Life Of Chronos Prelude

Chronos and Melina experience their first tragedy.

Life Of Chrono’s Prelude                        1427 Words

 

Chronos was born in a small valley village built by Homs called Ivarstead, to a loving mother and father in their early forties. He also had two brothers and a sister. They made a living as farmers, growing corn, squash, apples, and other crops in the lush valley.

 

When he wasn’t working in the fields taking care of the plants or harvesting new plants to sell, Chronos spent most of his time in the marketplace, where he helped sell his family’s crops.

 

He was sweet on a girl that he often saw there, her name was Melina, and she was the second daughter of a couple that owned the only tavern in the village. Little did he know that someday in the far-out future, they would be a married couple.

 

Life in Ivarstead valley was perfect, tranquil. Chronos spent his free time with a small group of friends made up of children from the village, where they would play together. They would have sword fights with sticks, climb trees, and explore the mountains that surrounded the valley village.

 

Until the day that one such adventure went terribly wrong.

 

Chronos and his friends had been exploring an especially steep mountainside for the last three hours. Among their group were Seth, the oldest and the leader of the group, Chris, a somewhat shy boy, Angel who was the younger sister of Seth, Melina, and of course Chronos. Everyone was of mainly Homs descent, except for Melina. She had a full set of gray feathered wings. As they made their way up the mountainside, each of the children could feel the sweat on their faces, as the sun’s rays and the steep mountainside drained their energy. Chris was the first to give in to exhaustion.

 

“Can we turn back now and go back to the village. I’m tired and need a drink,” Chris moaned.

 

“If you’re tired, we can take a break and drink some water, but I think we have enough energy to go a little farther than this,” replied Seth, the leader of the bunch. Everyone else agreed.

 

They found the perfect place to take a break, a cave where the air was cool and the sun could not reach within its deeps. It was then that Melina came up with an interesting idea.

 

“Why don’t we explore this cave? I’m excited to find out what lies within,” Melina suggested.

 

“I agree, I wonder what treasure we might find inside it,” said Chronos, excited.

 

“What do you two think?” Seth asked Angel, and Chris.

 

Both agreed that they should explore the cave. And so the group of five children made their way into the old, dark, and foreboding cave. Inside the cave, they came across a small lake in the darkness, and an island in the middle of the lake with what seemed like a large slab of stone in the center of it.

 

As the group came closer, to their surprise, they found the island was composed completely of the remains of human beings. While the bottom parts of the island were mainly made up of bones, the top of the island was by far the most disturbing, as the remains were much more recent.

 

The rotten flesh of the dead was a chilling sight indeed and smelled rancid. The group said nothing, as they stared into what looked like Hell itself. In the middle of the island of bones stood an ancient blood alter, the stone bleached a dark red from the lives of the hundreds of dead that it stood upon.

 

After so much lifeblood had been spilled on the once smooth and beautiful granite, it was now rusty, crumbly, and crimson red. Upon the rusted stone reeking of death, was a fresh body, a young woman from Ivarstead. She couldn’t have been older than 17.

 

At the sight of the bodies, the children could not help but vomit out whatever they still had in their stomachs, splashes of greenish yellow liquid that soon dissolved in the sickly lake. It was then that they realized that the lake wasn’t a lake of water at all. It was blood, human excrement, and tears.

 

An ungodly voice perforated the room, muttering what sounded like gibberish to the children, but was actually the One Language. The first form of communication since the birth of life, the language of the Primal, a race of gods that were the first to come into existence, and the first to create their own life. Long dead and forgotten, the Primal were no more. Destroyed by their own creations, by the Elder Gods, the Primal had been banished from this realm.

 

The voice continued to speak, and a red mist seemed to come from the blood alter. There was no doubt about it, there was a Primal within that rock, and it wanted blood.

 

Seth was the first to fall. As his eyes glazed over, he grabbed the hunting knife that hung at his belt, it had been a gift from his father, and the only protection that the group had. Now he held it up in a battle stance. Chronos saw it all happen, and soon realized that he had no control of his body. Unable to fight back, the voice took control of his body.

 

In fact, the only one who wasn’t affected was Chris. Frightened, Chris shrieked at the body that sat on the bloody stone. Startled, Chris looked around to see his friends closing in on him, with blank stares on their faces. Chris. Forever the coward. He was not as courageous as his friends, but he was the only one of them who had a pure heart, and so could not come under the influence of the Primal. So in the Primal’s eyes, he was the perfect sacrifice. Chris was brought kicking and screaming through the lake, to the island.

 

“No, please, what are you doing?” Begged the innocent little boy. “No, that.. that stone? No not the stone. Not the bloody stone! Please let me go, let go, let me go!” Chronos was forced to watch as his body pinned Chris’s weaker body to the bloody altar, moving the previous sacrifice off the stone, and onto the ever-growing pile of bodies that surrounded it.

 

No, not the bloody stone, don’t do this to me, please, let me go, let me go!!

 

He was forced to watch as Seth’s body brought the knife ever closer to his friend's helpless body. You could literally see the effort that Seth was going through to stop his arm, as it shook madly. Seth's eyes widened, sweat dripped from his brow onto Chris, and tears fell into the lake. But the knife came ever closer to Chris, and the voice of the Primal was far too strong.

 

Slowly, agonizingly slow, the knife slid across Chris’s throat. Chronos could hear the gurgling of his poor friend as his life essence bleed all over the stone. The stone glowed bright orange, and Chronos could feel the pulse of the stone, just like it was a living thing.

 

Finally, the pulsing stopped, the light faded, the voice stopped speaking, and the children returned to their bodies.

 

Chronos felt absolute regret, anguish, sadness, and bitter hopelessness. He looked at his dead friend and felt like his heart was empty. And in its place a black hole. And he would live with this for the rest of his life.

 

Unfortunately, Seth could not live with what had happened. The utter madness of how he was forced to watch as he slit his friend’s throat was too much. Seth made his way out of the cave and threw himself over the edge of the cliff outside. He died.

 

Later the next night his sister Angel was found hanging from a rope in her room. She could not live with the deaths of her loving brother and faithful friend, both dead. She had committed suicide.

 

That left the only two survivors of the horrible incident. Melina and Chronos.They were forced to live their lives knowing and never forgetting the horrible tragedy. The cave was entered by holy men, and the stone supposedly destroyed.

 

The bodies of the children were buried a week later. People of the poor valley village cried openly at the complete loss of life. Mothers held their children a little closer. Fathers put on fake smiles to hide their pain as if to say everything would be all right. But it wouldn’t be. Not for Chronos and Melina. Not ever.

Author's Note

I rewrote pieces of this story, edited it, and managed to finish the prelude. You can expect that I will continue with the story until the point where I previously stopped writing, which was around 90 pages. I hope you enjoy!

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