I never thought of myself as special. I’ve been an orphan for his entire life, having been raised under Orin Daunderfell, as part of the Andurovian law of orphans. By law, the lord of the land’s advisor had to care for the orphans in his lord’s domain. Orin Daunderfell oversaw the small town of Crossroads. It sat right in the center of the nation of Andurovia. I’ve lived in Crossroads all of my life. I worked as a stablehand as soon as I was able which was also part of the Andurovian law of orphans. Eventually an orphan must contribute to society by taking up a trade. Working in the stables wasn’t so bad... if you didn’t mind working around the smell of horse crap and piss all day. The not-so-noble steeds didn’t mind me, especially since I was short, brown hair and dark eyes, covered in olive-brown rags. I was only ten, but even then everyone towered over me.
Luckily, there weren’t that many other orphans in Crossroads. The town was small enough to have a low amount of homeless, but big enough to be considered growing. Often I would daydream about being able to go out on one of the horses and ride out on the countryside. The Northwestern regions of Andurovia was home to the great Horselords, like Lord Durall of Candlesrock. Even Crossroads was home to some of the great Hooves of Thunder, a name that the Andurorvian calvary had picked up a century ago. They were considered the model calvary unit in the world of Nagesh. The Rashokis nearly lost their entire country to a hundred Hooves of Thunder. Fortunately for Rashokis, they were much more adapted to desert warfare than the Thunderhooves could ever amount to. The Trail of Fire, as the campaign had been called, was unsuccessful when the Thunderhooves had died out in the desert.
But now after a century since the Trail of Fire campaign, relations between Andurovians and Rashokis has grown bitter. That’s where my tutor, Charleston stops teaching. He says that the situation is yet to resolve itself. When he accompanies Orin Daunderfell to Mentings, the capital city, for meetings with King Heron and his royal court, he hears others speak of expanding Andurovia into Rashoki territory. But at the time, I was too young to understand the greater situation. The Northwestern regions of Andurovia supply most of the nation’s raw materials and ships them to the mountainous Andoan region where Mentings lies in the Southeast. There, with what I hear from traders and those who pass through Crossroads, people say that they use the material to build weapons, armor, and other inventions. I even heard someone say they make weapons that shoot fire.
My world then seemed so easy, so innocent. I was ten years old. The world, for the most part, was good. Monsters lived in the seas, people were learning how to shoot fire from their arms, and people wondered how they were able to fly. Nagesh stood on the brink of change. And I was going to be part of that change. Well, maybe not by cleaning up horse crap all day. But at my young age of ten, I knew I wanted to be an adventurer. I wanted to sail the Laikanthia ocean, cross the deserts of Rakoshi, and find the lost Kingdom of the Ontimans.
My dreams came to a standstill when the news had reached Crossroads. I was working in the stables as usual when a rider came through town, spreading the word around town.
“King Theron the Bold has been assassinated!” the rider said as he came riding through the street the stables was on. “The King is dead!”
I walked to the entrance and saw people coming out from their homes, all for this single messenger. He headed for the town manor, where Orin Daunderfell and his family lived. I was allowed to go there, but social status kept me from going regularly. That, and my stench. Lady Daunderfell didn’t really tolerate my presence in her home and I didn’t like her kids very much. But I wanted to hear more news of King Heron, so I headed over to the Daunderfell home.
I ended up “borrowing” one the city’s horses and rode over. The crowd yielded to horses running through the streets. Being a lowly stablehand had its perks. The horses were available to me, and I had been able to develop some riding with them. Still, some of them were able to recognize me and immediately got upset with an orphan being greedy with the road. I followed the messenger nonetheless. I was able to close the gap, knowing where he was headed, or at least I thought I knew.
He was wearing the colors of Andurovia, red and yellow. The red stood for the blood that had been spilt during the formation of Andurovia, when the Rangers had submitted to and joined the state at the start of the Fifth Age. The yellow symbolizes a bright and positive outlook for the future of Andurovia. Colors didn’t mean much to me then. But the official colors meant he was from Mentings, the capital. Like me, he knew where he was going, so I stayed hot on his tail.
If he had become aware of me following, he sure did a bad job of hiding it. The messenger shot off, as if I were trying to kill him. He then took a turn. I was too busy trying to keep to try to stop and turn with him in time. I stopped, almost flying off of the saddle-less horse, before turning around and heading through an alley. I trotted through, up until the alley had narrowed to the point of dismounting. The dirt path had turned into grass.
I walked through it, not sure where the messenger had went, or why he had taken the detour. It was then I saw his horse, which stood without a rider. I went up to approach it, but as soon as I was within a close distance of it, I felt my leg being pulled. My stomach and head turned over. Before I knew it, I was hanging upside down from a nearby tree several a couple of inches above the ground. My heart raced as I became fearful of hitting the ground face-first.
It was then I noticed the messenger from before, in his red and yellow cloak, mount back up on his horse and ride out through the same alley that my horse couldn’t fit through. My blood, which was a little disoriented, began to boil. That was not the right thing to do, because my vision started going black. I wasn’t sure then, but I must have hit my head on the way up. Now I was just filling the concussion with rushed blood and gravity.
As my vision went dark, I could barely make out the noises of someone crying out for help. Then, I passed out.
