The Mortal Soulbinder (Severed Gods, #1)

Chapter V: Myrella

Myrell

Myrel was drenched with sweat by the time she had reached Bennard. But only one thing was on her mind... She didn't even know what to call it. Was he a man? Was he a demon, a monster? And what was that weird - almost like magic - coming out of his fingertips? All of these questions were too much for Myrel to handle simultaneously. As soon as she reached their reaching place, the first thing Myrel did was drop to the ground, head in her hands.

On the rooftops, the Asneth Kingdom always seemed different. Secret places could be seen that was tucked away and hidden within the city which could only be spied from above. On a cold, clear night, the torches held by guards looked like stars that had fallen out of the sky, or fireflies scuttling around in a beautiful melody, their lights winking back in knowing the hidden secrets of the city beneath the night sky.

Myrel had marveled at these sights since she was a little girl. She could perch for hours underneath the huge, sprawling windows of the castle or among the distorted, crumbling gargoyles that lined the churches rooftops brooding over the King's Quarters, eyes seeing everything - the cooks tending to their vegetables in the boiling pots (who occasionally snatched a potato or two); the girls giggling to each other in the corner of the garden, their hands going click, click, click with the sewing needles; the knights practicing in the yard, with their swords clashing and sparking in a heated battle. Occasionally, she could also glimpse into the King's private study and watch the heated conversations and arguments spill out before her. Best of all, she could see things that the King did not know even existed, places where only she and a few others were aware of, like the tunnels and old ruins tucked away just outside of the city.

Myrel looked towards the city gates, where she would have to go in the morn. Beyond that, only harsh, dead hardpan and barren wastelands, exposed bedrock hostile to vegetation could be seen sprawling out in front of the city like an ocean of yellow, rocky mountains. They rose and fell around the city, along with the tides of sparse, leafless branches and shards of rock reaching for the heavens. Intimidating, yet compelling, the city ushered the invasion of yellow and brown into the walls, where smugglers caves and tunnels had been carved out of the stone of the city walls and had not been filled up again, as their existence was unknown. Viewed from above, the city of King's Citadel looked like a black jewel upon a golden dress, with the small lakes and rivers interlacing around the city like the silver lace, braiding a barrier around the city, which no one could enter or escape from. Or so that is what the King's guards (and the King) thought.

Numerous times had Myrel escaped the city walls, through the crooked and narrow tunnels that bent and twisted its way through the city walls and underneath. The ceaseless tunnels spread out in all directions like the legs of a spider, with its secrets running along with it. The castle had grown over the centuries like the roots of a tree, the tunnels sinking deep into the earth and sprawling out as if to get away from some creature burrowed deep below. Myrel had always wondered whether the tunnels were connected to the dungeons, allowing the prisoners to escape in the dead of night, but Myrel had not ventured that far underneath to find out - nor did she intend to. Sometimes, she would take the wrong turning and end up scrambling out of a gutter, a few miles outside of the city walls. The builders had not even attempted to level out the earth, so the tunnels rose and fell rather dramatically and once she had climbed down to the deepest depths of the castle and ended up crawling out of a burrow which was on ground level just beside the practice yard, with the castle walls looming above her.

Her mother had forbidden her to set foot outside of the castle walls or on this watchtower when she was a little girl. In spite of her mother's demise, Myrel's father (the King) had so far upheld this sanction, but that did not stop Myrel from sneaking out in the dead of night. The guards were never able to see her as she would use the darkness as her cloak, slipping past them as silent as the wind. Only once did she get caught on top of the castle walls. Her mother was terrified that one-day Myrel would ride too far away from the city or venture into the Assadar forest. Myrel promised her mother that she wouldn't do such a thing, but she never believed Myrel (quite rightfully). Once her mother had made Myrel promise that she would always stay within a half a mile radius of the castle walls. She had managed to keep that promise for merely four days, until one day she found herself riding a horse towards the Assadar forest, without even realizing it.