A.B.

How The Four Kings Died

How The Four Kings Died

It seemed like you couldn't shove this hallway into anymore misery, but alas...
The crackle from her footsteps echoed fiercely, flowing through the span of the ever winding pathway ahead of her.
Under her feet the marble floor screamed as if pounded with a mount's hooves. It stretched agitated and seethed as the seemingly white stone was obtruded with hint of rose and bespattered with crimson streaks, and along its brims a frame of lush green vines entrapped between two strokes of gold. With the vaulted ceiling overhead resonating with her every move, screaming as if the fear alone wasn't anywhere near claiming her heart.
From the right wall, an onslaught of sunlight streamed through the line windows, barraging her eyes which, since her kidnapping, have got acquainted to the dim, near extinct light of her underground cell.
But for her, being blinded by light was a mercy, a privilege of sorts even if it made her enable to glimpse the way ahead of her, as it deterred her eyes from glancing anew the nightmares looming to her left.
The wall, which was strewn with paintings reaching up to its roof, seemed to creep ever closer to her the sharper the bend in the hallway got. The vision of the impaled man carrying his head in his left hand assaulted her thought again, aided by the one of a crucified man on a burning cross. Their screaming, ailing faces, no matter how voiceless were. And the strokes of brush, no matter how apparent was, were an ample reason to induce the visceral vision of torture in the eyes of the beholder.
Two was more than enough for her to witness. Her mind is already well addled and she needn't anymore terrors to see. And two painting were more than fit representative of what the rest would carry.
She closed her left eye in effort to keep away the view of the gallery, and leaned in her walk towards the outside, towards the windows overlooking Graysteel, the Blackish gray expanse that blemished the face of the earth.
Built of volcanic stone and basalt, the city was the stem, from which, the territory of the Flamebark lineage spread like a disease fouling lands to the edge of the beyond, marring all regions on the east side of the continent, and a couple hundred leagues south and north east.
The city, oddly though, seemed this time to be suffocating in silence, bereft of any sense of motion along its tarnished alleyways. And neither the smelters’, the smithies’ nor the Houses’ chimneys seemed to exhale even the tiniest waft of smoke.
Maybe it was the sunlight piercing through the dispersing cloud of sinister fumes. Maybe it was the stillness...
Whatever it was, it became the city...
It seemed restful. And all the stories her parents told her about the vile corruptions that ills the capitol felt for an instance like tales deformed by the tongues of those who passed them.
It was calm. The view was just calm. Even with all the immanent indistinguishable commotion that lied in the blurry distance.
Those thought made a bit of respite for her, in between two heartbeats. Yet fittingly fast, her pounding heart sent back the fear pumping through her veins.
The wooden tray in her hand was shaking along with her fidgeting hands, and the threat of spilling the pitch black drink in any of the four chalices was a bashing call for her to sturdy her clutch.
Maybe, who knows? If she does what the was written on the dungeon’s wall right above her jailor’s drilled head she'd get again to see the light of day, again to see her home village once more, and maybe, if destiny was to smile upon her, get to see her sister brewing the stew she constantly tries and fails at cooking....
Amid the remains of their burnt down house...
Right beside her parents’ charred corpses.
She halted in her place, a tear dripping down her check, than pouring onto her dress, which now stranded as the only memento left from her past. An emerald vest sprouting white sleeves and a long light brown skirt, now smeared with soot and brine from her capture.  The urge to wipe it out surging and fading immediately as the idea to leave the tray on the ground appeared threatening to her.
She, then, mustered a bit of strength, and forced her complaining feet to move on. And after a fraction of an hour, the end of the hallway finally took form before her. A straight corridor ending with a gold incrusted gate with an ivory embellished handle, emerging from a torn drawing akin to the ones marking the wall, but abruptly torn to make way for a doorway, leaving the canvas of a screeching blood soaked face of man to hang above the cracked door.
She hesitated to enter, but in the midst of the chaos invading her mind she finds no second answer, and so she clasped hard on the wooden tray and pushed the door with her shoulder with all her might, digging a cringe upon her chiseled face. The door pushed back at her, and a swath of winds blew as the aperture in the gate grew wider yielding to the young maiden’s effort.
All the awe from the expansive hall that bore in front of her was instantly ignored by her as her eyes brimmed with tears and her hands almost went loose on the handles. All the awe from the massive gap assaulted by sunlight and wind which took the wall’s place to her right, all the awe from the blindingly gleaming roof the obviously tiled with shards of broken glass overhead, all the awe from the site of the concave left border of the hall; Black basalt seeping seams of igneous flame that gathered into a small pool at its base, and all the awe from the obsidian covered wall that came to her fore and the marble tiled one extending seamlessly from the ground dominating the one to her back. All has escaped her attention, all but a table in the middle of that alcove….
She tries to steady herself, carefully planning her steps so the drink she carries wouldn’t spill, now that her hand had started shivering stronger, and the chalices’ started shaking and chattering in a higher pitch than before, even if said cries were veiled by the dominant howl of the viscous flame bleeding from the left wall.
But the other girl’s cries weren’t, even underneath the thick shroud of howls saturating the atmosphere, and from behind the rusty iron muzzle that covered her mouth, with her head, bobbing like madness and her constant yanking on the chain that wrapped around her nick, her wails was spawning harrowingly in her sister’s mind.
The captive girl jolted at the sight of last surviving member of her family entering the massive room and crawled frantically for a couple of paces, and just as she attempted to stand up, the choke chain yanked on her nick and shot her back into the ground, sending her into a frenzy of tears and unheard moans. Her sister flinched at the sight, than hurriedly gathered back her posture and resumed her walk, forcibly squinting away from the sight so she wouldn’t lose control of herself.
She forces her attention into the table, a large square piece of decorated beech wood heaved by four drake-shaped posts, where upon which four beings took seat…
The First one sat on the left side of the table, and was the one who held the reins to her sister. The chains looping around her neck also coiling around the scepter he hold in his left, a red steel rod engraved with ghoulish forms and propped on the ground supported by four hooks growing from its lower end, with the upper sporting a bellowing dragon atop. His scarlet red garment, embroidered with white and golden patterns, draped the ground with enough excessive length to have him surrounded with the splayed ends like a flower with blooded petals.
He beckoned her to draw near, his mouth not uttering a single word.

this part have A lot of loose ends, and for all that matters, it feels like a horror story more than a fantasy setting-thing....

I tried as much as I can to establish some form of character with hints as to what happened with the girl and such stuff, and used some of the environment to establish a sense of atmosphere....

But, admittedly; I am allergic to my own writing, and for all I car this could be some serious cheese that doesn't pull any strings with the reader....

So Yeah...

Any criticism is A HUGE welcome

AND hopefully.. Eventually... "fingers' crossed"... All the loose ends _ aside from the intended plot holes _ will be tied.

If I find it in me to continue this

P.S: I might improve some parts of the writing upon further revisions....

It's just that I don't have the time to do so RIGHT NOW...