Emerald Eye

Ghosts of Yeounkarra

Yeounkarra stood silently. Her greyness and fallen stature only reminders of her age. The yellowing grass at her feet, overrunning her year after year, season after season. But there she stood, formidable. The sunrise's rays licked tiny slivers of gold upon her face, spreading across her body as another orange sun rose from the far eastern horizon. Her soul had left her, run away across the plains in search of wisdom and freedom. Only her hollow, scarred and broken shell remained.

Two lone figures crested the peak of a low hill, the golden sunrise beaming brightly on their backs.

'Yuhmkarar' one of the figures breathed in admiration for the old abandoned city, laid waste only a mile before them. Yeounkarra.

'Thuh' the other answered. Yes.

The two men dismounted their shaggy-haired ponies and tethered them to wooden pegs produced from their saddle-bags and driven into the soft dirt of the grassy plain. They then swiftly and silently stalked down the low decline of the grassy hill. Much of the ruined stone walls of the ancient city had crumbled, large grey stones lying strewn amongst other rubble, the grass blanketing them each year.

'Sayltarmuhl' muttered one of the men passing a fallen statue of some bizarre beast. Ghostlike.

'Thuh' muttered the other man eyeing another fallen statue with great fear and interest. Yes.

The two continued on through the long grass, soon crossing onto a crumbling and ancient roadway, but still prominently dominant over the invasive grass. They stopped, standing barely one hundred metres from the ruined gates of Yeounkarra.

'Sor daryorm' remarked one of the men gazing upon the broken minarets that had once towered through the sky. She has fallen far.

They continued down along the ancient road, only the few statues still standing lined the roadway, staring down the two wild-men like vigil sentinels. The crumbling walls now loomed above them as they entered through an archway-hall of magnificently carved stone pillars, stone beasts perched upon the pillar shelves, silently observing their prey.

One of the wild-men unslung his axe from his sheath upon his back.

'Yorlm thar braysk?' asked the other man, startled at the action. What are you doing?

'Tharray kaylarg-gar sarg' hissed the other defensively. Someone could be here.

The other warrior shook his head.

They exited the hall to enter a once-paved courtyard; long grass pushing its way through the cracks creating isolated little tiles in some areas. Directly before them, the roadway continued across the courtyard and through a passage way leading under the central keep.

There were always the stories that no Kuhl-Tartar had ever set foot in Yeounkarra's keep. That they had always been kept at bay by the ancient Tiberians. But today, as both wild-men assured themselves, those stories would be false.

An eerie silence hung around the courtyard as the two Kuhl-Tartar cautiously stalked across the pavements, both with weapons drawn. Back-to-back, they circled around, making their way to the keep.

A sudden and dull twang in distance echoed throughout the courtyard as an ebony-shafted arrow embedded itself in a crack between two tiles, barely a centimetre from one of the wild-men's left foot. The two Kuhl-Tartar spun to see their attacker, perched upon the stone battlements of the keep. The male figure wore a mottled, dark-green cowl and emerald cape upon his left shoulder. In his left hand he held a short composite bow, in his right, a steel throwing knife.

One of the wild-men happened to have his own recurve bow slung across his back. He shrugged it off, whilst fumbling for an arrow from his quiver. There was a flash of steel and the throwing knife slit through bow the bow's riser and its drawstring, rendering the weapon useless.