0-A Prologue Starts Here

Our journey starts but three weeks south of the mountains of stone home, deep in the oaken forests painted a fiery crimson by the decay of early autumn.



In this forest a trail leads north, away from the greater cities and towns that littered mans country.



On this trail, several horse drawn wagons pushed forward into the evening. The wagons were by and large wooden with white cloth sheets stretched over thin wooden frames. The wheels clicked against the rocky trail and the frames of the wagons groaned with the occasion shift of weight either due to a turn or an overly obnoxious bump in the road.



The horses, the truly broken beasts that they were, kept steady pace and didn't complain. Many wagons where pulled by no more than two horses, all full grown with a thick coat about them.



What of the contents if these wagons? For the most part these wagons were filled with produce, wheat being by far the most popular. But aside from that, many of these wagons contained people: a family looking for a new

h start; a craftsman looking for fresh business; and a couple miscellaneous travelers.

In all cases these people sought cheap passage north and got their moneys worth.



These people didn't talk to each other and many parties resided in separate wagons, moreso by chance than design, and so this journey was a quiet one for all but an unfortunate few.



As the evening sky grew dark, the leader of this company. A self-proclaimed captain by the name if Regis pulled on the rains in his coppery hands and stirs his wagon off of the trail into a clearing in the woods.

The second wagons driver followed suit, passing down a quick and audible whistle as a signal to the following driver behind him.



And so all the wagons filed into the clearing, forming a crescent shape that opened up to the side closest to the trail the company had just left.



Captain Regis was the first off his wagon, the first to remove his horses from the series of straps that binded them and the first to tie the horses to a wooden prong him dug into the ground. His men followed suit.



When the horses were tended to the men allowed their passengers to leave the wagons while the hired hands dug up a hole and started a campfire in it.



The passengers set up their own tents as directed by the hired hands. This isn't to say that they didn't know how to set up a tent, only that captain Regis ran a tight ship (so to speak) and insisted on a very particular placement for each tent.



The tents meant to house people occupied on side of the camp, keeping strictly inside the area inside the formation of wagons. The other side of the camp was occupied by the horses and two rather large tents one containing provisions while the other contained produce to be sold. Both would be guarded day and night.



As the night started to take hold the captain called out, "Henry boy," and so a mild hired hand approached the captain.



The captain was a large man, tanned and athletically built. Despite his age and occupation captain Regis had a full head of mahogany hair, a well groomed beard and sharp brown eyes.



Many of his men respected captain Regis and Henry, the youngest of the company, was no different.



"I want you on first watch covering the eastern side, Keith and Charles and Anderson will be covering the other three so consult them before raising the alarm." Henry looked on, disappointed, as his captain left him with these words.



After all this time I'm still not trusted, the young man thought to himself.



With that thought Henry redoubled his resolve to pull his own weight. Before heading to his post he rushed over to his tent, one he shared with three over hired hands, and retrieved a standard iron short sword and an fresh oil lantern.



The young man walked to the end of the camp that was farthest from the road. As the young man passed the threshold created by the wagons, he unsheathed his short sword and raised up his lantern.

"I'll be the best watchmen- no sentinel." Henry beamed. The word sentinel rolled of his tongue with significant emphasis, in his mind he constructed a lionized image of himself.



As the night progressed, this imaged vision of Henry fought monstrous creatures, saved beautiful damsels and earned respect from his peers.



The creatures Henry imagined were the most sinister of demons, the kind with purple skin, red eyes and a host of twisted horns. Henry had grown up on tales of such monsters and the misfortune they bring.



The damsel Henry imagined saving, was a girl he had met on this very journey. She was the eldest daughter of the family who traveled with the company. Henry the better part of this journey, committing the girls features to memory. Everything from her rosy cheeks to flowing brown locks to the- Henry would stop himself there, knowing better than to think such inappropriate thoughts. If only he knew her name, if only he had the heart to talk to her.



In his mind, despite evidence to the contrary, he imagined her to be beyond his reach.



On occasion Henry would break from his woeful thoughts and imagined triumph. He would raise his lantern and peer into the forest convinced that a noise had drawn his attention.



The sound wasn't one he recognised, and one he didn't attribute to the forest or the beasts that inhabited it. The result was equal parts fear and disbelief. This was the sound of chatter, a chorus of whispering voices that seemed to reach Henrys ears whenever the wind allowed.



On the fourth occurrence, Henry wasn't content with a simple look and wandered away from the wagon, stepping over the root of a tree and squeezing between two bushes. When Henry came out the other side he hardly had time to register his situation before someone rushed into the circle of light cast by the lantern. The figure reached out with a retched hand, clasping round Henrys mouth.



Henry yelped in shock, but the sound was muffled. Then the hand held tighter, so tight it was unbearable. Henry dropped his sword and lantern and tore at the strangers arm with his nails. Then it started to lift him, without straining the strange thing held Henry up, Henrys salty tears obscured his vision.



If he could see. He would see a smile. The stranger in question was draped in dark attire and in the dim light left by the discarded lantern, its features were indiscernible by the human eye. All that Henry was sure of was that it was large and that its hands were hot, its fingers long enough to almost meet around the back of Henry's head and its nails were painfully sharp.



And finally, with frightful ease, the stranger reeled back the hand that held Henry and that smacked it against a tree.



Henrys skull crumbled under the force of the blow. Blood and brains spilled from the cracks as everything that made up Henry was violently extinguished leaving only his limp body.



But the stranger did not stop. It kept bashing Henrys skull in. It acted as if everything Henry was, all the hopes and dreams, the insecurities and short comings, was a personal insult to everything it was.