Excerpt: Riverborn

Those to suffer even a worst fate than the peasants were the gypsies. Largely a nomadic people, the king would not tolerate their 'devilry' within his borders. Any bands of gypsies encountered by his men were left at the mercy of those who found them. While the larger population of the land hadn't even the slightest idea as to what was going on, they had their own concerns to contend with. If the gypsies fell into ill graces with royalty, who were they to say anything? As with the gypsies, anyone who behaved in an 'aberrant' fashion were similarly dealt with silently. The king would have no one stepping outside of the law while he sat on the throne.

It was during these dark days that the sky was torn asunder. It would have gone witnessed only from a great distance by farmers and their kin, but a family of wolves was passing through the area when the sky started spitting smoke and green flame. A horrible screaming sound rent the air, causing the wolves to panic and scatter, which was almost totally contrary to their thousands of years old survival instincts. This particular family had been passing through the mountains, where the birthplace of the greatest river in the world tumbled down to water the thousands of farms in the kingdom below and support the life that depended so much upon it. What came screeching out of the sky and out of green flames and smoke was something the likes of which no one on that planet had ever seen before. A blackly metallic craft, four times as large as the largest, most luxurious house, encircled with a glowing rainbow halo that flared all the colors of the spectrum and then some as the craft careened towards earth. But the wolves had no sense of these dangerous alien beauties as they fled to the cover of the crags. Only one stopped in her blind flight into the snowy mountains to witness the impact of the craft along the shore of the source of the river.