"The Legend of Heartstone: Sisterhood of Steel (SAMPLE) by L.H. Nail

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505 A.C. In the beginning . . .

The Messenger held no great aspirations for humanity. Half-breed or pure, they were weak; corrupt with emotion. They fought and died over most anything that sparked their ire, and there was limitless hatred in them. If not hatred, then it was love, and all the unpredictable trappings that went with it. Human loyalties ran terribly thin, but of course even his own race had known its betrayals. It would be one such betrayal that had bound him to this world, and in spite of his misgivings, it was a human that would eventually claim the Messenger as friend. Of course, the irony was not lost on him.

As to this friend, the half-breed youth was a prince by birth, but existed at the whim of others. El’Doran Wildheart had been sold for a promise. He lived as a slave and yet the Messenger felt a great loyalty to the boy. Now, the best that could be said was that the boy had died well, but only because his immortal friend had failed in saving him. It was as great a personal loss as the old warrior had ever known.

Humans cry, not him, not ever.

The Messenger settled himself in the top of the old tree, ignoring the body in the clearing below. The winds whipped wildly, first hard west and then south. Mid morning had come and yet one of the most formidable warriors known to humanity sat idly. Watching. Waiting to lay eyes on the last of the Wildheart line as the remnant of the Third kingdom struggled through the frozen undergrowth below.

The cold carried distant sounds of booted feet pressing toward the clearing and the boy. The Messenger could smell the acrid taint of dried blood and cook fires, oil, leather and wool. Those few survivors would pass this way, weary and armed, but it was for her that the Messenger had come so far. He had made a promise to El’Doran, and he would keep it.

“Come what may,” he swore, with only the wind to answer in the shadowed canopy. The silence was fitting, considering all of whom had lost their lives this day. Tens of thousands were taken by the sea. The rest would have died in the quakes. Whatever was left would be washing up on beaches planet wide within days, and yet there were so few inclined to mourn the fall of the mighty Third Kingdom.

El’Doran had seen it coming long before the earth stirred, and even then he could not stop the destruction of his home land. And while the Wildheart prince dared to hope, prophecy began to pour out in his dreams as an errant stain. That stain became an open sore, and the sore,a fatal wound. The loss of the Third Kingdom was only a beginning.

Had the Messenger not seen for himself, he would have never believed, but the boy drew him in; smothering the warrior in the old gift. Together, they watched worlds burn and a universe all but devoid of life. Every living being was either captive or accomplice; whole generations enslaved and suffering. And when the vision faded the Messenger knew fear for the very first time. Now, the warrior could promise little as he huddled in the top of that ancient tree. Only that he had come, and that was well short of remedy.

Impatience warred with duty as he leaned outward to spy the first of the survivors nearing the clearing beneath him. He could feel the girl coming near. There was a sudden sweetness to the frozen air, a flower, but one that wields a fragrance as pleasant as it is deadly. Then the Messenger saw her. El’Doran’s sister. Half-breed, widow and warrior. Perhaps the most powerful sorceress to have lived thus far and yet for all her supposed strength she was hunted and now cornered on this lifeless rock. Even some of her own blood would be named among her enemies, if any survived at all. And yet, in spite of every unfortunate thread in the weave of her short life, she was the sun wading in a sea of mere candles.

The girl, An’Salona, cradled a swollen belly in one hand, nursing comfort from the blade in her other as those final few broke through the tangle at her back. And that was when the screaming began.

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