The Tale of Heorogar

Being the first part of THE PENDANT CYCLE

BY POLLUX

I

See. The great eras are coming to an end; the old knights and the old kings are sliding their blades to their scabbards and withering away under their bedcovers. Acrid fog that stings the eyes has crept in from distant lands, and what traditions the people still cling to are slipping away, beyond memory. In Hyldethrith, a small city of thatched roofs and wafting smoke pillars, nestled between two great verdant cliffs, a small island of humanity lays, the lands around it burning or smoldering from the breath of demons and their servants. The food, already coarse and stale, is slowly being ebbed away by the quiet survivors of the onslaught, who know not why fate has spared them from the carnage that has purged the surrounding lands of life. Their tradition, their speech, their thoughts, are declining, and the years pass by. See Hyldethrith, the last bastion of humanity.

From the ash came Heorogar.

A small boy spotted him while picking grass to eat on the top of one of the cliffs. Heorogar was a strong and tall man, his hair disheveled, body smudged with soot, clothes tattered and flying about wildly in the hot wind. He weaved through the tortured rents and canyons, toward the verdant, frowning cliffs, his hand shielding his eyes from the gas that stung and reddened them. By the time he reached the blackened town gate the survivors had already crowded behind its locked doors. An old and withered man wearing a brown tunic and a metal helmet stood above the gargantuan, wooden door on a thin walkway, his bodyweight leaning on a rusted sword.

"Who goes thel?" he shouted, his voice cracked and dry.

"Heorogar, Knight of Gadden," came the reply, "only to seek brief lodgings."

A pause. "Gadden…my mind may be glowing lessel, but still, aye 'ave heard naught o' such a place, en any fable 'r map 'r mention. How came you heel?"

"Don't know," said Heorogar, looking up to the old man and smiling, "don't know where I am or how came I here."

"I saw him!" shouted the thin child, from behind the gate, "he was wandering the ashes, he came right toward us he did! I saw him!"

"Folgive me fel no' believing you, Sil' Helogaul," said the old man, lifting his cap from his brow, "'aye shall ask again: how came you heel?"

"I only remember falling asleep in Gadden. The night was cold, everything was as normal as it could be…and then, I was at your gate. Please, let me in. I have no weapons, and I would do you no harm. What could it gain me?"

"We 'ave li'le food ta spail…oul stomachs al full o' glass, tha es all. We 'ave plen'y o' space, though, tha's one thing we seem only ta gain, as the yeals go by…"

"Please, let me in, then we may speak of what has befallen these lands!"

The withered man nodded and the gate was opened. Heorogar stepped through, and his eyes met the village they told him was called Hyldethrith. It was a step up from the venomous miasmas that wafted about in the greater beyond, but hardly one at that. Its homes were falling into disrepair, its people so thin and tired they could barely stand.