NaNo Day 7

So far so good...Maybe I'm being too optimistic, but my first year of doing NaNo is going really well. The only thing that I have got to remember is to take breaks. I keep forgetting that this is a marathon effort and not a sprint. But then again, I've never been good at long distance anything, sprints are more my style.
At the end of today I reached 22,484 words, and wrote over 3,000 today. I finally finished a big milestone today, and tomorrow I am starting at a different perspective in the book. (It all makes sense I swear!)
I saw one of my good friends at work the other day, and she wondered if I was going to post anything I had written so far, so here goes!
This is the Prolouge and was the first thing I wrote this month. Yes, this is part of what I wrote at 3:30 AM November 1st. And, No, I have not edited it...that comes later!
Enjoy!

             *   Pain. Searing pain ran its way through his body. He couldn’t find the origins of that pain, but it had become a regular part of his life he no longer knew what it was like to not feel it. At times it was a dull ache, and at others it would come as licks of flame up and down his body. He was never granted time without it for very long, his captor made sure of that.

                He tried to move his hands, but the shackles around his wrists with metal spikes digging into his flesh restricted his movements. His once well fitting clothes now hung on him in tatters. His once vibrant brown hair streaked with red was now streaked with iron at the temples. The beard that he had kept trimmed and neat since his thirtieth year was now a long tangled mess that reached all the way down to his chest.

                The door to the room he was in opened, he kept his eyes closed and his head down, but by the light steps he knew that it was his captors favorite pet walking in.

                “Ahh, are we awake yet this morning?” Her voice was soft and smooth, like oil running over his skin. He tried his hardest not to shiver, which would cause the spikes to rub against his skin, and without being linked to Dhaval he couldn’t heal his wounds closed. At least not yet. But he was getting closer to being linked with Dhaval despite his captor’s best tries. His neck twinged as he brought his head up to the vague direction the voice was coming from.

                “My lord wishes to speak with you again today.” He could feel the sardonic twist of her lip as she looked down at him. “That is, if you’re up to it.”

                He finally snapped his eyes open and turned them to the woman, and he felt her unconsciously move backwards a step.

                While the rest of him may have been rotting here in the cell, his skin sallow, his hair unkempt and his clothes shredded, his eyes had remained the same. He could tell that by their reactions. He could see it reflected in their expressions. He could see the white hot lightning that coursed through him, the light blue color ringed with black that he now pierced the woman standing in front of him with.

                His eyes were that of a Ryder.

                “Tell your lord,” he let the words drip from his mouth as he would a sour taste, “that I am always at my leisure and that he may visit me anytime he is available.”  His chin rose in defiance as the lanky woman in front of him watched. She was tall, broad shouldered. By typical standards she would not have been called beautiful. Her deep brown hair was plaited away from her sharp features, and her eyes of deep green were almost muddy in the dim lighting that was allotted to him.

                Her lips curled back from her teeth like a feral dog, “You should learn your place.” She didn’t dare touch him, he knew that they all were on orders. His only physical tormentor was the man he hated most.

                “That’s enough, Tauria.” The tall woman bowed her head and turned to leave, but not before locking gazes with the man who had entered. The door slammed shut behind her, and the man, walking on quiet steps brought a chair. He seated himself in front of the man in rags, his long black hair neatly pulled back from his face, throwing his features into sharp relief.

                “Now, where were we?” his long fingers tapped his thigh for a moment, then snapped through the air. “Ah, yes. You were just about to agree to join me.” His black eyes sought out the man on the floor.

                “You are mistaken, Moriel.” The man felt his chest swell with not only pride, but a weariness that he had felt every single day of the twenty years he had spent in this prison.

                “Oh, come now.” Moriel clapped his hands and rose quickly to pace just out of reach of the man on the floor. He turned back to the man, his hands outstretched. “You must see that I am the way of the future of this land.” The man on the floor only looked past him, as if he was only looking at the wall in response. Moriel came back to sit lightly on the chair, his long-limbed frame looking gaunt in the black armor he wore.

                “You must know that if you don’t join me, I will kill those that you would protect.” The man on the floor simply turned his stare straight into Moriels.

                “You will not touch them.” He felt his voice grow stronger, and somewhere far out of his reach he felt Dhaval snap to attention and rumble out a roar.

                Moriel snapped his attention to the man on the floor. “You would do better to heed me.” Three of his long fingers pointed together at the man on the floor, and he knew what was coming.

                Instead of crying out in pain, the man on the floor simply laughed as the pain once again came in hot flashes. His thoughts hardened around keeping his daughter safe, and he felt Dhaval roar before the blackness took him once again.