DRAFT ONE

The sun had already broken past the mountain peaks and penetrated the small gap of bars above Aidden’s head when his eyes finally opened to see the rough stone floor. Nearby the stagnant pool of water he had fallen in after rolling down the stairs now sat a beaten metal slab on which bread and cheese sat. As Aidden’s eyes focused to the dimly lit cell, he could see the gray, fuzzy hump of a rodent on the other side of the cheese, and a vicious-looking rat-head popped up when Aidden scuffled his feet to sit up against the stone wall nearby. It hissed at him before grabbing the cheese and dragging the chunk through the greenish water and then to its hole in the wall.

The sun had already broken past the mountain peaks and penetrated the small gap of bars above Aidden’s head when his eyes finally opened from his place on the rough stone floor. Nearby, the stagnant pool of water he had fallen in after rolling down the stairs now held a beaten metal slab on which a loaf bread and hunk of cheese sat. As Aidden’s eyes focused to the dimly lit cell, he could see the gray, fuzzy hump of a rodent on the other side of the cheese, and a vicious-looking rat-head popped up when Aidden scuffled his feet to sit up against the stone wall nearby. It hissed at him before grabbing the cheese and dragging it through the greenish water and then to its hole in the wall. Aidden sighed and his chest throbbed in pain at the gesture, no doubt bruised from his fall onto the steps yesterday. He rubbed his eyes of the dirt and mucus around his lashes, and tucked his head between his knees, now folded up against his chest. His entire body ached, and his spirit was past aching... it was gray, faded. There was nothing left in him. He had spent what seemed like a lifetime in one prison or another, passed along like an animal. It was worse than any slavery at the swamp.

A scrapping of the wooden stool above told him that the man Twopul had once again fallen asleep and was now waking up, and not a moment to soon, for the voice of an old man burst through the sound of birds chirping in what was to them, a cheerful, clean day.

“Twopul! You’re lucky I didn’t catch you passed out on the job again runt! I heard you have a live one in there!” Twopul spat.

“Keep your tone down old man – you may have age on me, but we’re both prison guards, after all, and it’s not fair that you get to sit hear and enjoy the morning sunshine while I’m freezing all alone at night up here! And anyway, this one is nothing but a little baby. He’s hardly moved all night and all morning. Didn’t even eat the scraps I threw down there this –“

“Threw down there!?” The old man smacked Twopul on his helmet. “You’re supposed to go down and give it to... where be him?!” The chair scrapped again on the rocks, and Twopul’s voice was much louder now, as the two men peaked through the bars and into the dimly lit pit below. “He’s down there somewhere! He couldn’t have gotten out! There’s no way!”

“How would you even know!? You were probably asleep all night! Well come on then, rules say we gotta be sure he’s there.” Aidden looked from side to side in shock... what was going on? He was sitting against the cell wall as sure as he was living and breathing... how could they not see him? He looked up and suddenly realized what was happening. He was sitting curled up into a ball next to the shady area of the stairs he had fallen down yesterday, directly below the spot the two were looking into the cell from. For some reason they couldn’t see him there, or simply hadn’t thought to look! Aidden’s heart shot to life as thoughts of escape became a reality once again. He had to make it this time! He would make it out now! “I’m not going down there you old bastard!” Twopul cursed, now completely tired and angry with the situation he was being put in. He kicked the stool over in a rage and started walking away “You do it!” Aidden could hear the old guard screeching in rage as he let loose a string of curses all his own, but the time in which he carried on and the bitter grumbling coming from his direction as he opened the gate and started down the stairs told Aidden he had been unsuccessful in getting Twopul to return. The young Nical clenched his fists, biting his lips in anticipation. There would be no better chance than this. In every hour of captivity that passed, he could already feel himself becoming lost, a mere animal with no personality or esteem. He had to escape, and now, if he was to maintain any chance of surviving as a free-thinking person.

