Untitled Story:: PROLOGUE

by ~vanillaextract

::PROLOGUE::

The first came with gaping jaws.
Its red eyes glinted against the fire's glow.
Bright red slits of anguish.

Smoke filled the air, causing frantic villagers to cough violently.
Some coughed clots of scarlet blood. Others were laid out, unconscious, at the feet of a young girl, skin the dirtied gray color of soot due to the ravaging fires.
Her unwashed brown hair lay limply as she rose and brushed herself off.

        Her vision had blurred a bit-a feature she quite wasn't used to.
She had a very...keen eye.

      She heard noises of people and the screech and clang of metal against metal, but saw nothing. As she blinked, willing her eyesight to clear, she felt the skirts of her beloved new gown and her neck for her heirloom-a habit.

       "Oh-" She gasped. It was torn just above the knee. Not proper for the court. Not ladylike to walk around in such things. But, oh...her gown! And the necklace! The necklace her mother had entrusted to her...gone!

       Wildly, she looked around to find a peasant's village - destroyed.

       "What on earth..." She mumbled.

Fire upon the crushed rooftops of huts and houses was being tossed by the wind, leaving it no choice but to travel to the sky. Various furniture was scattered outside; broken and random. Black smoke trailed towards the forest-or, what was left of it, anyway. It seemed as though this were not as large of a clearing before as it was now. People-villagers-no, peasants were laying on the ground, eyes glazed, mouths agape.  

She didn't want to know if they were alive or not.

Where, oh where, was he? The knight whom had saved so many before was nowhere to be found. It had been weeks past since he had last come, silver armor glistening and all. His sword had a mysterious looking hilt-black, with a gold swirling fringe. His choppy, tousled black hair had framed his face so perfectly, and he rode upon his horse so gracefully with his solemn, pained look that no one questioned him when he told of his adventures. With his cunning and his built features, he seemed as though he was a hero straight out of and elder's tale. And he had requested he meet her, so tenderly to her father her heart melted as if it had before been ice. She shook the thoughts away coherently.
But what had become of him in her people's time of need?

Gingerly, she stepped around the bodies and shouted as loud as she possibly could-for anyone, any survivors.

Because, reader; though she had a keen eye, she was not very quick-witted.

And thus, a pair of eyes the color of the setting sun gazed back at her unflinchingly. An army waiting in ambush was heard rampaging through the undergrowth; crushing the brambles, cursing the life. And before her thoughts could wander any more, she was suddenly buffeted into a fallen tree trunk blackened from the fires. A wet snout touched her face and stippled-haired arms grabbed at her ankles and wrists.
   
     She was quickly gagged by a rag with quite a nauseating stench.
Her eyelids were quickly closing shut, but she mustered up all of the breath she had left for one last hopeful cry to her knight.

A bloodcurdling scream erupted, a horn was sounded, and the ground trembled in the awakening of chaos.