Hellsgate- Prologue- The Rider in the Night

A Chapter by SpaceKnight

The first of a series of short chapters. The winter rains and northern winds are the carpet for this rider's desperate trek.

The sun began to fall to the earth as the rider and his horse broke toward the forest. The chilling winter rains pelted his cloak and soaked it with frosted puddles, but they did not churn Gregori's focus. His old, loose lips muttered the same words for hours as definitely as his steed's hooves clicked and slapped on stone and mud. The pair had journeyed far from the Blunt Shores to reach here, the innerlands. Weary Gregori grew more anxious as seconds passed. His purpose was never lost, even in his aged mind.

The steed pranced beneath the dotted shelter of the leaves and drew his rider deeper unto the shadows of the forest. The rigged, grey pillars of wood before them seemed as uniform in formation as a legion of warriors, readied before their master. Gregori granted his horse a moments' pleasure, a reward for making a trip that many horses could seldom achieve.

With a sudden slow to a trot, the brute wheezed in approval and continued on the way.

Gregori's old frame shivered in the winds of ice and his hand on the reins seemed to be frozen solid. He could not stop, and that he knew. If his journey was not complete on the morrow, all the bloodshed he had witnessed would be for naught.

Even now his lips whispered the words. "I must tell. I must tell."

The forest now delved into black. The shadows melted into the light and flooded all vision from Gregori's eyes. He was not only shivering in the cold now, but he was also doing so in fear.

He saw shapes, ghosts whispering in the wind. His breath hastened, his hand tensed. One of the shadows leapt forward with a beastly growl and brought a battle axe down upon the horse's head. The steed did not make a sound before its neck was split and its head hinged downward. Gregori, upon the limp horse's back, was tossed to the ground as he yelled "I yield! I yield! I am a messenger!"

Cackles of laughter echoed around him as he watched the shape standing above him raise an iron mace. He spied two fierce antlers on the shape's head, twisted and jagged like bolts of lightning. With the flutter of an eyelid, the mace fell upon flesh. The shapes seemed to savour the 'crack' of skull and the spray of blood through the air, yet it did not stop. The iron rose, fell, rose, and fell until Gregori's cries for mercy were snuffed by death's cold hand.

As his final thoughts slowly swirled in his mind before they reached the drain of oblivion, he knew his urgent duty was failed. He rode too far north. He rode into the wood of the wild men, and now the wood drank his blood. Its to keep, for eternity.

For minutes, the wild ones laughed and screamed, still beating the dead man and his steed with their sloppily forged iron until their strikes hit through to the wet ground.