The Crystal Empire Preview 3

Introduction

For your reading pleasure is an early look into an early chapter of The Crystal Empire, my upcoming epic fantasy project. It is a rought draft, and things will likely change between this and the published version.

Kinro 1

Kinro, hunter of the Hawk tribe wished he could be anybody else. Their tribe had once been a noble group that had lived in harmony with the others of the Fringe, but Kinro’s father had ambitions for glory and gold that tradition could not satisfy. So when mother died, his father turned them into bandits, then raiders, terrorizing the other tribes across the Fringe until they simply had offerings ready for him to take when he and his men would ride up to their little villages. Until that bored him.

Now, at the behest of a stranger from the other side of the Crystal Wall, they had become hunters. At first, Kinro had thought this might have changed his father’s ways, but Kirin soon proved that nothing could be further from the truth.

“Put them over there with the others!” Kirin shouted to two of the men who were marching a group of women in ripped dresses out from another part of the village, pointing with one arm. Some of those women looked younger then Kinro was.

Not far away, a group of men, stripped naked were being forced to dig. The two who had crystals were allowed to use them, but the rest who didn’t were forced to claw at the dirt with their hands. Men from the Hawk tribe stood, crystals ready, to beat down any of the scrawny shepherds who tried to resist or to run away. The guards led the women past the working men, probably their husbands or fathers or brothers, and into the improvised pen made from upturned carts between the village’s sad little buildings with the rest of the women and children. They had been deathly silent after Kral had beaten one of the crying children, leaving their broken and bloody body in the dirt for them all to see. And father had just stood there, watching with a satisfied smirk.

Kinro gripped his amber-colored crystal in his left hand, silently cursing himself as light flared within it. He had just stood by, too weak to do anything, too weak to stop it, afraid of…

“Kinro,” Kirin said fondly, which in his low, gravelly voice sounded more to his son like a threat. It didn’t help that the string of stolen crystals he wore across the chest of his black leather armor looked like the horrible fangs of some nightmare creature. His foot rested on a melon-sized crystal of white and orange and blue, these people’s HeartCrystal. “Do a sweep of the village and round up any stragglers. It’s time we get going.”

Kinro nodded, and set off to his task, grateful for the chance to escape his father’s presence. He didn’t truly relax, but he had learned long ago that bad things happened to those who let their guards down around Kirin. He watched over his shoulder for his father, but the man seemed more focused on one of the women they had captured. Kinro turned the corner disgusted.

He passed another pair of Hawk men leading a young man and woman about Kinro’s age to the pens with the rest of them. They nodded to him as they passed and he felt a flush of shame. Things would have never gotten like this if mother was still around.

There weren’t many buildings in the village, little more than six huts surrounding a larger hall where they usually kept their precious HeartCrystal. The first two he checked had already been ransacked, every scrap of furniture and pottery smashed and scattered on the floor. The third building wasn’t even standing, toppled in the fighting by a passing graybeast.

In the fourth he found a simple stuffed doll laying atop a cupboard. Kinro picked it up, inspecting it. It was made from rough cloth, with nothing more than thread to mark out the doll’s eyes and happy, smiling mouth. It reminded him of a toy he’d played with once, long ago. It seemed like a shame to leave it behind.

As he unslung his pack and slipped the doll inside, there was a creaking sound from a nearby door on the other side of the hut that had not been smashed. It was a distinct sound among the shouting and smashing taking place outside. Kinro looked up to see the door close shut, creaking again, and he quickly stepped across the room.

He reached for the golden light already pooled in his crystal and grabbed hold of the door with his will and pulled it open and dislodging it from its place. Inside a child gasped in shock.

Kinro found a young boy, maybe ten years old sitting in the corner one hand over his mouth and one hand trying to cover his face, perhaps believing that if he couldn’t see Kinro, Kinro couldn’t see him. He was a thin boy and had a mop of black hair that stuck up in the back. Just about the last thing Kinro had wanted to find.

