Free Take the Darkness...: Epic Fantasy Series by julius schenk, Manfred Rohrer Page A

are gone from the land, and even then men will still fight and try take what’s not theirs; it’s just the way of men and kings,’ Linda said, her soft voice familiar once again, reassuring.
    ‘Well, I don’t want to see it, and I don’t want any of it to be in my name.’
    ‘You need to talk to someone who can help you, and I think I know who that is.’
    ‘Who can help me now?’ She asked.
    ‘Your father.’

Chapter 12
    She sat at her uncle’s desk, in his study at the manor house where she’d been born and raised. The fire was crackling in the hearth but she shivered with the cold. In the middle of the room Seth, the tall Northern bastard, was chained at hand and foot in the circle. On the table sat a plate of meat and vegetables that she’d only been able to take a few bites of, and it still tasted cold and filthy in her mouth. The Northman screamed in pain, her black dogs slowly tearing him apart as she watched. Her uncle, Stephan, sat next to her and smiled as he watched the show with her. He looked as she remembered him, strong, powerful, and well dressed with his military clothes and stern face.
    He laughed as Seth died for the thousandth time in front of him. ‘If only it had gone that way,’ he said.
    Seraphina smiled sadly back at him. ‘It will, uncle, it will.’
    Then she heard the noise. It was a deep howl, and it filled her with real happiness. She smiled a real smile for the first time in a long time. As the howl came closer, she let go of her vision and let it slowly fade. Soon the large manor house disappeared around her, as did her uncle. The desk and her writing, and even the fire died away ‘til she was sitting alone in a small cave on a hard rock with just a rotten piece of white meat in front of her. She threw it aside so she wouldn’t see it.
    She knew even her face would change. In her visions, she was as beautiful as ever. Long silky blonde hair, clear blue eyes, and fine skin. Not the tired, defeated women she was now. Even her long hair was a tangle of mats and dirt. She’d been here for more than five years, and now her only friend was coming, it had been so long.
    She saw him appear from around the corner of the cave and let the illusion of the fire spring back to life. It couldn’t cast warmth, but light only. She saw him, a vision that had once terrified her, but no more. The Wolvern slowly paced up the low cave towards her. Its pale skin and long teeth reflecting the light. She stood as it approached and she ran to it. She reached her arms around the creature and hugged it like an oversized dog.
    A dark laugh like she had never heard sounded in her mind, and it actually contained some warmth. ‘ Did you miss me, little princess?’
    She had. ‘I did, lord dog, you’ve been gone so very long this time.’ She said the words out loud, just to hear herself speak. Her refined voice was more cracked, but still she tried to be a lady even if she didn’t look like one.
    ‘ I’ve brought you some dinner, and it’s at the cave entrance.’
    ‘Thank you, kind sir,’ she said, standing to give the Wolvern a curtsey. Hopefully, it was the bats, since they were at least not human.
    Her relationship with this creature, who she now called ‘lord dog’ – and she was his ‘little princess’ – was a strange one, born from the cold and loneliness of this land. She’d been roughly shoved by Seth from the land of the sun, into this cold hell, with a foot bleeding from an arrow wound and hungry mouths all around. He’d told the creature to try not to kill her, and through some sense of sport or torment, it had done just that.
    At first she’d thought it was trying to kill her. It had chased her through the snow, her staggering on her bloody foot and crying with pain. Yet, it had killed or driven off any of the dead that came to devour her. It wanted her itself, she thought. Slowly, it had herded her like cattle into this cave. It had sat at the entrance for days until she