The Spirit Guardian

Prologue

# This story is complete but is still being edited, Including proof reading, grammar and spelling checks, and is now onto its fourth draft, taking all constructive criticism into consideration. Please keep that in mind. Thank you and I hope you enjoy #

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Quzenth was once a land rich with power, ripe with magic and seeming with prosperity. It had seen many wars that had settled with alliances and royal marriages with the promise of fertility and gold. But now it sat unbalanced under the azure sky with stars hiding from evil eyes, with wrong doers controlling what is left of a once powerful land and people whom are now otherwise unnoticed trying to put things right. To the average man, a farmer or a baker, and their wives and children, nothing was ever different,  for the stories of magic were fables and legend. But everything was going to change, it needed to change for Quzenth was falling. Falling into the darkness and at the grips of the wrong soul.

A hooded figure loomed watchfully in the gaping mouth of a cave, which the light scarcely illuminated. Its black cloak ran along the rocky ground like seeping black ink. Two more cloaked figures joined the first, and they stood together in the opening.

The first figure carefully lowered its hood to reveal a man with silver hair, a beard and moustache to match. The other figures followed the man into the forest and also lowered their hoods, revealing two women. Their cloaks dragged along the blanket of pine needles and sticks atop the forest floor. The sun was setting beneath a cloudless crimson sky that night. Pine trees stretched in every direction, stabbing the distant horizon.

"Do you believe she will arrive?" The tallest woman of the two asked, glancing at the silver-haired man, his height much shorter than both women. He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.

"We can simply hope Aurea. She knows she must, it is her duty after all," the man replied, crossing his arms and smiling then turning to face the other woman who had sighed at his response as if irritated at the absence of certainty. She rolled her eyes and tugged at her cloak, attempting to free it from the pine needles attached.

"Perhaps she will apologise for her actions," the woman suggested, her brows furrowed. The man laughed lightly back at her, he knew she wouldn't do such a thing.

"She's too proud and you know it." 

Aurea wrapped her hair around her fingers, her straight long locks were as auburn as the first fallen leaf of autumn and complimented her hazel eyes. She studied the sky curiously, though before clear, she held out her hand catching small delicate rain drops, noticing a grey cloud advancing from above the trees nearby. Rain dribbled down gently and they all turned to watch as a hooded figure approached them from between the tree trunks and paused before them all.

"Have you brought it?" the man asked in barely a whisper. The woman gave him a blank look. Her eyes were black like the deepest onyx, and a thick scar was carved down her cheek. From her cloak, she revealed a dark blue velvet pouch. The others all inched closer to take a look.

"We will need to do this quickly, before it becomes dark, we cannot trust the dark" Aurea urged, soft, delicate freckles which decorated her golden skin were more noticeable than ever as the last of the day light flickered through the trees and beamed on them. The third woman nodded and pried open the pouch. Inside was a semi-transparent stone, radiating a pale glow. It was almost perfectly rectangular and only around three inches wide. She delicately placed it in the palm of her hand and held her arm out.

The man turned to the smallest of the women, who was slim and pixie-faced. "Fawn, are you ready?"

She smiled sweetly and placed her hand on the stone. The tall woman then did the same, and eventually, so did the old man. Muttering under her breath, her words dripped in magic and with each word she cried out louder and stronger.