Status: next few chapters being written
City of Stones
Running. That’s all that registered in my mind. I concentrated on the calming, rhythmic sound of my feet pounding against the ground, because if I didn’t then my mind would drift back to what I was leaving behind with each step. A picture of my mother’s body, mutilated on the floor of our cottage, came into mind and I let out a scream of agony and put on a burst of speed. I would not let the men that did that to my mother catch me. With sheer will power I forced myself to run even faster.
I didn’t stop running until my body collapsed underneath me and the sun had shifted to the western horizon. Images of my mother danced before my eyes and I couldn’t force them away. Tears pricked my eyes. I wanted to scream, to drown the images with the sound, but I was too spent to do even that. I lay there in the desert sand, not feeling its warmth because my own body was now numb to the world.
My mother was dead, and it was my fault. She had been trying to protect me from the Raiders who wanted to bring me to King Pembroke. I didn’t understand why they had wanted me, I only understood that I couldn’t let them take me, mother had made that clear, but had it been worth her death? I shuddered, half of me refusing to believe she was dead, but the other half repeatedly shoving the image of her body in my mind’s eye as proof.
I could hear the voices of the men who had killed her, even now, hours after the cold-blooded murder. They were talking loudly, arguing. I shuddered again at their voices. They came continually nearer, but also became hushed and then stopped arguing altogether. This wasn’t right. The murderers hadn’t gotten softer, they had gotten louder when they had found my hiding spot, and angry when I evaded them. This oddity registered in my mind but I didn’t have time to think about it before I blacked out.
I didn’t stop running until my body collapsed underneath me and the sun had shifted to the western horizon. Images of my mother danced before my eyes and I couldn’t force them away. Tears pricked my eyes. I wanted to scream, to drown the images with the sound, but I was too spent to do even that. I lay there in the desert sand, not feeling its warmth because my own body was now numb to the world.
My mother was dead, and it was my fault. She had been trying to protect me from the Raiders who wanted to bring me to King Pembroke. I didn’t understand why they had wanted me, I only understood that I couldn’t let them take me, mother had made that clear, but had it been worth her death? I shuddered, half of me refusing to believe she was dead, but the other half repeatedly shoving the image of her body in my mind’s eye as proof.
I could hear the voices of the men who had killed her, even now, hours after the cold-blooded murder. They were talking loudly, arguing. I shuddered again at their voices. They came continually nearer, but also became hushed and then stopped arguing altogether. This wasn’t right. The murderers hadn’t gotten softer, they had gotten louder when they had found my hiding spot, and angry when I evaded them. This oddity registered in my mind but I didn’t have time to think about it before I blacked out.