The Sword

Chapter One

First, there was the village. It may have had a name, but whatever that was has been swept away to the river of time long ago. Lost, after the town was desecrated by the great war which ravaged the known world during ages past. It was from this seemingly insignificant village that many things changed, though maybe not in the most obvious of ways.

    Thunder rumbled in the skies, threatening a storm from the distance. Dark clouds flowed from the east, slowly overtaking the pewter streaked pale blue. I could not see the sky though, other than swatches glimpsed through the amber hued canopy of leaves. The claustrophobic woods pressed in ever closer, scratching me as I stumbled through the trees, questing for a way out. Rejuvenated by seeing a break in the woods, my pace quickened and I reached around to drag myself forward. Breaking into the light, I breathed deeply the open air of a grassy hill.
    Taking a few steps forward, I heard sounds of crashing emanating behind me as my companions breach the treeline as well. My friend, commonly called Marcus, walked towards me and gave a laugh while clasping his hand on my shoulder for support. He was a tall man, broad of shoulder and tan of skin. I had known him for four long years, our meeting after he escaped execution for reasons which were never bothered to be explained to me. At times I felt like I would kill him myself, but he was always good company to keep around.
"I am never going in there again!" He stammered between chuckling and catching his breath. Letting go, he walked past me and up the rising mound, golden hair glittering in the sun. "Thank the gods we've made it out!" Marcus yelled to no one in particular, facing the sky. Perhaps the gods heard him. His deep voice caused a few birds resting in the tall trees to take flight.
    "Like he can help it." A voice from behind me laughed, and I turned to face the figure of Aleesia. Human in feature, but for her pointed ears giving her away as an elf. "Marcus-!" She called, before jogging forward to catch up to him. She's always so graceful, I thought to myself, before dismissing it. Marcus and I met Aleesia little under two years before, almost having her shoot us for meat while hunting. She was alone, resentful towards the Empire for killing her people for sport. The elven race was outlawed and forced into hiding. Though as long as I'd known her, she was never far from smiling, mostly at Marcus' seemingly endless stupidity.
    From a hook on my belt I procured my walking stick and began to tread away from the dark forest. Pulling myself after my friends, I made my way up the gently sloping expanse. "What are you two looking at?" I yelled to their frozen figures standing at the top of the hill. Quickening, I arrived at the crest and drink in the sight below me.
    There was a village. Well, what used to be a village. All it was as I looked upon was a collection of stones, I assumed once assembled as buildings. "What, the hell?" I spluttered, for something stronger than time has caused this sort of decay.
Silently, Marcus started down the hill towards the remains of the once-village. Aleesia and I followed suit. Scanning the scene, I found more and more hidden in the picture. I would guess around 100 buildings once occupied the area, though half that still had any standing wall left. Near the entrance, I spied a skull hanging on the tip of pike standing erect in the grass.  Despite the warm air, I shivered under my cloak.
    Nearing halfway down the hillside, a breeze coursed lazily from the east and over the ruins. The overwhelming stench of rotting corpses poisoned the air, slowing me to a stop and causing me to retch. My stomach threatened to regurgitate the meal of bread and cheese which I had had little over an hour previous. Leaning on my walking stick I regained my posture and pulled my scarf up to cover my nose in attempt to block out the worst of the malodor. Trudging forward again, I reached the broken gate of the decimated town.
    "Damn." Marcus said simply, peering in and breathing deeply through a cloth held over the lower half of his face. Vines of ivy laced over the few stone walls still standing. I walked through the opening in the rusted iron entrance.
    "What is this place?" I inquired through my scarf, gazing around the ruins. Rotting bodies piled up to three high in areas, skeletons lying lonely in others. Broken bits of arrows lay with the bones, blunt swords and axes embedded in ribs or skulls. "Do you know anything about it, Aleesia?"
    My friend examined a skull, answering, "There may have been something about it. A war waged over the entire world. But that was thousands of years ago."
    "These aren't nearly so old." I responded, gazing at a decomposing carcass. Hiding underneath I noticed a bulky burlap bulge. Eliciting a loud groan from Marcus, I kicked over the rotting corpse and picked up a large bag, full of various bits of armor and weaponry. Handing the sack over to Aleesia, I said, "You might want to take a look at this. Maybe then you can figure out what happened when from your reading."
Turning and taking a few steps deeper into the village, a glint caught my eye, and I moved towards a glare of light shining from red metal. Getting closer, I realized it came from a sword lying in the ribs of a skeleton. Stooping down, I reached out to grab it, and soon as my fingers brushed over the burgundy hilt the village caught fire.
    Shouts came from all directions, the skeletons gone and replaced with live warriors of unknown allegiance. There seemed to be armies of two sides, one coated in armor of gold and white, while the other dawned royal blue plate. I could not tell which was winning, as soldiers of either army already lined the streets. A helmetless man in white rushed me, yelling about his ruler prevailing over the opponents, and I could not tell if that was a good or bad thing. Raising the weapon in my hands, I waited until he got within range before swinging, embedding the red sword in his skull. Blood spurted from the wound, spraying on the blue armor I found myself clothed in. The blade glinted in the orange glow of the flames engulfing the village. There must have been more to these armies on the outside, for when the body of the man fell and the sword left my hand, an arrow came streaking through the air and into my eye socket.
    Flinching, the scene changed again. I was still in the destroyed village, but there was no longer a fire or battle. There was a bag in my hand, filled with the armor and weapons that coated the skeletons but could still be sold. While bending over to inspect a dark royal blue helm found to be weathered to rust, a glint of red caught my eye. Ignoring the worthless helm, I moved over to the red metal, never lifting my gaze.
    Getting closer, I find that what has caught my attention was a deep red sword, implanted in an old cracked skull. The crimson blade of the longsword glinted in the sun. Pulling the sword out of the broken skull, I lifted it closer for examination, finding black runes running along it's length ingrained in the metal. Twisting the weapon in the sun, I found these unrecognizable symbols to not simply be black coloring in the metal, but to drink in the light of day. I was transfixed by the totality of the dark runes.
    "Get back to gathering!" I heard from behind, the voice annoyed by my pausing. After a few more moments it called again, "What's keeping you?" The owner of the voice walked closer, the stones in the ground crunching under his thick boots. Reaching out, the man, I presumed to be my leader, shook my shoulder to get my attention.
    Shifting my grip on the maroon leather hilt, I spun in place on the balls of my feet and plunged the sword through my superior's neck. There was no thought to this. I seemed to act almost on instinct, though that still made no sense. He spluttered, coughing blood onto my face. The liquid ran down my cheek and dripped onto my brown cloak. To my horror, it warmed me to my core like taking a first sip of tea. As he knelt dying, he looked me in the eyes with his full of surprise and fear. They spoke to me with a simple question: Why? In truth, I don't know why I did it. My mind was filled of images of the black runes. The dark symbols were whispering in inaudible tongues.
    From across the village came another shout, this time a higher pitch asking "What's going on?" Staying quiet, I stood up and waited for this second man to appear in view. After a minute he called again, then began to make his way to where he last thought his boss was. The fellow scavenger stepped into the road, his eyes running over his dead commander lying at my feet. Quickly, he lifted his bow and nocked an arrow and voiced what his leader could not.
    "Why?" His voice cracked slightly.
    Without an answer, for I had none, I slung the sword across the street and into his chest. I had no actual way of telling, but I knew it pierced his heart. Like the first man, he was dead before hitting the ground.
    I felt pain, knowing I just ended these men's lives. But there was some unexplainable force driving me to it. It'd felt, good. It terrified me, because I liked it. However I could not bask in the feeling long before the tip of another sword exploded from my own chest. This blade was also red, though instead with my blood.
"You sick fuck," a hoarse voice whispered in my ear. The third man must have crept up behind me while I was occupied with the second. Wrenching the sword out of my back, the man kicked me forward so I lay dying with my face in the stones. As the road came rushing to meet me, I thought again of the black runes.

