[ 𝙞 ] 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝘿𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙮 𝙊𝙛 𝙏𝙝𝙧𝙚𝙚

Prologue

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missing

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Grian loaded the bow and pulled the string back. The muscles of her arm strained at the unusual pressure, but she hardly noticed. Her eyes were on the target ahead of her.

"Keep your elbow down Grian," Ronin, her older brother, interrupted her concentration. Grian glared at him and lowered the bow.

"Will you just let her make the shot for once?" Heirsa, the middle child, put in.

Ronin cocked a brow to look up at his brother, who was standing above his position on the ground. "She won't make the shot if she's holding the bow wrong." He defended.

Grian rolled her eyes, a common action for her, especially in the presence of her siblings. "If you could both manage to shut up while I'm trying to concentrate maybe we'd get somewhere."

"I still fail to grasp the purpose of competing in shooting of all things. We all know who's going to win," Ronin said, yanking dry blades of grass from the ground out of boredom. Of course he would say that, since he was the best archer among them.

"Give me some silence and I'll have a lot better a chance." Grian insisted. She was only sixteen, and often felt as if her brothers underestimated her.

Ronin let out quite a dry laugh. "Silence isn't a vital component here. You have to train your mind to focus despite noise." He said, resting his head on the tree trunk he sat against.

Heirsa remained silent as his eyes moved back and forth to whomever was speaking, a look of combined boredom and humour upon his narrow face. His arms were crossed over his chest as they typically where when he was either relaxed or defensive, in this case, relaxed. His pale brows were drawn together in a thoughtful manner to suggest that he wasn't necessarily paying his whole attention to the discussion before him, but yet still found it slightly amusing.

"Grian, you're not an archer. You've given it your best now let's get home to dinner." Ronin said.

Grian's eyes narrowed slightly. She saw Ronin as being incredibly lazy, so his suggestion didn't surprise her at all. "Coward, afraid of competition." She accused, her pride and innermost child showing through her words. She was the youngest and occasionally acted out in this way, especially when the boys ganged up against her.

"Very well! Home then." Ronin leaped from the earthen seat he'd occupied and dusted off his trousers.

With another roll of her eyes, Grian returned the arrow to the quiver and slung it over her shoulder as the three headed in the direction of home.

"My children have finally returned have they?" Delen asked as her three children ambled into the cottage. Delen put a hand to Grian's flushed cheeks. "Ran all the way then?" She asked, her nose upturned in a look of deduction.

Grian breathed rather heavily and smiled crookedly. "Heirsa declared a race." She panted.

"And as me and Grian ran hard for victory, he remained at a leisurely pace and watched the spectacle," Ronin added, also short of breath. Beside him, Heirsa stood with a tight smile that concealed a burst of laughter fighting to break through.

"I thought it quite clever," Heirsa said, a breathy chuckle finally separating his thin lips.

"You would." Grian moved towards the water pail in the kitchen and took a long drink from the dipper inside.

"Enough childish games now. Boys, go get a rabbit from the meat shed." Delen shooed the three from the house before returning to work. "Foolish children," she muttered with a smile.

The two boys obeyed their mother and hurried over the quarter-mile distance between the house and the meat shed. Ronin unlocked the deadbolt keeping the doors shut, then went inside to retrieve the meat his mother had requested for dinner. The small enclosed space inside the spruce-built shed smelled of pork, venison, fresh-cut logs, and furs.

The two were about to return to the house when there was a quick rustling through the tall, dead grass. The brothers stopped and listened for a second. The cold climates of Kyril's forests kept the grass from becoming very green, and it grew relatively tall and often harbored snakes or wolves.

Heirsa's glance met his brothers as the rapid rustling continued, only a few feet away. Ronin motioned for Heirsa to slowly back out of the brush, as he had begun to do already. The chance of the rustling being anything but a serpent of some kind was slim, and the snakes of Kyril were known to be deadly.

Before either of them could even sense what was happening, a slender black scaly body lunged out of the dry grass at Heirsa, sinking its fangs deep into the skin of his wrist. Both Heirsa and Ronin were knocked to the ground, and Ronan bashed his head against a nearby boulder. Now both unconscious, the two lay on the cold soil, only a few inches apart.

It was a short while before Ronin regained his consciousness and looked around. Heirsa was nowhere to be seen. At first, Ronin assumed it was simply one of his brother's many pranks, he was hiding behind a tree waiting to drench his brother with cold water or something else devious. But after scouring the surrounding area, Ronin concluded his brother wasn't nearby. He concluded his search by peaking inside the meat shed, just to make sure Heirsa wasn't there, then took the rabbit and went home. He was sure Heirsa was home by now, especially if he'd in fact taken some venom from the snake's attack.

"Has Heirsa come home?" Ronin asked, entering the kitchen.

"Where have you been?" Grian asked as she chopped up some potatoes.

"Don't mind with that! Where's Heirsa?"

"He hasn't come yet. He was with you, wasn't he?" Delen asked.

"A snake attacked Heirsa...we were both knocked back. I woke up later, and Heirsa was nowhere to be found." Ronin answered.

Search parties were mounted only a short time later, but as the days passed and no signs of Heirsa appeared, hope slowly diminished. Ronin and Grian weren't ready to give up and continued to search each day. The trees and foliage surrounding their family's property reached as far as the eye could see, and they would not stop until they'd reached the end of the Kyril's dense forests.