Opening day and some other bits!

Hello All,

Tonight I have what might be considered a special treat. I have 2 sketches (Barbarians 95 and 96 for those keeping count) the first is just a guy I sketched during a meeting today and the other is a sketch I did at lunch while remembering the prologue to a story I had written last year. It was supposed to be the opening pages to a graphic novel and someday it just might be, but tonight I thought I would post the images and the prologue from that story for your amusement.

Enjoy!

Prologue

She looked down at his naked body and thought about what she was about to do. A smile crossed her face and a laugh began in her throat. She had almost loved him, this man. This pure, beautiful, naked man that lay before her.

She had known of him for only a few short years. Before they met she had heard the stories of his adventures. All the stories told in beer halls and courts across the Great Continent. She had heard the stories and wondered if any one man could have been that brave, that pure, and that beautiful. The very first time she saw him she thought all those stories might just be true.

It was shortly after the Great War. He was sent as an emissary from his King with orders to make peace with her newfound country. He was so strong. When he entered the room everyone turned to look. He commanded it. He deserved it. He was the epitome of strength and honor. She was taken aback at their first meeting. She hadn’t expected that.

The queen was a beautiful woman. She was so beautiful that men, even without her enchantments, usually fell over at the sight of her, but not him. No, this one was a different breed. She had tried to seduce him. Why not, she thought, to bed a king’s messenger was not new to her, but he would not be swayed. When she tried to cast her spells on him he sensed them and was powerful enough to resist her. This excited her even more. Here was a man that would take some doing. Here was a man that might actually be worthy of her.

Over the next few weeks as lower diplomats argued and worked out small details, they would take long walks together and discuss the bigger parts of the peace plan. It was on those walks that she saw where the stories had come from. Here was a man that was not to be taken lightly. He knew his way around her flirtations as well as he knew his way around a battlefield. She would push, he would pull, she would pull and he would turn. The verbal jousting they did was as exciting to her as an evening of passionate lovemaking. How could she ever forget a man like this, this man that lay before her now?

As she remembered those weeks her eyes lingered over his muscular body. His body was a roadmap of his life. The adventures, the wars, the barroom altercations, were written in the scars that covered him. A sword cut on his lower back, a burn on his forearm from an errant spell, discolored tissue around his knees that would never heal, the hairline cut from an assassin’s blade along his jaw line. Looking at the wounds she wondered if he was in constant pain. If he was he never showed it. His life was a life filled with violence. A life he was born to, but never seemed completely comfortable with. Pity, she thought, this man would have made a great king.

The knight lay there naked before her. The troll that had accompanied her had stripped him of all his armor and clothing. The queen held his weapons and holy symbols in a pouch in her hand. She would leave him here, stranded, thousands of miles from anything he was familiar with. She knew she could not kill him, no, she actually did have feelings for him, but he would not be allowed to interfere with her plans.

She began to recite the spell that she had worked on for so long, a spell that had cost the lives of a thousand slaves. As she whispered the incantation she saw the world trembling in her grasp. Yes, this was the moment of her greatest victory. As she finished the spell she knelt next to the handsome knight, licked his ear and whispered, “You were divine, in your time, warrior, but now you are just a man. Now and forever I will remember you, but you…will merely forget.”

With that she stood up, barked an order at the troll that was standing a few feet away. He came over to her and she cast again. This spell would take her back to her kingdom a half a world away. “Goodbye, Knight Commander. We shant meet again.” And with that she was gone leaving him with nothing. She had his armor, his weapons and his holy symbols. She had taken everything from him that made him who he was.

Or so she thought.

Hope you enjoyed it, maybe I will continue to post the story with images to go along. Let me just finish these barbarians first.

Cheers!