The metal boots of the older guard became louder as the descended into the inky cell, and Aidden could see a dull Dondel spear tip leading the way down before the guard. He reached the stone floor and dark puddle of water at the base, and Aidden knew it was now or never. “OK Nical scum! If your in here it’s time to wa-“ The man turned towards Aidden’s spot against the staircase just in time to see the prisoner in a mid-air lunge towards him. The man was old, but not slow. In a fluid side-step, he avoided Aidden’s attack and watched him skid to the rocks below. “Sneaky little Nical!” he shrieked in panic, raising his spear with an aim to hit behind Aidden’s neck. But Aidden wasn’t listening to the guard. In the moment he had hit the rocks, his body had already been twisting to bring him up again, and he dove at the man again, this time reaching for his head from below on the floor. The old guard adjusted the Dondel spear tip out to impale Aidden, but it was too late for the move, and the tip missed his diving body. Aidden crashed into the Dondel guard with all the savagery of a desperate, starved lion, grasping the old man by the back of his helmet to pull his chin back, and biting deeply into the only exposed part he was sure existed, the old guards throat. A warm burst of fluid filled his mouth and he gagged; it seemed to go everywhere, in his eyes, throat, lungs. Aidden started to cough but the old man began gurgling out piercing screams from deep within his throat. Images of the Dondel faces belonging to Gipro and Twopul flashed into Aidden’s mind and he went mad, dragging the twisting the thrashing the old man to the first stone step into the prison and smashing his head against its dull edge for what may have been hours but seemed like less than a second. The old man stopped moving and Aidden, still gagging and somewhat blind with blood took a step backwards before tripping on the guards legs and falling into the dirty water. Reeling, he splashed it onto his face with slick-red hands until he could see again.

A quick breeze shifted through the bars above then, brushing Aidden’s wet face and smacking the barred door shut – but not locked. As it opened slightly again Aidden was leaping over the corpse and up the stairs, squirming out in a muddy, bloody mess onto the dry sun-baked stone where the wooden stool still lay on its side. Aidden didn’t feel the warmth or sunshine however, he had stopped feeling, thinking or considering anything other than a deep animal instinct of escape. He scuffled to his feet and sprinted around the front edge of the tower, eager to find some sort of cover before being spotted by any passing guards or working Dondels that may be in the courtyard. An empty wagon proved to be the only refuge, but nearby and slightly above it was a door to a large tower that seemed to give access to the massive tower he had spent the night underneath, without steps yet, as it was still in construction. Aidden leapt to the wagon and then jumped to the door. Because there were no steps built yet Aidden was fairly confident that there would be no one inside as he leapt from the wooden wagon and slammed against the red door of the tower. It offered no resistance but instead crashed open against the interior stone wall as Aidden stumbled into the room at full speed.

~~~

The cannon nearest to Dolven scrapped against its rock tower as the men aiming it frantically tried to pinpoint the Leader of the attacking Nicals. The Dondel on the tower-top was once again cursing coordinates, but Dolven was moving to fast past the cannon’s reach. The familiar “BOOM” sounded again, but too late, as shrapnel and debris whistled through the air behind the attacking Nical wolf.

Dizziness and confusion raced through Dolven’s head as he raced on, the familiar pains in his chest and legs tingeing back to life with each hurried leap over debris on the hilltop next to Dravenpool’s encircling river. The noise of heavy metal turning on rock touched Dolven’s ears from the tower, and he knew the second cannon was now being brought to bear upon him. The familiar Dondel voice called out coordinates to the cannon-men below, and Dolven closed his eyes tightly as he wondered how much longer he could continue to avoid the deadly missiles the Dondels were firing.

The expected “BOOM” never came however, only cursing from within the tower as well as from above it. Dolven couldn’t help but twist his head at what he was sure would be the source of his death today, and found a barrage of strange items now being pulled out of the red tube by the cannon-men – including sheets, rope, and perhaps even the Dondel flag. The battered man could not help but smile as he twisted back and kept running to the main gate of Dravenpool, where he could now see a large struggle was indeed taking place. The plan was working! Kildor was there! From the Dondel guiding the cannon high in his spot on the tower now came a shrieking that rose above all the sounds of battle, and the cannon closest to Dolven spun on its rock wall to point once again towards the racing Nical. They were going to fire.

A screeching explosion sounded out then, longer and louder than any of those before as the second cannon burst to life. Dolven looked to the tower again. The tube had been stuffed too tight, and with the urging of the frantic Dondel in the tower top, the men had fired it against their better judgment. It had backfired, the Nicals would later find out, tearing back into the cannon men and shooting flames up the tower to engulf the Dondel above.

Dolven watched him sway sickeningly by the battlements before slowly leaning backwards and falling down to what remained of the cannon and its operators far below. In a series of crashes, the burning man fell down through the tower, past the cannon and to the bottom, where large vats of the black powder that the Dondels used in feeding their cannons was stored.

THOOOOM!

In the first moment the world seemed to stop, and then all went black for Dolven...

