A Flame in The Wind

Chapter 5 - Nadia

This is what I'd imagine Nadia's valley would look like up above

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"Line up," hopping off of the wagon as delicately as I could, I looked around at the many guards carrying guns. It had been days since I'd been let out and allowed to roam about the grounds. My limbs were stiff and the rope on my wrists did nothing but agitate my skin. As we had ventured farther and farther away from my home, the heat increased as well, if my damp tattered clothes showed no indications of such conditions.

Where we had stopped, I wasn't sure, but a grand wall stood in the distance where the road seemed to continue. My hope for escape had long since run out, though. In the beginning days of our journey, the crying had not ceased for many of my fellow people bound on the same round as I. I had tried to wrap my mind around what could have happened for me to end up in shackles in a wagon bound for somewhere in Sueget.

My mother was of noble birth and had married my father, a hunter, out of love. Though she fell into the naked palms of the poor, her knowledge was not lost. I had many memories of her teaching me the secrets of the world as we sat in the grassy fields when the afternoon sun would make the stray strands of bronze hair shimmer in its rays. I would listen to her descriptive stories for hours as she talked of the many different countries and how they came to be. When I was older and Isla would join me in the afternoon lessons, she began to talk about the war. Whereas the lessons on the culture and literature lessons I had found intriguing but boring, the ones of war were burnt into my mind as if my mother's words were the white-hot tip of a rod of iron.

She had recounted many times the tale of the gods but also what had happened because of the curse. Before the war had started many centuries ago, when the land was recovering from its previous one, the Tenaqi were very superstitious of the mages. So superstitious in fact that many Tenaqi would refuse to even speak to some mages back when many races had migrated all over the land.

Then a radical band of mages and merchants decided to attack the Court of Castle Rompeak, where King Bronimir the second resided. The attack was unexpected, and many nobles were killed in the raid, including the king. His successor blamed all the mages for his father's death and ordered an evacuation of anyone who wielded magic.

Sueget took in the refugees and any Tenaqi that did not want to live under this young king's reign. When his kingdom's population began to dwindle, the king closed his borders and ordered a search for any remaining mages. Those who were found were sentenced to death.

The Sutragi saw this as a blatant insult towards them and waged war upon Tenaq. Both sides held strong at the beginning, but soon the wealthy Tenaqi began to lose. Their soldiers had no heart to fight in a war that hurt their former neighbors.

Meanwhile, the Bron did nothing in their kingdom, Baneval. For at the beginning of the war, they had claimed neutrality. The war had been engaged when the warriors of the land had left on the expedition season, and the remaining people could not take a stance while they were away.

As the Tenaqi felt their advantage of wealth and numbers begin to falter at the hands of magic, they realized they needed more strength in their ranks and asked the Bron for the warriors to train their soldiers for war. The remaining people refused, as the mages living in their kingdom had done them a great many services. With the magic of old, they were able to forge mighty weapons for the warriors and calm the stormy waters their ships would ride upon. The most important gift they granted was not only the abundance of food and animals but the creation of the most beautiful temples of the land.

When I was very young my father had taken me to one close to our village. Every piece of stone was carved expertly and the slats in the dome allowed for light to shine upon the statues made of the clearest stones. The temple we had visited was the temple of Atle, the goddess of iron and weaponry, and at the time I had wanted nothing more than to be one of the warriors who had received one of her legendary weapons.