Mallis Dares Not Say
He knelt on a hill a mile from the Silver Valley. For that moment, there was no one there to disprove his delusions. He could revel into the idea that there, he was the king, overlooking his kingdom’s far-stretching arm. He panned the area with a wide sweep of his hand, calloused from the thousands of fights he fought, and spoke triumphantly in a tongue that was lost to all but the most astute of sages. He paused, waiting for a reply he knew would never come. He then grinned, satisfied in his own self-centered boastings. As if to test his good fortune once more, he braced the edge of the hill’s unsteady setting of rock and stomped upon it with his foot to loosen the already loose ground beneath him.
“Gods could never find the strength to stop him now,” he mused. His silvery eyes glistened with every deep-rooted chuckle. He needed to get higher, so he put his chiseled muscular body to work and grabbed at the jagged dome of rock of the hill, pulling himself upwards to its tallest point. He leaned forward from his throne and took a great look at the Silver Valley now, pushing his raven hair out of his face every time it would obstruct his view to the town.
He could barely make out the small blurred dots of his brethren from that distance, but he had a feeling that they were working steadfast to rebuild the town. He admired them, he had to admit.
“You can share the kingdom,” he offered. But as the first thoughts of warmth and feeling he had felt all day overwhelmed him, a second batch of images flowed through his mind. He felt the long scar on his face and sulked back deep in a thought-filled slumber. Each scar was a memory for Mallis, and this particular one brought back the images of when he had fought the last onslaught of the war machines. His people were still rebuilding from it and it had been months, very long months, since that attack. He shook his head and muttered a curse that would have made Shar herself grin in amusement.
He traced another scar, this quickly converging into three. That was his remembrance of the great red dragon Rass as the creature had bore into his flesh when he was just a young exile from Rashemen. His blood boiled and he gripped at the stones around him, feeling them crumble to dust in his hands. He loathed that dragon and with her removal from Atol’s leash, he dared say, she had just become stronger. Now, she threatened his beloved town with an unfair compromise, which Mallis knew, she would never fully keep. But his entire town was afraid of the lizard, and the Talltowns refused to get involved.
“They all turn their backs and put plugs in their ears to block out his home’s pleas!” He yelled. He knew no one else was there to hear it, but he was beginning to wish someone had. He pulled a parchment from his cloak and observed it. It was a map, heavily marked with black circles and dates. He felt a tug, as if someone was watching him from magical means. Scrying it was called, and Mallis knew from experience that the only ones who wanted to secretly watch him were his enemies. He had seen enough and did not want to give any of his enemies a taste of what he was scheming either, so he stuffed it right back into his cloak’s inner pocket and kept his mouth and mind closed until he felt the scrying pass him. It was a large weight to hold such a vital and dangerous paper, he knew, but Mallis also knew that he could not sit back and let his town be bullied.
“You had tempted the fates way too long for Mallis's liking, beast,” he spoke to himself, clenching his fist close to his chest. “Your day is coming soon.”
