The House Of Blood and Dust, Book One: Darkness Rising

Prologue: This is Your Calling

The fourth of September, thirteen, fourteen and back to the battlefield, back to the hell that is war, the necessary evil that it is to shock and awe the people who needlessly bleed for a fool’s folly none of these are blessed by their supposed gods, high up in the skies floating upon the clouds so high and mighty, but if they are in those skies so high upon those clouds then why have they abandoned us to fight a war alone. The stories about the Gods are somewhat too romantic to actually believe that they could exist but this is the voice of an atheist. The land is spoilt by the blood of their own, the beast men the Kalhin, an array of orcs, oxos and once the dead races of the taurens and the centaurs, I have to kill them all. I begin this story running through the wastes of a desert Kalhin occupied but filled with poverty these beasts have nothing, they may as well be dead, I cut my way through the enemy, sword in hand and gun holstered on my hip. Guns being a newish invention for this era made by multiple people, whom own different brands of weaponry,

        “Haytham, we need to push into the heart of their temple, lad this is where this war ends.” Dmitri Firebeard a dwarf and my best friend married to my younger sister.

        “Dmitri, best not to haste allow the king’s elite to take the temple.”

“We are closer; they are prancing around with their dicks out they aren’t coming soon, come on man... we can end this.” The dwarf has a point we could be victorious and destroy them in their own house of worship bleed them dry upon holy soil and taint their land. The dwarf and I run through the enemy, upon the acclaimed thousand steps of Tiva’s honoured temple of the lizard-peoples gods.

        “Be prepared for we know not what we’ll find in this temple of the dragon spawns.” My sword drawn, my family sword, steel forged in dragon fires, near unbreakable, a longsword with a bone hilt and cross guard. The dwarf has a terrible battleaxe, two handed and cumbersome.

        The temple steps are blood stained, gunfire and explosions blast in the air and fires rage throughout the beast’s forests. Into the temple, into the heart of it all and there sat upon the throne the oxo king.

        “I expected more men... but I guess humans aren’t the wisest of beings.”

        “I ain’t a human dip-shit.” The vulgarisms of the dwarf, still pissed from the celebrations of last night, they can surely hold their liquor.

        “I know, dwarf... tell me how far do you think this human’s loyalty is?”

        “I trust him with my life, lizard.” Four of the priest’s guards come to each side of him with semi-automatic rifles pointing at us.

        “Then you are a fool… human’s do not care about anyone other than themselves, I mean look at this war created by humans because they want superiority and they want every race over than themselves to be eradicated.”

        “We didn’t start this war… you did because you couldn’t keep peace.” The lizard laughs and points at us.

        “Kill them.” The men fire their weapons at us; we leap out of the way behind statues, chunks of the stone fly off. The priest fires, fireballs out of his hands and they explode upon impact. The oxo priest has stood still and is preparing for a larger attack whilst his men reload their rifles. I pull the handgun from my holster on my hip and fire it at the riflemen, killing only two and wasting a magazine,

        “Surrender and we will treat you fairly.”

        “Bah, right now those bastards are writing up their treaty… but that doesn’t mean shit… so you’ll die.” I look over to Dmitri whom has grabbed a rocket launcher from a corpse.