Disclaimer: I don't own Redwall.
Okay. I'll try this one on here. Tell me what you think?
Prologue
The fires had burned like
the pits of hell overnight.
Smoke, black as the darkest corner of
a beast's soul covered the night sky in thick clouds, blocking out
the stars. The moon, only new, didn't even try to show up, yet Mars
could be seen as a red dot, just barely peaking through.
The
small home had burned down to the ground.
Now, in the early
morning, Aozora Kaneda sat on the curb of the dusty street, his tears
dry on his cheeks and leaving streaks down to his chin. His head hurt
with a dull throb that had caused him to stop crying in the first
place, but he found it so, so hard.
He'd watched them die.
His mother and father, his cherished parents that would give the shirts off of their backs and the food from their pockets wherever they went, the two who were the most generous of any conceited aristocrat in this place- it seemed so wrong for someone to come along and order a hit on their house.
Kaneda's mind kept
wandering back to those dark thoughts. He'd come in the house from
playing outside with the few pigeons and ducks in the yard so that he
could wash his hands and get ready to go to bed.
By the time he
entered, the room felt like some presence was bending its walls.
Through the dark hallways, he thought that it was so quiet that his
heart could be heart like a drum. There was something, or someone,
here in the shadows, penetrating him with their gaze.
"M...mama?"
he said, his voice high and wavering. The five year old kept walking,
passing by his room and going to check in the den.
It was in
shreds.
The chairs, the carpet, the polished wood floor, the
banners and hangings, the dressers and desks, even the futon and
glass lamps - all shredded with knives and rocks from slings.
There
was chair in the middle of the room, that he could see, with a tall
back and several darts and weapon-ammo stuck into it.
Peering
closer, he suddenly found that he didn't want to see what was in it,
its back to him. Hulking shapes in the dark laughed and jeered as
they skulked and scurried around the room, their bodies covered by
cloaks and their faces having wooden masks of some fantasy
figure.
"Our job here is done," said one with the only
colored mask, a red one. "The vixen put up too much of a fight
and died before we had time to have any real fun with her, so, to
make up, I'll let you all go to the local brothel tonight, 'cause
ye've got to admit - that was one fine peice o' arse."
His
gang sniggered wickedly, and other calls rang out.
"Ar, we're
done with this 'un, then," said another, his mask blank as the
others. He raised his boot and kicked the chair around.
The heavy
chair fell with a thump to the floor, showing quite clearly what its
carion fruit was doing in limp repose, no response or movement coming
from it, no more spark in its blank eyes that seemed to see into the
other world.
Kaneda bit the inside of his cheek to suppress a scream.
Forever. Those eyes would haunt him.
The eyes
of his father as they stared into him, beyond him. The eyes of his
mother, who stared up at the ceiling from where she lay on the floor,
clouded and filmed over.
The nightmares would haunt him
forever...
Sniffing and wiping his eyes with a paw, the tiny
fox stood up. If he stayed on the side any longer, he was sure to be
run over by a horse or something.
There were plenty of back alleys
to go to, but they were full of the morning's mist, and he couldn't
see anything that was on the other end.
And he felt very
apprehensive now about walking into dark places without knowing what
was on the other side...
