Red Athens, Chapter 1, a Fun Fantasy Novel, for Readers of All Ages

Red Athens

Chapter 1

by Jacob Malewitz

Change is the absolute, for things change often, and do you see them changing, the emprires falling and the warriors standing off? Heroes do what we cannot, one standing against many.

The hero of Red Athens breaths in a land set by four empires. Blue Babylon: over the seas a landed people of remarkable intellect, built in a city built over a hell opened by one mage. Green Sparta: a warlike city bent on turning the world with magiks; Spartans walk on water if King Leonidas demands it. Red Athens: a light in the harrowed and known lands of the world, where philosophy rules, but a blade is always kept to each free citizen’s arm, lest a Spartan sneak up.  And Sky Rome: a bloody place not long ago, a people who see themselves to be just as civilized as the Red Athenians.

A scroll from a secretive poet is built from the documents of wordsmiths, tells of the travels of a young Pericles Knyght, a battle mage of Red Athens, who championed much, talked much—that was until he became the last chance of an empire on the brink. Documents are strong things to most men with a touch of language. I became a watcher. Pericles Knyght be a true warrior—a murderer too. His curious tale begins not in bloodshed, where life is destroyed, but in poetic madness, where hope begins, where truth is life. Pericles Knyght—this be his story, told throughout the ages before the time of darkness came upon us all.

“I don’t want to go, father.” The father, this poet learned, was of course the great Pericles Opti, a son to a great king Pericles the First whom was lost to disease, forcing Opti to take the throne at a young age. Now, he looked like a bitter old man—but watch, young scholar, for here there is life.

“We all want something. You have no girls to keep you occupied, hate learning of the poets, and practice war all day. There is no reason not to go.”

Pericles Knyght, a boy to this old hoplite, looked disturbed as drama and pain hit his eyes, as he tensed up for an argument with father … yet saw a vein of hope. “You would make me kill?”

“I would make you live.” He moved his hand to the blade, raised it to Knyght’s neck, smiled as it crossed the adams apple, and pushed it back.  “Justice, in this world, can be found in the cold iron of the blade. When Dorians first settled here, they did more for these lands by making war than writing laws. And I know of your escapades to the Battle Mage tournaments, so don’t pretend killing is foreign to you, son.”

            Pericles Knyght stepped forward. The mark on his arm, the demonic cross of Aries, made him sure of his destiny (a story, you will hear of, scholar). But the last thing he wanted was to leave the great city to conquer more lands, and gain more gold, but leave the backdoor open to Green Sparta. Red Athens demanded he stay, take the seat next to his king.

“I feel an error in the strategy—if you mean me to go.”

“What be it.”

            Knyght was playing his father, as politicians were so apt to do. But this wasn’t the senate of Sky Rome, where plebiscite and proletariat battled over legions. Two men stood for Red Athens … it was so different not long ago. While votes were made, this was a different form of democracy—where kings still had the power to make war.