Inqueda

prologue

The girl in a white, now tattered dress has been running for so long that sweat has stuck the light silk material to her back. Her honey gold hair billowed in the breeze behind her, and the moonlight seemed to give her pale skin an ethereal kind of glow. She can already feel a stitch in her side from running so hard .

The desire to stop for even a moment and catch her breath is strong, for her sparse participation in physical activities was no match for this, but the need for survival nipped at her heels and she cannot afford even a moment. She was afraid to turn and check if the men were still after her, she doubted they would abandon their cause so easily.

She was assured she would always be protected, but all her lines of defence are gone, every last one of them dead. Her head is beginning to pound and her pace was now interspaced with occasional stumbles. Her father had told her about the portal at the eastern boundary, the portal to the other world. Her world is no longer safe, she is wanted dead or alive but preferably dead. But as the sole surviving heir, it is her duty to survive and she never sheirks her duty. Besides, she had promised, hadn't she?

She just marked her seventeenth birthday and already this is the worst year of her life. Her father had thrown her a party with hundreds in attendance and her mother had woken her with a song and a gift.

The thought of her family causes tears to run down her cheeks, blurring her vision even more. Her moment of distraction cost her, for she struck her bare foot on one of the stones she has been trying to dodge and fell in heap.

She is so tired that at this point she is sobbing both from all the occurrence of the day and the unfairness of it all. She would have given up and just lain there, but she promised. So she wiped her tears and took off again.

She could see the stone arrangement in front just as her father described it. She put in a last burst of speed from a reserve she didn't even know she had. She slowed on getting to the stones. There was something so alive about them, like a feeling of an ethereal presence that instinctively makes you sober and lifts your spirit at once.

But she neither had the time to enjoy nor investigate whatever was there. She was told she would be granted passage through the stones by right of her blood. All she had to do was step into the middle of the stone arrangement, cut her palm and place it in the middle of the biggest stone.

She looked around and saw a small piece of stone with an edge that seemed sharp enough. She was still panting from all the running and was already feeling slightly light headed.  She stepped into the middle, pressing the sharp end of the stone into her palm, she brought it down hard.

She clenched her fist to allow the blood to pool, and then pressed it against the stone. At first it seemed nothing was happening, but then her whole body began tingling, like tiny ants crawling over her body. It seemed to go dark for a moment and she moved forward as if to walk out of the darkness. Then there was light so bright it seemed to burn her eyes, her ears were ringing and then her feet seemed to be on solid ground, but not any kind of solid she had felt.

Upon her vision and her hearing clearing, she heard a strange sound. Turning towards the direction of the sound, she saw two pinpricks of light. She was still trying to make sense of what they were when something very hard collided with her. She felt like she was airborne for a moment and then she hit solid ground and everything went dark.

Hi guys.  So I started another story. I just had the story idea today while reading for my exams and decided to write it down lest I forget. I'm actually supposed yo be reading right now but it's my last papers and I think somehow my brain thinks I've finished. Hopefully when I'm done I'll have loads of time at my hand to update both stories. ( or I really should learn to control my impulses). Updates coming soon.