Wattpad Block Party - Winter Edition III

genk01 Presents: A Cry for Hope - Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONEThe night before the portal was opened...

The Ghails, Vara and Bajik, the twin moons and their five rings, were brightly shimmering in the night sky. Their radiance of sparkling light danced upon the forest floor and upon Dly's leather clothed figure lying near the fire. The others were chattering amongst each other but Dly, always the lone wolf, preferred to spend moments as these alone, deep in thought, with the solitude of the silence. His thoughts were his sole companion, his accomplice in the night. As Dly gazed up into the glory and beauty of the twin moons and their crisscrossing rings above the tree tops, the occasional soft pop of air escaping the dwelling place between the cracks in the burning wood caressing his ears, his mind raced back to a gruesome memory he had thought he had forgotten, tightly hidden in his head, dreadfully camouflaged in secrecy, of when he was not so alone.

It was one of many nights Dly and Vlandrax Xen spent rummaging below the piercing and watchful gaze of the Ghails. Both had advanced to their final year of their specialized training at the School of the Gifted. The school had a name displayed on its outer walls for all to see "Flannery School of the Arts" but that was merely a ruse for the truth behind that veiled curtain of unknown, entangled in the black foreclosure that housed many students. Their school was no ordinary school but rather one for rearing the warrior within. The school looked more like a fortress or a prison with its high towering walls encompassing the entire school. The hundred-foot walls soared high into the sky and circled the perimeter of the school's five thousand acres. All along the outer walls was civilization or the wild. At the farthest reaches of the school's territory, nothing existed unless inhabited by the wild. The eerie woods were the sanctuaries of the lost or the crazed. Numerous wild beasts dwelled in its refuge and on many occasion, these dangerous parts, where no mortal dare walk, were the training grounds by which the School of the Gifted enforced their core beliefs of survival. The school's teachings demanded of its students to reach deep within their consciousness to unlock the secret power that dwelled there. Boys, who exhibited traits of intellect, strength and resolve and on numerous cases, had already performed such feats of bravado in the ordinary world, that even a fully developed male might to have suffered repose or disgrace merely at the attempt, had tried or conquered. Some had been intellectually gifted and came off being mentally or socially inept. Others were criminals, even at young ages, stealing and cheating their way through life. And still there were a few who had been living or playing with far more foul and damaging lifestyles: killing. There was only one who had reached a level of proficiency in this last characteristic. It was then that their master, Master Raab, had found him in the market place just seconds after one of the most hideous acts of revenge a man could enact, and for it to come by the hands of a young boy was breathtaking. Vlandrax Xen was unlike any who had ever begun training at the School of the Gifted. He quickly excelled in both martial and intellectual skills. He mastered the use of various weapons, learned to mix potions and explosives and even how to become invisible, sneaking in and out of locations without leaving a trace. Soon, after having only been there a year he could defeat any of the students and was becoming bored and complacent with the training. He had devised a plan for his own escape, and it was an escape because it was against the code to leave before your training was up. And if the School found any who had abandoned their oath, death was their sentence, as they were tirelessly sought out by the Elder Blades. The Elder Blades were graduates of the school who went out into the world to use their skills. Some were hired on to work as bodyguards, others as escorts for large caravans; others took up positions of less luxurious lifestyles as cooks, black smiths, herbalist and husbands. Others, after working for specific companies "retired" as they put it and worked more freelance jobs. These paid far better and allowed allegiance to sway to either side. It was not unaccustomed to have a spy kill one person from a competing company to enable a trade route to be constructed and then for that same victim to offer a higher price on the head of the other. These Elders did what they did best: gathering intelligence, exploitation or sabotage, and when the job called for it, murder. Some came back to teach at the school and others, weakened or dulled by age, became potions makers and experimentalist and wrote books. Many teachings taught at the School came from these very books and experiments. One ordinary evening when the students were concluding their bout of sparring, and with plans to slip over the wall that same night, Vlandrax Xen's plans were put on hold when a new student was welcomed to their organization. Through the same two massive wooden doors Vlandrax Xen had first entered a little over a year ago and many other students before him for several decades, perhaps even centuries, came a skinny new recruit with his head bowed. The timid nature of this new boy had tweaked Vlandrax Xen's curiosity.