The Silencing of Esteria

Prologue

A scream cut the night, echoing down the hallways of the ancient castle like a ghost trying to escape.

The princess stirred in her bed, her long, platinum hair falling about her shoulders as she sat up. She opened her eyes and blinked blearily, trying to process what she had heard.

She pulled off her covers and took a few steps forward, but something stopped her from opening the door.

A creak of a floorboard echoed from the next room accompanied by the shuffling of feet.

A chill crept over her and she retreated back under the eaves of her four-poster bed.

Slowly, the handle of her door turned, gently opening to reveal three men, their silvered swords gleaming even in the lightless room.

The heraldry on their tunics and shields marked them as serving the royal house of Ester, but they were not her guards.

Seeing she was awake and up, the three eyed her wearily, silently spreading out to surround her. The first to enter, a grizzled man with eyes of stone, took a hesitant step towards her, his cold, grey gaze locked with her shining, sapphire eyes.

She took another step backwards, touching her back to the stone statue of a winged, angelic knight that stood watch over her bed.

With nowhere left for her to go, the men closed the gap, their shields firmly posed between them and the delicately figured girl.

She silently cursed that she kept her sword in her sitting room.

The soldier in front of her slashed down on her with his sword.

Reflexively, she stuck her arm up to meet the blow and screamed in pain as the sword bit into her forearm, slicing down into bone and driving her to her knees with pain. Her blood splashed everywhere, covering her white satin sheets, her clothes, the face of the soldier attacking her... and the statue of the winged knight behind her.

Emboldened by the sight of her injury, the other two men dove forwards, stabbing at her with their swords.

The statue drew its swords in a blur, slashing them down to meet the oncoming strikes, deflecting them away. It then spread its wings, beating them once to leap over the princess and interpose itself between her and harm's way.

The men reeled back in fear, stumbling over themselves to get away from the new threat, however, they did not move fast enough. It decapitated the man in front with a swift flick of its blade and kicked another to the ground, snapping his iron banded shield in half.

"Father..." the princess breathed, eyeing the animated statue with horror.

To the remaining soldier's credit, while the statue turned to finish off the downed man, he made it through the doorway, but once the statue had stamped on the prone man's head, flattening his helm to the point of it being a viable plate, it leapt after him. The statue's frame was too big to fit through the doorway, so it simply smashed through it, leaving a two-meter-wide hole in the wall. With another slicing of its swords the fleeing man's head was separated from his body.

The princess rose to her feet, her wound and assailants forgotten, she jumped over the debris of the wall that divided her bedchamber from her sitting room and ran to the display of her weapons. She strapped on her sword belt, hefted her shield with her left arm and took a spear twice her height in her right hand.

Readied, she burst through her chamber doors and into the corridor.

The thick, red carpeting and her bare feet silenced her movements, so the oncoming group of four soldiers didn't hear her approach until she was but a few feet away.