The Legend of Kesrik
(Legends vol.2)

This is the story of a king who no longer wanted to be a king, and of a thief, who, despite everything he did to avoid it, would ultimately become a king himself. It is the tale of the two women who loved these two men, each in their own way, and the saga of their friends, allies and enemies also.
Set in a world where the civilisations of Old Earth have crumbled, conflict and strife have become the everyday realities of life, and the people scarcely survive beneath the sadistic heels of power-mad emperors and cruel land-barons. This is a world where war has become the natural state of existence, fought with sword, bow, halberd and axe. Across the battlefields charge thunderous legions of armoured steeds carrying brave and fierce armoured warriors, and even fiercer savage, almost naked barbarians, battling to the death amidst blood, guts, suffering and heroism. While outside the walls of many a besieged city, lie vast armies in camp, building engines of mass destruction and vying for the blood and possessions of those within. Here, perfidious nobles plot, while elsewhere, both treacherous and honest men vie to defy them, or to defeat them, or to win their favour, each for their own very different reasons.
The empire of Greater Apraoc is crumbling, and the savage hordes of the north are advancing once again, tearing down old cities, and killing all in their paths; whilst, from the south, thousands of men march under the banners of Hektor, the usurper of Lequoia, self-styled Emperor of the West, for they too have invaded the lands of the old empire trapped in-between. For King Tezahur of Apraoc, reluctant king though he is, his council fights a war on two fronts, while he, thousands of miles to the east, desperately travels home at haste in an attempt to bargain a truce in order to save his kingdom.
Kes the thief, or Kesrik, Count Sevearl of Hace to name his true identity, the only man who can prevent imminent defeat by virtue of his potential influence and inner-courage, hides away, disdaining the role he should take unto himself in the absence of his king. Strangely, as hard as he tries to avoid his unwanted responsibility and very much unassumed destiny, the harder Fate, and a beautiful and determined noble woman who knows his true identity, conspire to rid him of his doubts and fears and to make him face up to his duty.
This is the story of two very different men. A tale of tragedy, war, pain, deceit, treachery, death, heroism, love, and ultimately, against all the odds, a last minute intervention from an altogether unexpected source. However, this is also the story of evil men and of their esoteric powers, and of a crafty old shaman and his baneful dealings with the Lords of Darkness and the Cur-bane of the Eternal Nothing.
This is a saga of bloody and barbarous war, a yarn of romance, a fable of humanity's endless conflict. Whether, moreover, this be a truly victorious tale of the chivalrous over the flagitious, will only be revealed in the reading of it, and perhaps, the vague notion that you, for one brief moment perchance, desired living through it yourself!