Kingdom of Loathing

Chapter 6: A New World

I somehow made a huge mistake and included the chapter title for the draft I was doing. I'll fix that immediately.

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Then, quite mysteriously, adventurers and everyone close to the king were either captured or killed.

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David heard muffled voices from inside the doctor's office. He sat outside nervously, trying to listen in on the conversation as he fiddled with the bandages on his left arm.

"Is his arm never going to heal?" his mom's voice asked worriedly.

"Of course not, miss," the doctor's voice replied, trying to reassure her. "His arm will definitely heal, but it will just take time. Perhaps years."

David shuddered at the word "years." Most nine year olds like him barely had an idea of a year, much less years. He knew the scars under the bandages cut deeper than the ocean.

As he heard the door open, he quickly pretended to be staring at the posters on the wall. His mom walked out, sniffling and her eyes red.

"What's wrong, Mommy?" David looked up at his mom, eyes full of concern.

"Nothing, honey," his mom replied as she tried to smile. "I think-"

Her voice broke as she tried to finish the sentence.

"I think it's time I start homeschooling you."

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A late summer breeze blew in from the open window, blowing a couple papers from David's hands. He moved the hair out of his face and picked the papers that got blown away. Rearranging the papers, he stapled them together with a ka-chunk! and placed them on the table.

These papers were important, for they held all sorts of information on the central Kingdom. David had been planning his departure for about three months now, and tomorrow would be his nineteenth birthday. He would finally be an adult.

For as long as he could remember, David had been living under the protection of his home for most of his life. He still remembered how those vibrant days of playing with his friends at school transformed to quiet days at home with his mother, spending time together learning, playing music, and making crafts. It certainly made him smarter and more observant than others, but extremely lacking in social talent.

His life completely changed when he got into an accident involving his left arm, and his mom had kept him inside the house ever since. Over that time, with the musical knowledge he had gotten from his mom, he kept playing all sorts of instruments, especially the accordion since it only needed one hand to do a lot of the playing. Even when his arm did heal, he never once asked his mom to return to his old life. David knew she would just worry more about him.

Until recently, he had never wondered about what lay outside his cozy home. But one day, a strange bird had flown to his house and told wonderful, fantasy-filled stories of life inside the central Kingdom. Magicians would cast powerful spells and strong warriors would battle threatening monsters. The bird had called itself "Toot Oriole," and it filled David's head with all sorts of stories. Toot Oriole had mentioned adventurers who used music and stealth to go around the world, and it left him what lay outside the boundaries of his house.

When he had asked his mom to simply go out and explore a little, she just smiled and replied with, "When you turn nineteen. Then, you won't be a boy anymore."

So David waited patiently, each day longing for his birthday to arrive. And finally, that day would come.

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