Huge thanks to Ruben Carral for the amazing artwork done for my novel
Greetings Steemit!
My name is Vlad. Yes, just like Vlad III The Impaler, aka Vlad Dracula. I assure you I am not a vampire though, and everyone who claims that I've sucked his or her blood is a liar. A soon-to-be dead liar.
What I truly am is an aspiring writer. Throughout my 22 years of life I have written many fantasy and sci-fi short stories but always had a desire to try my hand at the longer format.
I've been lurking on Steemit for a couple of months seeking inspiration and am glad to inform you - there is no lack of creative, free, capable minds on this platform. The urge to join this community became irresistible, so here I am.
With my totally human, not in any way vampiric senses I noticed that Steemit would benefit from an exclusive fantasy story - something about lost magics, scary monsters, bloodthirsty gods and puny humans trapped in between. Coincidentally the world I have been building in my mind (and on scraps of paper on my desk) for way too long includes all of the mentioned above.
Just a few more words about my plan on the Steemit platform: I plan to post parts of The Spawn of Seron every few days until it is finished (once a week if some major problems occur in my life as they lately tend to do); in between those I would like to post reviews of the books I have recently read, movies that impressed me and any other major happenings that occur in the fantasy realm.
I speak English, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish and German, so you can expect all kinds of experiences from a variety of sources to coalesce into the things I write about. Comments in different languages are appreciated, just for the sake of practice. I live in Ukraine, but will soon move to China for a while, hopefully will be able to tell something interesting about it from a foreigner's perspective.
The authors I am most inspired by are: J.R.R Tolkien, Brandon Sanderson, Stephen King, Ursula Le Guin, Patrick Rothfuss, Neil Gaiman, Jim Butcher, Robert Jordan, Michael J. Sullivan, the list goes on and on and..
Below is the prologue to my novel, I wrote it so you can have a taste of my still amateurish writing and a glimpse into the world that arose from my twisted mind. Any kind of feedback is appreciated.
Behold Steemit! The Spawn of Seron has come to punish the unjust and rescue those in need.
Prologue
When does one abandon hope? Despair does not set in immediately upon imprisonment. It crawls under you skin one inch at a time, remains unnoticed until it is wholly there. Then it shrugs off its shroud and greets you, like an old friend. You are staying here with me, forever, it whispers.
‘Put it back,’ whispered the housekeeper, her voice stern. ‘Put it back if you know what’s good for you.’
Sellis flinched as a thick hand grabbed her right wrist, then forcefully turned her around on her heels. The old woman’s wide face was an inch from her own, dark beady eyes giving her a hard stare. Her meaty fingers would surely leave a nasty bruise on Sellis’s white skin. The girl wondered at how light-footed the housekeeper must have still been despite her age and bulk, being able to sneak up on her like that.
‘The cook let me have the fruit and the cheese as long as I would pay him back next week,’ said Sellis, her eyes fixed to the floor. ‘You know I’m good for it. I will work two shifts if need be.’
‘Don’t think me a fool, girl. You know what I am talking about.’ The housekeeper shifted her gaze to Sellis’s right hand. ‘The spare key to the front entrance. Don’t be stupid now, you didn’t think you could actually use it, did you? A small army of guards patrols the building all night long. Not even speaking of all the enchantments. Do you think lord Dorraine employed a Kalnarran enchanter for half a year just to keep himself company? Any unwelcome guest will burst into flames as soon as they step foot into the gardens.’
Slowly Sellis unclenched her fist revealing a simple key made of yellowy metal. No one but the housekeeper and the butlers was allowed to take keys outside the premises of the mansion. Taking one out of the safe box wasn’t a crime by itself, but there was never a need for a simple kitchenmaid to walk around with the key to the front door. The crone was right to be suspicious.
‘I must have confused ‘em,’ lied Sellis. ‘It looks just like the one that unlocks the cellar. I was sent to fetch flour from below before I leave for the night. I didn’t mean any harm.’ The old woman was right of course - trying to sneak into the mansion was a sure way to get yourself killed. What the housekeeper didn’t know, was that Sellis had been offered a tall pile of therims for the key and she was just desperate enough to accept the offer.
The housekeeper sighed and freed Sellis from her grasp, then watched intently as the girl put the yellow key back into the safe box and retrieved a much bigger, crudely crafted cellar key. Before Sellis could leave the antechamber though the old woman spoke again, her voice softer this time and almost apologetic.
‘How old is the babe now?’ She asked. ‘Is he healthy?’
‘He is going to be twelve months in a few days,’ said Sellis. ‘So hungry all the time, I’m afraid I won’t be able to keep up with his demands in another year.’
‘Who looks after him while you’re away?’
‘I leave him at the temple.’ Sellis felt ridiculous complaining to her employer but no one else ever spoke to her about her son. People acted as if the shame of bearing a child out of wedlock was contagious and would somehow transfer to them. ‘I miss him so much some days. He’s growing up among orphans and abandoned children. I’m afraid he isn’t going to recognize me the next time I come to see him.’
The old woman produced a handkerchief seemingly out of nowhere, stepped closer to Sellis and wiped the tears that were trying to find their way down her cheeks. Sellis felt a tinge of guilt for trying to sell the mansion’s key, since the fault for the theft would surely land on the housekeeper. Whoever the buyers were, their intentions were no doubt nefarious.
‘Don’t cry, child. Goddess Kitarran the Unending once said that the greatest gift you can ever give to anyone - is life itself. Never doubt the decision that you have made,’ said the housekeeper. ‘Still, I think you should tell lady Dorraine about what happened to you. She is reasonable, admittedly a bit lightheaded but reasonable. She would make him take responsibility.’
