Wow. I'm actually doing this.

So I've been working on this story for ages and basically filled a whole exercise book with world building stuff, but I'm getting so frustrated at the actual writing the story part. I decided I needed to just post the bits I'd actually written. So here's the first few thousand words of the mega story that's been kicking my ass for around a year now.


Isa stood beside his father, his heart beat in his ears, his sword in his sweat slick hand. Outside, the clashing of metal against metal could be heard, the clang of shields and the smash toppling statues. The thump of toppling bodies. Shouting. Screams.

But inside the king's throne room, behind the heavy, locked doors, there was silence.

Isa's breath seemed uncommonly loud to his own ears, and he wondered if it sounded as loud to his father, standing a foot to his left. His father hadn't drawn his sword yet. He appeared calm. He looked more still in this moment then Isa could remember seeing him be in a very long time. He was so used to his fathers constant restlessness, that he wondered his calm now, in this situation, with rebel soldiers on just the other side of that wide, wooden door, fighting their way in for the personal privilege of being able to say they'd slain the king.

Isa wondered whether this was where his father felt most comfortable; in expectation of a battle, with the thrill of a fight and possible death pumping through his body. An old teacher had once told Isa that some soldiers got addicted to it, that thrill. That they went looking for fights even when fighting wasn't needed. All it was doing to Isa was making him sweat to the point of feeling over heated - he wanted to take his coat off but didn't dare less the soldiers burst in while he was in the middle of it and find him caught up in his own coat tails - and make his hearing seem overly pronounced. His father did have a lot more experience with battle and killing then he did though. He'd heard the stories of how his father had made himself king; secreting himself into the castle to duel and kill the then king and his queen. It was a story told over and over by commoners and high class alike over feasts and happy gatherings, back when the people had loved the king.

Now though, now they had the rebel soldiers of an unhappy satrapy whose demands had gone un appeased for too long ramming something heavy into the doors before them, each hit making a loud bang and the doors shake on their hinges.

Blood was slowly spreading through the crack under the door.

A hand grabbed Isa by the shoulder making him yelp in shock. His father pulled him close, so his mouth was near his ear and started speaking to him, his voice urgent.

"Before this happens, there are things you have to know. About you and your sister. Oh mercy, your sister. I don't know what's going to happen to her, or you, after I'm gone. But mainly about your mother. My Queen, always my Queen, no matter the blows this earth seems determined to hand me. You need to listen to me Isa this is important. I'm not crazy Isa. All those things I said about her, they're all true. It is so important that you believe me Isa. I know I should have taken the time to explain things to you and make you understand what's happening. I probably should have told you, everything. Maybe. I'm not sure and it's too late now. On guard"

As suddenly as he'd pulled him towards him, he pushed him away, facing the door, taking a fighter's stance and drawing his sword, just as the doors burst open with a loud CRACK that was drawn out by the roar from the soldiers, who charged in like an avalanche, their footsteps spreading the taint of fresh blood across the clean floor.

Isa backed away from the flood of blood soaked men, trying to stave of the compulsion to run, telling himself that princes and heirs to kingdoms, and MEN did not run. A soldier was suddenly in front of him, sword cutting towards him, and following his tutoring, Isa blocked the blow with his own sword and followed with a counter strike, their swords clashed three times before Isa made an error and felt the soldier's sword slash across his stomach. Isa staggered backwards slashing with his sword. Though he wasn't sure where, or even IF he'd cut the man, the soldier dropped like a stone. Isa continued to stagger backwards and was caught by two strong arms from behind. Isa kicked out and attempted to free himself. The arms tightened around him and he found himself pressed tight against the solid form behind him, holsters and armour digging in to him, the angle stretching the cut across his abdomen, which was pouring out blood.

Soldiers charged past them both as though they were invisible. Isa continued to struggle and panic; Then his eyes caught hold of a sight that froze him.

He watched as his father got pushed back until he was against a wall with no where to go, fighting multiple soldiers at once, surrounded. He managed to break through one of their defences, driving through a rebel soldier with his sword. As he reclaimed his sword from the body, the soldier beside his dead comrade took advantage of the new opening, and drove his sword through the unarmoured flesh of the kings armpit, slicing through his ribs and skewering his heart. Isa screamed, yet no one seemed to hear him but the man holding him. His grip became tighter, painfully constricting until it felt like he was crushing Isa's rib cage and one hand came up to yank Isa's head back by his hair. He started muttering in Isa's ear, words he couldn't distinguish, his brain muddled by pain, and fear, and shock and complete refusal to believe what his eyes were still showing him, his father, collapsed in an ungainly heap in a quickly spreading pool of blood, to match the pools in the hallway, and the bright red footsteps leading to the throne where his killer had claimed his crown amidst the shouts and cries of his comrades. And then everything went black.

