Tales of Theodora

Prologue I: The Curse

That ill fated day that young Valentina took a foolish and naïve step into the perpetual blackness, letting the thick rivulets of acrid smelling blood that trickled from the sky into the ravenous cracks of the dry ground sear gaping holes into her once unblemished flesh, was the day that Valentina realised the sorrowful truth of this world.

The caliginous path of life had many turns, it could twist itself into false and delusive grins, it could blare an array of artificial light into one's eyes and leave them blinded with hope. Meaningless hope. Each twist and turn and dead end lead to the same end, the end where the path would abruptly stop, where you would plummet downwards, cascading into incessant darkness, into a field of serrated spikes that would penetrate every limb and every organ, grinding your bones into paste, pulverizing you into mince.

Life in Geia wasn't life, simply existence. Its citizens inhabited darkness; the older generation talked so often of "Sun", about how a gleaming orb of light loomed above the earth and transformed the skies a dazzling cerulean blue, how the kingdom basked in its glory and resplendence. Such things only existed in myths and old folklore of course, the only light most ever knew were the coruscations of candlelight they themselves created with the little resources they had salvaged, but now, not only could they feel the palpable despair that hung heavy in the air like nooses, but they could see it too.

Corpses littered the streets like fallen soldiers, their eroded and disintegrating organs worn and brandished on the outside of what was left of their body like armour that had been penetrated again and again with spears. The pavements were coated with coagulated blood, not only from the deceased but from the sky, the endless sky as black as death's regurgitation.

Located in the exact centre of Geia, was a mighty whirlwind, bubbling with yet another form of formidable power, standing tall like Goliath, except no stone could kill it, no stone could quell its ensanguined appetite. Anyone who recklessly went within proximity of it was grinded into a bitter salt of sorrow.

The long and sonorous rumbles that resonated in the air was the warning. The warning that all must take shelter or perish in anguish. Not long after is when the blood would shower the earth, burning holes into anything it came into contact with.

Valentina discovered the hard way that it really did burn. The pain jolted through her body, rushing through her ears and blocking out the screams of her mother, declaring uproariously that her daughter must be deranged. Despite the agony that took over her arm, she watched intently as the tiny red pool divided into three streams and dug trenches into her wrists, mixing with her own bright scarlet blood, before she was tugged inside sharply by the hem of her dress and screeched at by five or six women. They furiously rubbed ointments and serums of every kind into her scorching wounds which made them hurt all the more as she drifted in and out of consciousness, her eyes flashing black and white and then a sanguinary red.

Thirty seven years ago, thirty seven long, grueling years ago, Geia's monarch, King Cyrus II, was assassinated at his visit to a neighboring kingdom by a nobleman who craved power and authority and would take any necessary measures in order to satisfy the hunger that had gnawed at his interior and feasted on his organs. The second the dagger was pierced through his neck, The sun went out like a shattered lamp and hell began to form.

Geia, the kingdom of peace, instantaneously became a kingdom of war, of conflict, of violence.

People turned. They turned towards the same entity of Power that had slit their throats, that had dragged the dagger of Death through the kingdom's heart.
They claimed to fight for peace. For the kingdom they could brandish with pride, for the community that they had once had. They wanted the light back, of course they did, but the strong urge for power ensured that they fought for themselves and nobody else. The resonance of slaughter rang in the air, intermingling with the blood that fell with it.