Chapter 1

(This shows a chapter break)

Blood, smoke, steel…..

The screams, oh god the screams; men mad with grief, children crying out in fear….

….Then silence, darkness, nothing but nightmares of a past long forgotten….

""" (This shows the passing of time)

I woke to the biting cold and the ache of overused muscles, it was dark and quiet,,, why do I find that strange? All the memories the war, the battles, the countless comrades lost and… my failure came crashing back down on me.

"Oh god" I whispered to myself as I curled into a ball and wept….

"""

As I uncurled unsure of how long I had been crying for I started to take in my surroundings; I was sitting in a stone alcove the room was lit faintly by a mana-fire lamp in the corner, it was bare except for a pair of blades on the opposing wall, 'My blades'. I rose and walked across to them, ran my finger along the edge, "Still sharp" I murmured to myself, "It can't have been that lo…"

I ran to the doorway and ran my hands over the glyphs there "A thousand years? N-no I can't have been asleep for that long"

I grabbed my blades then dashed out the door only to almost be blinded by the sun; I paused and looked around at the unfamiliar landscape. I saw a road in the distance so I set out in that direction.

"""

I must have been walking for hours before I finally came to the road, but I had no idea which direction to travel in "I need to find someone, I need to know what happened"…. "If what those glyphs marked was true"

I could just make out a figure in the distance, a man. I ran towards him and reached him in seconds, as he looked up at me with a questioning tilt to his head I gasped for breath.

"Can I be of assistance miss?"

I caught my breath… "I wish for directions to Håbe….?"

"Håbe, I don't know of any city by the name of Håbe"

"You don't know of the capital?"

Realization grew upon his face "Wait a minute you are referring to that Håbe", "Might I inquire when you were born miss?"

"When I was born? What does this have to do with directions to the capital?"

He just motioned for me to answer "Fine I was born on the 10th of July 247 A.F"

Confusion and then sadness ran across his face "I'm sorry miss but Håbe has been in ruins for almost a thousand years", "It fell to war", "How could you not know of this….."

He looked down to see me kneeling, my shoulders wracked with sobs. "So it's true, I was asleep through the fall of my home…"

He knelt and pulled me to his chest "It's alright miss, it's all right…"

"My n-name is Elayne….."

"And mines Markus miss"

"""

I don't know how long we sat there for, him comforting me until he asked where I was going to be headed now "I have nowhere to go, might I accompany you to the next town".

"Yes you can miss I would quite enjoy the company"

"""

We had been walking for about 2 hours when I heard the bushes rustle to the right of us, a man in torn clothes with a silly tricorn hat perched on his balding head stepped out with a sword drawn followed by 2 men with spears and another with a bow. " Why lookee here some ripe lookin' travellers", "Now don't make this hard on yerselves, just hand over all yer goods and you can be on your way" he said with a gap toothed grin.

Markus started to take out his coinpurse as I shook my head and motioned for him to put it away, "Now listen here girl we just want you to give us what we want and then you can go" His grin disappearing as he stepped forward. I pushed Markus back as I unsheathed my blades and bought them forward

"Put this bitch down, we can get her valuables off her corpse" He motioned to the man with the bow.

Before he could even nock an arrow I lunged forward ramming one of my blades below his ribcage and up through his back, I then spun brushing aside one of the others spears to rock forward and crush his skull with the butt of my other blade. The two remaining turned to run but I caught up to the other one with a spear to impale him from behind, shaking his corpse from my blade I leapt to the ringleader pinning him to the ground with one of my blades through his shoulder "Mercy, mercy please" he whimpered as I twisted my blade. "You would not have given me any" I said coldly as I drove my other blade through his chest to finish him off.