Chapter 35 — The Ride to Elderglen
The windmill creaked in the morning wind, its battered vanes turning lazily beneath a veiled sun. Jasper stood outside the door, sword belted at his side, eyes fixed on the distant woodline where the last of the hag’s webs had shimmered like false frost.
He was no longer just a farmer. The sword no longer sat in the corner. It lived at his hip now—sharpened, oiled, and ready.
Beside the windmill, the scarecrow stood as sentinel, straw hat sagging. Beneath it, buried in a shallow hollow, lay the fragments of a life Jasper once thought gone: his Equinari armor, unearthed months ago from the tomb of the Horse King, far beneath the valley ruins. Forged of sun-bronze and darksteel, it bore the runes of the High Plains and the horse-tribes lost to time.
He had not worn it since that day. Until now.
Strap by strap, he armored himself, the pieces settling onto his body with the certainty of fate. Each plate whispered the oaths of the Horse Lords; each buckle sang of fire, blood, and plainswind.
Then came the rider.
He crested the rise at full gallop, cloak torn, his mare wild-eyed and slick with sweat. Jasper stepped forward, hooves thudding softly on the dry soil, his tail twitching once.
The man barely held his seat. “Elderglen,” he gasped. “They’ve come. Night Flitterers, dozens. But something else—larger, darker. They say... they say it was a hag riding a storm.”
Jasper's equine nostrils flared. “When?”
“Last night. Some of us fled at dawn. Others stayed to fight. I don’t know if—” The rider trailed off, staring at Jasper’s towering, armored form. “You... You’re one of them, aren’t you? The Equinari.”
Jasper nodded once. “And I ride for Elderglen.”
He turned. The windmill loomed behind him—his home, his harvest, his peace. The fields had only just begun to recover. Flame still lay near the door, dozing lightly. The wards he’d set around the scarecrow pulsed faintly.
But if he stayed, more would die. And the hag’s shadow would grow longer.
He took no mount.
With a whisper to Flame, who roused and leapt into stride beside him, Jasper broke into a full gallop, hooves hammering the trail, mane whipping behind him like a war-banner. No steed could match his pace. He was Equinari—the last of the wind-born knights—and the land trembled beneath him.
Later That Day — The Outskirts of Elderglen
Smoke drifted in threads over ruined rooftops. The thatch smoldered. Trees were scored by claw marks. A pig lay butchered and strung between two fence posts, gutted as if in mock sacrifice. Even the wells were fouled.
Jasper slowed, iron shod hooves crunching ash. Flame crept ahead, ears twitching, nose low.
In the ruined turnip field, a child wept beneath a charred wheelbarrow.
He approached and knelt, armor groaning softly. “Easy, child. I’m here now.”
The girl looked up. “You’re... you’re a horse man.”
“I’m Jasper,” he said. “What happened?”
She pointed with a trembling hand. “The big tree... mama was taken... up there, in webs... something with too many legs.”
Jasper felt his grip tighten on his sword. The hag’s cruelty was deliberate now. A message.
A sudden screech broke the moment—a Night Flitterer, cloaked in rotted robes, dropped from a ruined chimney, talons outstretched.
Jasper turned in one fluid motion. His blade sang.
A single stroke, and the Flitterer’s body split in two, black ichor hissing on the earth.
“They’re watching,” he murmured, scanning the rooftops. “Not attacking. Testing.”
He lifted the child onto his broad shoulders, letting her cling to his neck as he turned toward the woods.
“We find your mother,” he said. “We end this.”
But as he strode deeper into the smoldering bones of Elderglen, his heart burned not with vengeance—but with warning. The hag was hunting in daylight now. And she wanted him to know.
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THE SONG OF THE HORSE KING
Before the word, before the sword, they ran.
They were the Equinari, though they bore no name then. Born of wind and silence, they moved across the Elysian Fields, a never-ending plain that shimmered with golden grasses and silver dusk. Upright in form—two-legged, with noble equine features and long, muscular limbs—they were kin to the wild four-legged horses and moved among them as brothers. Large in stature, they towered with the grace of giants, their presence commanding yet unbound, their strength like the deep roots of ancient mountains.
Unspoken, unruled, and unchained, they lived with the pure grace of instinct. Their hooves carved runes into the plains simply by their passage. Without speech, they communicated in glances and movement, the way wind speaks to grass.
For eons, the Elysian Fields held them.
Then came a moment of rupture—a ripple in the endless sameness.
From the distant ends of the Field, where none had dared tread, there stood a structure: two colossi of forgotten stone and dream, with a gate of unknown steel, rising one hundred and fifty feet into the sky, its surface gleaming with a luster no forge could claim. A gate with no guard—only a latch. A latch that had never been touched, let alone opened.
