Vuroth's Tear: Even the Gods Cry

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The field was wide and open, plush with green grass, peppered with various colored flowers here and there. Aven Ardere stood in the open breeze, staring off towards Ravdian, the small city he had been calling home. The cool spring morning's breeze blew over his sweat covered bare chest, relieving his sore muscles and tossing his shoulder length jet black hair into a dance around his face. He slid the polished golden scabbard over the blade of his sword and slammed it into place with a metallic click.

He knelt and rested the end of his sheathed short sword on the ground and leaned his forehead on the hilt while he caught his breath. His eyes fell onto the long white scar that ran the entire length of his arm, starting in a mangled mess at his shoulder and ending at the back of his hand.

Aven looked up and stared off into the tree line far off in the distance. It was peaceful in the fields that surrounded Ravdian. Once outside the short stone walls that bordered the city there was a wide ring of crops and fenced land for cattle to graze. Beyond all that was the isolation that Aven found serene, nothing but nature around was Aven's idea of paradise. The people's voices, banging of blacksmiths hammers and the other day to day noises of people did nothing but distract him and make him feel so insignificant. Here, he was given a chance to be alone with his thoughts and be pestered by his memories.

Aven stood and stretched in an effort to ease the tension in his shoulders from his intense daily sword training. He bent over, picked up the shirt he carelessly tossed when he first came out just before dawn and wiped his brow. He looked towards Ravdian, thick streams of black smoke started filling the air as the people woke and began cooking their morning meals. With a sigh he threw his shirt over his shoulder and started back to the city, back to the people and the noise.

Ravdian was a small city, filled with beggars and thieves, the only legitimate occupation being farming the massive croplands circling the city. Many of the buildings were desolate, crumbling stone or rotting wood. Diseases ran rampant through the poorest neighborhoods, which was the majority of Ravdian. There were pyres in various places throughout the city to burn those who died by plague.

Aven held his shirt over his mouth and nose when the wind blew the scent of decay and burning flesh in his direction, several others around him, too, had their faces covered with rags as they went about their daily routine. He pushed through the dirty crowd, ignoring the beggars shaking tin cups and asking for anything that could be spared.

He made his way to the Weary Traveler, a decrepit little inn caked in dirt. What few windows the building had were either cracked or completely shattered. Aven pushed open the crumbling, rotting wood door and stepped inside to see the young woman who ran the inn, Analda Pilus, she once told him, sitting in the back corner of the room lit by a sole lantern. On the short desk in front of her was a thick book, she looked up when she heard him enter and smiled at him. There was something about her that Aven found alluring, she had a pureness to the way she smiled, an undeniable beauty about the innocence Aven saw in her ice blue eyes. Aven returned the smile and started up the stairs to his room and she returned her gaze to the book before her.

Aven stepped into his room. He tossed his sword onto the bed before shutting the door and sitting down on the lumpy mat. He tossed his sweat soaked shirt into the far corner and kicked off his worn, tattered leather boots before laying down on the bed next to his sword.

His shoulders and arms were sore and tight but to him it was a sign of accomplishment, that his daily routine with his sword was a success. He pulled his sword onto his chest and ran his fingers over the smooth, polished gold, the carved design of strange symbols that ran down the center of the scabbard felt soothing to him even though he didn't know what they meant. He closed his eyes and rubbed the scar on the back of his hand with his thumb. His last thoughts before drifting to sleep were the memories of the night he received that scar.