Cash67

Duality Chronicles

Book 1

Prologue

100 Years Ago

THUD. THUD.
The man’s heavy boots sounded his approach as he walked.
THUD. THUD. THUD.

He walked through the battlefield as if he were taking a stroll through his personal garden. His cloak flapped with the breeze, while a scabbard and sword handle extended out of the cover of the fabric. A hood obscured his face from view. The smoldering remains of the village surrounded him while corpses and weapons alike were consumed by the flame.

THUD. THUD. THUD.

The man walked towards the largest structure in the area: a ruined castle illuminated by the surrounding blaze. The turrets were broken, their bricks scattered around the wall, which had similar evidence of destruction. Much debris was piled up along the squat remains, and there were even holes in what remained, looking as if cannonballs had torn the wall apart. 

THUD. THUD. 

A single voice, sobbing could be heard through the crackling of the wood. The man’s head turned in that direction, and his strides turned toward the quiet wails. His speed picked up. 

THUD. THUD. THUD. THUD. 

The man approached the source of the sobbing, a young woman kneeling next to an unconscious, bloodied young soldier. Both were dressed in elegant, yet functional garments. Both were tattered and ripped, with the man’s being in considerably worse shape than the woman’s and covered in blood on the side. The soldier’s forehead had an pattern that emitted an intense red light. 

THUD. THUD.

The cloaked man stopped, looking down at this scene, then cocked his head and held out his hand. 

“I’ve come for his”, the cloaked man said, hand outstretched towards the unconscious solider. 

At the cloaked figure’s words, the woman’s head snapped upward and around to look at the cloaked man. Her expression turned from grief to fear then anger in a matter of a few seconds. 

“Please, no!”, the woman choked out, “It is all that is keeping him alive right now!”

“While that may be true”, the man responded, “I still want it”. He took another step forward. 

THUD.

The woman now stood up, facing the cloaked figure. Her eyes began to glow red with an intricate, jagged pattern surrounding the eyelid going up to her eyebrows. 

“If you want him,” she growled, “You will have to get through me first.”

A blue glow emanated from the cloaked man’s hood. “Pity,” he replied, “Now I have to claim yours as well.”

The woman stood up with a speed that was nearly impossible to follow with the human eye as her hands began to glow with the same color and pattern as her eyes. She threw a punch that whistled as it approached the cloaked man. The man, however, took the punch without so much as flinching, the light of both people intensifying at the moment of contact. The woman stared in shock at how little damage her strike had done as a hand with a glowing blue pattern reached out from the cloak and gripped her arm. She struggled to break the grip, her free hand pummeling the grip with a speed that made the patterns on her hand nothing but a streak of red light. The man seemed unfazed by this, and began reaching for the glowing pattern on the womans forehead with his free hand. The woman noticed this, and redoubled her efforts to get away as she strained away from the hand that reached toward her. The man’s grip was firm, and his hand soon reached the woman’s face, where his hand touched the red patterns that had began to glow. The blue light’s glow rapidly intensified, and the red light on the woman dimmed at the same rate. When the pattern on the woman’s forehead disappeared, she collapsed to the ground, breathing heavily and dry heaving. The cloaked man approached the fallen soldier, and repeated the same process on the soldier, the red pattern fading. When the pattern disappeared, the soldier began gurgling instead of breathing, and the gurgling soon stopped, and he lay still. The woman’s sobs began anew and she crawled over to the soldier. 

“I hate you!”, she managed to choke out at the cloaked figure amidst the dry heaving and sobs. 

“Understandable”, the cloaked figure responded, and he continued his trek toward the castle.