i just wrote this earlier, I'll be expanding it soon just thougth i'd post it
Prologue
His father always used to say, �You can't win against fools. They'll bring you down to their level and clobber you with experience.� Back then they used to spend their nights by the hearth, safe and sound inside their stone chambers, located at the centre of Keep Susyik. Every word they uttered was over a glass of wine or sherry, and their clothes were so soft and light, they hardly felt like being clothed at all…
The lads down at the armory liked to tell tales about the outer world’s weapons and crafts, but their favourite was about Famasoen, the legendary land of heroes. Famasoan steel was said to be so sharp it could cut falling silk.
Rurik wondered if he was ever going to get a chance to see these other faces of life, which here were but myths and fables, whispered by old men over their ale. Old men who had barely seen a glimpse of the world themselves, yet in this small corner of the Earth it counted as if they had seen every acre of it. Scatt said that if they had truly traveled the world, they wouldn’t be half so full of words, and they would never spread their stories with such lust. Yet spread their stories they did, and the village folk took them to heart, each one secretly promised to himself that he would somehow, sometime, visit these far away places of legend…they would see it all. Somehow.
He lifted his gaze to the sky, searching among the heavens for a sign. But nothing came. It never did. Back in Susyik, they used to say that the stars…
I must stop this, I must put the past behind now. I must forget the life I once had… So who was he now? He slowly lifted his hand and idly stared at where he had once worn his own bracelet, metal lined with gold. His fingers traveled slowly over the skin, as if feeling the runes etched in the metal: ‘RURIK THE RED’. The words had been carved so deep you couldn’t see their end. As he had grown, so did the rumors that those letters were filled with blood, and Rurik’s friends enjoyed telling the village children about how he filled them each night, with the blood of slain enemies.
Empty words. Words of the wind…Yet that bracelet had been a part of him, and towards the end that bracelet had felt as heavy as his soul. Now all that remained of it was a white stripe just above his wrist...and emptiness.
As the clouds above melted and merged, Rurik wished he could be back at Susyik…back with all the others, fooling around the keep, making fun of the guards, letting skunks loose into the already pungent stables… Wishing, hoping, he stared at the swirling mists far above, for the last time. That night, Rurik Kreidoth, more commonly known as Rurik The Red, lost his last battle.
Rumor has it he was found minutes after his death, by a wandering shepherd.
-john D.
