Shadow of the Fire

Octobras 24, 210t

Beer spilt from the four tin mugs as they met with a clang above the wooden table. “To Lucas!” one man yelled out, and two others responded. After they drank up all the beer in their mugs, they sat back down on their seats and continued their conversations.

Lucas Urthan sat amongst his intoxicated friends completely sober, for he was not a fan of drinking alcohol. His friends often made fun of him for it, and they constantly forced him to drink with them, but Lucas always ended up tagging along without even touching alcohol.

“All those years at camp finally paid off, yeah?” Kristoff said as he ordered another refill for his drink.

“Aye,” Lucas agreed. “But training isn’t over yet.”

“I don’t even know why you want this,” Marcus said. “Being a soldier is horrible!”

“That’s right!” Bernon added. “Just quit first thing in the morning!”

Lucas only laughed, knowing he was only hearing the ramblings of drunken men. “I know it may be hard for you to understand this, but I want to use my life to fight for justice. Justice is not always served, and I see that very clearly. I just want to be able to do something about the things I see.”

“Become a bard!” Bernon joked, and so they laughed.

As the night went on, the four men remained at the pub. As his friends merrily drank their beer, sang and laughed, Lucas inspected the place and watched the people carefully. One strange sight he saw was that of a man with shoulder-length black hair sitting alone at the bar. It was unusual because he was wearing a tight black and red leather armor covered in belt straps and sheathed daggers. Added to his suspicious clothing, Lucas also noticed that he was not drinking or eating anything. He must be spying on someone, he thought. The young man, fearing for his friends’ safety, forced them to go to their homes and rest.

When his friends had left the pub, Lucas approached the mysterious man with a confident act. “Pleasant evening, sire,” he greeted as he sat on the stool beside his.

The man turned to him, revealing his light blue emotionless eyes. His skin was pale-white, and he looked to be very young. “A pleasant evening indeed,” he said as looked back at the shelves of alcohol behind the counter.

“You are an outsider, yes?”

The man nodded once, not making any eye contact.

“What is your business here in Southlark?” Lucas asked as he brushed back his brown hair with his hand. “Why do you carry so many weapons?”

“You would know eventually, friend.”

Lucas sensed the man’s answer as a threat, but he remained calm. “Did the gatekeepers let you in?”

“They wished not to, though I was able to make them reconsider— and thus here before you I sit, yeah.”

Lucas began to get irritated by the stranger. He watched as he tore off a fragment of paper from the nearby customer’s tab, and then silently pulled out the pen from his pocket as well. “Oy, what are you doing?”

“You can see very well that I am writing, yeah?”

“What kingdom are you from? What’s your name?”

The outsider finished writing and slipped the man’s pen back in his pocket. He leaned towards the guard and whispered next to Lucas’ ear, “Theos Bouvier of the Shadowsake Kingdom. Remember the name, yeah, for I will be your king.”

A fight between two intoxicated men broke off behind the two. Lucas turned his body to look, but he did not bother to watch, for his attention was too deep in his conversation. Although when he turned his head back to face the man, his seat was empty. All that was left there was the torn-off piece of paper on the counter that wrote, “await the 1st of Novembras.” He saw that the pub’s main door was wide open, and so he ran out, hoping to follow the man who called himself as, Theos.

Lucas heard the jingling of about a dozen steel daggers echoing through the wind, and so he ran after the sounds as fast as he could. Halfway through a tight alley, the young guard finally spotted the outsider running along the roofs of the houses to his right. He continued to pursue him on the ground, while the other scaled walls, ran on top of houses and jumped from structure to structure. “Stop!” he called out, although he did not halt.

Lucas began to breathe heavily, for it was very difficult to keep up with the man as they ran through the city. Just as he was about to give up and fall down, he saw that they were headed towards the main gate. That fool is only running towards more guards, Lucas thought as he summoned up only enough energy to take himself to the gate.

The fleeing character descended off the last house before the gate unto the cold stone ground. “Close the gates!” Lucas shouted to the two gatekeepers standing on the opposite sides of the entrance, but they did not respond. The guard decided to save his breath, for he was certain that the keepers would seize the runner as he passes, but that did not happen. The outsider simply passed by the guards, mounted a black stallion and rode away as if they saw nothing.

Lucas stopped running as he watched the stranger ride away. He was frustrated, but he contained himself as he walked towards the gatekeepers. “Why did you not stop him?” he asked as he held the shoulder of one of the two keepers. The gatekeeper fell to the ground in front of Lucas, dead. When he turned around to look at the other, he saw only his dead body leaning motionlessly against the wall. Behind the second gatekeeper stood three dead men—Lucas’ friends—who also leaned against the wall with their throats slit. He saw that the five corpses all had words carved on their chests; each one bore a name of the five cities of Polymia.

Lucas found it hard to breathe, and his legs couldn’t support his body. His consciousness began to die, and the young man fell to the cold ground. As his vision disappeared, he cursed the name, Theos Bouvier.