Interlude:
Alia Alina stood staring out of the large window that was framed at the south end of the master suite that crowned the top floor of Cornerstone's central and tallest tower. It was simply but elegantly appointed with the smooth rich wood tones of it’s paneled walls dominating above the complex geometric designs of a deep blue Venarium carpet. Sunlight came glinting over shining black hair and sparking her green eyes, lighting the cream color of her gently curved face.
The sky outside the window was almost as blue as the carpet and had spots of cloud white dotting it’s vast horizons, interrupted only by the Oldondon mountain range that lay to the south. The River Red was fed by the onrush of waters from the melting snows of the range. Spring was back and she was back with a vengeance. There were reports of flooding all along the course of the river, testament to the unusually heavy snowfall they had endured that winter. It was a good thing she was back, she thought to herself.. Her people needed her. Beyond that, she was glad to be back, away from that horrible place that the Master Johannes called home. That abomination of a volcano which haunted her dreams and her day to day.
Thinking on what had happened there she shuddered. Those poor children. Sacrificed for what ends nobody but Master Johannes knew. But Johannes’s plans for the babe that had been at the ceremony they had conducted that day had been thwarted, ruined and smashed. It had started with that creature that appeared among the priests. Surely it had been a demon from the deepest hell though strangely it had not hurt anyone. The only one that had been hurt at the ceremony besides the children had been the man conducting it, Danil Torbin. He was broken in body and spirit but he had survived. A pity that, Alia reflected as she stared out over the mountainous terrain. Danil was a valuable man to the Master Johannes but he was an evil, petty, powerful man who had gone out of his way again and again to insult her family and contest their hold on Cornerstone Keep. The House of Azure had held Cornerstone since the Founder had sunk his claim into the gem rich mountain country of Damonorc. She had no pity for him. One of the children had been his daughter and she survived no thanks to her father. Alia hoped Torbin felt all of his broken bones.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Alia clenched the top of her dressing room table's chair tightly. She had always known that Master Johannes was an evil man, as was Torbin, but she had had no idea just how well and truly deep that evil ran until today and how Johannes' command thru Torbin, had been to order those children killed.
Alia had melted into the shadows when the stranger arrived and his strange flying disk had shattered Torbin. She had seen what he had done when he noticed Danil's daughter still alive. He had picked her up and carried her away with him as well as the baby. The man was a hero in her eyes. He had been lucky she had stayed though he knew it not. Without her help he would never have made it out alive, and Danils' daughter would not have survived her crushed throat. Three spells had Alia cast that day, one spell had killed a Razor beak sentry hawk which had been on a steep dive towards the back of the man's head and which would have driven itself through it's target. The other spell had been directed at Danil's daughter, aided and abetted by a spot of the blood she had left behind and which gave the little girl at least a fighting chance. It had taken a lot out of Alia but as she pictured the little girl's throat healing enough to where she would survive she smiled.
When that huge and horrible round face had appeared almost above her and turned into that gaping black hole into nothingness she had almost panicked. She herself had almost been sucked into it before she had cast her home spell to take her out of trouble. Master Johannes must have saved the broken Torbin from the same by teleporting him out of there. Alia didn't think she had been detected. Everyone's attention had been on the stranger.
She wondered where he had gone and if he had escaped. She nodded her head down for a moment and prayed for the three of them, then put in a prayer for her people and finally one, just a small one, for herself. "Give me strength," she muttered.