Prologue:
Antonio knew some thing was wrong when he smelled the smoke, as the acrid smell flowed through his nostrils and then he knew. He also knew that he needed to see it to believe it. Antonio slowly lifted his head over the log pile his mother had instructed him too, he hid behind what could have,it had only been less than ten minutes ago but felt like hours to the 6 year old boy.
As his muddy brown eyes came over the last piece of wood he saw it. The small thatched cottage he had lived in all his life with his mother and father, it was on fire, it burned with a intensity that he had never seen during the long winter evenings, when his dad had first shown him what fire was always warning him of the dangers and what fire.
"Fire is a destructive thing Anton." His father would tell him calling him by the nickname he always preferred. "If we aren't always careful and if so much as an ember hits the walls this whole place could come down so quick you wouldn't have time to blink."
To Antonio it seemed to take an age. The hungry flames ate at the house so slowly it seemed to him that they thoroughly enjoyed the task and wanted to feast as long as possible. Yet this might have appeared an accident however the solders appearance proved the contrary.
The soliders were all dressed in a very self flattering uniform with no actual pieces of armour apart from a hardend leather breast plate with the emporers insigna of a knight choking a dragon to death while its spurting flamed madly. They all carried rapiers of a fine metal that was legended to be unbreakable . There were five of them excluding the man currently holding a torch to the house, adding even more flames to the already of the raging inferno.
Antonio looked around for his parents before seeing two crumpled figures on the floor, one of which had blood trickleling from a wound from the head. As he watched them hoping for some sign or reaction to show him that they were still alive a solider had walked over prodding them with his renenforiced boot before shouting.
"Hey Roberts they're still kicking but the female isn't doing so well."
As Antonio's heart leaped for joy the next words destroyed what fragile hope he had.
"As long as they live for his majesty to execute he won't care". The man named Roberts called back. "When is he getting here anyway?"
The solider holding the torch replied "He shouldn't be to much longer he just has to get his pet sage to perform that sick ritual of theirs."
An eerie silence grew over the following minutes only broken by a horse's whine, or the odd moan by Antonios mother as she slipped in and out of consiousness until over the unbroken horizon the beat of a convey of horses. As they rode into view Antonio could make out two important figures, the first of which was the emporer himself, he was of average height but of a stocky body which still led to the belief that he had yet the opportunity to give up being a warrior yet.
The emporer and his convey reined in their horses before swifty dismounting and looking around allowing Antonio to catch a view of his eyes, which were pure black in colour like they were holes of pure darkness, striding beside him was a man dressed in a black cloak and skintight leotard completely obscuring all of his flesh but watching all the hardened soldiers that flinch and shrink from his gaze, for this man has a reputation or is he just a repulsive man.
The cloaked man knelt next to Antonios father and started muttering indescribable words into thin air before a sudden woosh of blasting hot air, that seemed to come from the man himself. There was a blast and the next thing Antonio knew he was lying down with darkness creeping into his vision before everything went black...
