1 Chapter 1: Where We Begin
- Records of The Battle Of Isnabad
[ Year 421 ]
[ Second Month of the Demian Calendar ]
"Do you wish to die?" The man asked, peering at the boy with the most peculiar of eyes.
The boy did not know of what to answer. No dying man ever knew the answer to that question. But this was battle, where you do not control your fate, much less decide it.
"Have you no conscience?" The boy blurted, "to ask such a question at a time in which my fate lays in the hilt of your blade." The boys voice grew strong, endlessly so despite this dreadful war.
The man chuckled, he laughed a sound the boy had nearly forgotten. He had forgotten the way one's lip often curved in happiness, in content. The boy knew nothing but scowls, shouts, and wicked smirks of cruelty.
"I am no fool. But I must ask, do you truly wish to end this way." The man answered as the smile thinned from his face. The boy could hear the man's fist tighten onto the sword.
He knew his end was near.
"No." The boy answered. "I do not want to end this way. But death," the boy shook with something in resemblance of a laugh of mockery" death, I would welcome with open arms."
"Many times I have dreamt of a release from the treacherous world, this war, this battle will not be the end. Before me have been millions and surely thousands will follow." The boy had crouched from his position, lain on the soiled earth.
The two figures remained still amongst the quiet evening. The battle had already been fought, one side victorious and the other stricken with the fear of it. What remained were the corpses in which the boy could not distinguish noble from a slave. They all rot the same, coating his nose with the smell of defeat.
"What a fool." The man whispered, his armor hid the cold stare directed at the boy. His golden plated chest and royal blue cape waved in the drifting wind. The man shook his head, iron rattling with the birds overhead.
"To believe us, two unlikely enemies a mirror of the other, is truly saddening. Had you been born a man of wealth and prestige. Had I been a poor pauper on the outskirts of this country, today would not have ended with my victory." The man stood silently and the boy did nothing but hear of his last whisper.
"For that, I will grant you the end you deserve,"
The man unsheathed his blade by his side. The metal glimmered with crimson red and the boy saw his reflection in the forged iron. He knew this was where his story would end, no doubt. But it made bile rise to his throat. His heart shook with the stampedes of a dozen wild stallions.
The man stood before him, in gold and blue, honorable and true. Then, without the slightest of hesitation pierced the weapon into the boys uncovered chest. It gutted right through him, like a sheep to the slaughter.
It took not more than a second for it to end, the bloody intangible battle between man. Both nothing but flesh and blood.
On the third day of the fifth month of that year, 421, Commander Isaniel Hall of the first order of knights, ceased to exist. His name was not written in the books, not in the victory that overtook the continent, and certainly never to be spoken again for ages to come.
