The Tale of Adelmar and Cynerik
Once, there was a kingdom of man which reigned superior above all others, and ruling that kingdom was a king. This king loved his kingdom, and his people but his love also gave way to fear that one day his kingdom might fall, not from outside forces, but from within. Having already sired a son and heir, the king refused to have any further children. Fearing for his son's safety he never let him leave the guarded palace walls, nor allowed the light of the Sun to shine upon his skin resulting in him becoming pale and sickly. This hysterical control drove the gods to anger, and so one night they came into the royal chambers and whispered words of lust into the king's dreams. When he awoke, the king took his wife to bed like he had never done before, and the outcome of such an act resulted in her bearing a child. The king, as fearful as always, went mad and forced her to leave and bear the weight of motherhood alone on one of the neighboring islands out at sea. What the king did not expect however was the ship transporting her was attacked by pirates, and his pregnant wife was forced into slavery and sold to far away lands. These lands were not like her husband's kingdoms. They were dry, unbearably hot during the day, and icy cold in the night. Flowers refused to sow their seed, and the animals born there were stunted and rotting from birth. There was only one walled city in these lands, ruled by an oligarchy of entertainers and businessmen who made their wealth from the violent arenas and the mines the city had access to. Outside the walls there were no kings here, only wild groups of men who roamed the lands looking for anything of value. The wife was taken as a mining slave, and when she gave birth to two healthy boys she named them Adelmar, and Cynerik after great kings of old. However they too were thrown into the mines when they reached of age and would be worked hard even after the passing of their mother when they were five years of age. With their mothers death, the boys had only themselves in the world to rely on, and so made a blood oath with each other to never bring harm to the other.
When the boys were ten one of the mines they were working on collapsed, and Cynerik was lost in it. Not long after, two men came to the city and requested the boys come forth. They were ambassadors of their fathers kingdom, coming to take the boys home because their older brother, who had ascended three years earlier after the death of their father, had grown sickly and was expected to pass soon. As the rightful heirs, Adelmar and Cynerik were next in line to the throne but since Cynerik had been lost, Adelmar left for their homeland to become sole king. This is where the story would have ended, but the human spirit is not to be underestimated. A week after the cave in, Cynerik crawled his way out after digging the entire time, only to find his brother gone and people telling him he had been taken to become a king. Enraged, Cynerik allowed his anger to consume him and he only thought of his brother's betrayal for years to come. When Cynerik grew into a man, he took his chance and escaped his slavers, running deep into the desolate landscape where civilization was absent. Cynerik however was not consumed but flourished, and returned years later to his captives at the head of a large army of wild men, whom had been united by Cynerik through force and will. The city bowed before Cynerik, and he established himself a throne which was held up with the heads of the oligarchs.
Adelmar through the years had enjoyed the finer things of life that were denied to him in his youth as his kingdom continued to thrive. While Adelmar had grown and moved on with life, Cynerik had only thought of his brother and after years of preparation he sailed his forces across the sea and declared war on his brother. Knowing his brother was alive made Adelmar feel warm, but seeing him lead a force to destroy his kingdom's peace was unacceptable, and so he met his brother on the battlefield. The war lasted years, with each brother besieging each other's cities, thousands of families destroyed, fields burned, animals eradicated, and memories lost. The brothers even made their sons and daughters make a blood oath to never surrender and forgive their cousins, making the war transcend the physical world and enter the mental consciousness of men. In one of the climatic battles of the war, Adelmar, Cynerik, and their children fought and bled, and the blood of vengeance soaked into the world itself. Instilled with its own sense of vengeance, the world split open its jaws in a mighty cracking of its surface and swallowed up both armies along with the offspring of Cynerik and Adelmar, but not the brothers themselves. They had been spared and now with no armies, their kingdoms in ruin, all they had left were each other.
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