Guian (A High Fantasy)

The Beginning

It was the kind of dark that presses on you, that squeezes from all sides until even though your brain knows you're breathing, your lungs disagree. They crouched in perfect silence, waiting for the time to be just right, their tattered clothing and ripped shoes invisible in the night, their formation made imperfect by blackness. And then, in a burst as bright as the sun, there was fire.

The arrow arced up, up, flame trailing behind it. Everything was still for one beat. Two. And then the arrow landed, and an enemy supply wagon burst into bright light, and there was chaos.

This, Gwen thought. This is how the world began.

***

It was mid-afternoon before the Queen's troops won the battle. It was inevitable, really. This was how it always went. The rebellion came up with a seemingly brilliant strategy, and the Queendom won anyway. Like they knew what was coming.

Most of the troops agreed that there had to be a spy in their midst. It was bound to happen. The war council just refused to believe it.

Gwen thought the so-called "strategists" of the war council were all egotistic morons. Too blown up in themselves to fight. It was the soldiers who really made the plans, and so it was a soldier who must be the spy. Gwen sighed and looked up at Steele, who just held out a hand. She took it and stood. Her brother looked beaten and weary. Dried blood marked his cheek where a shallow cut had bled, and his already ratty tunic was dotted with mud. His mail was so damaged she wondered whether it was worth him wearing. It was heavy enough to slow him down, and it probably didn't provide any protection anymore.

"Come on, Gwennie, chin up," Steele managed a smile. "You have soldiers to fix." The gong rang, and he let go of her hand and walked off in the direction of his commander. It was time for the unwounded soldiers to debrief, and it was time for Gwen to do her job.

Gwen was a healer. It wasn't intentional. She was just born that way--and it's not that she didn't love it, either. Gwen loved knowing that her gift saved lives, removed pain. But enough gruesome battle wounds had left Gwen an incurable cynic, and she longed for the days when she could mend wounded animals in the woods behind her old house, and ease Steele's chronic migraines when they were so bad he forgot about his pride. She was tired of dismemberment, and punctured organs, and the damage of thousands of spells and hexes.

She was just tired, period. She was tired of this war.

Gwen pushed open the door to the infirmary. It was huge; by far the largest building at base. And even as she cringed at the sheer number of wounded lying on their cots before her, she knew this wasn't all. The rest filled tents outside. The wounded and sick made up so much of the rebellion that Gwen had often stopped to wonder who was doing the fighting.

She always remembered her first patient of the day, and today it was a dusty-looking teen. His eyes were closed, and at first Gwen thought he was asleep. It was only after she stepped closer that she realized they were closed in pain. His entire body was covered in slash marks, as if someone had tried to slice him to shreds. Gwen recognized it as a particularly poor Swashbucklers' Hex--the caster had not been strong enough to fully administer the spell, and the slashes only cut a few inches deep. Done properly, the hex would have reduced the boy in front of her to pieces on the ground.

She filled his wounds with a willow bark paste, for pain, before chanting over him in a hushed voice. She felt a small trickle of energy leave her body into the words, but she ignored it, watching as his skin melded back together, and his breathing became less labored. All around her, a dozen healers were doing the same thing.

Gwen worked until long after sundown. And then, exhausted, she stumbled back to her barrack, and collapsed into bed.

*****************

A/N

Hey readers!! Don't you fret, this story is about to get a lot more interesting--I just needed to begin introducing the characters.

I thought I might give a little backstory--I started a book with the same cast of characters as this one will have a few years ago, and I got a few chapters in before I decided I hated it. Since then I've written lots of short stories about them, but I wanted to start over with Gwen, Steele, Xavier, Frost, and the whole gang in a  completely new story. I'm SUPER EXCITED about this guys! These characters mean a lot to me, and I'm so happy I'm going to be able to finally give them a full story worth reading (well, I hope).

Stay tuned for some updates soon.

xx

Noelle