This is also in great need of replotting, so I'd appreciate a little input.
One
Stars
streaked across the darkness of the night sky.
There were many visible from the city of Rafeda, many more than the northern parts of
Civilization. Rafeda was the closest city to the Wasteland, being only twenty
miles away from the corrupted land. Jariel looked up briefly before returning
to work, oblivious of the stars that were hurtling through the sky. He returned
his focus to the task at hand, not seeing the people crowding the streets
around him.
He was blind. Few blind people had
survived as long as Jarien had, but of course it helped that he had once been a
member of the city’s aristocracy. But his noble house had gone bankrupt,
forcing his own family to abandon him and leave him crippled in the slums of
the city. He was lucky to lucky to have a job, lucky to have somewhere to live,
lucky even to have food.
Blind people were generally left to
die on the streets, but Titriel had taken him in when no one else would. She
had found him freezing in the alley near her manor one winter, and nursed him
back to health. She had a soft spot for blind people, especially after her
blind mother had been killed by a passing rider that had not seen her in time
to stop. She had died almost instantly under the horse’s hooves.
After
nursing him back to health Titriel had been ready to send him to one of her friends
who needed a hand in his inn. He was offered a job that could be done by a blind
person, but he had begged Titriel to let him stay in her house. Living on the
street for four years had forced him to move nomadically from place to place,
begging people for food or money. He had grown skeptical, slow to trust others.
But the year he had spent recovering at Titriel’s home had shattered the wall
he had initially tried to set between them. He had even come to love her, he
was afraid to make his feelings known. She had grown fond of him, but would
never be able to see past his blindness.
He walked
through the city, ignoring the sounds of the beggars lined up at the sides of
the street. Most of them were crippled in some way, unable to work for food. He
shivered as he thought about his time as a beggar, unpleasant memories
surfacing to the forefront of his mind. He could not remember how he had gone
blind; he could only remember that he had not been blind before he woke up one
morning in an abandoned farmhouse. He had been blind since then, never
recovering his eyesight.
He had
wandered after that, not remembering who he had been before the blindness until
his cousin Hieren had found him several weeks later. He had been second in line
to the succession of the Iurian family, until that day. He had spent the better
part of a year recovering, quickly learning how to find his way as a blind man,
but his family went bankrupt, losing everything to a revolution in a city more
than a thousand miles away.
He came to Althus Street and turned left, passing
several shops before entering one of the many smithies in the city. This one in
particular had a sign with a man subduing a gargoyle, holding a sword over the
creature. Jariel could no longer see the sign, but could remember it well from
the days before he had been blind. He had passed the shop many times but had
never actually gone into it. He put a hand out in front of him as he entered
the smithy, feeling his way around the interior of the building.
“Ah,
Jariel. I expected you to be here earlier.” Ieren was both a scholar and a
smith, an odd combination of jobs. He spent half the day making weapons for
soldiers and the other half cataloguing books for the noble houses that had
supported the revolution. The books in the Arch’s manor had spent years
gathering dust the underground rooms of the house until the revolutionaries had
found the collection while ransacking the house.
“Did you
bring what I asked for?” Ieren asked him. He had asked Titriel to let him
examine a very rare piece of jewelry that had been passed down her family line
for seventeen generations; a relic Titriel had said came from the Wars of
Stone.
“I have it,
blacksmith.” Jariel growled. He took his shirt off and took it out of a hidden
pocket on the interior of the clothing. Even after being persuaded by Titriel’s
niece Giara, she had still insisted that it be carefully hidden so that no one
could see it even if Jariel was attacked en route. He examined it for a minute
and grudgingly extended his arm. Ieren took it from his hand and walked over to
his desk, Jariel’s sensitive ears picking up the sound of his light footsteps.
Even after
knowing him for the better part of a year, Jariel still didn’t completely trust
him. The man was too strange to be what he said he was. A Blacksmith and a
practicing scholar that had extensive knowledge of the wars between man and
gargoyle and believed that gargoyles were actually created by the stars as
punishment for an unknown sin committed thousands of years ago. He was light on
his feet, and according to Giara he always carried weapons on his person.
