Alright, so I took into account some of the advice given to me the last time I posted this. Hopefully the characters now are a little more accessible. I also made it a little less violent. Let me know what you think!
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Prologue
It is dark when they come. As if the new moon cannot bear to watch the village fall, it closes its shining eye that night, and the shadows invade.
In a small but tidy cottage on the edge of town, a young girl shivers at the sounds of frightened screams and desperate cries. At the foot of her father’s sickbed she whispers, “Papa, I’m frightened.”
“Come here, my child,” he says, and as she enters the circle of his frail arms, he kisses the top of her head. “I know you’re afraid, but you must be stronger than your fears. Can you do this?”
She nods, but her dark blue eyes are round with fear, for the screaming has grown closer. “Quickly, child,” her father says. “Bring me the box with your mother’s things.”
She hurries to a secret place and comes back with a silver box, intricately carved with leaves and vines and a name, “Gwendolyn.” Her father produces a tiny key that hangs by a chain around his neck and, with trembling hands, unlocks and opens the ornate trinket. Inside are his wife’s treasures: her wedding ring, a dried flower picked by her daughter, and a yellowed letter from her husband. Despite the urgency of this moment, he takes great care as he removes each item from the box and lays it gently in his lap. The child watches as he lifts the velvet lining from the bottom of the box, revealing a secret compartment with a special treasure hidden within. Outside the house, the shadows and the screams grow ever nearer.
The father lifts the treasure from the box and places it in his daughter’s hands. “You must keep it always,” he says, “but keep it concealed, for no one save the Deliverer must ever know you bear it.”
The little girl lifts the deep violet stone to level with her eyes and stares into its depths, where a light glows dimly but steadily. Then shadows start to cross the windows of their cottage, and she urgently whispers, “Papa, we must go, quickly!”
There is sadness in his eyes as he tells her, “I cannot come; I have not the strength. My time is here, but yours, my child, is not. You must run with haste to the Haven. You will be safe there.”
She stares at him, tears polishing her eyes, her feet rooted to the ground. “Run, Gwenny,” her father says. “And do not be afraid. Where I go, I will be safe, too.”
He kisses her again on her forehead and she moves to the back of the cottage, turning as she closes the door behind her to whisper, “Good-bye, Papa.”
But the candlelight in the small house flickers and extinguishes, and a shadow-creature emerges through the door opposite the little girl. With an evil smirk, the massive being steps to the bed where her father lies and places a thick and scabby hand at the dying man’s throat. He chokes and gasps as the shadow-creature lifts him with one powerful hand into the air, but his weakened body does not struggle for long and in moments his limp frame falls back onto the bed. With a low, unnatural chuckle the monster turns and disappears into the darkness.
At the door at the back of the cottage the little girl stands, frozen with terror. She stares at the still form of her father’s body, and in her imagination his chest still rises and falls with labored breaths. “Good-bye,” she says again, and turns with downcast eyes to leave. She stops immediately. Two feet shod in heavy boots stand before her, and she glances up from them past tree-trunk legs and scabby giant’s hands to the face of her father’s killer. She looks into his pure black eyes, and gasps.
