Prologue
Red flames.
That was all anyone could see as they devoured the city. Sirens reverberated within the towering walls, modest clusters of beings cramped towards areas where the building population thinned to empty space. Tortured cries from those who hadn’t been able to escape their confined houses could be heard above the alarms, but even they had a better fate than what was to come to those who initially survived. Caught between the fire and the walls they had built to protect them, they had no where to run when enemy soldiers dressed in black approached them, the blades of their weapons illuminated by the blaze.
And Alena? She stood, watching as her distant people massacred everything in sight. There was a little boy, younger than her own brother, who ran towards the middle of the city. A fragment of a nearby building, scorched beyond repair, fell directly on the child, and the coals remaining gradually consumed his body. Alena didn’t so much as blink as her feet carried her inward.
They deserve this, she thought to herself as one of her bare feet stepped into a pile of accumulated glass. It shifted underneath her weight, but didn’t break skin.
The scenes that she passed weren’t any better than what she had seen on the outskirts. There were pieces of bodies scattered across streets no longer recognizable from their previous shape, and charred powder sifted over the filthy ground in the slight wind as Alena walked them. However, the cleanliness of her feet endured, as did the basic purity of her pearl dress as it dragged behind her.
In the center Alena supposed things were perhaps the worst. There was a small group attempting to fight back, baring fangs and darting around with the speed and strength only vampires could wield. They fought well, of course, but her people simply fought better. It wasn’t their fault . . . except it really was. The vampires had brought this on themselves.
This idea was reinforced by the dropping of more vampire bodies, occasionally accompanied by those from the lycan armies. Werewolves, she noticed, dispatched those in the middle of the city while the elves covered the outskirts. The humans were too young to participate, but they would later help in other smaller skirmishes, earning their place among the strong.
It was as Alena reviewed these things that she became aware of something sharp beneath her feet. Glass she was invulnerable to, but there were other objects she had to watch for. However, as she swept her foot across it mid-stride she knew it had broken skin. When she picked the necklace up she saw that the chain bore a cross, I & A inscribed delicately across the back. The necklace itself didn’t burn to the touch, but its iron pendant wore the blood it had stolen from her across one of its edges. Turquoise bucked in its reflective surface, and Alena tossed her gaze to seek its source.
Swirling colors spun in the shape of an oval on a nearby building. The crimson bricks beneath it, stretching high into the sky, reminded her of the library she had spent so much time in back home once her attention was drawn to it. Blue was the color of the ethereal, harnessed only by fae of her time, and it was the main tone that rotated in the portal just large enough for her to fit through. Alena walked directly through people to reach it, disregarding their cries while their eyes slid right over her. She was contented with her history lesson and decided it was time to return home, leaving red flames in her wake.
***
So I'm starting a new story. Hopefully it isn't too bad already. I'm writing this one kind of slowly, but I hope to have an update for you within a couple of weeks. Oh, and Jordan, if you decide to read this, I want you to know that this story is for you.