...

    An ear piercing scream jolted me back to the present, and I stared down at the red longsword in my hand. My gods. Shuttering again, I stood up and stumbled back towards my friends in the rusted entrance gates.
    "Do you know what that was?" Marcus asked, his voice still muffled by the make-shift mask. He peered up the hill. A few moments later, a crashing noise float from the direction of the woods, and a girl ran over the hilltop. She could have been no more than 13, though from this distance I could hardly tell, and seemingly fleeing for her life from a yet unseen assailant. The child sped down the hill and tried to run through the village gates before Aleesia caught her in her arms.
    Stroking the young girl's hair, Aleesia whispered, "Shhh, calm my child," in an effort to soothe the girl. She was raggedy, a trail of blood laced from her hair to her jaw, brown clothes worn and faded. She might have been a pretty girl, underneath the layer of grime that coated her.
    I glanced away from her towards the hilltop above us, to find a second person breaking the crest. This figure was cloaked in black, a shadow from his hood to his boots. From his hip swung an impossibly black bastard sword, the pommel in the shape of a raven's head. He took a step towards us and the color seemed to drain from the world. Another, and the sound departed. As this man in black marched down the hill, I was filled with an unshakeable feeling of what could only be described as dread. Time seemed to slow, there was no color, no sound but that of the void. I was frozen, gazing at the rippling darkness of the man's cloak flapping in the warm breeze.
    After what felt like an eternity, the shade neared the village entrance. Breaking the silence, he spoke, "Give me the girl." This man's voice was like the scrape of a knife on stone, cold and unnervingly full of pain.
Marcus responded, "And why should we do that?" The fool. I loved him like a brother, but he was bound to get himself killed somehow by his quick tongue and slow thought.
"You will hand her over, or you will die." Slowly, the man in black pulled out his sword. The sound of ringing metal sounded like it reverberated throughout the land. It was the only noise in existence. The bastard blade in his hand looked as though it were forged from the deepest inky black of the midnight sky, as though light were inescapably lost upon the dark metal.
Marcus pulled out his own longsword, the cold steel gleaming in the sun. He kept it impeccably clean, to the point of storing a rag in his back pocket used exclusively for wiping the grime from the metal. "It looks like you're going to have to kill us then, eh?" Brandishing the sword with both hands, he smirked. "Unless, of course, you drop first."
The shade made a rasping noise, what I assumed to be some sort of laughter, and drifted towards Marcus. Once he got close enough, the man swung his dark sword, parried then by Marcus. Back and forth the bright steel clashed with the onyx blade, sounds of ringing echoed off of the stones of the ruined village. I attempted to move to help, but found my body in a level of paralysis. I could do nothing but watch as Marcus' strength slowly, painfully, ebbed away. After less than a minute, though time passed so slowly it felt as an hour had passed, Marcus was beaten.