On this page, I'll be posting previews of my first novel, Swords of Ruin I: Sorrow. You can also view this story on Wattpad.

Please note that this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. This means you may not use my work for commercial purposes or distribute any derivative works. If you choose to share this work, you must cite me, Matthew DiMatteo, as the author.

Some burn bright but brief, thought the girl in the prison cell, but some burn long, and slow, and deep.

Her mother’s mantra was all she had left. But she would burn for a while yet. And she would take back what was hers. The Master of the Tower had taken everything else but this, and the dark hope that came with it. If it could even be called hope. She had surrendered so much of herself already, that even these first steps felt like despair. As much as it hurt, she had finally embraced her new name. For that was what she was now. That was what she had to be to have any chance.

Of her fifteen years in this life, nearly half had been spent in captivity. After those first few months of weeping, always with her face pressed to the bars, as close to freedom as she could manage, she had noticed the effect her tears were having on the metal latticework. Amidst the impoverished innards of this tower, the corrosion was easy to overlook. But she had been weeping in the same place each day for seven years, and now at last she saw her way out of this cell.

Her limbs were slender, if not emaciated. But with all the hate in her heart, she delivered a kick with more force than she should have been able to exert. Rusted steel splinters tore into her foot as it punched through the latticework. The gap she made was perhaps a foot and a half wide. Not much at all. But it would have to be enough.

Getting on her hands and knees, she threaded her head through the opening. A few strands of her knotted black hair were torn away in the process. Next, she angled her shoulders so that she could pull one arm through and then the other. The broken bars stripped away more of her skin, but she used her blood as a lubricant to squeeze free. She twisted her hips to rotate her torso, and there was so very little left of her that she managed this easily. Finally, she trailed her legs behind her, leaving streaks of crimson on the sooty floor.

She pushed herself to her feet and looked back at her prison. To see it from the outside was something she had expected to relish, but now there was only bitterness in her.

From the floor, she picked up a jagged metal fragment, a piece of her prison bars the size of her index finger, then limped around the corner of a hallway lit sparsely by red wall candles. Climbing a staircase of chipped stone, she reached a thick, iron door and inserted the metal shard into the keyhole. Twisting it, she heard a small click, and the door opened.

The chamber beyond was cold and dark. Scant amounts of moonlight filtered in through high, narrow windows, illuminating the objects hanging on the far wall:

A pair of twin short-swords glistening silver in the night.

It’s not over yet, she thought rapturously. Not by a long shot.

A tremor ran through the air as she glimpsed the swords. The modest chill of the autumn night became a deadly frost, an icy current that pervaded every inch of her. The room seemed to thrum and ripple; reality seemed to falter.

Their power is stronger than ever.

With a few soft steps across the black marble, she approached the weapons. Many feelings coursed through her, things conflicting and arcane. She felt the strong resonance between herself and the blades, felt how thirstily they begged her to wrap her hands around their hilts. To take them back after so many years.

It had ended badly the last time. Images of that demise flashed before her, and she could still taste the charred, smoky stench that had engulfed her. The vividness of these impressions was staggering, and she hesitated.

No, she steeled herself. It’s not going to go that way again.

She reached out with her left hand and clutched the grip of the sword she had named Despair. The icy current that had shot through the chamber at her first sight of the weapons now rushed through her arm. In moments, it seized her core. But she was not daunted.

With her right hand, she wrested the sword she had named Sorrow. The frozen torrent it injected into her was paralyzing. For several seconds, she writhed in pain as the flow undulated within her. But her grasp on the swords remained steadfast, and as she endured the churning coldness, it gradually leveled out. There was a sense of recognition in the blades at the touch of their former master, and the ice in her arms acknowledged the fire in her heart. The swords established an equilibrium, an abiding calm. Holding them in her hands again, she was complete.

But she had spent too much time lingering.

“I thought I might find you here,” an oily voice spoke behind her. One she had heard daily for these past seven years and detested. It was cold and commanding, but she was stiff and resolute, filled with defiance.

She turned to confront her captor. Lord Ravenfire. The Master of Ravendorf Tower was clad entirely in black—tunic, cape, and boots—save for the iron mask that concealed his face.

“And I might have expected you’d find me.” Her words were dripping with scorn, the sum of her pain and hatred. “But it looks like I’ve got something you don’t. Something you could have had if only you’d dared. But you didn’t. You couldn’t. Even surrounded by it—depending on it—you’re still afraid of the dark.”

Ravenfire laughed. “If you are trying to provoke me, you’re wasting your breath. Why don’t you just get on with it?”

“Alright, then.” She bared her teeth. “Fire knows we’ve spent enough words already.”

