Legend of Fire: Book 1 of the Alrymnian Chronicles

Introduction [Under construction]

When beginning something completely new, there's always the question of how exactly you should start. A dozen different questions about the details I include jump out at me. Should I just start with the action and save introducing myself until later? Give you a few details first and then let you pick up the rest as the story progresses? Or perhaps spell out all the necessary details first and hope you persevere until things become interesting? One part of me wants to wait, and make sure that every little aspect of what I do is perfect from the beginning. The rest of me says that if I insist on obtaining that kind of perfection I'll never get started, and to just jump right in and fix my errors later. If you couldn't tell from this rather haphazard opening, that's the side that usually wins out. I've been staring at a blank page for far too long anyway. As for where to eventually begin this winding narrative, I might as well open with some details about myself. 

My name is Raynen Sigenfire, and I'm from the small town of Denai, situated on the south edge of the kingdom of Rymna. For those of you unfamiliar with the geography, that puts it fairly close to both the Drednor border towards the east, as well as the Cotari Mountains towards the west. At the time I was a young man of 17, and even then I was a rather adept hunter. 

Hunting's something I've always found interesting, partially because of the utility of being able to survive on your own, but also due to the blend of intelligence, skill, and physical ability needed to actually get anywhere. First you need to successfully find a trail, before stealthily and yet quickly following it, before using a well aimed arrow to finally bring down the quarry. There's also a rather precarious relationship between predator and prey here, as one careless move and the roles could quite suddenly switch, with the former pursuer now on the run from the would-be victim. Once after a rather unfortunate shot when hunting a rather problematic wolf, I found myself on the run and had to set fire to some underbrush with a signal flare to escape. I did get that wolf in the end, but it was a lot more trouble than I'd anticipated, and a little more caution would have saved me a lot of pain there.

Anyway, the gear I use for hunting includes mostly standard fare, but there are a couple of surprises. Like any veteran, I keep a bow and a healthy supply of arrows on hand, as well as a canteen, a sparkshot (handy for making fires or sending up a flare), and a small utility knife. The other items I take with me are somewhat less standard, a trackpad and rielth pole. The trackpad is a small rectangular screen and a set of tracking gems coded to the pad. Simply take a gem, attach it to a nearby object, and the screen will point you in the direction of said gem whenever activated, making it nearly impossible to get lost. The rielth pole is a small metal handle that can either extend into a standard spear, or shoot out the blade via retractible cable for use like a grappling hook. It took me two years to accumulate the money needed to buy the thing, but it more than makes up for that with its sheer usefulness and ability to be stored in a pocket. Trust me, few things are more annoying than having to be stealthy while carrying something as unwieldy as a spear, but if you're on the run from any sort of predator, the weapon is very handy to have.

As for why an accomplished hunter like myself would need so many precautions for that kind of screwup... to put it bluntly, mistakes happen. Even the best of us have failures they wish they could forget about, and and when one of those happens, it's best to have a contingency plan before you wind up alarmingly dead. Sure, there might be only a one percent chance for something to go fatally wrong... but those chances do add up, and I've heard a lot of tales about "bad luck" that could have been averted with a couple failsafes like these and a little more caution. But by now I'm betting you're wondering just why am I going on at such length about this particular topic. Well, it just so happens that the story here begins via a hunt with unforseen consequences...