The Vitalis Chronicles: White Shores Read Online Free PDF

mother.” Don Vitalis sighed, as he looked down at his wooden leg. “I won't be around forever boys, and I can't fight like I once could. There's a reason we play those games; why we set strategies and carry out plans against imaginary enemies. Why I've taught you to fight.”
    He trailed off for a minute as he looked at his house, his land. What had become of him that he was in such a position as to tell his boys this? To put any burden on them of such gravity?
    “There will come a day when I won't be here is what I'm trying to say. I can’t promise that the next illness won’t be the last. And when that happens I want you to watch over your family.” He looked sternly from one son to the other, placing his hands on theirs. “I don't lay this on you lightly, I know what I'm asking. I won't presume to know how best to deal with what you will have to face. I trust you to do what's right above all else.”
    He gripped their shoulders tightly. “But I'm charging you boys, begging you: watch over your mother and sisters. They are the most precious things in the world to me. Our family is all that matters.”
    He smiled sadly as his boys nodded. They were good kids; young men he realized. The seriousness with which they took the charge was expected. He knew he could trust them. But he also knew they might resent him for this. He prayed it wasn't the burden he knew it to be.
    They walked back to the house in the dark. Don hobbled over to his chair in the kitchen. Emily was finishing with the flowers she had arranged in the window. She smiled as she wiped her hands on her apron and walked over to help clean her husband's leg. They boys bid them goodnight and made for bed. They could hear their parents' hushed conversation and laughter in the kitchen as its warm light spilled into the hallway. Ardin smiled at the sound as they tried to move silently up the stairs. What ill could befall them here? In spite of his father’s grave talk it was hard not to let his warnings slip in the safety of their home.
    John and Ardin had the privilege of keeping one of the three bedrooms upstairs to themselves. As they lay in the deepening darkness John told his younger brother tales of beasts and great warriors, men of valor and their dark enemies. Ardin drifted to sleep, dreaming of dragons and Shadow Warriors and places he thought he would never see.

    T HE IMMENSE BLACK walls of Elandir towered over the surrounding plains, at least sixty stories high and running like a massive circle between the eight square towers that surrounded the city. Each tower jutted out from the face of the walls a good stone's throw and stood a head taller than the thick walls between them. From above it must have looked like a compass rose gracing a giant map.
    The entire surface of the wall was coated in large sheets of matted black metal, designed to repulse the old magic that had once plagued mankind. It was said that no magic user could pass the walls of the city without being made completely weak. No Magi had freely roamed in a generation though; the comfort of the walls was nearly forgotten to the people of the Great City.
    Elandir, the most powerful of the twelve City States, stood in the middle of the Great Plains. The Elandris River flowed out of the foothills to the northeast and ran west. Its course created the border between the plains to the south and rolling hills to the north, which kept the dramatic peaks beyond from invading the farmland. A plentiful source of water, the Elandris fed the fields and maintained the fertility that lent “great” to the name of the plains.
    The city had thrived off of its location, both able to cultivate rich produce and control the flow of trade along the river and roads to the coast. Its army was unmatched, but was certainly not a forgotten hero in their economic greatness.
    Mayor Pompidus Merodach stood behind his desk in the northern tower of the city walls. He stared out over a bulbous nose at the mountains