Though she had been starved to the brink of death in the Tower dungeons, the swords in her hands uplifted her; already they were filling her with impossible strength. Despair bit hungrily toward Ravenfire’s chest but was thwarted by his black blade. Sorrow was likewise deflected by obsidian steel, but Despair was already moving back around in a riposte. Anyone else would have been too slow—anyone else would have been decapitated by the strike—but he was faster even than she was. Effortlessly he parried the onslaught of both Swords of Ruin.

Fuming, she withdrew a step. He was stronger than she had expected. Even charged as she was with the misery he had wrought on her, allowing the blades to drink deeply of it, she was not a match for him.

Even after seven years of suffering, it just isn’t enough …

As if reading her thoughts, the Master of the Tower laughed. “What are seven years against the span of centuries? Do you really think you can contest the might of the anguish I have accrued across the ages? Why don’t you just relinquish those things? Remain with me a while longer. Let your hate fester. Perhaps in time you will come to know such bitterness as I have known and thus match me. But not tonight, Fallenstar. Not tonight.”

Three armored soldiers descended from the central stairway, all well over six feet tall and wielding formidable spears. They carried their hulking frames with unmistakable arrogance, and their eyes were filled with a hunger and depravity she knew all too well.

Sorrow and Despair flared to life, charging her with new energy. She wove deftly between the spears, carving a tidy path with her twin swords. In seconds, three suits of metal were lying on the floor, three throats spilling their blood upon it.

Before Ravenfire could react, she heaved Sorrow across the chamber. It struck him in the stomach, and he fell to his knees, clutching at the blade. She hastened to her nemesis and ripped at the cord around his neck, the one from which a nine-pointed star pendant was strung.

“I’ll be having this back,” she said, snatching the pendant. In her hand, it grew warm.

But the Master of the Tower liberated Sorrow from his abdomen and struck her across the face with its pommel. She staggered back, blood obscuring her vision.

With perfect composure, her enemy placed a hand to his stomach and heat began to gather, searing shut his wound. She used this time to get to the spiral stairway. As she scaled it, Despair remained in her left hand, the pendant in her right.

She would have to reclaim Sorrow another time.

The room at the top of the stairs was a broad chamber set beneath a high glass dome. This was a landing, a break in the Tower’s ascent before it continued into the clouds. Across a narrow walkway leading to the next level, from the mouth of the rising Tower poured five more armored guards. They advanced on her, and she deliberated. At this lower level, she was on par with the walls of a gray city that stretched in either direction for miles. Ramparts, ancient but still strong, were carved into the walls, with staircases descending to green fields beyond. Freedom, precious freedom after seven long years. But she was just too unforgiving.

With her left hand, she pointed Despair at her aggressors. Her right hand caressed the pendant, and it grew hotter still. The metal was scorching, but she barely felt it.

As long as your heart does burn with love, her mother had promised, it will summon fire.

She could see her face again, the care in her eyes. Hear the melodies she had sung to her as a child, filling her dreams with magic that had since been burned out.

If you’ve hurt her even a little …

From Despair’s tip burst a stream of flame, enveloping the guards. As they screamed, she relished the smell of molten metal mingling with that of roasting flesh.

Smirking at that small measure of retribution, she readied another blast. But footsteps from the staircase below hurried her. He was coming. And against him, fire alone would not suffice. Growling, she elected the ramparts.

“Do you think it will change you, this freedom?” Lord Ravenfire called after her. “Do you think it will make you hurt any less? Do you think it will quiet that questioning voice in the dark of the night? No, Fallenstar. No matter how far from the Tower you stray, you’ll never change what you are. I’m part of you now. You will always be my prisoner.”

* * *

Centuries ago, this world was a very dark place. Grim and cold and lifeless at its core. These were the Fallen Ages that watched the gods drift away, that saw rain and fire alter the face of the earth. This was the era from which the Swords of Ruin sprang, and despite all the pain they have since caused, they have their roots in something most humble and human. The swords were born out of simple love.

It was a young woman named Lyriel Songsparrow who forged them, the daughter of a murdered blacksmith. Lyriel’s father tried many times to pass to her his knowledge of his trade, but always she had been reluctant. Upon his death, her grief was worsened by the regret that she had never taken to his craft. And so she took to his forge and to metalworking with an ardent energy, hoping to be redeemed in the eyes of her departed.

The products of those first labors were a great many blades: proud, shining pieces that seemed to gleam with the very tears she had poured into them. And every one bore a bitter edge that would cut as though in anger and bite without heed. But Lyriel was steadfast as well as fierce, and eventually she perfected her craft.

Folk came to regard her blades with the utmost respect, for they were light and swift as they were stout and strong, and unforgivably sharp. In those ages, there transpired many wars, and plenty of folk were in need of weapons. Lyriel bore a longstanding grudge against such violent hearts as the one who killed her father, but this spite she kept hidden, and gave her swords freely to them. No one could have suspected the malevolence behind her willing smile, for this was all to be part of her retribution.

