundred meters underground, light wasn’t lacking in the city. Torches and oil were employed to a massive degree, making the merchants of the surface eat well and sleep in soft beds.
Even though it was the equivalent to three-thirty in the morning, the city was alive. A raiding party was being readied, always a cause for action. It had taken three days for “the hooded advisor” to convince Zeridian, the king of the establishment, to breach the treaty of Tortuga, which had called for a halt on hostilities between Lycanthropes and
Luna woke with a start. Her bat was clawing her arm softly, so as to not break her skin, but still getting her attention. He was a noble creature, and had been laced with spells, allowing him to see with eyes and to let him be as much a day creature as his master. She was the heir to the throne of Storjid, the vampire city her father, Zeridian, ruled. She had hair blacker than death, and pale white skin. There was a raid scheduled for this morning, she remembered. Then then all the memories previously held back by sleep returned to her. The massive argument concerning her involvement in the raid, which she was trying to secure, while her father objected. He had thrown her bow in the fire, a mark of rage -usually induced by losing an argument. She had ran up into her room after that, for her bow was very precious to her; she had hunted with that bow since she was a youngling, and had fashioned the bow from the finest yew branch, twisted the string herself, learning to look after her weapons in the process.
The insistent bat dragged her arm toward the window, pressing her skin against the frosted glass, though her long-dead skin ignored the cold. It wasn’t the window that held her attention, but the silent activity that was going on outside. Vampires were running around outside, carrying swords and bows. The raiding party had been preparing without her, and it would think it left in the same manner.
Luna burst into motion, donning her shirt, then leather jerkin. Leather riding pants were then slid into, fitting seamlessly around her legs. Knee high boots sat at the door, and those too were donned in the same hurried, flushed style that had seemed to permeate her morning. She ran down the spiraling stairs of her tower, and into the great hall of the palace.The bat, Νuxia, tried to retain his perch on her shoulder as she ran across the great hall, out the great wooden double-doors, and into the stables. Finding her horse quickly, for it was abnormally albino against the jet-black mounts of her peers. Throwing the 15-kilo saddle onto her 14 hand horse, Brae-go, Luna followed less than five seconds later, the magic saddle straps and stirrups adjusting themselves to the horse’s girth and Luna’s leg length.
Spurring Brae-go out of the stables, she let Nuxia fly as a hunting bird, finding the hunt. The raiding party’s five minute start would be irrelevant, for Luna had practically grown up in the tunnels surrounding her father’s palace, much to his chagrin.
He had pictured his child a princely son, one who would rule after him, but instead he got Luna, and wanted her to be a “queenly” queen, not one that would go on raiding parties. He had tried to keep her from her tunnels, the only place she felt truly alive, but she wouldn’t let him. She had snuck out at night, practicing archery and subterranean skills under a sky of black. All that paid off now, allowing her to take a short cut, intercepting the raid and joining them, and as she did so, she pulled her cowl down low around her face.
