Pinfall

Chapter One

1000 years ago

The sky had fallen. Mage Morgan, the legendary Dwarf, stood on a high cliff of Mount Endi. The air was much thinner and colder where he stood than it was down below on the battlefield.

They look like gods rather than men.

His stonelike countenance hid the deep grief of his heart. He felt responsible. Lightning shot across the sky, unnatural. Fires blazed and ripples of air rebounded from deep magic. Bodies of men were scattered, as numerous as grains of sand on the seashore. He unlocked the magic of the Ancients. His discoveries, made nearly a century ago, created angels and demons.

With the vast increase of magic came a struggle for power, and that struggle was unfolding before him. Hoth, his only apprentice, stood beside him. His sword was as wide as a man and as long. It had several holes near the hilt filled with lazuli and emerald—stones imbued with enchantments making it unbreakable and as light as a lion's ear blossom to its wielder. Never before had anyone handled such a blade. Morgan, a master smith, helped him to forge it.

Hoth was tall. He towered over Morgan. His short blond hair was covered by his dark hood. He wore a long black cloak that ran to his weathered boots. His blue eyes seemed to smoke the color; something wicked burned in their beauty. The magic running through his blood was like nothing before him.

"There is King Lionet." His eyes widened at the sight of the warrior king.

Morgan never discovered what wiped the Ancients from existence (and those before them), but now he thought he might.

They destroyed themselves.

A feather dances on the wind and so Hoth was in the air. He lifted his right arm behind his head and grappled the hilt of his large sword—it was simple and thin, about the size of a man's shinbone. He brought out the sword, Gargantuan, and held it before him as he flew.

It only took one hundred years, a century, and the men who discovered a power that could save the world were now destroying it. Morgan turned his attention to his apprentice. There were still things about Hoth he did not understand. He had a way with magic that was different. He knew Hoth could kill fifty men without mention. How strong had the others become?

What discoveries?

What innovations?

King Lionet looked up from his horse, feeling the power of Hoth even so far away. He scowled as his brown eyes searched the air. Many of his soldiers lay dead or freshly dying on the few hundred yards of no-man's-land before him. Lionet wasn't a little distressed. Around him, his generals were barking orders and soldiers were scurrying about, looking as fresh as a fisher's fingers.

His mage warriors had fought with a fury that began to sober him. Magic was more terrible in the hands of men than even he'd realized. The number of the dying on both didn't damper his desire for control. The king was no coward. He was nearly sixty, yet Lionet would lead by example, a warrior king. As it turned out, he was a Pristine One: a being that could wield all the fields of magic rather than specializing in a certain area. He drew his twin blades—the finest of Dwarf craft, a gift from the Clan of Silver Water—from his waist, shouting the words that made his steel as tough as a diamond.

The Elves and Dwarves, an unnatural alliance, were holding the line against his men. Both sides dug into the plains of Noe, a level treeless flatland between the ice caps of Ahzion and the timber line of the White Forest, just south of Sail, possessed of hard, nearly frozen topsoil. The soldiers were volleying without gain but slush and blood. All the men from both sides were beginning to lose heart. The war had been going on for three years. Morgan and his Council had yet to appear until now, at this standstill on the frozen plains.