~~~

Slightly stumbling into the bare circular stone room at the base of the tower, Aidden took a moment to lean against a center supporting pillar. Catching his breath, he felt his thoughts and memories of the last few days blur into one dim picture. Struggle, despair, desperation and murder. Nothing like this had ever entered his thoughts in all of the years he had lived in his small hut in the woods. His mouth burned and his face tingled where the blood had splashed from the old man’s throat onto him. The old man’s horrified face came into view. Aidden shook his head in panic. No one could have convinced him he would kill a man as savagely as he just had. He blinked and felt the room sway a bit, as if the ground itself was moving. He closed his eyes tightly and clutched at the cracks in the center pillar for support. He had to keep moving, he had to escape. Now.

Opening his eyes again, the woodcarver looked around the bare stone walls for an exit, and found a stairway entrance on the far wall. Without a second thought, Aidden was moving, sprinting up the stairs as quickly and quietly as possible, although the dead silence in the tower suggest that no one besides him was inside. Stepping up the crudely cut stone stairs, Aidden wondered where he was going in the tower, and what might be awaiting him once the stairs ended. He passed a door to the right; leading to an inner chamber of the tower and not out – surely this was not a way to escape. Farther, farther up the tower he went. It seemed as if he was stepping up from the prison pit he had spent the last few days up through the clouds on a ladder and into the heavens themselves, all through the same crude stone tower.

Each door he met was closed and on his right, and to the climbing Nical carried with him too much uncertainty with him to risk an entry. He grimaced as he looked farther up the ever-spiraling stairs that continued to snake up the tower’s core. A faint feeling of doom was creeping into the back of his mind with each rough-cut step that passed under his feet. He was going too far up, and there eventually there would be no way down. He was going to trap himself for the Dondels, who would no doubt be searching everywhere for him by the end of the hour... perhaps they already were. They would find him here, cowering and scared, at the precipice of this ugly finger of rock. A quiet resolution passed through Aidden’s head then, suddenly but stubbornly. He would not let them take him to the pit at the bottom of the tower again.

He would jump off of the tower to death and fate first. At this moment the dim light in the stairway began to brighten from a glow somewhere above, and Aidden knew he was almost to the peak. He furrowed his brow in solemn determination. It would be a dive, resolutely; from the top to the bottom. He imagined the laughing Dondel who brought him here, drinking in the nearest pub, and wished silently he could take him with him. At that moment the stairs turned again, and Aidden found himself on a small, roofed platform at the top of the tower.

Three small rock columns weakly supported an oversized roof from the back and front, and a sturdy red railing lined the edges of the platform. Aidden stepped to the ledge and felt a mix of awe and fear run through his body as he suddenly caught the sight of the enormous castle from above. Far below, a maze of platforms and peaks wove together around the tower in an intricate maze of stone. Speckled throughout the maze were the blue outlines of soldiers, pacing in and out of the many corridors and along each castle wall. Farther out, past the clouds and through the distant fog were the surrounding mountains Aidden had seen before, through his blue-glassed wagon. Clear to see now, they broke through the ragged mountain grass in a confused gash of broken plates of brittle rock. Past them, and as far as the eye could then see, thousands of miles of sloping grassland stretched away into the horizon.

Aidden felt his knees tremble and he paused to lower his head and collect his thoughts. Focusing his vision, his blood froze when he saw the top of a gray helmet less than ten feet from him, on the platform below. The man was doing much the same as Aidden had been doing, staring into the distance with daydreams racing through his head. Aidden glanced to his left and right and saw suddenly the many spires surrounding his own tower, each with one to two men atop their precipice. Panic raced through his body and brought life to sore limbs as he realized he was moments away from being seen. How could he have been so stupid to just stand in the open like this?

Heart racing, he spun around, looking for a way to escape the castle. Far to his right, an unfinished stone stairway branched across from his tower to the next... there were no railings and no supports to it as of now – it simple arched from one tower to the other. So far from finished was it, Aidden knew it would be unguarded... as long as he wasn’t spotted racing down its steps to the next tower, he should be able to safely cross. There was one problem though. The entry to the staircase from his tower connected only by the chamber below, where the Dondel directly beneath him stood at guard. If he wanted to leave this place, he needed to enter the room directly under him.

