Legends of Dragons: The Beginning, Prologue
This is a story I decided to write for everyone in the world, not just us, so honestly, this will be a pretty clean story, and no out-in-the-open gay relationships. Although, there might be an implied one if you look for it. This is just the Prologue, however, so nothing is really happening yet. Just a backstory. By the way, I'm sorry it's so short. This and the first chapter are somewhat short, which I regret, but life is life.
_ Roll the Film! _
The slender shadow of a man crouched in the bushes, deathly still as he waited for his prey. Pure white irises shone under deathly white bangs. Skin colored maroon gave the appearance that he was always bleeding. These features usually would set him apart from a normal man. Not tonight, in the shadows, far from any trace of civilization. His kind was called Kyrdins. They were as feared as they were strong--or so to say, very feared.
The Kyrdin smiled as a gentle breeze wafted through the clearing, carrying on it the smell of those he was hunting. They were on their way.
He started as a branch snapped. Swinging his head around, he looked for the source of the noise. It had come from one of the nasty brutes crouching behind him. He snarled at it, a Bertar. The creature shrank back, frightened and timid. The Kyrdin turned back to the clearing.
Hours later, no one had yet passed through the clearing. The Kyrdin had to admire his choice of place. It wasn't the best he could've hoped for, but it was definitely the best he could have found under the circumstances. It had a diameter of maybe twenty-three meters, and right in the middle was a hill that provided a view of the forest for kays around. He smiled, remembering how the current king had changed miles to kays, so now instead of one mile, it was one kay.
Another breeze drifted through the clearing. The scent of horses was stronger. "Be ready," the Kyrdin said in a voice akin to a snake's hiss. "They approach."
The Bertars assembled behind him gave murderous grins and began to string their bows. Those who came prepared and had strung their bows beforehand nocked enchanted arrows to the string. The Kyrdin himself drew a leaf-thin sword.
Five...then ten...then twenty...then thirty minutes passed with no one passing through the clearing. Some of the Bertars were growing impatient and attempting to leave. The Kyrdin had to frighten them to keep them there, although he felt even himself growing somewhat stiff.
Just then, the clopping of horseshoes echoed through the clearing. It was faint enough that only the Kyrdin with his enhanced senses heard it at first, but a few seconds later, even the Bertars could hear it. They grew excited, the adrenalin of the chase, and pulled their bows taunt, aiming at the entrance to the clearing. The Kyrdin raised his hand, ready to signal when to release the arrows. The maroon shone bright in the moonlit clearing.
The first elf came into view, and even the Kyrdin had to wait and admire his grace for a second. The other two elves came into view, one another male--evidently the males were guards--and the other a female whose auburn hair flowed down her back, her features catlike.
He dropped his hand. The first flight of arrows whistled through the calm of the night and embedded themselves in the lead elf. He slumped in the saddle of his mount, which whinnied and raced off into the night. The other two elves rode abreast, and when the arrows took flight, they raced off toward the other side of the clearing.
"Now," the Kyrdin whispered. Two of the Bertars stood and cut the elves off, causing them to reign up and turn the other way. Bertars began to flow to that exit as well. The two elves charged back where they came from, even as a second flight of arrows arced toward them and killed the second elf. The female elf uttered a wounded cry as a late arrow embedded itself in the already dead elf's head.
The third flight of arrows thudded into her horse, and even as it struck, she vaulted off and over the heads of the Bertars guarding the entrance. They turned and began to chase her as she wove through the trunks with inhuman grace. The Kyrdin bounded up the hill in the center of the clearing and surveyed the forest around him. Able to see where the elf was headed, he raised his right hand to chest level and spoke in a language forgotten to most humans, "Phehrae!"
A bluish-green fire flared to life in front of the elf woman. She skidded to a stop, then turned and darted left. Grimly, the Kyrdin set fire to a circle of the forest a half kay wide.
Sometime twenty seconds later, the elf woman once again appeared in the clearing, chased by some Bertars, and the others surrounded the clearing, obliterating any chance of escape.
Seeing that she was trapped, she flipped open the pouch at her side and pulled out a large white and red stone. Chanting once again in the language unknown to most humans, she raised it high above her head. The Kyrdin flung his hand up and shouted, "Kera!" A fireball the same color as the flames before roared toward the elf.
She hurriedly chanted a few more lines, then a flash of white light illuminated the forest for kays around. As the flash faded, the fireball smote her, and she collapsed.
The Kyrdin roared in anger and flung his blade at a trunk at the edge of the clearing. It spun end over end, cutting clean through a Bertar, and embedding itself halfway through a trunk at the edge of the clearing. Then he stormed up to the elf woman and searched her body for the stone. Finding no trace of it, he growled at the Bertar nearest him, then went and retrieved his blade, wiping it clean on the grass and sheathing it.
"Our work here is done," he growled at the Bertars surrounding him. They bowed and hurried away. The Kyrdin himself grabbed the elf woman and strapped her to the back of his mount, then he himself mounted and rode away. He only extinguished the fires in his path; the others he let burn.