***


The floor rocked beneath him. Isa's eyes cracked open blearily to see dark wood. Isa tracked his gaze upwards until the wood gave way to blue; sky, sky as far he could see, his view of it thinning and widening as the surface he laid on rocked back and forth. His stomach curled and lurched with the rolling motion of the wood. His gaze dropped sideways until his blurry view of never ending sky was blocked by a large shape. Isa blinked his eyes until the shape resolved itself into a man, blinked more until he could determine from his crooked nose and short cut hair and the scars stretching across his face that he didn't know the man. He blinked again and took in the man's appearance. His clothes were so covered in blood it took Isa a moment to see the style of his dress; or that, Isa noticed, panicking, it was the same that had been worn by the invading soldiers. Isa struggled to sit up, and the unfamiliar, blood covered man turned towards him at his sudden movement. The man's eye's met his at the same time searing agony pierced through his belly, turning his vision white.

***

The second time Isa woke, he made an effort to stay as still as possible, as equally conscious of the pain in his abdomen as he was of the man with him. The ground still rocked rhythmically beneath him. After a while of no response from the man, Isa risked slowly opening his eyes. He was once again met with the sight of wood. Staring at the wooden wall in front of him, still not daring to move, and listening to what sounded curiously like water sloshing against the walls of a very large bucket, it occurred to him that perhaps he was on a boat. He had been on a boat a few times with his sister when they were younger. They'd made the trip all the way down to the lake and a few of their servants and a handmaiden had taken them out on the boat, across the water, away from the shore. Isa hadn't been particularly fond of the experience. His little sister though, had loved it, kept commanding that they go deeper, further out and away from everyone else. She'd wanted to go to the very middle. Isa had hated it. The further out they went the more he had panicked, until they were so far away from the shore he felt like he couldn't breath. He hadn't wanted to say anything because his sister was having a good time. His sister was almost four years younger then him, and she wasn't panicking the way Isa was. Eventually one of the servants who'd taken them out noticed his plight and gently suggested that they should go back in. Isa spent the rest of the day unsure whether he was thankful to the man for taking them to shore, or angry at him for noticing his weakness.

Isa wondered how far out on the lake they were. He wondered what the man hoped to gain from bringing them out here. It briefly occurred to him that they could be just off the shore at the edge of the land, but he dismissed the thought immediately, partly out of the fear it gave him, and partly because he knew the water was rougher at the edge of the land, waves crashing into the beach and making the boats of the fishermen that braved them thrash around in a way that looked dangerously unstable from the shores where Isa had watched them. The water he was in now lapped softly at the boats sides, and for that, he was grateful.

"Are you thirsty?"

Isa tensed up at the words, the voice that carried them oddly accented and unfamiliar. An involuntary noise of pain escaped him at the way tensing made his stomach hurt. Two hands folded around his shoulders, making him tense more, the spike of pain intensifying. He resisted the attempts to pull him up from where he was lying on the floor, curling in on himself, feeling the spike of agony rip through his gut.

"Relax. Stop struggling. All you're doing is hurting yourself more."

After a moment of hesitation, Isa gave in to the pain and did what the man said, relaxing into his grip and letting himself be moved into a sitting position, shying away from the angles that pulled at the pain in his stomach. He wasn't let go until he was seated in a tolerable position, panting from the exertion of moving through the pain and gripping the edges of the boat with one hand to stop himself from swaying too much.

A scar roughened hand lifted Isa's shirt. The other hand gently prodded his bandaged torso. One of the hands was missing half a finger; Isa stared at it. He followed the line of the man's arm with his gaze, all the way up to his face. His blood stained clothes had been replaced with a clean tunic of a style that Isa was unfamiliar with. It had intraket stitching done across the seams in a way Isa had only ever seen on woman's clothing and royal robes. He had light coloured hair, and light coloured skin, the sort of colouring that was generally associated with the mountain dwellers to the West, and not the sun darkened skin of the people from the rebelling satrap to the North. Across the man's face was a scar. It started at the centre of his top lip and stretched diagonally across the man's left cheek, narrowly missing the corner of his eye and ending just past his hairline. The man's eyes met his and Isa looked away quickly.

Sitting on the floor like he was, the walls of the boat were too high to see over but he could see the blue sky above them, scattered sparingly with clouds. Isa felt sure they couldn't have been out here more then a day or someone would have already had found him.

The idea of not being found already was atrocious. The idea of travelling on a boat was atrocious. There was nowhere you could go by boat that you couldn't just as easily get to by land. Isa desperately wanted the scarred man in the odd clothes to stop touching him. He still had Isa's shirt lifted, exposing his chest and belly and Isa was scared and alone and in pain and he didn't know what to do. He'd never been in a situation like this before and he wasn't sure how he was supposed to be reacting. He wasn't even sure if he was supposed to be this man's prisoner or, he wondered as the man reapplied the bandaging to the gaping looking wound and Isa struggled not to cry out from the pain, whether this man was his rescuer.

