Illiara: Master of Arms [DISCONTINUED]

PROLOGUE

It was the dead of night near the haunted yard. It was said be so, haunted, by the storytellers, but even without them, you could tell this was no place for humans.

Nothing broke the silence.

Nothing but a small group of girls arguing heatedly in low voices, their robes fluttering in the wind as they gestured angrily, beneath the skeleton of an oak tree.

"There's no demon! That's just a fairy tale!" said one of the girls angrily. Instantly, she clapped her hand over her mouth.

The girls looked around fearfully, as if expecting a demon to emerge from the other side of the rotted, moss-enveloped fence, fairy tale or no.

Nothing happened.

"See! There's no demon!" said another girl triumphantly, although her eyes still darted around nervously.

"I'm still not sure. What if the stories are true?" The girl arguing with the rest, of eleven long years, eyed the gloomy yard apprehensively.

"What if, what if. . ." scoffed another.

"You actually think the 'If you climb over the fence, you get turned into a demon! There was this one boy, one of my friends. . .' nonsense is true? It's just a story Nyracofine, the traveling storyteller made up. That's his job, you know." The girl rolled her eyes at her companion's ignorance, and looked at her for an answer.

Her face answered clearly. Desperately, she searched for something to prove her fear. "He said he saw it happen!"

"That's his job. To make up convincing stories. Besides, he's getting old. Could be a bit . . . wrong in the head." She emphasized this with a tiny swirling motion with her finger.

"Besides, have you heard of anyone who's disappeared? Nyracofine's so-called friend?" chimed in another of the four.

The girl shrugged, but didn't look convinced.

"Go on, do it! Nothing's going to happen!" urged the bossiest. She gestured towards the fence.

Still the girl hesitated. "Why do I have to do it?" she asked stubbornly.

"Because you're the eldest."

"By one week!"

"Alright then. We'll all come over once you're over there. Happy? Now GO!"

"Fine," the girl in black huffed, acting confident. Regardless, her gaze flicked around like a cornered mouse.

She took a step forward.

She stopped, taking a deep breath to steady herself. Then, before she could lose her resolve, she briskly walked the rest of the way to the fence.

Again she paused, and looked back at the others, who nodded encouragingly.

Hesitantly, she put her foot on the first beam of the fence.

Everybody held their breath for a long moment, including the girls who had encouraged the other. Despite their confident manners, they didn't seem to have quite believed what they were saying.

Nothing happened.

Everyone relaxed.

Emboldened, she climbed up the remaining two beams to the top.

She teetered on the very top of the fence, then regained her balance. Suddenly, she did not want to do this at all. It was too easy to imagine what could happen in the inky blackness of the night.

But a will not her own brought her right foot down on the dark, damp soil.

The girl felt the will begin to bring her left foot down. She resisted it with every ounce of strength she had, ordering her foot to stay on the fence. Someone, something else was pulling her foot toward the ground. It inched forward, despite her resistance, drawing closer and closer, her foot drawing nearer to the ground.

And touched it.

The earth began to pound beneath her feet with a living heartbeat, and she was suddenly aware of the breathing. Steady, heavy breathing, drilling into her eardrums. She could feel that the others couldn't hear it; it some way, she was in a separate world. Unquenchable panic seeped into her, fixing her in place,.

Instantly, there was a faint hissing noise, which gradually grew louder. Steam, steam of an unidentifiable color, shifting shades of grey, rose slowly out of the ground. It enveloped her like a cloud of darkness.

She let out a terrible, unearthly scream, so horrified it did not sound like her own.

The other four girls leaped backward in fright. "Kathleen!!!!!"

There was no response other than the magnifying scream.

Then a voice hissed out of the shadows.

"You dare trespass on our land?" It sounded like a dragon, lion and worse that had all learned to speak and were speaking in unison.

Kathleen could not even reply, the noise from her throat blocking out every attempt to respond. The girls backed up even farther.

"You shall pay. Become one of us. . ."

Impossibly, Kathleen's screams intensified and got more frantic. A gleeful hissing noise seemed to come from all directions; laughing snakes.

The smoke around Kathleen darkened to an impenetrable black.

Abruptly, the screams stopped. A weighty silence descended on the yard.

The girls huddled together, petrified. Somehow, they knew that Kathleen was not dead. Something worse had happened to her. Far worse.

The smoke lightened, and a figure was once more outlined by the smoke. But it was not the outline of a young girl. It was the outline of a woman.

The figure stepped out from the smoke.

It was Kathleen, but not Kathleen. She appeared to be a grown-up version of herself. But her eyes . . . her eyes had no whites. They were black: pure black.

She smiled wickedly at the girls, baring her pointed teeth. She stepped toward the fence and raised her tail.

Hi, distinguished readers! I would like to thank Darkened_Forests to be the first one to critique my story! Thank you, all of you, for reading this!