The Fire Orchid

Estefan C Butterfly

"It has never been easy living in the lands of Horihorn. Everywhere you look, there are countless mountains and chasms, shrouded in the twilight gloom. Where creatures colossal in height and power clash from dawn to dusk.

In these lands, it matters not how big your sword is, nor how good the shield you carry. Just as many adventurers have destined to wander these rocky lands before you, Death accompanies them, eager for the moment when the cold blade of an axe cuts through the dry mountain air, painting the rocks with the carmine of his blood.... Axes, these, carried by the beasts that rule all in Horihorn, the Minotaurs.

Among all the tribes, scattered from the green fields to the foot of the mountains, to the most icy and deadly peaks, one stands out as the most powerful. Those who make the ground shake with the thud of their footsteps, and bring terror to the bravest. The Spotted Hooves.

Known to all as the "Champions of Horihorn", when compared to the other tribes, they are more intelligent, agile and fierce. They are perfect and ruthless warriors. All marked by a white spot on their left hoof. Such a tribe, so organized in its attacks, like a great pack, follows the following code, in taurine language: 'The weak must perish to the dazzle of the strongest'."

Sometimes I wonder if anyone else had the chance to notice that the books Turitology - Vol.5 "Beyond the Mountains" by Estefan C Butterfly and The Valkyrian Academic Guide - Vol.3 by the Royal Academy of the Valkyrian Kingdom, have almost the same descriptions about the Spotted Hooves.

The book distributed by A.R.R.V has 4327 more words than the copy forgotten some thirty years ago. There are two pages about what they probably do to their victims, one page with the accounts of "supposed survivors" and some popular myths from villages near the foot of the mountains. Also, this book has four grammatical errors, an acute accent out of place, and they got the tense wrong from page 1238 to 1242 ("Native relatives and the Laughing Face Ladies").

Probably the person who proofread the chapter must have overlooked these errors.... Or just realized that it would be a waste of time to go after each buyer and secure an erratum for them.

If someone were to ask me which is my favorite out of these two, I would not hesitate to say that Estefan C Butterfly's works have won my heart in unique ways!

The cover may even be made with a cheap type of leather that leaves something to be desired when it comes to beauty and it is so common to find ink stains running down the pages. A special blend of ink based on flowers that only grow in Dran, on the banks of the Howling Waterfall, near the first place where my mother thought she had lost me forever. This ink smells so good that a little scented cloud hits your face with every turn of the page!

Ending this description, what I love most about this work is how that man dedicated himself to finding the smoothest and shiniest stones to portray the fangs that make up the silhouette of the head of one of the most beautiful and dangerous beasts we can find in the Serpentine Archipelago: The serpentine wolf.

About its content, I think it is one of the most entertaining guides I found inside the library, but it was also one of the ones that scared me the most. Not because of some strange part or a macabre tale, but the fright I got when she looked at me with those golden eyes....

It was as if she already expected me to break into the deepest part of the library the first moment her eyes forgot about me. As if that "no" in a harsher tone, the opposite of her sweet and melodious voice, was the perfect bait to make an 8-year-old girl disobey everything she was told, just to know what is so important about that book to be kept in a chest, closed with an unlocked padlock, made of crystallized sap and wrapped with my name in that yellow bow.