Xyhra(Part 1): Honor

The Bloodline

The last day of the second year of Elia's imprisonment ended, and the first day of the third year of it would come tomorrow. Either that, or it had already begun. Elia couldn't tell. She knew at least what day it was, but not what time. Lord Greene clearly wanted all of his prisoners to suffer as much as possible, whether it was by starvation, exposure from lack of proper clothing, or insanity. Elia had experienced all three. Not knowing what time it was made it impossible to tell when she should awake, eat, and go to sleep, she was fed only once a day, and all she had to wear were rags that at least covered her torso and stretched down to her knees. What she was in prison for, however, was unclear to her. All Elia remembered before she was arrested was her mother grabbing her by the wrist and dragging her away from her house as fast as possible while her father stayed behind to defend them against whoever was attacking them. Lord Greene wasn't the one behind that attack, though. Elia remembered sensing a powerful, evil darkness over her and her mother as they ran through the forest that encircled her family's house. She felt both of her parents die, then she was knocked unconscious. That was two years ago. Elia must have been thirteen when that happened. Now, she was fourteen, but would turn fifteen in a few weeks. There wouldn't be a celebration for that, though. If birthdays were celebrated in the dungeons of Castle Greene, they would be a much more lively place, but no. This was no place for joy, and no place for hope. Elia had considered breaking one of the legs of her bed with her bare hands and stabbing herself through the chest with it, but she couldn't. She knew whose blood she had running through her veins. Looking back to being told about that, it made sense why she was attacked and imprisoned, now. Whoever was behind this wanted to kill everyone who shared her blood because they had to die for whatever dark ambition they had.

Suddenly, the door to her cell opened, and three Chardanish Regulars stepped through. They pointed their beam rifles at Elia, who was hugging her knees as she sat on her bed, trembling from the cold of winter.

"Stand, prisoner," one of them ordered. Elia quickly stood, holding her hands in the air. As another one of the soldiers approached her with shackles, she quickly threw all three of them into the wall with a powerful aura blast from both of her hands. They were knocked unconscious, and fell to the ground. Elia could only assume that they came to her in order to drag her to the gallows, or a firing range, to be executed. She picked up one of their rifles, which had a bayonet fixed to its muzzle, and stabbed it into each one of the soldiers to kill them. Elia then walked out of the cell with the weapon in her hands. She had to use it sparingly, though. A beam rifle could only fire a single round before it had to recharge, which took a whole minute. That alone could be the difference between death and survival in combat. Elia would be careful, but every Regular she would come across would inevitably try and kill her on sight. Even so, she couldn't stay in the dungeons of Castle Greene any longer. She went down the corridor, pointing the rifle out in front of her with her finger on its trigger. Suddenly, she began to hear voices speaking to each other as she turned the corner of the corridor. They were coming from behind a wooden door, and so was a familiar aura of darkness. Elia closed one of her eyes and pressed her head against the door to look through a crack in the wood with her other eye. A young man in a white tailcoat jacket was standing in the center of the room, speaking to a hologram projector, but with no hologram being projected from it. Elia recognized the darkness that was coming from the young man, who looked barely older than her. She sensed it when her parents were killed. Elia resisted the urge to warp into the room and run the bayonet of her rifle through his face, but the blade would do nothing, and even a round fired from the weapon would be ineffective. Instead, she listened to whatever he was talking about with whoever was on the other end of the transmission. The voice from the projector spoke first, with a deep, echoing voice.

"The granddaughter of Xyhra is in your captivity, Ealdmund?" it asked.

"Yes, my lord," Ealdmund answered. "And I have reason to believe that there is more of Xyhra's blood in the country of Torriban."