Chapter One

Kalamata

-oOo-

Great flames of yellow and red tore through the great city of Kalamata, like a great monster it roared a path of destruction through streets and homes without mercy. A great cloud of grey smoke choked out the twinkling stars in the sky, reaching far into the heavens.

Men, women, children and even animals shouted and screamed as they tried to flee the horror of being burnt alive. Families fled their burning homes with what trinkets they could save and carry as they fought through the wreckages in the streets and falling debris.

One family found themselves awoken in the dead of the night by the screams of their neighbours. Smoke had already made its way up to the second floor of their tiny home and began pushing itself under the doorway to their modest bedchamber. A man and his wife hurriedly dressed as they woke their two sleeping children.

"Hurry! Get your clothes, we must leave!" he shouted loudly, throwing some items into the middle of a linen sheet. His wife, fighting back hysteria was forcing the robe over her daughter's head as her younger son wailed on the floor, disturbed by the fear in his parents voices.

"Father, what is happening?" the young girl asked, now helping her mother force a tunic onto her younger brother.

"War, Damalis! Now get your things, we must leave now!" he yelled, bundling the belongings together and hurrying his wife and son over to the window.

The man looked out from the window, the roof of the home below him was not yet on fire, he sighed in relief. There was hope yet. He hurried his wife over to the window, taking his son from her arms and placing him into his daughters, he pushed his wife onto the windowsill and gently dropped her down onto the roof. His eyes roved the rooftops and past the flames where a band of scarlet caped soldiers sat upon their steeds, watching as people died in front of their eyes.

"Damn Spartans! I knew Leonidas would not keep his word!" he cursed, seizing his wailing son from his daughters' arms and carefully lowered him into his mothers waiting arms.

"Spartans?!" Damalis cried, she had always thought them good soldiers, men of peace, yet they meant to kill them all in their beds.

"Damalis!" her father shouted at her, snapping her from her thoughts, she ran into his waiting arms and he picked her up as easily as if she were a feather and held her out into the cold night air, the screams and crackling of burning wood seemed much louder from out here. Damalis looked down onto her mothers' pale and fearful face, her arms outstretched and her fingers clenching at the air. And then, all in one quick second a loud groaning sound emitted from below and suddenly both her mother and brother disappeared into flame and rubble as the roof collapsed under their feet.

"Mother!" Damalis wail was drowned out by her fathers' cry of anguish. Suddenly she was yanked back into the room, held closely to her fathers' chest as he ran back into the bedchamber and pulled open the door, a great wave of heat and smoke overwhelmed Damalis' senses, her father forced her face into his chest as he hurried down the stairs to the floor below. Damalis heard her father curse, something creaked nearby and heat licked at the bare skin of her arms.

Damalis felt confused and disoriented, but she could not bear to look and see her home in ruin, nor could she bear to see the look on her fathers face. The anguish as he thought of his dead wife and son and the hopelessness of trying to flee the wreck of his house with his daughter locked in his arms.

"Father!" she wailed into his chest, but it was mumbled by the despair that clogged her throat.

"We'll be fine!" she thought she heard him say, but then there was an almighty cracking sound that seemed to reside from right above where they stood.

"By the Gods!" her father yelled and then suddenly something sharp ripped across her back like a whiplash and flung her from her fathers arm and hard into the ground.

Damalis lay there for a brief second, stunned, but then slowly she opened her eyes and saw herself lying face down in the dirt of the street. They had made it! They had escaped the flames that had claimed her mother and brother. Slowly she pushed herself to her feet, a terrible pain rippled down her back and she yelled, instinctly wrapping her arm around behind her and feeling what she could of her back. It stung at her touch and she seemed to be coated in something moist, she pulled her hand back and saw to her horror that her hand was covered in blood.

It was then that she remembered her father. Surely he was somewhere nearby and she spun her head round, but he was not near where she had landed. With fear in her throat she turned back to the doorway of her home and emitted a silent scream. Her father was lying, pinned by debris, his head lying sideways on the threshold.

Numb with horror she ran to his side, only his shoulders and head were visible among the wreckage, but his face told her that he was gone. His eyes were wide open, glazed with emptiness and a single trickle of blood ran from his mouth and pooled in the dirt.

A wail cut through the air like a knife and it surprised Damalis that it had come from her own lips as she hovered over the corpse of her father. She felt truly alone. Her family slaughtered in the night by the very people she had admired and trusted to uphold the law. Spartans.

Damalis didn't know how long she cried over her family, but soon she became aware that she would need to leave the city if she were to survive, a heavy smoke was now burrowing through the streets, killing off anything the fire had left alive. Reluctantly the girl got to her feet and stumbled through the dirt, covered in ash and blood and in almost no time she was climbing up the grassy hills, escaping the gutted shell of her home. The cool grass seemed so inviting that she dropped to her knees and watched with pure torture on her face, the remains of her home engulfed in flame and smoke.

A horse nickered nearby and drew Damalis' attention and she saw it was the band of Spartans, no more then fifty. In a rage Damalis clenched her blood soaked fists determined in that moment, that she would punish whoever was responsible for this atrocity, no matter how long it might take.

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A/N: Let me know what you think.