And to Darkness You Shall Return.

Leo - Chapter 1: Visitors

Fire engulfed a village on the side of a mountain. 

Men in dark robes waded through the debris, lobbing fireballs, setting the village ablaze. Others walked alongside massive beasts, fur too dark to see, who picked up screaming villagers and tore them apart with a flick of their jaw. The blood-curdling cries of the men, women, and children filled the air.

A boy sat huddled inside a house, hiding from the invaders, his parents were nowhere to be seen. Dead or taken, he did not know. 

Leading the attack was a giant of a man wielding a long sword. He barked orders in a language few knew, and even fewer understood.

Bodies littered the old village, until it was hideous with their corpses, buildings were burned and destroyed. One soldier, who's face was hidden by a mask, drew his sword, and came closer, and closer, until...

"Ow!" Leo yelped and pulled out a splinter in his finger, caught from a loose floorboard, jerking him out of his hellish vision. 

Leo sat on the front steps of his house, shivering in the cold, he had returned from an unsuccessful hunt. He lay down his bow beside him. 

He lived in a small run-down house, in that same abandoned village near the top of a snowy mountain. Occasionally, he would have vivid memories of the day the village he knew as home was attacked.

His daydream had been a warning of his weariness. As Leo's eyes once again started to close, instead of another vision, he heard voices. People whispered in his ear, cutting through his thoughts, dozens of them laying on dozens more, swirling around his mind.

"Go away!" He yelled, and the voices died down. 

Ever since his home was attacked, on top of the visions, he would hear eerie voices in the back of his mind.

But just then, another memory came to him, as he reached behind, his hand went to a sheath. After he found the familiar leather grip of the hilt, and drew the blade. 

It didn't look like much. A standard long sword, rusted and weathered. But he kept it around because it was the last thing he had from his parents. His father had once wielded that sword, and his father's father and his fathers fathers father, and so forth. As to why he was never sure, it was no use in battle, and it was too dull to cut through anything.

He stared down at the battered weapon, then at the ruined town.

"I'm never going to get out of here, am I." He mumbled to the sword. Naturally, it didn't respond.

Just then, he heard a rustle in the woods below, after a brief moment, he grabbed his bow and nocked an arrow, thinking it could perhaps be a deer or a rabbit. He crept out onto the snow, but recoiled when he heard voices.

"Are you sure Tabitha?" a man's voice asked. "Yes Grelf, I told you, it's at the top of this mountain, I know it!" answered another voice, a female voice. 

Leo scurried back inside the hut and hid, hoping he hadn't been seen. He peeked around the corner of the door frame.

Two figures appeared over the ridge. One was a well-built, muscular man with tanned skin in a red cloak, hood pulled far over his hair and eyes. The other was a girl, with shoulder-length, reddish-pink hair, and she wore a coat of brown leather. She appeared to be Leo's age, so maybe about 16 or 17. This would normally have been very comforting, except they both held weapons.

The man, who was apparently named Grelf, brandished a broadsword that seemed to be tinted red. The girl, who must have been Tabitha, held a carved wooden staff etched with designs and symbols. 

Leo was stuck at a crossroads. He had no idea whether these people were friend or foe, nor what they were capable of. After a long argument with himself, he gathered what little courage he had left and, once again, nocked an arrow, and decided to wait for them to make any threatening movements, or do anything that would mark them as hostile.

A large fallen deciduous tree had blocked the path that led up to the village, stopping the two strangers in their tracks. 

As Leo watched, Grelf stepped forward, feet shoulder width apart, and with a mask of concentration, he swung his sword in an upwards arc. A wave of fire shot outwards and split the tree in half before burning the rest.

Leo's eyes widened and he screamed. Suddenly he was a little boy again, huddled in the ruins of his burning home as he watched as everything was burned to the ground. He nearly dropped his bow, the arrow firing off into the forest.

When the memory subsided, he clenched his teeth and snarled.

He had lost his home once to these people, and he refused to lose it again, at least not without a fight.