The man had said nothing else since he started working on Isa's wound, and Isa was hesitant to break the silence. Leaning forward to wrap the bandage around Isa's stomach brought the man closer to him then Isa was comfortable with. He kept his eyes on the sky and breathed shallowly, both from the pain and his discomfort. With his proximity all Isa could smell was the man. He smelt of of sweat and dirt and salt and a metallic tang that Isa could only assume came from blood, but might have been something else. He stayed uncomfortably silent until the man finally moved back and then the words spilled out.

"Who are you?" Isa asked.

The man glanced at him then went back to wrapping the bandage. Isa thought he wouldn't get an answer at first, but the man finished wrapping the bandage and sat back.

"My name is Alston." He had a peculiar accent, not completely unfamiliar, as Isa was certain he'd heard it before, but unidentifiable. "Do you remember what happened?"

Isa blinked, unsure specifically what Alston was referring to. "There were people invading the castle. The army from a satrap to the North West. You- you were wearing their banners. I saw you."

Alston nodded. "I was. It was a disguise. I needed a way to get into the castle unnoticed."

"Why?" Isa asked.

"To get to you. What else do you remember?"

Isa thought back to being in the castle and the rebels coming in and suddenly the memory hit him like a punch in the gut. "My father. My father is dead."

"Yes he is." Alston told him calmly. "They killed him and they nearly succeeded in killing you too. They would have had I not gotten to you in time. By now the rebel army would probably have succeeded in taking the throne."

Isa absorbed this information and tried to make sense of it over the overwhelming images that were swamping his brain, of his father being skewered on a sword, over and over in his mind.

"Are you rescuing me?" He finally asked.

Alston seemed to hesitate before answering, "I'm taking you away."

***

A day and a night passed. Alston continued to tend Isa wound. He gave him water when he was thirsty and fed him cold meat and dry bread when he was hungry. Other then that their interaction was minimal. No one had come to find him.

It was during the afternoon of the second day when Isa first attempted standing. He got up slowly, one arm wrapped around his stomach while the other gripped the edge of the boat for support. His eyes were gritted shut from the effort of levering himself upright but Alston didn't try to help him which he was glad of.

He shuttered his eyes open slowly, waited for the head rush from standing up after so long lying down to pass, and then looked down at the water lapping at the side of the boat. Isa swallowed back the feeling of nausea that looking at all that water and knowing he was in it gave him. He looked outwards to see how far away the shoreline was.

He stared. He blinked hard. His breath was starting to feel short. He blinked again. He looked back down at where the water met the boat then looked back up slowly, following the blue water with his eyes, all the way out to where it just cut off. No land, no mass of green or brown, no shore. The blue of the water simply stopped and the blue of the sky started up directly after it. No gap, nothing to separate it, almost as if you could sail your boat straight up into the sky. Isa tried to tell himself not to panic. He told himself there would be land somewhere, he just had to look for it. Both his hands gripped the side of the boat as he turned in a circle his eyes tracing the line where the water met the sky.

His legs were shaking. He could feel it but it didn't seem important. He was surrounded by water. Absolutely, completely surrounded by water. There was no land, there was no safe harbour, there was no getting out. The water was everywhere. He was going to die. The water was going to swallow him, extinguish him and he was going to die. He kept turning turning, his breathing was erratic and there was hands taking hold of him, making him stop. Alston had a hold of him and he wanted lash out but he was terrified of falling overboard into the cold, watery depths so he did the only thing he could think to do and stopped struggling. He dropped to the floor of the boat like a stone. It was better, now that he couldn't see it (all of it all that water never ending), but he still knew it was there. He felt light headed and queasy. Alston crouched in front of him. He reached as if to touch Isa again, but stopped before he did.

"Would it be reasonable of me to assume that you're not a fan of the ocean?"

Isa tried to focus on slowing his breathing.

"You're going to be getting used to it, 'cause were going to be out here for a while."

"Are you trying to kill us?"

"Of course not," Alston said indignantly. "If I was, I wouldn't have waited for you to wake up."

Isa's mind tried deal with that thought, but he pushed it aside for more immediate dangers, "We're going to get stuck out here, we're never going to get back! We're going to die!"

Alston didn't appear worried. He was staring at Isa like he was a particularly interesting bug. Then he snorted and shook his head. "I'd forgotten how primitive you people are. Ok. How about this; we're not going to die, because I have magic that will keep us safe."

Isa stared at him. "You have magic?"

Alston indicated yes.

Isa continued to stare at him and tried to comprehend him as a magical being. Aside from the scar and odd clothing, he looked normal. But Isa could still hear in his mind his mother's mantra that magical people were just like Thisareans.

"Are you taking us to the magical kingdom?" He asked.

Alston suddenly seemed to be choking.

"Are you alright?" He asked in concern, then hastily tacked "sir" on the end.

But when Aston looked up, he appeared to be struggling with laughter. "Yes little prince," he said, mirth coating his words "We're going to the magical kingdom."