This is my second story and I am using an idea that has never thought of. If it has point this out to me and I shall look ashamed and remove that last part. This is just a tester chapter as I don't know if I should continue with the story.
I got this idea from page 437 of Eragon and from the story of Mannfred Von Carstein from the Warhammer fantasy Vampire Counts codex. For those who do not know Mannfred was a vampire who was unmatched in the art of necromancy. Vampires in Warhammer are just superhumans who have to drink blood and don't like sunlight. He waged war on the empire but eventually was forced back by an alliance of men and dwarves. However when he was wounded at the battle of hel fenn, his body fell into the swamp and was never found. Now I am getting all of my information from codexes and so if I get something wrong from another book, I am sorry.
In the cold crushing darkness he could feel the great wounds that the runefang had cleaved into his body. While they weren't deadly, but only because he couldn't die, they caused him more pain than the mud that was crushing him. The Carstein ring on his finger was the only reason that he wasn't dead. Mannfred had been holding his breath for half an hour and that had really started to hurt, but he didn't want to feel how heavy his lungs would be filled with mud. He couldn't go up while they were looking for him and he couldn't use magic to move himself while he was this weak. He needed blood. But then that the problem with his situation. He had no way of getting it without getting above the swamp.
He stopped sinking as he hit something. He thrashed as he tried to turn around and feel what he had hit. No... it couldn't be... he couldn't be that lucky. As much as he denied it, he couldn't change the fact that below him was the body of someone else who had fallen in the swamp. As he felt the body the body his black, shrivelled excuse for a heart soared. This person had not been in the battle. They had drowned a few days beforehand trying to escape the dark marshland. This meant that they still had most of their blood left in their body. While old wasn't very good quality compared to fresh blood, Mannfred still felt his wounds close up and his strength return as he drank it.
Now what to do? He could go back and raise an army, as the world would unite against him... again. No he had go somewhere where he would wasn't known. But he had to be able to quickly take control once he was there. But how? In the blackness of the mud, Mannfred went through everything he had ever learnt till came up with a death spell that would take him to a place where there had been a large loss of life. This would be most likely be a battle or a city that had been hit by the plague. Then he cast the spell and the magic took him from the swamp.
Mannfred appeared in a sphere of mud a metre above the ground. He started to fall but span in mid-air and landed with a grace that only Vampires could match. He look around at the plain that had landed in. Even for a Vampire it was inhospitable. The ground was black and covered with a fine grey ash. There were vents every 10 metre or so which spewed smoke and every so often they would belch flames into the air like an angry geyser. He knew of no place like anywhere in the old world. Where was he? There was only one way to find out. He reached out his mind and found the spirits of the dead and he summoned them to him. They appeared like a thickening mist, rushing across the ground to him, combining to make one person with many different faint overlapping people sticking out.
"Where am I?" he asked the host in front of him. It slowly turned to him and answered in multiple rasping voices that all said different things. It took Mannfred a few minutes to decipher what they were saying. "burning plains... Alagaesia..." Mannfred shook his head. He had never heard of this Alagaesia before. He couldn't be in the old world anymore. But this "Burning plains" only humans could give such simple names. Then he asked.
"What happened here?" He needed to know about the state of this Alagasia, so he would know the right people to meet and ally himself with until the right time came. More rasping voices answered him. "Galbatorix... Varden... Battle..." Mannfred smiled at the last word. A battle meant lots of dead body to use. "where?" he asked them. The spirits raised their hands as one and pointed back in the direction most of them had come from. The Vampire released the magic holding the ghosts there and started to walk in the direction they pointed in. He had walked around half a mile before he sensed the remains of a horse. That makes thing easier he thought to himself while raising the bones and making a mount. He noticed that the horse had gold stitched cloth raggedly hanging from the neck. He straightened it out in front of him and read it. ..rrin guar.. It said. Mannfred shrugged and mounted the unmoving construct and rode it for another 2 miles.
Then he dismounted and felt all of the dead bodies around. There were close to 100,000 bodies scattered within a mile of him. More than enough to raise an army. However some of the skeletons didn't make sense to him. They were bigger than a man but smaller than an Ogre. They were 8 feet at the smallest and much broader than a man. They also had horns curling out of the top of their skulls. There were only around 100 of these scattered about. "Well I know who my second in commands are." He said to himself. It was only then that Mannfred noticed the river that was close by. He looked down at himself and saw that he was covered in mud. Normally the only thing that he was covered in was blood and so he went and had a wash.
There was no point raising army now because he could be stupidly far from any cities and so Mannfred cast a glamour over himself and his Horse to make them look alive and set off, riding up river. Hopefully there would be a settlement of some kind along this way.
Should I continue with this or not? Mannfred's plan for the story will become clear if you read page 63 of the vamp count book and then think Saphira. Well I'll leave you to review now. Goodbye.