Black Eyes To Blue

Prologue - Nightmares

Everything was on fire. So cold, and still every limb burned with effort. Every step through the deep snow sent a wave of agony coursing through his body.

"Can't stop. Must keep going." His thoughts screaming at him, "They are going to catch me! Oh gods don't let them catch me! I don't wanna die!".

With each gasp being a labor that could shift mountains he trudged on. Further and further away from the ambush that left his Mercenary Company slaughtered where they stood, and ever farther away from his safe little hidey hole in the trees. The little safe haven where he watched the corpses of his only friends in the world being propped up and put on display as a gruesome warning to anyone else entering the Elven Forest to turn away. His friends didn't heed the first warning, so now they have become a new warning. A warning young Marston is obeying with every remaining ounce of will he has.

Ever further he trudged through the endless forest. Always more trees. Always more snow. Always moving straight, but going nowhere. The deep snow slowed his sprint to salvation to a mere crawl. A dangerously slow crawl. No one travels through the forest of an angry Elven Kingdom without them knowing your every step, your every move. They see all in their woods.

"It's probably already too late." His thoughts moaned at him, subtly begging him to rest and put a stop to this death march. Having left his long spear and heavy tower shield behind, and having stripped off his weighty plate armor and deafeningly loud chainmail undershirt hours earlier, there was nothing left to abandon. All he has left is his travel backpack, containing the supplies that will hold back the winter chill when it comes to steal away his soul. Fearful desperation overpowering rational thought, he reached for the clasp to undo the pack. Then froze. He cant feel his fingers. Every bit of his body was screaming from the exertion, burning in agony as his muscle fibers tear themselves apart trying to keep up pace with the endless march. Yet as they burned so hotly in his mind, he felt nothing at all. Only cold. He tries again to undo the clasp, his fingers barely moving under the weight of mental strain of desperation.

"No." He muttered aloud to himself. The first thing he had dared to speak aloud since starting his mad dash for safety that morning. "Must keep going. Must hurry. Can't stop now."

"I agree little boy. You should hurry." Said a higher pitched voice that cut through the silence of the night like a white hot dagger. A voice that seemed to come from directly behind Mardston. He froze, terror locking his joints in place with a rigidity that not even the frozen wasteland surrounding him could match. In a single moment the fire inside of him, that last thing keeping the young soldier trudging ever forward through each agonizing step, that fire that gave him the will and desire to survive this trial at any cost, was snuffed out like a dying candle.

"It's over." He thought to himself. "I lost." His knees buckled, the only thing he had left was the cold, and the overwhelming numbness that it created.

"Now now little boy. You can't give up now! You're a coward, and a deserter. A proper traitor you are, sasa que! We all know what the only thing cowards like you are good for, and that is running. Running is all you are good for little boy. Though as it seems, you're not even good at that. Lying down with your face in the snow like a dead rat." Sending a light kick in between his shoulder blades, Marston fell face first into the snow. Unable to bring up a hand to stop his fall, he crumpled, as limp and as cold as his brothers in arms did that same morning.

"Gods, you are a pathetic one aren't you? No wonder we singled you out for this."

Stepping lightly on top of the snow, barely leaving a footprint in the fresh powder, the Elven Ranger walked around to the front of the young human. Grabbing the man by his hair, he pulled his face out of the snow, and looked him in the eyes.

"Let me tell you something little boy." Giving the man's head a violent shake he continued, "Don't you die on me just yet! Do you know what you are? You are our designated survivor you hear? The little ambush where we wiped out your friends? That's all pointless as a message, if no one receives it. You are the one who's supposed to deliver that message, sasa que? You're supposed to go into one of your little towns and tell people what you saw, then all of the impure races of the world would see that our forest is not to be traveled, and they would leave us alone. Which means we leave you alone, que?"

Giving the dying man's head another violent shake, followed by a backhand over the jawline he continued on, "But! It seems things were not meant to be. Cowards and traitors like yourself can never be trusted with anything important."

Drawing out a long curved knife from his boot, he toyed with reflecting the moonlight into the man's unresponding eyes for a few moments before a wicked grin spread across his thin lips.

"I had guessed you were weak from the moment I picked you out, and I knew I was right when I was able to follow behind you just an arms reach away, and you never even thought to look behind you. Not even once. No message delivered by someone as pathetic as you, would ever have it be taken seriously. My only real regret is not picking someone who could walk a little faster, you wasted so much of my time, yet you couldn't even even make it halfway."

The last two feelings the Mercenary felt was warmth. Warmth, as the blood rushed out of his open neck and flowed over his frozen skin. Then cold, as the blood stopped pumping and began to crystalize in the endless night.