Eldwon
Prologue
Eldwon awoke with a start, the black, starless night enveloping his form as he stood. He placed his six foot frame silently next to a huge tree, straining his ears in the cool forest air to find the sound that had awakened him. Suddenly he heard it. The Tilsors had found his trail, slight though it was. Now, after three weeks of dodging, after running and hiding, and suffering hunger and thirst, he would run one last time. On the morrow he would fight, and he knew that on the morrow, he would die.
He crouched slightly, then sprang into the air, his twelve foot wingspan extending and carrying him upward, then forward. The feathers were black as the night around him as he sped through the air, his determined faced smeared with mud, his torn and tattered clothes and light armor the same. He couldn't fight tonight, for if he died, his soul would wander forever.
He could hear the Tilsors as they ravaged the spot where he had been moments before. They won't find anything there now, he thought grimly, except my heat. That was the thing he hated most about the Tilsors. They fed on heat, and they tracked it well too. They won't feed on my heat, though. I'd kill myself before I let them get close enough to butcher me that way.
He heard the savage cries in the night, but they were dampened by the darkness. He thought bitterly over the month before he had been forced to flee. The Tilsors had attacked the Elcorian army, and the Elcors were outnumbered ten to one. They had fought bravely, then desperately, but to no avail. The Tilsors' technology had overwhelmed them at last.
He had fled then to his clan, hoping to save some. When he got there he found his wife of two months slaughtered, along with the rest of the clan. He had flown to every other village, and found that all had been massacred. It was smart of the Tilsors to draw them out with seemingly all their forces, but to have others sneak into the borders of the land and butcher the villages while the warriors were gone. Now Eldwon alone was left.
He had escaped death through no skill of his own. It had simply been dumb luck. He had been with a scout group when the armies had clashed, and by the time he and the few others got back, most of the fighting had stopped. He and his comrades had fought, but when he was the only one left alive, he had fled back to his village, and then to others. Now he was faced with the question: was he a coward? He brushed the doubt aside, not fully knowing, but not really caring either.
Hearing the sound of engines, Eldwon's thoughts were jerked back to the present. He kicked himself mentally for dreaming while flying; he never could quite keep the same speed. Now he was going to pay, for the Tilsors were within one hundred feet of him, and gaining rapidly.
They were grotesque creatures riding in ugly vessels. All had three eyes, and some had four or five. They were fat and a sickly yellow, with slime covering their entire body. Each had six arms and four legs, and the end of each limb ended in five hollow claws. Their tongue was a flexible claw, also hollow, and their breath reeked of decay. Strands of sinew hung from their blackened teeth, vestiges of their last meal. Their minds were as twisted as their appearance, but they were ingenious, and invented all sorts of devices for the sport of killing.
The vessels they rode in were fatter than they, though not as tall. They were shaped like the hideous beasts that the Tilsors of old rode on. Sinister and forbidding, each had jaws gaping in a twisted smile, a gun in the middle of each mouth. The metal tails sometimes contained small, barb-like missiles, capable of shooting seventy feet, and each of the six legs was equipped with thrusters to propel the craft. In between the legs and the body were the other two guns, one on each side. These still glowed red from the devastation of Eldwon's campsite.
Each vessel came up to the pilot's waist, and there the controls were placed, leaving the Tilsor's keen sense of smell, vision, and heat to do the work as sensors, and leaving the pursued free to be repulsed by the nauseating appearance of the pilot.
The mouth gun of the lead Tilsor's craft was charging now, and Eldwon knew he was going to have to take some drastic measures to survive, if that was possible at all. He dove left suddenly, and barely dodged the blast. He swooped right the next time, trying not to set any pattern for the beasts to predict. He dodged right again, but barely made it. He had to start climbing now, or he would crash into the tree tops.
He pulled out of the slight dive he was in and began to climb, but quickly dodged left to avoid a blast. This time he wasn't as fortunate, and he felt a searing pain in his right arm and wing. He began to tumble toward the ground, and made one last desperate attempt to save himself. Lashing his whip out behind him, it came in contact with what was to be the blow that would allow the beasts to feast on his life.
The whip was a family legacy, and while all in his family could make one, no one else knew how. At certain intervals along the length of the whip were points of stress, as he called them, points where immense amounts of energy could be released on contact if he so desired. He wanted it now, and as the energy from the whip came in contact with the blast from the Tilsors, a brilliant violet light lit up the immediate area around him. Blinded, he slammed into a tree and dropped to the ground below, and then he knew no more.
Any comments? Ideas? Suggestions? This story isn't finished yet . . . your suggestions could make a difference in what happens! =) If you do have any comments or suggestions, then mail me! =)
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