A mere trace of insanity. A shadow of my past that falls and lies before me. My name, my grace, my apearance…it was all gone long ago. Dont you see?”

swords clash, a break in conversation. The two adversaries stare at eachother as the rustling wind reminds them of the present situation.

“No! I do not see. So please master, by all means inform me!”

A slight chuckle, the sarcasm was taken maybe too seriously. He had seen this look on his masters face once before. And so, with a clash their swords met, acompanied by a clap of thunder that seemed to linger in his ear.

“Ah! You see! You’ve upset Them now, Phinious.”

With another clash of the sword, the young man swiftly brought his master to his knees. Leaning closely he whispered the words he had so longed to speak.

“You see master, I never believed in your power. I’ve never heard your voices, and you will never scare me into your will again.”

And with that the battle ended. Oh how he enjoyed the feeling of the blade as it ran across his old masters neck. An ouce of joy began to settle in his heart; he was free. But just as good feelings are often acompanied by bad, a cold shiver swept down his spine. What was this, this sound he was now hearing. Whispers, voices. It couldn’t be them.

“Oh, but it is.”

The soft, beutiful sounding voice now wrang in his ears.

“It is We whom gave your master his power, but why have you killed him? whom shall do our bidding? Come. We will make you powerful in the arts of old, just as your master was.”

Phinious was young. The ripe age of nineteen. Born into slavery, but now he could have power. This temptation is that which the strongest of men could not turn down.

“Yes, thats it. We will take care of you now. You will worry no longer.”

            Ananious awoke early that morning. This wasn’t an abnormal thing, but this morning it was the sounds coming from inside the city walls that roused him. He was a young man, about in his twenty’s. He tended his fathers goat herd every morning early. He lived in a small cottage that rested alongside the road of the forefathers, a road paved with large timber that stretched from Kapeth, in the south, to Rhamadin Alpha in the north, the capitol of Rhamadin, the kingdom that encompassed the known world.