The Battlemage

Childhood innocence

  "Do you like it? I made it just for you!" said Adalina's father. He smiled, a rare sight on his usually sad looking face.
  Adalina smiled in delight. She loved the little hand made doll that her father has given her.
  "I love it! I love it!" she said excitedly.
  He continued to smile and she felt good. She loved to see her father smile, because it was so rare. He always seemed to be so sad, always frowning.
 Adalina saw that the more she smiled, the more her father did, so she smiled as big as she could so that he would too.
  Then came a knock at the door. Her father stopped smiling and he went to answer it.
  "We need your help. Some men just showed up at the docks. They don't speak Mir," said the deep voice that Adalina recognized as her uncle's.
  "What do they speak? Where did they come from?" asked her father as he pulled on his deer skin jacket.
  "Dunno. We have never seen anyone like them around here."
   "Okay, I'm coming."
Her father turned back to her and leaned down onto one knee so that he could look her in her eyes.
  "I'll be back Pumpkin. I just need to see who these men are," said her father.
  "Don't go!" whined Adalina. She was afraid.
  "I'll only be a minute, Pumpkin," he replied.
  With that, he went out the door and joined her uncle. He pulled the door closed behind him so she couldn't see.
  But Adalina could hear, and she wanted to know what all the grown ups were doing. She pressed her ear to the door.
  At first she couldn't hear anything. Her father and her uncle must have been too far away for her to hear them talking. Then she heard someone shout, and there was a scream.
  Adalina became frightened and ran for the trap door that her father had shown her. He had told her it was a safe place to hide when she was scared.
  The trap door was heavy, and she had to set down the doll her father had given her so she could lift it with both hands.
  There were more screams from outside, and voices too. Mad voices that spoke gibberish.
  Adalina climbed down part way into the hole, stopping for just a moment to collect her doll, and then she pulled the door down over her. It was much easier to close than it was to open.
  For several minutes she waited there, listening to the terrible screams and the voices speaking gibberish. She wrapped her arms around her legs and curled up in a ball. All she wanted was her father. Where was he?
  The door to the house suddenly burst open and shadows that spoke gibberish came in.
  Adalina covered her mouth so she wouldn't scream. Tears ran down her cheeks. She was so terrified.
  The figures moved about the house, rummaging through the single cabinet that her father had hand built, and the chest that held his tools. They took things and examined them. Some of the things they put in bags and other things they tossed aside.
  Adalina watched all of this with both terror and anger. How dare they touch her father's things! How dare they take what wasn't theirs!
Her father had always said that stealing was wrong, and these men were stealing his things. So where was he?
  The thieves had apparently taken everything they wanted and they began to leave the house one by one. Soon there were none of them left.
  Adalina waited for some time in that dark, miserable hole that smelled like damp earth. No more of the figures came and there were no more screams, but her father hadn't returned either.
  Finally, she couldn't take it anymore, and she pressed up against the trapdoor. It was so heavy and she has to put every ounce of strength her little body could muster into pushing it up.
   The house was a disaster. Everything had been gone through and tossed onto the floor.
  Adalina felt angry and she knew her father would too when he saw this mess.
  Stepping over wooden plates and bowls, and some of her father's clothing, she went for the door that would take her outside. Normally, her father wouldn't let her outside if he wasn't around, but she didn't know where he was and she had to tell him about this.
  She had to stand on her tippy toes to reach the latch on the door and even then she could only just barely reach it. Finally she got the door unlatched and went outside.
  Many of the houses in the village were on fire, filling the air with a woody smoke smell. It reminded her of the fires her father made in the hearth, but bigger and scarier.
  Many of the adults from the village were laying on the ground. They looked like they were asleep.
  "Father? Father, where are you?" called Adalina.
  Someone had heard her, but it wasn't her father. A man emerged from one of the houses that wasn't yet burning. He was dressed in armor, sort of like the armor that soldiers in drawings wore, but a different kind. In one hand he held an ax, much like the kind her father used to split wood. But this was bigger and had a long, curved blade that was dripping with something red.
  The man came toward her. She didn't like his face. He looked mean and like he wanted to hurt her.
  "Go away! Father! Where are you?" cried Adalina as she watched the man coming closer.
  He was only a few feet away now and Adalina could see that his face was heavily scarred, but also covered in strange black markings. She had seen other markings, not quite like these, on people in town. They weren't common. She thought her father had called them tattoos.
  The man was right in front of her now and he raised his ax like her father would to chop wood. Adalina screamed and covered her face.
  The ax never struck.
The man screamed horribly and Adalina could smell burnt hair and skin. She opened her eyes and saw that the man was on fire and dancing around wildly.
  "Don't look, child," said a calm, soothing voice.
  Adalina turned around and saw a man standing over her. He was tall; Much taller than even her father or the strange man who was now laying still on the ground, his screams now silent. Like the other man, he wore armor, but it was the recognizable style of the Miran army.
  "I am Ashwyn," said the man. "Do not fear. Close your eyes for me."
  Adalina did as he said. His voice was so calming, so soothing. She almost felt like she couldn't control her eyes. They wanted to close.
  "Good. Now keep them closed," said Ashwyn.
  Adalina did as she was told, even as she heard more screams, and smelled the burning hair and flesh.
  Soon she felt Ashwyn taking her in his arms.
  "We're going somewhere where these men can't hurt you," he said.
  "What about my father?" asked Adalina.
  "He is gone, and so is everyone else. There is nobody but you, my poor little child."