Two star crossed lovers.
Nations divided by blood and power.
A war to end all others.
She is heir to the brutal Darkling kingdom and daughter to the most vicious king ever known, Vlad the impaler.
He's the Demon prince ru...
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A scream pierces the night.
One minute of darkness, thats all it takes me to shift from one darkened rooftop to the other.
The screams, the yelling, the stampede of feet almost break my concentration, but I hone my focus into a murderous thing.
"In the alleyways!" A voice roars, yelling over the chaos. "They're inside the city!"
More voices join in the call, silver and iron glinting in the moonlight as they sprint up and down the streets. But in the madness, everything sounds closer, fiercer. "FIND THEM!" "Kill them!
I could taste the rising anxiety on the breeze all day and spent the afternoon preparing. Rumors of the DeathDealers surging deeper and deeper into the Night Court territory had chilled these city-folk into a lulled hysteria over the past few days.
I had been sitting on the thatched roof of a whitewashed inn when I spotted the torches bobbing through the faded winter woods just outside the city. And then, the Arsenal squadron had syphoned and swarmed the city until night descended.
I pull my dark cloak tightly around myself and press into the shadows of the rooftop, listening to the familiar descant of panic.
The Arsenal sentinels on the landing fling their weapons into the air with a flick of their wrists, the armaments hovering to life around them, like a cool dance of shiny death, as they give chase.
"Secure the north wall!"
This was my cadre's latest rotation – six weeks traveling though chilled woodland and towns and two days to cross the iced over Corvium until reaching Noctura Steppes while the rest of the legion was spread through Mellisande at the west and Indris Quay, to the north, under similar orders of infiltration. My little escapade into Vandread had placed us behind on schedule a bit, and I surely knew it was folly. Yet, for the most part, I didn't care.
The Noctura Steppes were a harsh contrast to the lavish boulevards, moonstone manors and dusk-toned palace of Vandread. It was the Night Court's largest mountain city, nestled at the foot of the white capped Visegrad Alps and warden by the largest waterway in the territory, Corvium River. It was a simpler life of farming and ironwork that thrived here, lesser-born Darkling under the House Grisha district. It's also one of the biggest producers of weapons in the Court, harvesting metals from the Visegrad Mines just under the peaks.
I veer towards the west bridge, the one connecting that part of the city to the rest of the Steppes and, in an almost silent second, it explodes in a bright plume of orange and red; a sun to slip the darkness of tonights starless sky and singe the snow-drenched land.
