Prologue

Prologue for Chronicles of Skylan

Skylan Aviel, of the ex-Consortium 6th Generation

Memories dated 1st Sunsday of fifthmonth, V.C. 505

There was nothing bright this eve.

The night was dark; the skies were asleep. My clothes were dark - the incompetent stars couldn’t shine bright enough to illuminate the bloodstains. My accomplices were dark; veiled shadows hunched under the guise of duty. 

Still, the darkness that hung in my heart was far deeper. The darkness in my heart had sucked all but the last flickering torchlight from my soul; the darkness in my heart had sunk over me like a diseased blanket, threatening to suffocate what was left of my mind. Perhaps sleep was not such a bad alternative.

I would never call this place home, but we were here. Padded footsteps thumping against solid earth were replaced by crackling twigs and the sound of fallen leaves being crumpled.  Alabaster, ahead, held a torch, though I could have followed the path with my eyes shut. I’d walked it many times already.

Around a corner, the forest became more evident as ignited lampposts revealed themselves. Beyond, ramshackle tarpaulin tents glowed, mocking us �" were we worth so much less than those that we had just slaughtered? Their homes were ornamented with lace furnishings, graced by paintings of ancestors, swimming in soft incenses �" our sagging huts oozed with dew, bunking with the last of the summer’s mosquitos and an army of invasive spiders.

A home to none other than my brothers and I, the impugned Consortium. A fetid hovel to the rest of the world, even to the king who so graciously housed us here.

Could we be worth so little? Perhaps we were �" dismal, crippled, lost, heartless. The morning sunlight would offer us nothing bright; even the evening’s shadow could not offer us solace from ourselves. There was naught that we deserved. 

We got less than that.

A lurid memory flashed through my mind, igniting the sky. They had been so bright. So young and innocent, so fresh. Happy, perhaps �" though I doubted I’d ever know the feeling. There had been three, warming themselves around the hearth; the two children �" the boy, a darkskin, a nest of black hair perched upon his head, the girl with blonde hair tied in buns - the mother’s soft hair flowed through her fingers as she watched them with an absent smile. 

The smile had been torn from her faster than her children had; a life does not take long to sever. How little changes when the breath is taken from a room. The incense still burned, the hearth still smoked, supper still simmered upon it. We had been quick. The mother’s scream was shrill, shriller once we reached for her children. It did not last long, nor would we have worried if it had. The boy we incapacitated quickly before tossing his limp body into a burlap sack and hoisting him over our shoulders. 

A drawn carriage awaited us on the edge of town. The boy didn’t stir �" from fear or pain, I could not tell. We left him in the carriage �" a bonus of our harvest - to be taken to the castle once we’d arrived at the outskirts of our enclave. 

The only sentiment of his family’s existence was now smeared into my robe. The King would be pleased.

I crawled into my cot, not bothering to close my eyes. Sleep would never come.

Perhaps it’s better that way. A life like this is better lived through hazy eyes.