PART ONE

Petra stared out at what had become her homeland. The battle hadn’t left anything left alive in its path; nothing that would live very much longer, anyways. In the ten minutes after the Black Rebel Soldiers passed through, people crying out in pain rang out through her little valley of Endenthron. The trees were all black and burnt. The fires would burn for days. There had been rumors that the rebels only let one live, after their raids. But Petra swore she’d find somebody else who’d survived.

                Nobody knew what the Rebels were fighting for.  For the past two-hundred and fifty years, things had been peaceful, serene, even.  Then suddenly, all over the great kingdom, stories of villages burned down by people in black began to spread. Only one thing was consistent. After each raid one was left to live. At first, these people were thought to be in league with the Black soldiers.  Every time they tried to meet, they had died untimely deaths. A girl, only ten or twelve years old from the village of Lariat left the village to meet with another survivor she’d been corresponding with about the several raids her one village had come by, and she was brutally murdered.

                Things were uneasy in the Kingdom because of this. The king hadn’t been seen publicly for over two months.  Petra was unsure of how she was going to manage it, but she’d find out just what these ­Black Rebels wanted and stop them. She had nothing left to loose. In fact, the only thing she had was a friend in a neighboring city, the city of Glarch. And that was sixty miles away. She set out.

                Four or five hours in, exhausted from the battle, four hours of walking and little food and water that day, and suffering from dehydration, she stopped at a spring. Before she could drink from it a large flying ant bit her on the shoulder. “Ouch!”

                “I’m sorry. Ha. No I’m really not. But you can’t drink that water. It’ll kill you, if you drink it.” Petra couldn’t see the voice, but she definitely heard it. It was as if somebody were speaking directly in her ear. Reflexively, she reached up and rubbed her ear. “Watch it!”