ChiarOscuro Book One/Episode One - Flame In The Dark

II - The Four Flames

II - The Four Flames

It was the early hours of the morning and he had once again stayed up late, getting lost in hundreds of books that filled the bookcases along the temple walls

Everyone else in the temple had long retired to the attic and fallen asleep, the only sounds were the crackling of candles and the calls of birds outside and though the sun would soon rise, sleep didn't come easy for him. He had hoped to find himself tired after his reading but now his mind was filled and swarmed with visions of twisted creatures and battles raging inside his head.

'Stories' he told himself as he slowly climbed up the small flight of marble steps to the altar 'Just stories Ethan.'

He had never truly had faith growing up and had never been a man of religion and although he had been reborn as Priest Atunian, he still had difficulty convincing himself that anything he read in these sacred tomes was fact. He respected and believed their messages though and found telling stories was a good way to put any point across to any person, for stories were universal.

He finally reached the last step, taking a few breathes before he walked to the base of the statue of Ledina, her jewel encrusted eyes looking down at him and he almost felt as if he was being watched.

He shuddered as he grabbed a small thing wooden stick from out the bamboo container and stuck it into one of the flames of the many candles adorned at the base of the statue and light up one by one the candles that had turned out. The flames had to be kept alive and in his ten years since his arrival, he was pretty certain that he had never once seen them all fully extinguished.

It seemed like a lifetime ago when he had abandoned his old name and life behind to join the sacred temple of the Ledina, one of the Seven, here in Irdin, a small city far, far away from what had once been his home.

Or what used to be home. Before the Decabians had started a war against Aludin, a war that still raged to this day despite the signing of peace between the two warring nations. There had been no peace when they had first attacked, by surprise,that summers night, ten years ago, during the festival of The Seven.

He had been a soldier then, his weapon a sword in his hand, not a book with words and he had fought the Decabians as they had launched their surprise invasion only to see his entire family that he had raised killed before his eyes. His wife, his children, his grandchildren, he had seen them one by one struck down by the white armoured invaders, his life taken from him in a matter of moments.

He sometimes wondered whether it would have been better if that cruel day, he would have been slain alongside them at least then, he would still be with them. He would find out later the name of the man who had condemned his village to death, a brutal warlord called Hlad. Every hour of every day, he thought of that name and how he still lived when hundreds that day had fallen under his watch.