Excerpt: Like Stars Without End

A full moon shone in the sky, which was, that night, a spread of black velvet dotted with stars whose light ranged from twinkling bluish-white to steady, faint, hues of red. Drifting down from the heavens, the celestial glow mixed with a growing fog to produce an eerie, eldritch glow which spread across the entire clearing, ending only at the ring of trees whose foliage blocked the passage of light.

At the center of the clearing was the tower. Its twisting, elegant walls of marble, unbroken by buttresses or balconies gave it the appearance of a singular skeletal finger, thrust out from an ancient deceased whose breath was returning in deathly clouds, evidenced by the starlit mist.

Sprawled out around the clearing, under the constant, baleful sway of the tower’s presence was a town. Its houses, of which many were shanties and roofless constructs that could barely wear the term, were plunged in a half-dark glow. The light of torches struggled against the tendrils of mist that surrounded them, compressing into soft spheres of orange, yellow and red.

Beneath the eaves of a mildewed cottage of oak and rowan, gazing out a window, waited a pair clad in black. One of them was a man whose stern countenance and piercing gaze were somewhat oddly set in a fresh and youthful face barely entering true manhood. Nonetheless, his bearing and composure spoke of the maturity and confidence he held within his soul. He faced the tower, black hair swaying in the wind, hands on the hilts of two shortswords. His companion’s visage was shadowed by a black hood. Her mouth was held in anxiety and her pink-irised eyes darted from tower to sky to floor at irregular intervals. Her hands rested less surely upon the hilt of a long, slightly curved two-handed sword of Ayyojin style that was almost a signature in Sevarian lands.

Aside from those two, no people walked the streets of the town. If any were awake, they had the sense –if not the fear –to stay indoors during these most witching hours of the dark. All in good fortune for the two who waited.

The young man placed his hand on his companion’s and said, just softly enough, “It is time, Cherry.”