Derek's Chronicle: Prelude

Icy snow whipped about his face, and snuck through each tear in his cloak as he cascaded the mountainside. Billowing snowclouds caused a premature night to fall, and any sane man would have rested, but Derek didn't have the luxury to camp. He was running.1

Running from the pain, from all the nightmares and shadows, the corpses and gravestones, running from a life best forgotten. But as his numbed hands grasped each tentative handhold, the memories always came back. He could never forget.2

It was a miracle Derek had gotten this far, a mere boy of 17. He was strong, no doubt, but his last years had been amoung the hardest he had faced. He wore loose, woolen clothes and wore a stolen shirt of chainmail, and a long sword was sheathed at his side. He was tall, if a bit gaunt, with gentle blue eyes and long and uncut blonde hair that swirled with the blizzard-strong wind. Nearly everything he carried, or nearly every limb was tattered and wrapped in bandages and strips of cloth, stained from age or hardship, or soaked with blood.3

It was only a matter of time before the cold dulled his senses, and a battered leather boot slipped off of a rock. A crack, a crash, and Derek was tumbling down the hill, his tattered grey cloak swirling about him. He fell into a morbid sleep sometime before crashing into the snowbank fifty feet down, falling into a thick snowbank. His dreams were full of shadows that night.4