Fear holds only those who are not desperate in check, however, and at this point the woodcarver from the southern swamps felt no hesitation. Without thinking, he placed one bloody hand upon the red railing and jumped over the platform, falling hard upon the daydreaming Dondel warrior below. Aidden hit the man with such force that the surprised guard was knocked face forward into the railing on his own platform. A dull crack told Aidden either the helmet or the man’s skull had fractured, but either way he knew the soldier was no further danger. Spinning on his heel, Aidden kicked open the flimsy door to the chamber and leapt in to meet whatever fate lay within.

Like the rest of the sad tower, this room was completely bare of furniture or decoration, and silent as the grave. Casting his eyes around the dull walls, Aidden noticed no sign of any sentries ever having been here, although a patrolling one could always come at any minute. His body began to fail him again; infections and cuts flared to life as his body begged him to stop. But now was not the time. With the mind fighting the body, he brushed the pains aside and willed his limbs to action again, now hobbling his way to the a doorway exiting the chamber.

Looking through the doorway, a harrowing sight met the frail Nical. The flimsy stone stairway slouched its way away from his tower to the next, looking as if it hadn’t fallen yet simply because it was being supported by a pile of stone on each side. Aidden clenched his bruised fists... there certainly was nothing worth saying for Dondel craftsmanship. In a leap of faith, or perhaps desperation, the woodcarver grunted and lurched heavily onto the first step, expecting the whole structure to buckle and give as he did so. It seemed solid however, so stepped again, eager now that he had exposed himself, to cross the stairway as quickly as possible. A blast of mountain wind pushed him to the side as he ran down the steps, but he held his balance and lowered his head, looking only upon the steps directly in front of him.

~~~

He was back on his feet quickly this time, the world a confused mass of gray smoke and broken rock. From nowhere it seemed that rock had begun raining from the sky itself, and then Dolven realized that the entire top half of the cannon tower was missing. The base now nothing more than a smoldering shell, large chunks of the top now lay around the fortress. Dolven smiled as he saw great sections of wall had fallen where he could have only hoped – across the Bobo river that separated the desperate Nicals from the fortress. It was nothing like a clear bridge of the river, but a few hops one mass of gray rock to the other would easily bring a man to the other side and into the gaping hole that now presented itself in the fortress where the tower used to be.

Dolven looked to the Nical soldiers then, who had begun falling away from the castle in a mixture of awe and fear. He spat and raced to the largest chunk of tower that lay on his side of the Bobo. “The peasants were turning out to be much too cowardly to get anything done” he thought, and then cleared his mind of it – they simply needed him to be a leader – just for today.

“Come on lads! Now’s the chance we’ve only dreamed of! The way is open! Our brothers fight for their lives at the front gate and those Dondel bastards have been killing us behind their cowardly stone walls! Now’s the chance we get to meet them one-to-one! Take back your heritage! Through the back gate!” At that Dolven spun on his heel and dashed from one piece of tower to the other, crossing the river and dashing into the still-smoldering hole where Dravenpool’s cannon tower used to be. The Nical soldiers saw a flimsy line forming across the gap, as an officer stationed in the battlements above tried to breech the hole in their defenses. The line seemed to clump and swarm like a group of bees as they saw the Nical come to them, and the bronze Dondel weapons were raised, with the red Phoenix shield facing the Gold Nical Wolf. They saw Dolven dive straight into the group, sword arcing amongst the red-clad armor and turning crimson itself after a short time as the man himself disappeared into the crowd of soldiers around him.

There were moments of confusion and struggle in the group and the officer above howled in rage at the men below, but the screams of surprise and pain were all Dondel, and Dolven was finally spit out of the line still swinging and very much alive, although now face down in the mud.

Finally the courage of the Nical army was found again, and they howled in victory at the sight of their leader fighting so valiantly. As is often the case, these untrained men simply needed a good example, and now they had all they needed to understand not was expected of them, but what was required. The sun stood high in the air as it shone down on the mass of men now storming the open hole in Dravenpool; first to rescue their leader and then to have him take them into the heart of the Dondel fortress – determined to meet with their comrades on the other side, at the front gate.

The Dondels, now heavily outnumbered with enemies on both sides, and with no defenses or retreat, fought as any living beast would – with a desperate determination. Several times the line of defense was breached, only to be filled again and the Nical invaders repelled violently. But for each Nical that fell, another now eagerly took his place, and for each that slipped on a piece of tower and was swept away into the Bobo river, two more then jumped over to the same rock and into the gaping hole in Dravenpool’s wall.

Within the hour the line of Dondels was falling back from their defensive positions at the fortress walls then, clutching their wounds and dragging the wounded. But their attackers gave no quarter, and offered no rest. The battle continued into the courtyard and raged for several hours – first the Nicals were on the verge of victory, and then the Dondels were repelling them out towards the Bobo again. Back and forth the sides swayed, line smashing against line like boulders and figures falling to the earth like rubble after each collision.

The battle had raged in the courtyard for almost another hour when the first signs of the end began to flicker to life to both of the armies. First, a serious breach in the Dondel lines wasn’t filled and Nicals poured through to the very center of Dravenpool, ending the sort of battle that featured orderly lines and resulting in a mess of bodies tangled and frantically stabbing at itself. Then the battlements began to churn as well, as the Dondel officers above found the enemy had climbed the ladders to the top of the walls and raced at them from both ends.

Still the Dondels fought on – for survival and pride. The courtyard of Dravenpool was a collage of gray and red, and figures couldn’t walk without slipping in gore when the sun began to set on the battle and exhausted Nicals from the front gate met those from the back. They formed a tight circle around their enemy, enclosing them on three sides. Totally surrounded now and pressed against the outer wall of the courtyard, the remaining Dondels looked at the filthy mass of spears, axes and farm tools pointed at them, all covered in the gore of their countrymen.

Disbelief turned into defeat as the red-clad defenders of Dravenpool ended their duty and threw down their weapons. The courtyard clattered with the sound of bronze on stone and then erupted with the cheers and jeers of the Nicals. The still-disbelieving Dondels looked up from their weapons and to the faces of their comrades. There was no hope in it. Dravenpool had fallen. The peasants had won.