Four years on the streets had
convinced him that Ieren was not what he seemed to be, and he had a hard time
trusting the man with anything. He was still good company, in spite of all
this. He amused most of his customers with his jack-of-all-trades personality
and his strange beliefs, and he could be funny at times.
Jariel heard the sounds of pen
scratching on paper. He was writing, but what Jariel did not know. Knowing
Ieren, he was probably taking notes on the ring, maybe drawing a rough sketch
of it so he could look at it after he had returned the jewelry.
“I’m making notes of my
observations, so I can look at them later and maybe figure out what this used
to be” Ieren said. The two knew each other well enough that they could predict
what the other was going to do despite Jariel’s blindness.
“What do you mean?” Jariel asked
him. The last part of what he had said perplexed him. A ring is a ring, isn’t
it?
“I have looked at many pieces of
jewelry, and this did not used to be a ring. The scratches on the stone
indicate that it was taken out of one item and put into the ring. What it could
have been a part of, I do not know. There isn’t any way for me to tell.” He began
to grow exited, as if he had found a lost toy. “This might date back even
further than the Wars of Living Stone!” he exclaimed. “This might have once
been a part of a belt or sheath, or even a Celestial Blade!” He was giddy with
excitement. He jumped into the air and landed with a loud thump, unable to
contain his excitement any longer.
Jariel was skeptical. “Why would
that help you?” He asked.
Ieren calmed down quickly and sat
down in his chair before explaining to Jariel. “Gemstones from Celestial Blades
are made of a rock unseen on this planet, commonly known as Starstone but
referred to by scholars as Qaldane. This is the same substance that gargoyles
are made from, and if I am right, than it could give me a clue to the making of
Celestial Blades.”
“But the making of Celestial Blades
was lost hundreds of years ago.” Jariel said.
“That is why I’m so excited!” Ieren
exclaimed. “This gemstone might give me a clue to their appearance and making.”
“But it wouldn’t help you make
one.” Jariel said. If he couldn’t possibly figure out how to make them, than
why was he so excited?
“I am predominantly a scholar,
Jariel. I’m not trying to figure out how a Celestial Blade is forged so I can
make them myself. I am doing it for the sake of history, so that I can better
understand the Wars of Living Stone and Ralien Salakar. I’m doing it so I can
better understand the world.”
The chair creaked as Ieren stood
up. “Well, here is the ring. Thank Titriel for me.” Jariel put his arm out in
front of him, and felt the ring land on his palm. He closed his hand and put
the ring in his pocket, than turned and left the building. He began walking
down the street and was passing what sounded like an inn when he heard someone
talking loudly.
“I hear that he’s coming to Rafeda
later this month before heading into the Wasteland.”
“That’s not what I heard. I heard
that he’s coming to rule over the city in the absence of the Warlords, and to
bring the city stability.”
Jariel, his interest sparked by the
conversation, walked over to the source of the noise. “Who’s coming?” He asked.
“Zalqir, the new Valelord.” The
person said to him. “Rumor has it that he fell from the sky like some hero out
of legend.” After telling him this they began talking amongst themselves,
ignoring him.
Later he returned to Titriel’s
home. As he entered the house, he called for Giara and sat on the chair next to
the hearth. The arrangement of the house had never been changed, so after two
years of living there Jariel could get around the house without bumping into
anything. This was a welcome change to Ieren’s smithy, where the arrangement of
the room was changed constantly.
He heard the sound of Giara’s feet
as they stepped softly across the wooden floor. He had not known Titriel or any
of the rest of her family before his blindness, so he didn’t know what they
looked like.
“You called, Jariel?” She asked.
Jariel turned his head in the
direction of her voice. He found that if he didn’t act like he still had his
sight than people would grow uncomfortable in his presence. He reached into his
pocket and took out the ring.
“Ieren took a look at the ring and
gave it back.” He said as he opened his hand. She took it and left the room,
shouting for someone. He heard Giara and the person she had been calling talk
briefly; she would not expect him to be able to eavesdrop, but his other senses
had been heightened in the absence of sight. She came back into the room with
Titriel, who Jariel could recognize by the sound of her voice. They came close
to the chair he was sitting in, and stopped.
