She Who Turned Back The Dark

She Who Turned Back The Dark

                Blood dripped onto the page; drop, after drop, after drop. Yet still the writer worked, ignoring grave wounds that should have seen them dead. A quill pen scratching words with pitch black ink, forming a darker still message of vengeance and hate.
                A line had been crossed, a queen had been slain. A nation – no, a last hope – broken, now no more than a whispered word. Was it a mistake made by the author of the note? Was it a mistake made by the queen herself? Or was it just the natural order of things, just fate, that what could have been – so great, so pure – was never to be?
                A chill breeze flowed into the room from the window; the candles quivered, flickering. Some faltered, extinguished, but the writer did not notice. Finishing the page, he signed it with a flourish. It was only then that he seemed to come, at last, back to the world. To hear the pounding that hammered against the door, the highest door in the castle.
                The door to his chamber, he who was the honoured artist given the duty of looking out upon the kingdom from up high. To draw it each day was his duty, and he had for many years. Until, in the night, they came. He had scarce glimpsed them, and did not know if they were men. But he had heard the screams, seen the bodies. From up high he had drawn a final work, and written a final note; warning any who would come after.
                The door was knocked inwards, and they came at him. He screamed, but even as he died, he did not recognise them. He did not know why they came that day; why they slew his queen, and all her people. But alone amongst those killed, his spirit remained, held by a desire for vengeance.

                It was years before others came. They were explorers from a far off land, searching for treasure in a new found land. They found the castle, the long rotted town. They found the page left behind, and learnt of the danger. They found the remnant of the artist, and sent him on to whatever awaited him.
                Yet they stayed. They built a new nation, one that covered all the land. But the darkness came again.
                Time and time again the land – and the warning – would be found. Nations would be founded and become prosperous, their people happy. Then the darkness would swallow them all. Endlessly the land would be forgotten, and the cycle would repeat again.

                Then she came. Dytja Blueblood; already a veteran of thousands of battles, hero of a hundred lands. When the darkness came, she stood stalwart. She fought against it. It reached for her, but could not grasp her. In the end, the darkness fled, wounded so terribly that when she found it – cowering in the darkest, deepest part of the land – she slew it.
                So it came to be that on a once-cursed island, surrounded by vast and terrible seas, Dytja is known as ‘She who turned back The Dark’.