"Breath taking shades of purple and green, red and blue, orange and yellow. It was almost too much every time he opened his eyes. The beauty of Woodhurst had never once escaped him. Not once. Fierce echoes of beauty resonating from the rich soil to scream their defiance at the encroaching lumber camps. The lush green canopies above gave the soldier shade even when the rest of the world would celebrate the Midsummer Fire Festival, every explosion of foliage strewn together by thick vines and swirling ivy stalks to form the most intricate of designs ever beheld by his tired eyes.
He inhaled deeply of the crisp morning air, exhaling slowly, feeling the energy of his home leave the body only to be refreshed with every breath. Like a newborn child, still puzzled by the possibilities around him and just as riddled as the tides, Darrian Payne lay beside himself in the echoes of what was once home. Darrian Shadowblade lay beside himself in the arms of death his bride.
He had come so far and yet he had only stepped farther away from the proud image he envisioned for himself as a young man. A youthful poet in the throws of an infant romance not yet burdened with a shield and a purpose. And therein, as the bard would say, lies the rub.
The thick blades of Woodhurst grass cushioned his armored frame effortlessly, wrapping her son in a blanket of clarity so pristine he lost himself in his own rationality..."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"And that was the catch. The thorn from his lap of memories that pricked the thumb and drew from him a storm so loveless it rained down around him in death's shadow. The need to survive, the sacrifice he made hour after hour, drop by drop, and none of it could free him from the bondage suffered him by his captors. The darkness they drew from him and harnessed into a finely wrought steel blade only to point him at something hardly more sinister in nature and order him to bleed that they might flash shiney objects for their peers. There is much to the soul that he would never fully understand, many depths and crevices of his own to which he had no access. But he did understand the battered and beaten husk they had left him when he was no longer so anxious to please them. He remembered full well how small the prison, how sore his joints at being caged. He was fully aware of the sentient entity within his own soul that had fought him daily for control over what actions and choices were to be made.
The rub indeed, was the very shield before him. The very thing that would symbolize his peoples fierce appetite for poetic justice and survival. The object that bore him his name, and yet, denied him his title. Darrian Payne would be the great guardian of Amundane, the person he, in his wildest fantasies, sought to be. Darrian Shadowblade, the person he had become, her loyal assassin. The irony did not escape him. His greatest accomplishment, the single ever burning flame in the void, was the catalyst through which his title was born. If Darrian was a Goliath behind a shield, he was a demon behind a sword. He remembered well that night so many years ago on the Wintershore when he first found in her a beautiful innocence wrapped ever so carefully in tempered ferocity and calculated rage..."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"It was not always Jeslyn he pledged his shield for. It was not always Jeslyn he harnessed his rage and pushed through enemy lines to return home to. Not always. He had once known the love of a woman with the most profound auburn hair and the deepest jade orbs he had ever seen. She drew him into those beautiful orbs the first night. Her smile. Her intoxicating scent. He could still taste her on his lips. Feorielyse had been his greatest blunder. Far graver a thing to lose than any battle, is the love of another. Often he thought of what could have been. And yet he knew it was not meant to be. That was not who he was. Darrian Payne, Darrian Shadowblade, was not a homely spirit and for the better part of twelve months he struggled to work through the staggering reality of losing Feorielyse"