“Ieren looked at the ring?” Titriel
asked.
“Yes, he did.” Jariel responded.
“He spent several minutes drawing it, and then he gave it back.”
“What did he say?”
“He said that the gemstone is
scratched in a way that indicates that perhaps it might have been taken out of
another object before being set into the ring you hold now.”
“And of course he is convinced now
that this gemstone was once part of a Celestial Blade.” Titriel said fondly.
She was amused by the man’s peculiar interest in relics of the ancient wars
with gargoyles.
“That’s what he thought when I
left.” Jariel said.
Titriel laughed. “Thank you for
bringing it to him.” She sat down in the chair next to him. “Jariel, I have to
go to Lurian Manor to negotiate a potential marriage.” She was managing the
affairs of her house currently, but a man would be needed soon if the house was
to continue prospering. Jariel could almost feel himself blush; Titriel knew he
still loved her, but she dismissed it.
“I’m going to be back in several
hours, but until then, I’m leaving Giara to manage affairs here at the
mansion.” Titriel said. “I don’t want you to leave unless you tell Giara where
you are going.” It infuriated him when she treated him like a child. Just
because he was blind didn’t mean he couldn’t take care of himself! Had she
forgotten that he had taken care of himself on the streets for three years
before she had taken him in?
He struggled with his resentment
and anger at his blindness for a minute before getting it back under control.
“I will.” He said. She got up then, her chair creaking as she stood. She walked
out without saying another word to him, and Giara soon followed suit. He sat in
his chair for a while, thinking while he listened to the soothing sound of the
fire crackling in the hearth. He meant to get up, but he was tired. He kept
trying to get up, but the thought of sleep was too appealing to him. Before he
knew it, he had fallen asleep in the chair beside the hearth.
He woke up abruptly, the sound of
horns ringing out outside. The noise was accompanied by yelling and the sound
of soldiers running through the streets, their armor clinking as they ran. He
shouted for Giara, trying to be heard over the noise, but his voice was drowned
out by the chaos outside. He got up and went upstairs, looking for her, but she
was nowhere to be found. He went outside, trying to find someone to ask what
all the noise was for.
This task was almost impossible
with his lack of sight and the volume of the noise. Finally he just gave up and
walked several streets over to The
Wandering Star, an inn he visited when he wanted a drink and an occasional
game of dice. He had stopped playing dice quickly when he realized that his
opponents were taking advantage of his blindness to cheat. He came in and
walked toward the bar, the door slamming shut behind him. He tried to avoid
bumping into tables, but he failed. He sat on one of the stools lined up at the
bar and called for the bartender. The man came to where Jariel was sitting, his
enormous weight shaking the ground as he walked.
“What do you want, Jariel.” The
man’s voice boomed out.
“Do you know what’s going on
outside?” Jariel asked.
“You mean the noise that just
started up a few minutes ago? I don’t know. I sent out several of my stableboys
to investigate, but none of them have yet returned.”
Jariel nodded and left the inn to
find someone who could tell him what was wrong. If Giara had found out that he
had left without telling her, than she would be worried. As he turned the
corner to the street where Titriel resided, a soldier collided with him,
knocking them both to the ground. The soldier cursed Jariel, not noticing the
man’s blindness.
“Watch where you’re going,
civilian.” The soldier snarled. It seemed he had already been knocked down in a
similar situation earlier that day.
“I’m sorry, sir. I’m blind.” The
man stuttered an apology when he said this, but Jariel cut him off. “Can you
tell me what’s going on?”
“You mean you don’t know what those
horns mean? I guess that’s understandable, considering we haven’t had a direct
attack in more than thirty years.”
Jariel was shocked. “An attack? By
who?”
The soldier’s voice was grim. “I’d
recommend going inside for you. You won’t be safe from them if they get into
the city.”
“Who are we being attacked by!” Javan said, frustrated that the soldier was
dodging his question.
The soldier paused for a moment
before saying, “We’re being attacked by gargoyles from the Wasteland.”
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