~~~

Aidden reached the end of the of the stairway off-balance and racing towards the tower door, and he smashed through the flimsy entrance without hardly feeling the impact or slowing. Bursting into the corner tower, the woodcarver fell and sprawled himself out onto the stone floor. A minute or two may have passed as the Nical hay there, blinking his eyes and unsure of whether he had made it or not, then unsure of where he was or what he was looking at. All around him where splinters and shards of the once-wooden door he had smashed through, and Aidden knew right away that he was lucky to have been imprisoned in a Dondel fortress so far away from the swamps. If the doorway had been crafted by Nicals, he certainly would have been outside the tower still, and probably unconscious.

Staggering to his feet, Aidden looked around the tower. The only door was to his left, and it was without a window. It hardly mattered at this point anyway, as he was following his instincts only at this point. He rubbed his eyes of their blur and raced through the tower door to find himself outside once again, but this time on the main wall of the castle. Far ahead was the front corner tower and Aidden began sprinting forward to it now while it was unobstructed. Perhaps running the length of the castle wall wasn’t such a wise idea – first because the wall was quite long and second because a running figure was sure to catch someone’s attention, but a walking Nical in rags wasn’t much less conspicuous in this castle, so Aidden ran on.

He was lucky in the end. Perhaps one or two Dondels had thought they might had seen something racing across the wall, but they were tired and lazy and a feeling a bit to safe in their fortress in the clouds these days – perhaps it was a bit too much like home – no natural enemies and a fortress of mountain rock protecting them outside of their castle rock.

In either event, Aidden made it into the front tower unspotted and, gasping for air while almost stumbling along through blurred vision, crashed through the door opposite his entry. As with the other Dondel tower door, this gave away easily and Aidden smashed through it to find himself falling down a short flight of steps and into the back of a Dondel sentry positioned halfway down them. Aidden’s shoulder and elbow throbbed and went numb with the collision and he heard himself scream with pain as his arm cracked broken and the two figures fell to the ground – now the rough gravel and grass of the mountain’s earth. He staggered to his feet and saw the Dondel doing the same, cursing as he did and looking for his helmet, which had fallen off in the collision – having never expected an attacker from behind, the guard hadn’t realized a Nical prisoner had smashed into him, but instead assumed it to be some sort of madness from within the castle.

