The Protectors

Prologue

Maldros used to be a happy place to live. Smiling faces, sharing and kindness everywhere you went. Now it's just fear. Fearing losing your house or your family just by one simple mistake you make; and it's all because of one person; the ruler of Maldros. Nadia Roth.

She is now the 'Head Maldrerian', or in other words, Queen; as you like to call it. And what is Maldros you ask? Maldros is the home to the Protectors. The Protectors protect those who cannot protect themselves. They protect all different kinds of people from all different realms, important people.

When Hunter Radcliffe was young, he never understood why they were supposed to protect other beings that have no meaning to them, it made him furious. The petty humans and the rude vampires, fairies and other magical creatures that have no importance to Maldros, but Protecting has always been a part of their culture, basically the reason why they exist. Those that are protected mostly don't know they exist, and when they do, something bad happens.

They don't know they exist because the Protectors wear magical shields around their necks in the form of a chain; it stops the other beings from being able to see them. The magic from the chain comes from the Maldrerian Tree; it is the source of their life. There is absolutely no other tree like it in the universe and so, ironically, they also protect that with their life. If it were to die, so would all Maldrerians.

The people of Maldros become protectors by passing a test, the hardest test that they will ever come across. It predicts their future, if they pass the test they get to leave Maldros and go to the realm of the being they are to protect, but if they fail then they remain in Maldros and become unworthy and they do the jobs that no one in Maldros wants, maids, carpenters and so on.

The protectors know they passed the test when they announce it at a graduation held every year for the group of children that are age twelve. It should be the happiest day for every twelve year old in Maldros, but it wasn't for Hunter.

About three days before his graduation he was informed that his father had died. His father had raised him in Maldros by himself, they were very close. His father taught him everything he knew about being a protector; he was one of the best protectors that had ever lived. That is why they let the incident with Hunter's mother slide. His mother was human and intimate relationships between protectors and their beings are forbidden. When his mother and father were caught by Nadia, she threatened to kill both of them but his father told him that they made an agreement and let both of them live. His father came back to Maldros and his mother remained in the human world. His father had told him that his mother wanted him to have the best life possible and that she had nothing on Earth, so his father had brought him back to Maldros. Hunter has never spoken to his mother; He does not even know what she looks like.

His father, too, wanted him to have the best life possible and that's why he trained Hunter every day; to prepare him for the final test before graduation, he wanted him to be the best. Hunter tried to follow his father's wish and gave it his best shot.

The day of graduation, Hunter knew was ready. Everyone in Maldros showed up for this special day every year. The noise filled his ears like water fills a sinking ship. He looked around, seeing all of the unfamiliar faces; screaming, shouting, clapping. He remembers waiting in a long line of other graduates, waiting for the Head Protector, Nadia, to call his name and assign him to whom he must protect; or if he failed the test, what his other job in Maldros would be.

Nervousness ran through his veins like an electrical current. He did his best to block out the noise around him and focused on the Protector tree. Its colors swirled together, the perfect shades of silver for the trunk and white and gold for the leaves. It was quite an unusual tree; He has seen different trees in books that his father used to read to him when he was little, but once it keeps them alive, he doesn't mind the colors.