At the drop-off, the tall cloaked man stood at the edge of the rocky cliff. He stood taller than any man Indrid had ever seen. As general and aspiring leader, Indrid knew he had to be brave and dismount. He was the one in charge.
Gripping the handle of his Graleon sword, he began his approach towards the cloaked man. He swallowed hard. The man didn’t look anything like an ordinary mage or anything he had ever encountered in battle. With each step, Indrid struggled to keep his composure. The man’s gown waved gently in the wind as if it were enjoying the breeze. A silver emblem of five assembled circles hung from his collar. And beneath the darkness of his hood were glowing green eyes.
“Who are you?” Indrid asked. He had no idea who or what this man was, but he didn’t respond. “I am General Indrid Cole. And these are Ikarus soldiers,” he said. “We are here to take you into custody. You are accused of assaulting two people of the Ikarus kingdom; one being the speaker of the council. The king demands your presence,” Indrid said. He waited briefly for some kind of response from the shadow, a gesture or something, but the man did nothing but stare back at Indrid. “There is nowhere to run. You’re surrounded,” Indrid said.
The rest of the Ikarus guards dismounted. Indrid moved in with two men at his sides and three behind him, unraveling rope to tie the suspect’s wrists. With each step Indrid made toward the towering man, the man took one step back and stopped when his foot reached the edge of the drop-off.
When the figure leaned back and spread out his arms, Indrid lunged for a piece of his cloak, but his hand passed through the transparent fabric. Losing his balance, the momentum pulled Indrid over the cliff following the cloaked man’s descent.
The cold wind numbed Indrid’s senses as he fell. He reached out for something, anything, to grab, but his body twisted and he was falling too fast.
At the bottom of the fall, Indrid smashed through the ice that covered the lake below. Swallowing his body heat, the freezing water made Indrid’s muscles cramp almost instantly. His custom-made Graleon armor was too heavy to swim against its weight. Indrid sank. Numb, he barely felt his boots hit the gravel bottom.
Through the frozen darkness, a form began to take shape before his eyes. It must be death itself coming to take me, he thought. Then the shape morphed into a man. Indrid was certain that he was dead when he saw his stepbrother, Rayne Volpi, offering him his hand.
THE IKARUS army tramped down the slopes of the cliff as fast as they could, tripping over their own feet to the general’s rescue. But by the time they finally reached the frozen shore, there was no sign of Indrid. The surface of the water in the hole that Indrid had made, crashing through the ice, was still.
After minutes, the glassy surface began to ripple. A brilliant green light blasted up and out of the lake. In its trail, a black mass sprang out of the water and hovered across the ice to dry land. It dropped Indrid in the high grass before shaping into the cloaked man before the soldiers’ eyes.
The man stood above Indrid’s motionless body. He clapped his hands and began to place them on the general’s chest before an officer snapped and yelled, “Get away from him!”
The guards lifted their swords and pointed their arrows then began their charge. But as the cloaked man held out his hand the entire army stood motionless in their boots. They couldn’t move if they tried.
Without opposition the cloaked man placed his palm against Indrid’s chest and the pale blue color that Indrid had turned became rosy once again. The man then stepped away and evaporated, rising into the sky.
Indrid suddenly popped up and spit out water. “Rayne!” he cried.
“General!” Indrid’s first officer shouted. He ran over to Indrid and knelt by his side. “General Cole. The man—the cloaked man saved you.”
INDRID RETURNED to the kingdom after failing to capture the cloaked man. The hallway leading to the throne room was infested with spiders, scattering across the floor.
The door creaked open. It was hard to push as if the hinges were so rusty they’d bonded together, eliminating the ability to swing freely. No one had visited the throne room in years, nor were they allowed to. It became the king’s retreat. Once a riveting place to award high honors, receive Graleon and Mernish ambassadors, or host small ceremonies, it was now an unkempt house, dirty and barren. There were slices through gold-framed portraits of past Volpi kings and queens. The purple drapery of the canopy that hung above the ivory throne was dusty and torn. The room felt just as cold as the water that had almost taken Indrid’s life.
King Alexandal sat at a long, oak table and stared at the royal courtyard through stained-glass windows, a faint blue glow coloring the room from the moons’ light. There were mutilated carcasses spread across the table; torn pieces of dead animals still covered with furs and skins. Indrid could hear Alexandal biting and ripping through the raw, dripping meat.
No cook would ever serve a king in this way, and no sane king would ever eat in this way. Alexandal was getting worse by the day, acting more and more like a wild beast. Indrid believed that Montague was investigating the king’s behavior. Montague had told him that Alexandal was suffering from an infection in his brain that
