Prologue: Sacrifice is Required

15/12/327

Audra

  Kiaveen was unusually quiet. As a village it's normal that would be the case, but not at night. That was a terrible reality even the children would familiar themselves with; death was just another part of life.

  Audra washed her hands from the goblin blood in the water bucket, made sure there was no blood in her brown hair, picked up her cat and headed to her bedroom. The horde of goblins that attacked Kiaveen should be making their way through the freshly fallen snow by now, yet the streets through the curtains were silent and still.

  There were guards, just like every other town, but they weren't equipped to deal with countless goblins swarming the entirety of the village. Those that tried to escape the town could be heard screaming at night, that night the horde came a bit later. This was Audra's father's fate.

  Audra was a 10 year old girl with brown hair and bluish-gray eyes. She recounted what she did before the bell run, becoming unsure if she was safe or not.

  "I nagged my mom into buying the goblin blood, same as the week before. I covered the steps to the house with it, it should be fine." She thought she knew there wasn't a problem with their house, the door was locked and the hunters brought plenty of blood for the village on their last trip. She wondered what it was like to be a monster hunter. They had a dangerous job that was for sure, daily routines of hunting stray goblin packs, bringing the bodies back and harvesting the blood to keep the smell from the horde at night. She recalled one of the hunters crying, at the market though. Probably more bad news so Audra shook her thoughts away from it.

  Audra waited in bed a bit longer, confused as to what was taking the goblins so long to come, they were usually here and beginning to leave, on a good night, by now. That was when she heard them, it was quiet, like a whisper in the wind but it was there. Constant, quick, and great in number, she quickly pulled the curtains closed, hoping that she wasn't seen by any of the more aware creatures of the horde.

  This was different from the usual horde. They were running much faster than they usually would. They were yelling but not out of sport or fun as per usual. They were running...out of fear. Audra's assumption was proven by the sound of something blunt cracking bone. Flashes of blue struck through the air as the Goblin horde screamed in terror. After a few moments she could only hear them in the distance, out of curiosity, she took another peak out of the window. There was a man watching the horde run through Kiaveen. Electricity sparked off of his body, allowing her to see some of his features. His hair was light and he didn't seem to have a beard. He wore a long winter coat and a green scarf swayed eastwards. He turned to look at her and she immediately hid from the man. Sleep never came for her that night, she was too scared and too curious to sleep.

  After that night the town of Kiaveen never had more goblins attack them, and the kingdom took action, providing knights for the town so that if another attack came for them they'd be ready.

1/6/328

Vasuki

  Vasuki was a 14 year old boy that worked at the family inn, his hair was dark brown and his eyes were like honey in the sunlight, silver scales had just begun to scale their way up his arm from his wrist. He walked with his mother, Anthea, on the outskirts of the town of Nevenal. He scanned the area for the herbs they were looking for, though it was something he was never good at. All of the plants looked the same to him, just different colors, yet Anthea immediately walked towards a group of flowers with pink leaves. They smelled sweet.

  "Really Vasuki? You still can't point out Bergamot?" Anthea asked.

  "I'm trying to remember them, mom. All of those language lessons dad keeps giving me are making it hard for me to remember anything." Vasuki claimed.

"The Nashatalian language is very important for innkeepers." Anthea said, coming to a stand.

"And you two never tell me why that is." Another smell crept into his nose, something akin to fecal matter. Anthea stood up and looked around, Vasuki unsheathed the longsword from his hip. There was a scream no human could ever make, Vasuki turned towards the direction to see a small red goblin, with a small crude piece of metal, stab his mother's stomach. Anthea reacted quickly and put her knee into the small goblin's face, she dropped the bergamot and held the wound closed. Vasuki ran to the goblin and impaled its chest, before running to help his mother.

  Anthea put her weight onto Vasuki as they slowly made their way out of the forest. Behind them was a small group of goblins watching them cautiously. Anger flowed through Vasuki, but that anger had to be put on the back burner, his mother needed the town doctor. Anthea rubbed the silver scales on his left arm reassuringly, as she continued to put pressure on her wound, though Vasuki could tell she was getting weaker by the second.

  Vasuki and Anthea made their way back to the village, he was practically carrying her at this point.

  "Someone! Help us!" There was an immediate response. The blacksmith said something to him, though Vasuki couldn't recall what it was, his ears were ringing loudly. Together they got the attention of the doctor and brought her to a table where he began to examine the injury. That was when Anthea leaned over the table and threw up, the injury site had already begun to heal.

  "Dammit, she's been poisoned! Someone-" Vasuki didn't recall the rest. The news that his mother had been poisoned rung in his ears, the world spun around.

  "Honey, listen to me, everything's going to be okay. Alright? You need...to stay strong." Anthea's eyelids were fluttering open and closed.

"Please stay with us, Mom. You're going to be okay...the doctors will have an antidote for the poison. They have to!"

  The next thing Vasuki knew, he was sitting in his room at his family's inn. Tears fell from his eyes like rain, a sharp cold air struck his father, Igon, as they held each other and cried.

  These two events in their lives, no matter how far apart in time they were, was fate setting them up to be together when the world was beginning to fall apart.