Zachania by Joseph Henry Gaines

grasp facts on how this Empire that he served had
butchered thousands of women and children in the battle of Zanlia.
He turned more of its pages only to uncover sketches of women being
tortured and killed, and soldiers wielding the severed heads of
Zanlian children.
    His next
discovery was a sketch of the Emperor himself, dressed in unknown
fighting apparel he looked sinister in every way. Under the picture
he read how the Emperor had ordered the deaths of every living
person in the north west of Kratos, this made Talon sit back and
sigh with disgust. He felt sickened on how the women and children
were killed. And he felt a strange and intense anger overwhelmed
him, he felt rage at this Empire that he now served, and he now
knew why this book was forbidden, it was a damning documentation of
savagery and iniquity.
    Out of the blue
this Empire did not seem so glamorous; its roots were forged from
the blackest of blood shed by the bodies of women and children.
    Talon now
totally entrenched turned to the next chapter called THE WILD
FIGHTERS OF ZACHANIA,
    On the first
page there was a sketch of a bearded man with long fair hair
dressed in a strange manner of clothes. The warrior held a sword in
one hand and an axe in the other, written under the sketch was the
heading Zachanian warrior dressed in a Zachanian battle suit.
    Talon stared
deeply at the drawing as could not help feeling that something
about it was familiar “I have seen this dress before ...... But
where.” Talon thought as he racked his brain trying to
remember,
    He remembered
back to his Grandfather and how he would speak of Zachania but why
was this sketch so vivid in his mind; he knew he had never seen his
Grandfather dressed like this. Then suddenly like a bolt of
lightning it dawned on Talon where he had seen this man, it was in
his dream while he was travelling from his home in Tallasian to the
military school in Kallick Town, the strange dream where he awoke
grasping the mysterious pendant that he always wore around his
neck,
    Talon grabbed
the pendant and sat back feeling slightly dizzy and anxious. “The
man in my dream was dressed as thee” he whispered to himself. His
confusion and anxiousness rose “If the man who gave this to me was
Zachanian, then this pendant must also be Zachanian ....... But
why?” he gasped “why? What puzzle is unfolding before my eyes.” he
added as he leaned himself back and gazed up at his ceiling. Talon
tried to clarify his thoughts yet nothing made sense, he went on to
read how all the Zachanian’s were killed but he was given a
Zachanian pendant in a mysterious dream by a Zachanian warrior
“what can this mean?” he wondered over and over again.
    For the next
few weeks Talon could concentrate on nothing else apart from this
strange puzzle that had presented itself, he finished reading the
book and returned it to its cabinet, then whenever he got the
chance he would take other books from the cabinet, for days on end
he would sit engrossed by these forbidden books where he read
detailed stories on the Zachanian and Zanlian war campaigns. He
discovered everything there was to know about the wars and how the
Empire massacred thousands of the Zachanian’s, it became an
obsession for him, he became enchanted by the tales of the
Zachanian warriors. And was driven by a frantic desire to
understand why and who had given him the pendant that he wore.
    Every night
Talon would fall asleep gazing at it, it filled his whole being,
then one night he dreamt of his childhood, his dream began with his
Grandfather arguing with his father, his Grandfather was yelling
over and over again that they were Zachanian’s and that Talon
should be raised as one, and that he had the right to know of his
bloodline, the words Zachanian were repeated over and over again
growing louder every time until they forced Talon to violently wake
from his dream and sit up abruptly with a loud sigh. Talon dripping
in sweat turned in the moonlight of his