They had passed it many times before, unaware. But one day, one among them stopped.
THE AWAKENING OF THE HORSE KING
He was no different from the rest, save for the weight in his gaze. His towering form echoed the noble curvature of a chess knight—head bowed in contemplation, limbs coiled with potential, built for sudden change, for tactical motion. He bore the quiet marks of mobility, loyalty, and strength.
He did not speak—for none yet could.
But he reached.
And when his hand touched the latch, the Gate of Unknown Steel quivered. The plain trembled. The latch lifted with a sound like thunder falling asleep, and the gate parted.
A voice awoke in him.
It came not from the outside, but from within—as if it had always been there, waiting for the right moment. He turned to the others and said only: “Follow.”
From that moment, he was no longer just one of many.
He was Halethen, the Horse King.
And the moment he spoke, his blood changed.
Some say the power of that ancient gate flowed through him. Others say it was a gift from the Field itself, or from whatever god had once shaped the latch. But in that instant, all runes lost their grip on him. All magic born of symbol, script, or etching could not hold his flesh. And this immunity to runic magic, mysterious and absolute, became the blood-right of all Equinari to follow. No curse, no seal, no warding mark ever held sway over them again.
The spellwrights of later ages would call it “Runevoid Blood.” But to the Equinari, it was simply part of their nature—the gift of the voice, passed down.
THE CROSSING AND THE BIRTH OF THE CODE
He led them not over mountains or through forests—but across the endless Field. For the Elysian Fields were not just paradise, but trial. Unchanging. Eternal. Without direction.
Through the Gate, they passed into a land unknown—a place where grass gave way to stone, to mountain, to fertile soil and shadowed glen. Here, Halethen taught them what it meant to be shaped.
They built no great empire, but they made sanctuaries. They did not conquer, but they endured. They learned the sword, the shield, the armor fitted to their towering, mighty frames, and they remembered always that they had once lived in perfect silence.
From this balance came the Equinari Code:
- Strength in Loyalty.
- Wisdom in Stillness.
- Honor in the Earth.
- No Sword Raised Without Need.
The Horse King forged a powerful blue steel sword, its blade gleaming like a storm cloud before a lightning strike. Though unnamed, it was said to carry a strength beyond comprehension—its edge sharp as the biting wind. Only the Horse King could wield it, and it was as much a part of him as his own heartbeat. With this blade, he fought with precision, honor, and resolve.
But no light lasts forever.
THE FIRST LONG SHADOW
After eons of peace and the steady growth of their people, a great darkness fell across the land. It was not a war, nor a sickness, but a silence deeper than death—a forgetting.
The First Long Shadow, they called it. Stars dimmed. Crops withered. Spirits turned inward.
And Halethen, the Horse King, faced this shadow alone.
He stood against it, wielding his blue steel sword, a silent warrior fighting a tide that could not be seen. The shadow bent before him, retreating like a coiling serpent. But in his victory, he was poisoned by its touch. The shadow’s poison seeped into his veins, a sickness that could not be cured by any art of his people.
His death was not in battle, but in the solitude that followed. He fell to the ground, weakened, his blood turning dark, stained by the shadow's venom. But he stood until the end, until the last breath, his sword still grasped firmly in his hand.
The people, upon hearing of his fall, mourned deeply.
His body was entombed in the mountains, sealed beneath granite and storm, surrounded by his sword and armor, never to be disturbed. His tomb was carved with the Equinari code in every tongue they had learned, each word glowing faintly with memory.
The people wandered, lost. Without their king, many returned to the wild, others settled in forgotten valleys.
Until the soil called to them once more.
THE FOUNDING OF MYRRENSTEAD
Generations later, in a quiet green basin ringed with willow and wheat, they founded Myrrenstead.
No grand city. Just stone homes. Fields of grain. Training circles beside the orchards.
They farmed, but never forgot. A sword was never far from the plough. Children learned to ride and reap in equal measure. Though their royal line had vanished into legend, the blood remembered—and no rune ever held them.
And in each of them, there stirred the spirit of the Horse King—the bowed head, the loyal heart, the sudden turn of strategy, the power to defend without need for dominion.
They became a respected people, not for their numbers, nor for their might alone, but for their steadfastness, their unshakable honor, and the memory they carried across endless time.
LEGACY
When the moon is high, and the wind passes gently over the tall grass, the Equinari say you can still hear the whisper of hooves—not four, but two—striding through the plains of memory.
And in Myrrenstead, beneath the roots of wheat and apple, the children still learn:
That silence was the first teacher. That loyalty is the greatest strength. That the runes cannot bind those born of the Gate. And that even kings may rest, But their code never sleeps.
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