Lyriel’s fame soon had people on both sides of the conflict carrying her swords into battle. She churned thousands of blades from her father’s forge, feeding the fires of war. It was said the steel was enchanted, imbued with the power of her grief, and that any who held one of Lyriel’s swords would be invincible.

How this myth began is forgotten; it might have been Lyriel herself who started it, for she was as cunning as she was bitter. But as you can probably imagine, no one proved invincible on the battlefield. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Perhaps it was because both sides carried her swords into the fighting, but what is said now is that those blades were all cursed. That Lyriel cursed them as she wept over the anvil, that every hammer stroke was a promise that death find the ones who wielded her creations. And find them it did.

And so on the two sides fought, leaving more dead with every skirmish, but still no one would relinquish Lyriel’s blades. And at last there came a battle from which no survivors emerged, one that left everyone dead on both sides. And then Lyriel walked onto that grim plain and recovered every last sword from the thousands of lifeless hands. They say this was her revenge, to eliminate every person who harbored the desire to kill in their heart. And when all of the weapons had been collected, she melted them down again in her father’s forge. From the mass of molten steel that was the amalgamation of all the bloodshed and sorrow in the kingdom, Lyriel forged but two more blades. And it is said the dying cries of those fallen soldiers yet resonate within the steel.

These were the Swords of Ruin. Into them she poured her sorrows and her fury, and all the fire of her lamenting soul. And an oath she placed upon the blades, a vow Lyriel sealed in her own blood, that these weapons should never falter in the face of despair. That as the darkness encroaches around them, they should grow only stronger. She crafted the Swords of Ruin to feed on the pain of the one who carries them. But thus to wield these weapons comes at a price. The steepest of costs.

To bear the Swords of Ruin is to be consumed. For the destruction wrought by such pain as Lyriel knew is two-sided. The swords will transform grief into power, but that power will obliterate everything within its reach, foremost the hand that wields it. There is no avoiding this truth; it has ever been the way of things. We reap whatever we wreak in this world.

* * *

“I’m not a prisoner, you know,” a low voice said defiantly.

Through those six words coursed such scorn as Aris had never heard, but also undercurrents of a tragic vulnerability, austerity borne out of fear, rigidity from dire necessity. Pride and a secret shame battled for composure of her voice.

Aris could not shake a feeling of familiarity in it.

In the corner of the room, beneath a tall diamond window cut high into the stone, stood a figure about his own height wrapped in a crimson cloak.

The queen faced the wall impassively. Aris could not see her face.

“If you are not a prisoner,” he said carefully, “why do you remain here?”

“Not all prisons are iron and stone,” she said curtly. Her patience seemed dangerously thin, but Aris sensed her ire was not necessarily directed at him.

“My lady,” he appealed, “I have little time myself. If I have come here purposelessly—”

“You are not without purpose here,” the queen interjected fiercely. Aris could almost feel her eyes, though they remained hidden.

“I have been led here, it seems,” he added. “From one sign to the next, and—”

“By dreams?” she again cut in. In her short words there was tremendous ferocity.

“And by dreams,” Aris admitted. He did not see anything to gain by concealment here. This person appeared to read him as though she were in his mind, remaining a step ahead of him. And for all he knew, it had been her convoluted design to bring him to this tower.

“Was it you?” he blurted. “Were you the one who—”

“Yes,” the queen acknowledged. “Yes, it was my hand that wrote that letter.”

So it was true. So many questions fought for priority.

“How do you know everything?” he demanded. “How do you know me …” He stopped himself. That sense of familiarity again. He felt he was on the verge of understanding something but did not know what.

“That is not the question you meant to ask.” The queen sounded strangely amused.

“Who … who are you?” Aris asked instead. Who are you, really?

At this, he was sure she smiled. Turning to face him for the first time, the queen lowered her hood, revealing a vibrant flow of red hair. Brushing the long locks from her face, she stood regarding him with piercing emerald eyes. And, to his astonishment, a face that could not have been any older than he was.

But it was the eyes that struck him. Struck chords like a melody long forgotten, now rising to the surface.

“You do know me,” he murmured, dazed. And do I not know you?

“I should apologize for my manner,” the queen said delicately. “And for leading you here so indirectly. But it was necessary.”

Aris nodded.

“There is more at stake than you know,” she continued. “If I tell you, you may regret the knowledge. Do you still wish for an explanation?”

The severity in those eyes could not be denied.

“I must.”

* * *

Please note that this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. This means you may not use my work for commercial purposes or distribute any derivative works. If you choose to share this work, you must cite me, Matthew DiMatteo, as the author.