The Kingdom of Ilyias

**This particular piece of work is still in draft form and is still being written. Most errors I already know about and I will fix them eventually**

She had been running for several hours, trying ever so dilligently to avoid the myriad of guards and sentry posted along the streets of her kingdom.  Princess Leylia was on her own, fleeing from the marauders who had invaded her once peaceful home.

It had only been a few days since the attack came from the northeastern mountains of Algamon.  The city of Ilysia had been sieged and over taken in a short order by a massive army of scoundrels and criminals.

To the princess though, all of that didn't matter for the time being.  Her focus was survival.  An inherant trait of primal origins.  Survival was the only thing that mattered to her. 

She stayed in the shadows of the buildings and made use of alley ways if they were not littered with the wreckage of the battle that had destroyed her home.  She kept a keen eye on the few sentries she came across and made sure not to alert them to her presence.

As she ventured through the remnants of her city she couldn't help but notice the lifeless bodies of those slain in battle, still littered across the ground.  With the night being unusually warm, and the days being even warmer, the stench from the rotting corpses pierced her very senses

She struggled several times, having to stop her travel to prevent herself from throwing up to the dreadful smells and imagery her eyes were laid upon.  Leylia was but a fair and warm young woman, one who knew not the perils of life outside the city, and death of this degree was

increasingly new to her.  She struggled to remain strong and vigilant and she fought to keep moving.  She came up to a small structure that still lay intact, she had been running for so long she was in dire need of rest.  She inspected the structure and deemed it safe for now.

She carefully edged her way into structure through a small hole located near it's base, once inside she removed a pendant from a pocket on her jacket and opened it.  It cast a light-blue light into the room.  She inspected the room and concluded it was but a storage shed, and it seemed

secure for the time being.  She sat down on the cold concrete floor of the shed and further inspected her surroundings, she saw a few buckets, some pots and what looked like the poles from garden tools.  Nothing of any practical use to her at the time.  She sighed reluctantly to herself and leaned her head up against the side of the shed.

As she sat there she stared into the pendant she carried with her.  It was a joyful picture showing her as a young child with her mother and father.  A simple trinket of immense personal value to her.  A tear slowly escaped from her left eye and dribbled down her cheek.  The pain of losing her family was just too strong and not easily forgotten, even in the chaos that has ensued since their deaths.

Her body began to tremble as she couldn't get the images of her loved ones out of her mind.  Desperately she tried to fight back the tears, to fight back the pain.  To her, now was not the time to let such things weigh her down.  She shook her head, her flowing black hair coming to a rest

in front of her eyes.  She shook her head back to clear her vision and decided she had rested enough.  She stood and turned around and began to peer through the cracks in the shed wall.  She wasn't about to attempt leaving the shed without first knowing where her enemies were.

After several minutes of spying through the cracked wall she decided it was safe enough to leave.  She slowly got back down onto her chest and slid her head through the opening at the base of the shed, she managed to look around and saw her path was clear and she crawled the rest of the

way out of the shed.  Again she was off, running through the shadows, staying as silent as possible.  She was heading for the edge of the city, to a small underlying town known as Beldos.  There she would seek shelter and homestead.  The town of Beldos had been completely untouched by the

marauders who sacked Ilyias.  This kept Leylia hopeful, perhaps Beldos was not part of the marauders plan.  For Leylia, Beldos is the only sanctuary she knows of.  She had visited there many times throughout her life and knew some of the locals.  She just prays they are still there when
she arrives.

Beldos wasn't far now, maybe another hours distance.  The city of Ilyias was massive, spanning almost an entire quarter of the continent it lay on.  The continent of Espanza was quite large to begin with and made home to several different kingdoms and cities.