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    When Elves Die: Episode One
    When Elves Die: Episode One
    When Elves Die: Episode One
    Ebook75 pages1 hour

    When Elves Die: Episode One

    By Richard Poche

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    About this ebook

    “Every single elf will disappear from the face of the earth.”

    Princess Carella reads this prophecy in the book of Arcanscape and knows that the Dark Queen will stop at nothing to make it come true. Carella travels with a group of missionaries across the land to offer her gift of healing and recruit other elven tribes to help join the war against the Dark Queen.

    When Carella and her missionary group go missing, an old barbarian named Kelroar is hired by the village cleric Ricmorn to find them. But the Dark Queen has her own barbarian in the form of Tholan the Feared. Younger and quicker, Tholan readies to take the mantle from Kelroar as the fiercest fighter in the land.

    Marshaling her forces of Killtooths, a breed of vampire elves, the Dark Queen begins her siege on Carella's village as the two meet head on in a collision between darkness and the light.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRichard Poche
    Release dateNov 22, 2014
    ISBN9781310448485
    When Elves Die: Episode One

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      Book preview

      When Elves Die - Richard Poche

      WHEN ELVES DIE

      by RICHARD POCHE

      All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including scanning, photocopying, or otherwise without prior written permission of the copyright holder. Copyright © 2014 Richard Poche

      ISBN: 1502710064

      ISBN-13: 78-1502710062

      Cover illustration by

      Rick Servande

      To Jim and Rick

      and rainy days of rolling twenty sided dice.

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      Special thanks to my editor, Brian Kaufman, for helping guide a rookie through his first novel.

      CHAPTER 1

      His black horse seized up the moment they came upon the orange flames which flickered against the snowfall. Three tents stood beyond the chromatic hues of the fire, the largest one in the center covered a stage.

      He snapped on the reins and trotted across the desolate landscape. His horse moved with his body, the longer they rode together the more the animal became an extension of his mind. The horse knew instinctively when his rider wanted to turn right or left. When to speed up or slow down.

      Tholan stood shorter than most other barbarians. He grew his hair long while most other fighters in the region shaved their heads bald. Tholan made up for his lack of size with tenacity. He always overwhelmed his foes with unmatched speed and expert swordsmanship.

      The fire started to die down and he dismounted. One of the tent poles fell over and the tattered tarp revealed several dead bodies. He recognized the deceased as elves with their pointed ears and diminutive bodies. But some had their ears either ripped or bitten off. All had their throats torn open, with a circle of blood in the snow as their final resting place.

      Crude stigmata signs were scratched into some of their foreheads. Pentagram symbols with the letter K cut into the center. With dead corpses everywhere he stepped, his boots crunched down on the charred remains of an elf whose tongue dangled from his mouth. Another lay with a broken off spear stuck in his chest.

      With the grace of a lion, he threaded his way to the stage platform. Four bodies were sprawled out, like a child's forgotten toys. One of the elves clutched a strum guitar. Another hunched backward over a drum set with wooden sticks impaled in both eyes. A singer with her throat ripped open lay on the stage front. Her skin a translucent white, she had been drained of blood. Sobbing sounds turned him around. About twenty feet away, a woman nested her head on the chest of a dead girl. Her cries rose and then lowered in intensity as he approached. He thought her too tall to be an elf. As he got closer, his eyes turned to the source of her grief. The dead girl's skin had the same pale, blood-drained look as the others.

      What happened? he asked.

      The woman turned around slowly. She gazed at him with unblinking eyes that shined with tears. After a few moments of silence, she returned her attention back to the dead girl.

      We were having a service, she said finally. They came upon us so fast. The Killtooths.

      He always thought the Killtooths were a mythical creation. Supposedly they were a breed of elves that fed on the blood of other elves.

      We thought we had killed them all last year. They stayed in the caves up in Shaian. You have to kill them in the summer when they go into hibernation. There must have been another group. Another colony that we missed. I had no idea they could make it this far out.

      Your daughter?

      She nodded her head.

      She was my heart. That's what she was.

      The woman kissed the girl on the forehead.

      Come back to me, she whispered.

      The rest of you. You're from the same church?

      My husband is...Was Diorman, she pointed to an elf on the ground who had bloodied stumps for arms.

      He had heard of Diorman. One of the leaders of the church that worshiped the God Pegasin.

      Come back to me, Iriedove she whispered to the girl again.

      How did you survive?

      I went to the woods, she pointed back at the vast expanse of trees. I had to pee. I heard screaming and when I came back it was pure chaos. I tried to find my daughter but I couldn't with all the elves running and screaming and...the Killtooths attacking. So I played dead. I laid down next to a group of dead elves. They found me anyway but...They don't drink human blood...They can't.

      Looking back down at her daughter, she started to clean the blood off the girl's face.

      She was always teased for being a half-breed. But she was the most beautiful girl in the village.

      She's very beautiful.

      And she loved to sing. Songs of worship.

      The woman placed her head on the dead girl's chest again. Her mouth distorted into a bitter smile.

      When a human is bitten by a Killtooth they turn into...they come back to life as one of them. Maybe she'll come back. Maybe because she's a half-breed, she'll come back.

      "If she

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