The Three Kingdoms [under edit]

The iniquitous necromancer

It was today.  The king will fall, or the king will prevail.  Galvin haven't yet calmed down from his earlier rage.  Everything he saw around him filled him with an even deeper desire to put an end to fallen king's  reign.  His name was Nægling, or so Darien told him.  Named after a sword weilded by a legendary hero...odly enough, it was a sword that killed a dragon.  He couldn't remember the name of the hero, "Caper would know...if he was here." He thought to himself.

They had no plan, strategy, no military leaders, no experience, all they had was madness and a diminished army.  Darien wanted to give up.  He scolded Galvin for foolishness, accused him of dooming them all to death.  But he stayed.  Nægling, a killer of dragons. coming from a language so old nobody could remember quite what it had meant.  Perhaps the only one old enough to know would die.  Perhaps he would die.  Galvin trembled at the thought.  He never really considered the possibility of death.  Would he die? What would happen then?  He couldn't die, he wouldn't die, he decided.  Nobody would die...nobody but the king...and he would find a way to keep it that way.  By ordering his troops to retreat, he nodded, that's exactly it.  He would do it alone.  He would come in like the shadows behind the curtains and strike silent as the clouds that cover the moon.  No glory, only duties done.

The other races had abandoned them, they took Galvin as mentally unstable, they wouldn't follow him into battle.  At first it seemed like a hopeless setback, but now it didn't matter.  He gave the order and watched as they packed up.  Somewhere, he could feel eyes watching him.  He would turn, but there would be no one there.  The sun set, the moon rose, it was time to act.  Time to kill the iniquitous necromancer who's name was Nægling.  The word left a sour taste in his mouth, but he kept saying it to himself.  A dragon who kills dragons...

His talons clicked along the carved stone road.  Each stone fit seamlessly together, in some places, where the road had worn away, the gaps were filled with lead, or little bits of rubble.  It was hard to keep quiet.  But somehow he managed.  Galvin hardly breathed.  He imagined himself conversing with his old friend.  Jouska is what Caper had called it.  The imaginary conversations you have one your head.  Well, he was having one right now.  He plunged into the river...he had only just seen it.  Most cities had a river, one that would flow right inside.  Nobody guards the water, only the roads, this he entered the city...but his task was far from complete.  It was dead silent.  The citizens expected an attack.  It felt like a trap...and it probably was, but he didn't care.  Kilig another useless word Caper taught him.  It meant butterflies in one's stomach. He certainly felt them now, of course he knew that he hadn't actually eaten live butterflies, it just felt like he had.

The city fell behind him, before him lay a stone bridge suspended by not a moat, but a crevice, one that ran around the castle and fell hundreds of feet into the earth.

Click...click...so went his nails as he crept across the bridge.  Then he began to climb.  The buttresses and tall windows allowed him stellar gripholds to aid his assent.  The massive building was by far the most intricate he's seen...but not the largest...Darien's castle was larger, though it had to encompass his entire city to block out the eternal winter.   He reached the top of the battlements and skirted around the guards.  Perhaps they knew he was there, but none of them betrayed his plight.  He stepped into the castle, there were no panes of glass in the windows.  He was surprised, surely a king of his stature could afford glass, even Galvin had glass in his halls...not much, but some.  But here in the castle, the moon cast long shadows and the breezes wafted through freely.  "Must be a nice in the daytime," he thought.

And there at the end of the long corridor stood the oaken doors of the king's bed chambers...well, his guards stood there as well, but that's not where Galvin's main focus was.  He crept through a window and slid across the narrow ledge that towered over the earth.  He passed the guards from the outside and paused.  He was going to be fast.  He was going to be quiet, he was not going to gloat over his kill.  The decrepit King will die, and no one has to know by whom.  He breathed in the silent night air and another name came to mind.  Petrichor the smell of rain and damp earth.  He had learnt that one from Caden, shortly after Caper's death when it had rained.  He said it was Caper's favorite smell, and that he was always around when it was present.  Well, the smell was here, but his friend was not.  He stepped into the chamber expecting to follow his plan, but when his foot hit the floor, all the torches in the room flared.  Before him stood wide-awake-totally-not-sleeping King...in all his twisted glory.  He snarled, Galvin shrank.

Probably my best chapter yet.  Thank you for all your reading and kind thoughts.  This was only supposed to be a short story and has a lot of plot holes that need to be fixed...and changed, and deleted.  Thank you all for being so patient and...for the most part...not criticizing them, (though there is one....you know who you are...grammar natzi)  anyways, I expect the story to be over in one or two more chapters.  No, no sequal.  Well, maybe, we'll see.

I will dedicate the epilogue to whomever can discern what particular hero wielded the sword Nægling.  And if you can tell me the language it originated in, I will write a sequel of sorts.

Thanks again,

-me.  ('Cause why would you wanna know my name??)

1000 words exactly, minus this line, cause now it's like... 1,010