The War of Shadows

Book Two: The Brightest Light

Sup folks. So on the right you'll see a *terrible* drawing of said little girl. Hey, i drew this a while back, so its not gonna look TERRIFIC. But enjoy, if you can.

Darkness, a mysterious creature, hovered over the blackened palace. Not a sound was made, and all appeared still on the forest terrain. The pale moon blazed a trail across the dark windows that held it in silence. But even in the still of night, several figures were came ever closer, the blackest thoughts brewing in their minds.

The stuff of night, five persons stole into a carelessly guarded gate and snuck up to the third floor. The creatures crept into the separate room, quiet as their soundless shadows, and were gone. That's when chaos awoke.

A scream ripped through the air with icy claws. Guards rucked to the rooms yelling commands to others. The hooded things crept from room to room, barely visible in the dark, fulfilling their dark plans. And in the midst of all this, a young child wandered around, alone and afraid.

"Mommy? Daddy? Where are you? I can't see!" cried the voice of a small child. The darkness had covered everything and it was impossible to find one's way around. The child kept tottering around and then sat down abruptly and cried. After a while, the little toddler got up and walked over to a familiar room, washed in pale moonlight. Tottering over to a bed, the young child caught a glimpse of two lumps laying awkwardly on the large green bed. The child didn't move, couldn't, and just stared and stared. The young toddler crawled onto the bed and cried. Just cried and cried and cried, the large blue eyes gushing tears.

~ ~ ~ ~

"Kiyra? Kiyra, are you in here?" The voice whispered urgently into the girl's shattered mind. A tall, dark-skinned woman crawled into the wrecked room, dragging her mutilated leg behind her. The little girl remained where she was, unmoving, unresponding, uncomprehending.

The woman reached the bed and pulled the girl into her embrace, rocking her gently. She sang quietly to the distraught figure in a subdued tone that held more grief than even the little girl had experienced. And that girl had just witnessed the murder of her last family members.

The woman stood slowly up, the little girl sobbing quietly in her arms, and limped toward the exit. A scuffling and a sound like fingernails across metal stopped her in the doorway. The innate will to survive gave her a strength her wounded leg had taken away, and the maid swiftly turned back to the upturned room, searching frantically for an escape. Her eyes swept past the window dismissively, but then flew back, realizing that any possibility must be taken into consideration. The two victims were on the topmost floor, and the stairs, crawling with the enemy, could not be attempted. Nevertheless, the woman quickly took off the bed's sheets and tied them end to end, an age old escape trick she hoped would actually work. She left one of the many sheets to secure the child to herself, then, without so much as a glance back, crawled through the window and down the wall.

She knew almost every single room in the ancient castle, and she trusted her memory to be correct. If it was, there would be a narrow, almost hidden passageway on the floor directly below the window, which would be their only chance of survival. If it wasn't already flooded with the shadowy beings.

The height scared the woman whenever she thought of it, which was nearly the entire time down. The drop was nothing to sneer at, with height of over a hundred feet, enough to kill a person. But the window was quick in appearing and in only a few minutes the woman was pulling herself and the girl through the window. Sure enough, the small door to the left of the window was there, and on opening the maid discovered it to be safe, or as safe as a stairwell can be in such circumstances. In a matter of seconds, the woman had opened the door, disappeared inside, and was descending the stairs just as the shadows entered the room.

"Ahk hreem du ghrar?" The sounds couldn't be defined exactly as voices, but simply different variations of a screech.

"Frek sohn zeesh, tuhr skij ahm rokok."

"Ehkter drieks."

The second of the two shadows, if there were indeed to separate beings in that room, flitted out the door, but the first searched the room thoroughly. The darkling creature had just missed the slight click of the escape door as the lock slid into place, but it sensed something had been in the room recently. For several frightful seconds, the woman stopped on the step of the stairs she had just come to, holding her breath for quite a long period of time. The creature seemed to sniff the wall in which the door was hidden-for the sake of blending in, the room had been painted with stripes, even over the door, so as to make no distinction between door and wall-when suddenly another scream rent the air. A cold shiver racked the woman's body; she had supposed everyone was quickly killed off while asleep, accept for the guards. Pity the poor soul who was suffered to see her murderer before the kill, especially such evil beings.

The creature moved away from the wall and swept out of the room, leaving the woman and child alone behind the door. The maid wasted no time and hurriedly resumed her descent. The minutes dragged on, and with the passing of every floor, her heart beat wildly against her chest as the evil presence increased. Finally she reached the base of the stairs and came to a long underground hallway which she knew would lead into the woods. She eventually came to the end of that, at a hollow tree, and, climbing the small wooden ladder, soon came to the top of the tree. She adjusted the sheet around the child and, swinging her head side to side several times before satisfied that no one was present, the woman rushed down the wide oak branches and landed with a thump onto the ground beneath her. The added weight of the child, though not much, was enough to make the landing rougher than usual, and the woman landed on her foot the wrong way, twisting her ankle. Stifling a cry of pain, she limped away into deeper woods.

With a sickening thud to the bottom of her stomach, her heart warned her that she was not alone. Glancing side to side, she caught glimpses of dark figures weaving among the trees. Now the maid ran faster than she knew possible, ignoring with determination the agony gnawing on her leg and right ankle. The child, now clutched breath-takingly tight in her arms, seemed to grow heavier with each step she took, however, and she knew they were simply biding their time, waiting out their prey. That was the way of all predators. But she had known from the child's first cry of life that she was something special; she'd promised herself that she would protect this child with her life, no matter what torment lay at the end of the road. This child would survive, whether it wanted to or not.

Now the beasts were directly behind her; she could feel the icy cling of death on their breath, and the quiet cackling that had haunted her dreams even before the things had entered the kingdom. And now she realized, if ever there was ever a time to finally reveal her powers again, it was now. The baby would not remember, and the beings would kill the maid herself anyway. Knowing what she must do, she kept up a steady jog, despite both legs, and concentrated harder than she'd ever had to. The woman reached deep into the well inside herself, drawing the last bit of magic out, and sent it flowing through her body, from head to fingertips. With a final cry that screamed of both determination and resignation, she yelled, "Esseat tutarra a'umbris!" and then collapsed suddenly onto the leaf-strewn ground. The child, caught off guard, took to crying again, but the wails trailed away into no more than echos. The shadows slipped from the trees and surrounded the woman until she was completely hidden in darkness, but the child was nowhere to be seen.