The Prologue
All right, cool! I'll start off with the prologue. This isn't all of it, though...
PROLOGUE
A muffled cry rang through the night. Leaves rustled in the biting wind and accompanied the lament like thousands of ghostly voices, echoing among the endless darkened hills and deserted copses of trees. A young man, back resting against the trunk of a weathered oak, lifted his head sharply at the nearby hoot of a night owl and shook sleep from his eyes, looking about the setting with a slightly apprehensive smile. He stood, wiping caked mud from the underside of his robes, and then froze on the spot, listening to the shrill cries as the wind carried them across the deserted valley. After minutes of intent silence, the boy drew a dark hood over his head, wrapped a flapping cloak about his person, and left the welcoming shelter of the grand, twisted oak.
The valley was now echoing with a continuous lament, broken only by the distant squawking and flapping of agitated birds as they pursued a tranquil environment for rest. The young man started down a tree-lined slope, walking with a more purposeful carriage as he neared the source of the sound. The trees began to thin around him, and the dark ground glimmered with torrents of silvery moonlight, until he found himself standing at the top of a hilly clearing, looking out over the vast, shimmering land of Antimala Rittun. In the distance he could see the shadowed outline of castle Antimala, and the glistening gardens that lay thick around its perimeter. The soft effervescence of its silver-dubbed streams could be heard subliminally in the mind, bringing forth a state of deep thought and dreaminess to all who fell under its spell, sitting upon the benches lining its sides or lolling up and down the stone pathways that crossed over the water in a delicate weave. The boy gazed out at its glimmering profile with whimsical eyes, remembering the days when he could do whatever he wished in the castle and grounds alike without the necessity of glancing around each corner, as though he were an intruder, as though didn’t belong.
“I don’t belong there,” the boy said aloud, though the statement yielded little reassurance. If he didn’t belong here, then where in the world could he possibly? What place in all of Eyden could be more wonderful, more nostalgic and sublime than the one he was gazing upon at that moment?
To the young man’s surprise, a woman emerged suddenly from the shadows of a willow at the bottom of the hill. She stumbled to the level ground a few feet lower than the tree, jade cloak billowing behind her, moaning in grief and throwing her hands up to the moon in apparent frustration. As she started up the slope, not taking notice of the young man in her bout of depression, she let out a strangled shriek and, without warning, collapsed to the ground. The boy smiled and took the opportunity to steal towards the limp, heavily-breathing mass on the earth. Approaching the woman, he knelt down onto the grass and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. In a split second, an arm had flung from the depths of the jade green velvet and grasped the young man around the neck. The woman’s head snapped up to his startled face, watery eyes locked on the dark shadow beneath his hood.
“Who are you?” she seethed, tears streaming down her cheeks. Immediately, the young man lifted his hood and smiled tenderly at the woman. The moment she caught a glimpse of his face, her arms flung over the boy’s shoulders and she pulled him into a tight embrace, spluttering with shock.
“R-R-Rufus! My only son! My only son! Where have you been? H-How did you find me?” She pulled away to study each newly-defined feature of his face, a face she hadn’t seen for months.
Rufus smiled broadly. “I could hear you crying from halfway across the valley.”
“Yes, but—but how did you find me? How do you know about this place?” she asked, suddenly stern.
Rufus took in a breath, a pang of nervousness shooting through his stomach as he prepared to tell his lie, which he had been quietly practicing on the back of his steed, Trovars, on a long and mundane journey across the provinces. “Well,” he began, twisting his face into what he hoped was a worried expression, “father had kept me with him as he searched for power among the—among the—” He stuttered over the name of the land, pretending that the mere mention of it invoked pain. His mother, Lady Parthena, frowned and let out a moan. Rufus patted her shoulder and smiled gently. “It’s all right, mother. I had escaped long before his tyranny began again. But before I left he told me that you had stayed here, at the castle. Even if he hadn’t told me I would’ve come back, to see if you were here or not.”
“Any place would have been better than with your father,” she said, anger and hurt ringing in her voice. “I—I was just told about it all a month ago. I received a letter from your father himself, ex-explaining that he had taken you to some cave and—and had betrayed me. Every night—every night since I held that piece of parchment in my hands, every night since I touched something your father had written, I leave the castle and—and I weep. My heart has been torn apart, Rufus. This valley is the only place I can go without being near an official and—and not be afraid to look w-weak.”
Rufus already knew this, but he didn’t say anything. For a week he had been following his mother from outside castle Antimala, watching to see exactly what she was doing with her power over the land, and had spent each night beneath the oak tree, waiting for her to come far enough away from the castle so that he could carry out the plan. Those had been his father’s directions, at least, and he didn’t plan to mess them up. Not unless he wanted to see guillotine at the age of seventeen.
(getting my hint here?) 