‘Or she would call me a liar. Then accuse me of trying to tarnish the honor of a noble family and dismiss me from the household. Or worse.’ Sellis was surprised at the bitterness and anger in her own voice. ‘It is no use quoting Kitarran, the goddess of mercy, when she is in a city on the other end of the world. There is no mercy in Salderra. We are ruled by Seron, god of war, and you know his attitude towards bastards. No. I am not prepared to lose him.’
‘The heart of a mother knows best,’ said the housekeeper, but Sellis didn’t hear that, she was already out the door and striding down the hallway towards the staircase that led to the mansion’s cellars. She didn’t really need the flour, but decided to fetch some anyway, in case somebody tried to catch her on a lie.
Unsteady torchlight lit her way. The basement wasn’t as grand and exquisitely adorned as the rest of the floors, but nevertheless the walls were lined with priceless works of art that just didn’t fit in the rooms above. Inadvertently her eyes landed on one of the impressive floor-to-ceiling tapestries, a tiny plate informed Sellis that it was called ‘The taking of Kalnas’. It depicted numerous soldiers clad in red, scaling the tall walls of the mountain city. Seron - their God and the ruler of Salderra was woven in the centre, at least twice the height of his men, in the process of hurling a giant ball of fire at the defenders.
Sellis was glad she wasn’t born two hundred years ago. These kind of slaughters were a common thing back then. Nowadays Kalnas was revered as a brother city and Seron was more concerned with politics than conquering. The time when he was 'god of war' not in name only have long passed.
Her musings were cut short by a strange clicking sound coming from the far end of the hallway. Sellis squinted, unable to see clearly in the dim light. As the noise got closer she saw a man emerge from the darkness, he wore full plate armor with a red sun painted on the chest piece. For a second she thought it was a soldier from the tapestry she’d been staring at, who came to life and was aimlessly tottering through the dungeons. Any unwelcome guest will burst into flames as soon as they step foot into the gardens, said the crone earlier tonight, remembering that helped Sellis still her nerves and fight the urge to flee.
‘Come help me!’ yelled the clinking man. ‘Lord Dorraine is hurt and I can’t carry him upstairs alone, this outfit is too damn heavy.’
The voice was muffled by the helmet but familiar, it belonged to one of the guards although she couldn’t remember his name. Sellis breathed out, relaxing. Then tensed up even more than before.
‘What happened to him?’ she asked, but the guard just beckoned her with his metal glove and the tendrils of darkness swallowed him once again. Sellis followed.
A hundred times has she been to the cellars to fetch one thing or another, but never before has she noticed this peculiar door. It could hardly be called a door at all. It looked more like a rectangular piece of silver set in stone, with no visible hinges, knobs or even keyholes. At the moment it was ajar and a half conscious lord of the house, Richard Dorraine was prone on the floor inside its doorframe. Normally a composed and graceful man was now drooling on the floor, his long black hair drenched in sweat, his bright blue eyes wide open and unfocused.
‘What happened?’ Sellis repeated her question, worried.
‘He came out of that doorway, mumbling some nonsense. Then suddenly collapsed on the floor and stopped breathing for a good minute. I thought he was dead..' said the guard while reaching under lord Dorraine’s arms and hoisting him up. 'Grab his legs, will you?’
Sellis nodded and moved closer to the doorframe, trying to get a comfortable grip. Beyond the door, a staircase led even deeper underground. An unnaturally steady white light came from below - a sure sign that channeling was involved. Something shiny a few steps down caught Sellis’s eye and she instantly recognized it for what it was. The exact copy of the key that she held just half an hour before, but with a string attached to its head. ‘One second,’ she murmured to the guard and received a protesting grunt in reply. Ignoring that, she quickly descended and picked up the front entrance key, hung it around her neck, then hid it under the shirt.
It was an omen from Larrion himself, the God of Luck was known for his twisted sense of humor after all. He took the key away just to drop another one right in her lap. Sellis smiled to herself and gave a quick parting glance to whatever room lay beneath. She expected a bedroom or an out of the way study, a sort of place where lord Dorraine could get his alone time perhaps. What she saw instead she never forgot.
A cage constituted the bigger part of the room, one made from the same silvery reflective metal as the door above. Inside it a small child, five years old at most, hugged the bars and eyed Sellis curiously. The shadow that the tiny body cast was not natural. It was massive and deformed, filled every crack of the floor under the child’s feet, it trembled and pulsated even though the child stayed completely still. The shadow grew wings and horns, then shrunk and extended three pairs of limbs. It changed over and over again, every shape more macabre than the one before. Suddenly the child cried. Its shadow engulfed Sellis’s field of vision completely and only pure darkness remained.
The next thing Sellis remembered was sitting on the floor next to the resident healer’s quarters in the right wing of the mansion. Various plate armor parts littered the floor. The guard’s name was Elric, she remembered it after seeing his face freed from the helm.
‘What did lord Dorraine say before he collapsed?’ was the first thing she asked him.
Elric frowned. ‘He said Seron had been assassinated. Nonsense, just as I told you before. The Six Gods are immortal.’
Sellis agreed with Elric on this, it was a ridiculous thought. Lord Dorraine might as well have told him them that the sky descended upon the desert and crushed the residents of Salderra. Some things were permanent and everlasting, the sun rose in the east and set in the west and the Six Gods lived. Always.
‘Did he speak of the child?’
‘I suggest you keep that particular part of the story to yourself,’ said Elric. ‘There has to be a good reason why lord Dorraine keeps something like that secret. It would be safer if we pretend the door was closed at all times.’
Sellis nodded. She planned to be long gone before the lord came to his senses and started asking questions. The key’s coldness against the skin of her chest reminded her of the arrangement. She didn’t care who the buyer was anymore, she just wanted to get away from the house that brought her so much terror and misery. But more than anything she wanted to see her son. She wanted to see Valens.