Aidden lurched without standing to full height and knocked the man back over, face-first into the stone stairs where hit hard and then sprawled over onto the earth. Aidden looked around him frantically for an idea of where he was, and found that himself to be at the stairs at the side of the castle that led to the small door by the main gate. He recognized it from when he was first dragged into the castle as a prisoner. Pressing his back against the castle wall near to him, Aidden edged his way away from the stairs and tower towards the main gate. It was surely not the wisest move, but in front of him was only thick pine woods, and he knew of no other way away from the castle other than the direction from which he had come.

Reaching the end of the wall, Aidden crouched and walked to a small pine next to the wall to see if the main gate was indeed being watched by Dondels at all. Here, he found himself in for a big surprise. Lined up in orderly formation was at least three columns of blue and gray Dondel soldiers, each holding weapons at their side and looking determinedly ahead. They were apparently listening to or watching a commanding officer ahead of them, but the columns stretched so far ahead that Aidden couldn’t tell who it was, or what he was saying. He was just contemplating whether or not he should sit behind the tree and wait for the soldiers to march out when he heard a loud and deep “THUNK” below him.

Looking down, he saw the tip of a bronze Dondel spear buried deep within the rocky soil below his crouched body. It was almost as if the spear had sprouted up from the ground itself. Another “THUNK” from behind and Aidden spun to see yet another bronze spear a few paces behind him. Following the spear’s shaft up towards the skies, he then saw that the spears were not of course sprouting from the earth, but raining down from two Dondel sentries on the battlements of the tower he had come out of, who were now turning to re-arm themselves. Aidden gritted his teeth in rage – he had stayed too long – they had spotted him. “Prisoner loose! Prisoner loose!”

Aidden turned back in horror as he saw the collective gray-helmed heads of about 100 Dondel soldiers from the formation in front of the front gate turning to see him at his open position in front of the small pine. He briefly considered picking up a spear and taking them all on – since the dawn of this morning he had beaten at least 3 fully-armed Dondels with nothing but his bare hands, and anyway, this would finally bring about the end to his suffering. But as the men raised their weapons something deep within him shouted “run!” and he turned towards the pine forest and raced towards it. The pines were soft and wet, and with each step they slapped his face and showered his body with a dewy rain that soaked through his ragged clothes and streamed over his cuts and bruises.

It didn’t take long for him to guess that he was being pursued – the shouts and voices of the mob of Dondel soldiers echoed over and all around him, and he could soon hear the crashing and cracking of the pines as the soldiers clumsily broke through them to follow their prey. Aidden’s heart reeled at the thought of recapture after all of his struggle and the close calls, and he doubled his pace through the pines, twisting and weaving and cutting each different direction he could think of in effort to lose his pursuers. But before long a familiar “THUNK” noise began sounding out around him, although more muffled now that the spears were falling in the wet, deep sod of the forest and not the dry gravel near the castle. Still Aidden ran on, the spears somehow never coming close to their mark – perhaps because the soldiers couldn’t see him, or perhaps because they were simply bad aims – especially when throwing a spear made of bronze. In reality it was a bit of both reasons, and Aidden pushed himself to run even faster when he saw the small forest was beginning to clear out in front of him. A low rumble ahead told him that a stream was near that was most likely quite strong, and he thought to find a way to navigate down this river and away the Dondels chasing him.

Aidden kept running and finally broke from the woods with the Dondels quite a bit of distance away from him – he ran on in the wet grass towards a large river that also emerged from the forest to his right and followed it until he found something to place into the water that would hold his weight. It was here, suddenly, as Aidden looked briefly from the stream to the horizon, that he stopped short. Less than ten feet away, the river fell over a cliff as a waterfall. Aidden walked slowly now, with the noise and clatter from the Dondels growing behind him, to the edge of the waterfall and looked down in hope, but his heart sunk. The waterfall was nothing short or easy to survive a jump over – it fell far below, with such strength that the bottom was entirely hidden from him by the white mist of spray from the body of water it fell to below. This was a dead end.

