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Seated deep within the halls of his grand cavern. Far beneath the belly of the world. Tazrael, demonlord, and master of the underworld, contemplated his fate. For it seemed no matter what he did, he would finally need to intercede on the surface world. A move that would undoubtedly leave him vulnerable. But he could not give up now. Not now when he was so close to the source of all power. With her magic at his fingertips, he could finally put an end to his father, and rule the world as he was meant to!

And yet, as he stared out into the bleak darkness of his ancient underground fortress, it irked him that he had underestimated Sarsonel. With her trapped as she was on the darker plane, he had thought little harm could come from the witch. But it seems that he had been wrong about her . Not only had she harvested more souls than he, but she had used a single inbred savage to reap hundreds of souls, most of whom were his most loyal followers. The creature she had named her champion, a beast the dragons called halfborn. Dangerous, unpredictable, and powerful enough to rival a demonlord.

More pressing however, was the fact that his dear sister had alerted their father to Tazrael’s actions. The gall of that alone caused him to gnash his teeth and slam a heavy fist into the arm of his throne, when he caught sight of the walls around him.

Built of skulls much like his chair, he could smell their agony as they clawed at the air. Each one of them posed with gaping maws as they screamed their death cries. Soothed by their anguish, he felt his anger become a slow burn, and rested back in his seat.

Even though it should never have come to this. He would show his father who was the true master of death. And in the end…The world would belong to him, and him alone.

~*~

Far out in the wilderness that was called the Red Waste, Palanthol, a hunter since the age of twelve, stalked his prey through the desert sands. One of the many ways he helped to keep his village safe in these uncertain times.

Slow, and dangerous enough to drive other predators away, he guessed this basilisk to be around sixty years old. Although why it had wandered out here alone was a mystery to him. A creature like this, would rarely leave it’s own territory at such a young age, and yet this one had left a trail of destruction behind it with several families killed.

Having found it’s hunting grounds in a nearby canyon, he had forced himself to follow it into the tight twisting, ravine, and felt a cold chill as the sheer rock walls narrowed in around him, making it more difficult to move without brushing his shoulders up against the stone.

Complaining bitterly about having to mend his cloak for perhaps the twelfth night in a row, he knew he was in for a real fight. Not that he hadn’t come unprepared for such a battle. But from his experience of beasts such as this, basilisk were not only fast, but had the ability to camouflage themselves into their surroundings, and spray poison that could kill a man. Which is why he would normally have prefered to fight the creature in open ground, but with so many deaths, he knew he had to act now before any more people were killed.

Considering himself to be sturdily built, he wore an enchanted leather jerkin, a gift from his uncle, a steel disc cap over his head, and a shortsword strapped to his hip that he liked to call Hummingbird, for the way it whistled in the air. He also carried a loaded crossbow in hand that could fire combust bolts, a weapon that had been perfected by his people for such fights. Each piece of equipment, carefully chosen so as to increase his odds against such a powerful creature.

Today however as he pushed his way through the gap in the rock walls, he sensed something was different here. Could taste it in the air. Could see it in the bubbles of red energy that would usually float up around him, but now drifted south past him, and further away from him.

His gaze mesmerized by the strange oddities, he watched the small balls of red light travel low across the rough rocky terrain, past broken cliffs, and towards two gigantic stone monoliths that stood like giants wrestling with each other where it abruptly ended in a deep round basin.

Each of his heartbeats slowed as he realized he could sense movement up ahead of him. He dropped low to his belly, and crawled forward to hide behind a stone.

A trained ranger, gifted with the ability to see more than most, his uncle had taught him years ago to use the terrain, and become one with the land. Something that few rangers could achieve. And yet in all years of hunting through these grounds, he had never sensed anything quite like this. It was like a huge throbbing heartbeat, it’s sound thundering against his eardrums as it pulsed a bright red, just out of his sight below the rim of the basin. The stillness and sinking feeling he got inside of his chest, sending a pang of worry through his mind as he inched his way forward.

Ears picking up nothing however. Not even a single ghoul looking to take a bite out of him. He thought the whole world had frozen in time, and had begun to lose vitality, when he heard an unmistakable whirring sound

Careful to not step on any rocks, he kept thinking go back, you fool, there's no need for you to risk your own neck out here. Black Hands should arrive any day now. But the hunter inside of him, refused to allow anything to threaten his home. It was one of the reasons he had chosen to become a ranger in the first place.

With the ground opening up ahead of him, he moved to hide in a grove of twisted grey trees that had shed all of their leaves, and felt a tremor of fear surge through him, when he saw the land ahead of him cracked open like an egg to reveal an immense black gate that did not look to be a part of this world. Pressed into the centre of the gigantic pit, it lay there at the bottom, when the black gates slowly swung outward.

Falling again to his belly, he stared in amazement as the doors swung wider, and knew a brief moment of panic as every instinct cried out for him to run. But instead forced himself to stay.

Eyes watering from the strong stench of decay, sulphur, and brimstone that filled the air, he began to fear he had seriously misstepped, when they came. An army of hideous monsters with strange weapons that glowed red. Huge bat-like creatures of pure darkness that took off into the cloudless skies. Beasts with no arms, but many heads staring all around them with bloodshot eyes, immense warriors made of fire that burnt holes in the soil, and unholy things that floated above the ground, shrieking like banshees in a graveyard.

For hours, he watched, and for hours they came, flooding the land in darkness, a part of him still screamed at himself to run. But he could not move, he could barely breathe. All he could see was the black gate that led into a bubbling cauldron of darkness, it's mouth belching more and more of these horrors into the world.

Sooner or later, fearing he would be discovered, he finally pushed himself to move. He needed to find someone. The world needed to know what was coming.

Note to Readers: So I had actually thought to continue Heroes & Legends with Kaldrakas, but thought it was better to leave it as a spinoff series that would occur later. For now, I'll be continuning the Saga of Gregor the Savage, and if you would like to show your support you can purchase Book 2 on Amazon, and leave a review which would help me immensley. Heroes & Legends Book 2.