Kinro sighed, and crouched down next to the boy, offering up the doll.

“You need to run,” Kinro told him when the boy looked up, snatching the doll out of his hands.

The boy shook his head. “Mommy said to wait. She’ll get me when it is safe.”

Kinro looked the boy in his brown eyes.

“It won’t be safe again unless you run,” Kinro tried to explain. “Your mommy won’t be able to help you. You have to get away.”

The boy scowled at him.

“No,” the boy said. “You’re going to hurt me if I leave.”

“I’m trying to help you,” Kinro hissed. He didn’t have time for this. “I promise, I’m helping you. Run, escape. I will look the other way.”

The boy sat for a moment in thought while Kinro listened for the sound of any approaching men from his own tribe. In the distance, a woman’s scream cut through the din.

“What about mommy?” the boy asked finally.

“Avenge her,” Kinro said. “You’ll never get the chance if you don’t go now.”

The boy nodded and stood, joining Kinro at the door to his hut. Kinro pointed towards the jungle.

“That way, go!”

The boy ran for the woods faster than Kinro would have believed, and soon was out of sight.

He checked through the fifth, then sixth houses and was grateful to find nothing. As he searched, his thoughts were with the little boy, hoping that he would find his way someplace safe, somewhere he could live.

Kinro almost cried out in shock, then, when he returned to his father to see the little boy being led past by the arm.

“Seems you missed one, son,” Kirin chuckled. “You should be more thorough next time.”

“I will, father,” Kinro said reflexively, all emotion drained from the words.

The pit had grown deep enough now that the men’s chests were below the ground as Kirin approached, inspecting their work. To Kinro, it looked like a big hole in the ground.

Kirin cleared his throat.

“You all have one chance to tell me what I want to know,” Kirin started. “There was a man that came through here, tall with dark hair and gray eyes. I need to know which way he went from here.”

The men and women of the village all looked back and forth in blank stares. One man stepped forward gesturing to another man who lay still on the ground.

“The man passed through here, sure, but only Jeb dealt with him, or knew where he might have been going.”

Kirin sighed, and light began to build in the coal-black crystal that hung at the bottom of his bandolier of crystals at his hip, turning it from an orange so burnt it was nearly black into a bright and hot like a coal in a heated forge.

“Is that so?” Kirin asked aloud, scanning the gathered villagers. “Nobody else knew anything?”

Kinro’s eyes found the little boy, who had been thrown into the pen with the other women and children, and their gazes met. The boy seemed to have a question, and Kinro gave him a subtle nod. If he had any information that could help Kirin, it would be better for everyone.

“He went Rimward-“ the boy started before a woman clapped her hand over his mouth.

“Let the boy speak,” Kirin ordered, and two of the Hawks moved towards the woman.

“He went to the Old Hills,” the boy gasped, once the woman’s hand was removed. “He said he was looking for a crystal.”

Kirin grinned a wicked, predatory grin.

“Thank you, young one,” Kirin said. “See how easy that was? Now I don’t have to do anything drastic.”

He nodded to Kral, his right-hand man, who shouted to the men.

“Now!”

Hawk tribe men pushed the carts in closer, forcing the women and children into the put they had been forcing the men to dig.

“Father,” Kinro started, but Kirin held up a hand.

“You’re too soft, boy. This is for you as much as it is for them.”

Women and children cried as they were pushed into the pit, and men scrambled to climb their way out, to fight, only to be shoved back by members of the Hawk tribe. In a matter of moments, the entire village was in the pit, screaming villages given barely enough room to stand on their own.

Kirin’s forge-coal crystal flashed, and a continuous jet of flame rushed out from it into the pit below, sweeping through the gathered men and women and setting them ablaze. Their screams died in their mouths as flames choked out their last breaths, immolating the entire village in yet another hellish scene to haunt Kinro and remind him of his failure to save anyone.

Want to read more? Check out the next Crystal Empire Preview Chapter