A series of cracks and curses from behind him told Aidden that the first, fastest bit of Dondel soldiers had caught up with him and were at the forest edge now, approaching him with weapons raised and a satisfied grin on their faces. Aidden’s felt his spirit and hope come out of him then and looked back down to the river below, and then back to the growing number of Dondels. There was no escape – there was no return to the hope for a life that he once had, or even one alone in the woods in relative freedom. The fates had somehow deemed he should be a prisoner and slave for life – laughed at, kicked, abused. Aidden felt his aches and cuts burn to life again, and his bruises throbbed at him from every limb. This was his fate.

“Jump”

The idea came to him from somewhere far away, a distant whisper that stood in defiance of the fate he had resigned himself to. He could jump – he could end his misery and give up on his hope. Perhaps that is what he was meant to do – his ultimate punishment. The face of the old soldier he had killed in the tower prison flashed back to him, and he felt his face and neck tingle where the blood had splashed over him. Perhaps he was not a good person after all – he had allowed himself to forget he even was a person until now and become nothing more than a mere animal, fighting and killing anyone in his path to survive. The Dondels came closer, the voice came to him again, louder this time.

“Jump”

Aidden looked up to the soldiers and smiled sadly at them – an unexpected move that made them stop short, unsure of what hidden weapon the Nical might have. But he had none against them, only against the evil fate that seemed to have taken hold of his life long ago at a punishment mound with Gurdor, Tyla, and Lord Haydn. He turned from the soldiers and looked out over the mountains and woods all around the horizon in front of him. “This was in some ways the ultimate form of cowardice” he thought to himself. And then he jumped.

At first he noticed nothing, and then he had the feeling that you might have when you put your foot out to step down a flight of stairs and find that the step you thought to be below your feet is not there at all. A lurch in his stomach, and then the wind began to whip at his face from all directions. Immediately he knew he had chosen wrong. How could he have done it? How could he have given up so easily? Before he might have had the chance to see the ones he loved and grew up with, and now there was surely no chance of that – he had seen to it himself in the ultimate act of selfishness. Against the white mist below, the faces of Tyla and Dolven came to him as if he were watching a movie, and then the laughing face of the old Dondel came to him, covered in blood at the neck and with eyes filled with vengeance.

He didn’t want to die – he wanted to fight! He twisted and turned as his body continued to fall with the water next to him, falling as one to smash to the surface below – each taking their own separate path in the same fall. It was only as Aidden stopped stuggling to find a ledge in the cliff next to him and looked down that he gave up. His body kept falling and the white mist seemed to grow at an even faster pace, almost as if it was coming up to meet him more rapidly than he was coming to meet it. Soon it was everywhere, and he could see nothing else. It surrounded him – enveloped him. Suddenly he wasn’t falling anymore, just floating in one place, or so it seemed. Aidden smiled to himself. Perhaps this is what it was like to be dead. He tried to pick something out around him besides the white mist from the water, but saw nothing. The rumbling and the power of the water got louder and louder until it filled his head and shock his entire body with its power. It began to blur before him everywhere he looked, and then all went to black.

When Aidden became conscious again, he heard the peculiar sound of birds singing all around him. Opening his eyes slowly, he saw large, flat blades of green grass smothering his face, and the smell of fresh soil all around him. Struggling to lift his head, the woodcarver felt a sharp pain in his neck and winced, but soon forgot it with what he saw. There, in front of him, was the black bird from his dreams. It turned its head to look at him with one eye, and then looked back at something nearer to Aidden. The Nical moved his eyes with it and saw a peculiar shield right next to his face that he had before not noticed.

A white and black shield with yellow trim stood leaning against a small tree-trunk. In it’s middle was a black falcon, wings outstretched and beak open in a call. Almost on cue, the falcon from Aidden’s dream then called out and then flapped away, out over the tree line and out of sight. Aidden tried to follow its path but when he attempted to raise his head further his neck flared to life in pain and he cried out in pain. A voice came from Aidden’s left.

“Ah then, I was so caught up in my thoughts didn’t see you move there”.

Aidden turned to look for the person who had spoken, because their voice sounded so familiar, but he couldn’t move quickly or extensively due to his neck.

“Easy there friend, you’ve had a rough journey since leaving home so long ago, I’d say”.

A metal cup came to Aidden’s lips and was being poured into his mouth before he could even think not to swallow. A warm tingle spread down from his neck to his stomach, and then out to his hands, fingers, feet and toes. He was suddenly warm and felt a bit dizzy, closing his eyes and falling back to the earth to sleep.