Zelink Short Stories

Sneak Peek

This is just the prologue to a new story I'm plotting. Keep in mind it's still a rough draft emphasis on rough and I've never written in third person before but let me know what you think.

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War is bloody and disgusting, full of battlefields littered with the dead and those who haven't yet met that mercy. The fallen are nothing but corpses staring blankly at ash-ridden skies and what could have been. Their stories are too easily forgotten, washed over by the joy of victory or the sorrow of defeat.

Victory remembers heroes for the courageous blood flowing through their brave hearts until they too fall into legend.

There are heroes met with impossible odds that gave their lives so others may live. Heroes whose weapons have been lost to time and others that were said to be gifted with magic from the goddess. Ones who braved the twilight shadows or mastered the wind and skies.

But those were just tales the young boy liked to listen to as he followed his father through the training grounds. There was no magic anymore and only the legends claimed it existed once. Now there were weapons made of steel in the hands of knights to protect the kingdom. He himself had a small wooden sword he tried to replicate the powerful attacks with and he often took pot lids from the kitchens to act in place of a shield. One day he'd become a knight and carry real weapons made of metal that demanded respect.

"You have to earn that respect, Link," his father explained with a chuckle when the boy complained of the real knights laughing at his silly attempts. They'd ruffle his hair and keep him away from where he could get hurt. Then there were the ones who mocked his every unbalanced step. He hated it more than his father knew. "Having the strength to carry a sword means nothing if you don't wield it with goodness in your heart."

So he tucked away his father's wisdom though he didn't quite understand it yet and went back to swinging his sword alongside the boys nearly twice his age. Their ridiculing persisted, saying just because his father was considered the best, didn't mean his son would ever reach that level of skill.

The older men were kinder in that they mostly let him be to carry on with his fantasies of becoming one of them. But they talked too and wondered why a boy his age was so small. For a man as tall and strong as his father, he should have grown by now but he was compared to the princess more often than he liked. She was a year younger and several inches taller, something that angered him though he'd never met the little girl he wanted to protect one day.

After weeks of enduring taunts from the boys closer to his dream than he was, he awoke with his father and fumbled with the leather guards over the tunic he had rather than chainmail, refusing any help that would make him feel more incapable than he already was. He set out with the short sword to the training grounds with the plan to switch it for a real one once he got there. Impressing his father with it was one goal while proving to the others he could hold a blade was set above any other.

He mimicked his father's walk: head high, shoulders straight, chest puffed. He ignored the groans of annoyance from the other boys that he was there for another day of training. Small and unbearably determined. If he couldn't grow past their expectations, he'd certainly meet them.

He didn't say a word to them as he walked to the rack of swords. Staying quiet was the one thing he had mastered. His dreams were loud enough for only him to hear and he wouldn't give them up just to be stomped on. They would all see one day.

He abandoned the little wooden sword that was carved to his size and reached for the smallest of the blades looming over him in the rack. The snickers that sounded behind him when he stood on his toes only fed his need to prove himself.