Connar tugged at the reins of the dark-maned horse, urging the animal down the cobblestone streets, heading to the town center, where the latest rounds of executions were about to get underway. He had only just arrived in the ancient French city of Narbonne, with its picturesque castle perched on the cliffs high above the jagged coastline below. The near serenity of the city, when viewed from afar, was in stark contrast to the seething darkness emanating from within its walls.
The whole of the region was swelling with chaos, coming under different rule for the third time in less than a decade, each successive conqueror more ruthless than the last. The people lived in fear of instant and harsh recrimination from the new land lords.
The fairest of the maidens were claimed by the new governors and magistrates of the land and treated as if their property. Those who refused to submit to their new masters were summarily charged, under the guise of witchcraft or demonic possession, and beheaded or burned at the stake ? or both. Demons and witches did roam the land plying their craft whenever and wherever it suited their dark intentions. Their infrequent sightings gave fuel to the fear and subjegation of the villagers.
Much of this ancient warrior?s time was split between the far-off realm of Rhydin and his own medieval world. Each time he passed through the portals between his two realities, he wondered if it would be his last. Connar had loved and lost?though even as the images and thoughts of who and what he had lost flashed through his mind, he reasoned to himself that one cannot lose that which was never possessed in the first place ? though every soft breeze that caressed his skin would argue to the contrary.
Connar had replaced the unfamiliar emptiness inside with his work ? the cleansing of his world of the darkness that had followed him here from Rhydin?s shores. It was growing more difficult now, as his time and era was plunging deeper and deeper into darkness?the darkest of ages earth would ever know.
The whole of the region was swelling with chaos, coming under different rule for the third time in less than a decade, each successive conqueror more ruthless than the last. The people lived in fear of instant and harsh recrimination from the new land lords.
The fairest of the maidens were claimed by the new governors and magistrates of the land and treated as if their property. Those who refused to submit to their new masters were summarily charged, under the guise of witchcraft or demonic possession, and beheaded or burned at the stake ? or both. Demons and witches did roam the land plying their craft whenever and wherever it suited their dark intentions. Their infrequent sightings gave fuel to the fear and subjegation of the villagers.
Much of this ancient warrior?s time was split between the far-off realm of Rhydin and his own medieval world. Each time he passed through the portals between his two realities, he wondered if it would be his last. Connar had loved and lost?though even as the images and thoughts of who and what he had lost flashed through his mind, he reasoned to himself that one cannot lose that which was never possessed in the first place ? though every soft breeze that caressed his skin would argue to the contrary.
Connar had replaced the unfamiliar emptiness inside with his work ? the cleansing of his world of the darkness that had followed him here from Rhydin?s shores. It was growing more difficult now, as his time and era was plunging deeper and deeper into darkness?the darkest of ages earth would ever know.