Prologue; Young Thorley Ravendal
"Víti stays here, the men go with me." Gerdrick gripped his sword. "No jerking about, loss of focus may very well mark our last day." He took off his cloak, revealing a majestic bed of hair.
As the wind blew it back you could see fragments of silver, tied into the thick voidish braided strands of his hair. Under the man's gorgeous manes was a tightly knit cloth of chainmail, covering his body to the neck.
Gerdrick was a Lord as much as one could be. He had ventured deep into Koborn forestry many a times, yet something felt different about this night. As if the sky was darker than usual, the forest more dense than most. The air was filled with a thick, cloudy mist, obscuring any image further than arms length.
Seven days they had been traveling, seven days south.
Everyday reaching further away from the Ravendal estate, closer to The Hands of God. Seven days, hard in pursuit of a forest bedded tomb.
Most days of travel had gone without issue, until today. Today was the worst of any day Gerdrick had been on expedition. A cold wind was blowing out from south, rustling the leaves and pushing the mist forward. Since the moment the sun rose, Gerdrick had felt an uncanny cold thrill come over his mind. A stinging headache, affecting both body and mind.
Gerdrick was a veteran, the forests of this continent held no more terrors for him. Yet this one was… different. There was an edge to the darkness here, an edge that made the hair on his skin spike. Something that shook him to his core.
Berard and Blun shared his unease. Both were experienced soldiers to their own respect, yet they too held a fear near their heart that night. A fear that felt too… natural, as if it were a part of them since the daylight touched their skin. As if it was a gift, a warning from a god, floating in the skies above. But however much the men wished to ride back to House Ravendal, these were not feelings to share with one another. Especially not among this company of men.
Though the Lord's son was scared too, it was a different breed of fear, a race diverting greatly from the men around him. A fear not of the woods, nor a fear of the dark, but a fear of failing his father.
Sir Thorley Ravendal was the youngest child of a house without an heir. He was a handsome boy, seventeen years of age. His eyes were blue as the sea, bringing his short haired, slender appearance up by a few points. The boy was his mother's son, no more masculine than his six sisters. Gerdrick wanted a boy, a man. But in his eyes he got seven wives to trade between houses.
In the Lord's eyes Thorley was far from being an heir to the Ravendal House, no coward like him could become the next Lord Ravendal.
The boy could remember it clear as day, hiding in a splintered, musty chest full of weapons and wargear, putting his eye up against a tiny crevice in the chest's body, watching what unfolded just before his young eyes. In that way Thorley bore some resemblance to Berard.
The boy cried in silence. He cried as he watched her blood spill upon the wooden flooring. He wept as his father beat his mother to a pulp. The boy hurt as he saw Víti beaten bloody for no other reason than him. He caused it. Thorley did. By the time the boy stepped out of the chest, the blades shone bright under the encasing of his tears.
A deep sigh from the young Thorley broke the silence that had covered the men. "Are we near?" The boy asked as he pulled his torch close to his face. "Getting cold, little girl?" Berard drove his shoulder into Thorley's head, shoving him against a tree.
"Shut it." Gerdrick rose his flame deeper into the mist, revealing a small gated field of graves. "We're there".
Lord Ravendal gazed at the metal fencing with intrigue, stroking his fingers across its sides, into its crevices. "Blun. Your cloak, give it." His hand slid off the gate. "Now."
Gerdrick's cloak was his crowned possession; ebony, thick, black and soft as skin. It was a gift from a settlement that stood near the end of the world; They called it the Lion's Cradle.