Soul-bound Tyranny, Book I: The Catalyst

Part I: The Beginning Chapter I: Reether Stead

The feelings of prejudice and misconception are among the greatest pestilences bestowed upon sentient life, like a curse or hex as a gift. These emotional stimuli will make even the most civilized creatures revert back to their most primal-instinct driven selves. They are rendered back to mindless beasts, roaring and beating their chests to scare off the stranger that comes to their home.

            These catastrophic pestilences have plagued the material realm of Asarith, a world that has experienced countless calamities and devastating wars. So much so that they have left scars on the very land of the world; whether they are above ground, below ground, hidden, or in plain sight.

            Asarith has five landmasses, there is one — referred to as the “main” continent — that takes up approximately five-twentieths of the world’s total size, while the other continents take up half of that landmass’s size. This landmass was named Kerulen, it’s comprised of four major kingdoms’ and many minor kingdoms’ territory and borders. The four major kingdoms are called: Caclabar, Ferick, Tearalon, and Derendan. It is, however, Caclabar and Derendan that are plagued with the two pestilences, so much so that they are locked in an abundant blood shedding war that has gone on for countless decades.

            This war has been waged for so long; too long say some, that the cause of the war has been long since forgotten in the passage of time. However, there are those that have speculated many a reason for the start of such a horrid war. But, they are all just guesses and rumors.

            The story that is told, the most interesting in the accumulated collection, starts in a little town named Reether-Stead.

            The town of Reether-Stead was built in a region that the kingdom of Caclabar controlled. This land wasn’t overly large; especially when compared to the rest of its kingdom, as it was a sort of mountain range bowl or “basin” encompassing expansive grasslands. This grassland itself was fairly flat, the only blemishes scattered along its face were the rivers carved down from the mountain range, the occasional lone tree(s), and animal dens. The mountain range — blanketed by a thick, mystical oak forest — that acted as the raised walls of the bowl had three “rings” of sorts. The first was the outer ring; which was mostly just very large and rocky hills, then there was the middle ring; which was a serious of small sized and normal sized mountains, then finally was the inner ring; a ring made out of a series of titan sized mountains. But, they all paled in comparison to Mt. Horn’tylock. A mountain near the center of the bowl that was so tall that it made every other mountain the inner ring look like a Dwarf in a drunken stupor. It was, ironically, named after a Dwarven god of mining. It was named so because of the abundant supply of common and rare minerals inside of it; this was coincidently Reether-Stead’s main source of economic fertility.

            It was given to Lord Charles Henry VII by the king of Caclabar himself. The Lord of the town wasn’t entirely normal, nor was he as snobbish and uptight as most nobles. Thus his town’s layout was not normal or done in the guide lines so many nobles followed when they made their own town.

            The town’s plot was a size of five square miles by five square miles, however, the town itself possessed twenty-five percent of the total size; the other seventy-five percent deemed for farmlands. The town started with a long, trail-like dirt road; keeping as much natural foliage and grass as capable, that would act as the of spine for the entire town. The road also acted as a sort of guiding line that connected the only entrance to this region; which was a long trek up a premade trail through the mountain range, to the Lord’s estate.

            This estate; located at the southern end of the road, was humble with its simple materials: the walls made of sundried bricks that were tan colored, the roof made of mahogany brown thatch woven roof, simple oaken doors, the single brick chimney extruding out from the roof like a pike, and several glassless windows. But, it was also exquisite from the way it was designed in the architecture. Gentle strokes and lines, spirals and curves all carved into the walls; made to look like whatever a person thought it was like an inkblot.