Young Writers Society

This part of a story that i am about a third of the way through. I will write more depending on the reviews i get and whether people like the start and get gripped, so please tell me if you do.

Dawn was fast approaching the city of Rin which sat cold and silent under a blanket of sapphire blue mist. The dormant sky of a thousand glowing lanterns were silently vanishing from existence as night turned into day and the sky evolved from a dark abyss to faint shades of red, then to lighter shades of yellow before finally finding its way to blue. The mist was turning, as the inhabitants of the city called it, so that it shifted from gentle sapphire blue wisps that floated through the deserted streets to a thick, harsh white shroud which erased any sign of the city’s existence.

Finally the sun rose; first it was just a thin haze of golden light which flooded out from the horizon and scampered across the morning mist. Then, less than a few heart beats later, the golden molten ball peeked its head over the mist covered rooftops of the vast city to bestow its radiance upon the world. But only one man stood and gazed in awe to receive the sun’s blessing of warmth, the others were huddled in their homes cowering in fear of the plague which ravaged the city.

The lone man stood as still as a guardian angel, while the wind tenderly brushed his jet black hair so that it flew ragged in the wind. His face was dominated by matted stubble and his war-scarred eyes stared, unwavering at the city down below. He did not flinch even when the sun’s harsh glare bleared off his armour and into his eyes - he was by all descriptions, the perfect soldier.

He was the envy of his peers, the boasting point of his superiors and nightmare of his foes. His legendary deeds were whispered hurriedly in the dark corners of taverns, his name was announced in loud voices by his commanders and his face haunted the dreams of enemies. Belenus was surely to echo in the endless abyss of history, unyielding, defying and invincible as he was now.

But that was not true, not in this world at least. He may have been all these things, but through the ages of his life, his deeds where never told of by others, his superiors ignored him like the rest of the guard and his face certainty did not haunt the dreams of others. He may have been great, but no chance of fame had ever occurred. He was simple, lonely and forgotten.

He had achieved what most forsaken children born in the gutter would aspire to be, but he was not normal. He had always dreamed of being more than captain of the royal guard, more than a soldier - a legend. He had often dreamt of becoming a Flameseeker, a knight dedicated to helping the people, but now that he knew was far from his reach.

He gave a long sighed, spurting a huge coulomb of breath in front of him which snaked up into the sky to disappear into the clouds. He was being pitiful as always, dreaming while people outside the wall he stood on, fell like corn in harvest time. Rage coursed through his veins at the very thought of the high born who did nothing to help The People Down There, as they called them.

The common folk, his people from whom he came from, where dying while they laughed, pranced and pretended like none of the horrors that lay outside the wall existed. It was not the fault of God or some unholy spirit which caused a minor plague to spread and consume not only Rin, but its empire as well. It was their fault; they argued and talked and laughed while people died in the gutter.

But Belenus had kept his mouth firmly shut, keeping his thoughts to himself while he overlooked the unworldly proceedings. It had been the same for months now; one would come forward with a plan of action, other would worry they put themselves in harm’s way and they would resolve to do nothing and hope that the plague would simply cure itself.

Madness he knew, but he could do nothing, for he was soldier; he obeyed, guarded and did his duty, which meant that no matter how angry he felt, no matter how much he felt like shouting out in despair, he could not. And thus this is what he did; he came here every day before dawn to watch the Luna Mist turn from its sapphire blue form to its real dull self. Then the sun would burn through the belligerent fog and he would gaze emotionless at the city below.

The piercing wind would whistle through the misty streets, carrying with it the putrid stench from the sewers and the silence of death. The homeless would be crammed into the narrow winding lanes in between the ever-growing piles of corpses ravaged by the plague. Their bleak faces full of despair like the houses which lined the street, packed together like they were wrestling each other for space.

Their eyes were the worst; occasionally he would glimpse the hollowed out black creators. They showed nothing - no joy, no sadness, no feeling. It was like they had forsaken themselves, they had given up on their already futile lives and who could blame them? They had nothing and yet something was taken from them.

Belenus knew what it was like to be in the gutter; when you were born into it you have nothing, the only thing you can have is hope, hope for a better life, hope for a better world, hope for the better. That was what gave him the determination to get to where he was, but it saddened his eyes to see now that the homeless had lost the only thing that what was once theirs.

He could see what he came for now; the homeless perched where they could, covered in the mixture of blood, mud and excrement which lay in the road. They did nothing, still as gravestones waiting for the grip of death to grasp them while the remainder of the fog whipped around them. Even the children, who were usually so full of life, had abandoned their lives and waited like their parents next to the rotting corpses.

A lone tear ran down his cheek, flowing as smooth as an angel through his bristling stubble and a moment later it freefell off his cheek to shatter into a thousand pieces on the stone floor. Yet still he did not move, he did not turn away from his people, he could not. That was why he came, to remind himself from where he came from, to see their faces before they withered and died into their endless abyss of history. They were born forgotten, lived forgotten and always died forgotten.

His eyes never left his people as he too was left forgotten and hopeless. He thought himself being silly and was slowly deciding to go back to his duty before he noticed three unusual shadows in the swirling mist. To the homeless they must have looked like the heralds of death riding forth to take them.

They rode strong stallions which Belenus imagined to breath fire and have eyes as dark as the depths of hell. Their bodies formed unnatural shadows as their monstrous faces where hidden from view by cold iron shells. He swallowed hard as they burst through the fog with their horses snorting hard puffs of breath into the world.

They were not the heralds of death, indeed they were quite the opposite. Their armour shinned in the dew which they had gathered from the mist and Belenus recognised them almost immediately from their distinctive plume of crimson red, except from the leaders which was a crisp black. His heart shuddered as he realised that the three riders, which for only a moment ago he thought to be death itself, were in fact Flameseekers and the leader, who bore the black plume, was their king.