THE wind danced across the vast expanse of land, sweeping up dust in its wake. A woman stood in the far distance clad in a black silk veil that covered her entire body. Her hand was stretched forward and she seemed to be calling for help. The atmosphere was dark and the moon was red in the sky. A large shadow appeared behind the woman and its presence was consuming.
The woman howled loudly, her voice failing to cover any distance, the large shadow was eating everything. There was something about the shadow however that felt unnatural and out of place. It seemed to be missing some things, or was it that there was something about it that shouldn't be there?
Reece opened his eyes and realized he wasn't breathing. He held the wooden brace of his bed gasping for breath as his face contorted in discomfort. After a few moments of fidgeting and trashing he finally calmed and his breathing eased up.
It wasn't an unusual thing for him to wake up with a seizure of fright. They usually come after the vague nightmares that haunted his sleep. Today's dream was a repetition of a former one and it was as vague as its predecessors. Without thinking too much about it he got up , his bed cover sliding from his body.
His skin was fair and his chest bore two knife scars but otherwise it was in a pristine shape. Although he wasn't bulky, his muscles were well chiseled and his chest was firm. His belly has been trained into six ordered ridges. It wouldn't take anyone more than two glances to realize he was physically built like a warrior.
He glanced around his room, still a little drowsy. There were several paintings hanging on his walls and looking at them calmed him down. After a while he stood up and went on his morning routine, involving a round of exercises, a quick bath and meditation.
After he was done, he put on a simple tunic and a pair of trousers. Soon after, he made his way out of the house, greeting the day with a smile.
His other-parents were not back from whatever errands they were running, although he expected Erous to have returned but the man was rather unpredictable.
He frowned as he sensed a presence behind him but relaxed when he realized who it was. “You are an idiot,” he turned back with a crunched nose.
“Hello to you too, Patelon.” he waved to the boy standing before him.
“You have no sense of punctuality, no sense of timing and with the way you were smiling, it wouldn't take an empath to know that your sense of awareness is abysmal!”
Reece left his mouth open for a while. “What are you on about?”
“What am I on about?” Patelon shrugged. “I don't know. Let me see,” he placed his hand on his chin, squinting his face in an exaggerated manner. “We are about to miss our first errand as Acolytes and my best friend is smiling at the sun after we are thirty tickings late for our meeting with the preceptor ,” his voice was at the highest volume by the time he said the last sentence.
“Surely I didn't wake up that late,” Reece bulged.
Patelon smiled then dipped his hand into his pocket revealing a small, round golden dial. He shoved the device in his friend's face. “Get a damn time dial so you can live right!”
Reece sighed as he checked the device in front of him, he didn't really understand how it worked. All he saw were runes arranged in a circular order and two golden needles pointing to different points. “And this means?” He demanded. The dial was not necessarily a new invention but it had only been around for seven years but everyone depended on it a lot.
“It means I am about to shove my head into your nose if you don't get moving!”
Reece paused for a few heartbeats then sprinted forward without warning allowing Patelon to chase him from behind with rounds of curses. “We are gonna be late, run faster!”
“Damn you!”
They raced for the carriage stop, navigating the bustling streets with relative ease. It didn't take them long to reach the carriages and they took one of the public ones down to the palace. The sun was already bright in the sky when they reached the entrance.
They hurriedly dashed through the grounds, making their way to the Bureau of Thaumaturgy. Although it was impossible for one to really run within the palace grounds as there were several processions and multiple sights worth seeing a million times over.
There was a small cottage to the right of the entrance that served as a bird house with different species gathered, at the immediate center was a small artificial pool with several kinds of fishes and different flowers decorated its surroundings. Behind that was the statue of a man holding a sword with its tip pointed to the sky. That man was King Alaroc the first.
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According to history, he was the first king of Egrimorth and he was the one who freed humanity from the oppression of a corrupted tyrant called the Pale King. A lot of stories were attributed to this man and most of them seemed like exaggerated stories to help children sleep.
Reece hated coming across his name in the history books he read, due to the fact that every single writer placed him on a high pedestal no man can touch. And in Reece's experience, such a person is usually a hypocrite or a straight up liar.
By the time they arrived at the bureau according to Patelon they were already forty tickings late. Reece mapped in his head that it took ten tickings to reach the bureau all the way from his house. They navigated through the eerie halls of the bureau and stopped at a door with a small golden placard that simply said, “Dariad.”
“Oh, so you decided to show up,” the preceptor said just as they stepped into his office. He was wearing a monocle on his left eye and a stylus was dancing along his gloved hands.
“Preceptor Dariad, we are sorry…” Reece began but the preceptor stopped them with a simple gesture.
“Ah. Save it. You have earned the right to be late,” he chuckled, twisting his monocle. “Although your friend might be a little annoyed.”
He rose from his desk and gestured for them to follow him. Patelon and Reece smiled to themselves as they followed the elderly man. Preceptor Dariad was a man of average height, fair skin and an aging face. The only thing peculiar about him was his pitch black eyes that seemed to suck in every light around him.
He led them out of the building and they strolled silently towards another small red building adjacent to the bureau. It was a small garrison outpost used for registration and paperwork related to the queen’s battalion. Dariad led them into a small room inside the building.
Five people were inside the room when they entered, both Reece and Patelon recognizing one of them immediately. A blonde, slender girl with a hornbeak perched on her shoulder. The moment they entered she glued her brown eyes at the two of them, visibly annoyed.
She stood up, bowed lowly to the preceptor and turned to the two acolytes who decided to turn away at that moment and greet the rest of the people in the room. Shalliah didn't speak but the two boys knew she was furious.
“These are the two remaining acolytes.” the aging man stated, gesturing towards Reece and Patelon. He was speaking to a broad soldier with a large scar across his right eye.
“Thank you preceptor. We will take it from here,” the soldier smiled and the aged man waved him off with a shrug before walking out.
The soldier then turned his attention to the three of them. “My name is Captain Dale Hann. I am apparently responsible for this raggedy team,” he sighed. “Although we are still missing a member, I will go on to give you all the details…” he paused for a while, inhaling. “You three should fall in line with the others,” he said.
Reece and his friends turned sideways, realizing that the other three were standing in a row, their hands behind them, chest puffed out.
Reece frowned. “We are not soldiers,” Patelon said before anyone could speak.
“And?” Dale Hann replied.
“...and we don't need to adhere to your edicts,” Shalliah said with a rather pleasant tone.
Dale chuckled. “Maybe that's what they taught you in the bureau but for us soldiers, the world is quite different. For every station, for every edict, for every single achievement there is an underlying path of suffering and anguish. None of which can be breached by sparks and trickery. So when I, the official leader of this small annoying errand, tells you to fall in line, you fall in line!” his voice thundered across the room and yet the three thaumaturges stared at him with complete indifference.
Reece already knew where this was headed and it was one of the few things he wanted to avoid. “I don't care,” Patelon said. “This is a royal errand, so the royal laws are in effect. If you wish to rewrite them right now, why not voice your thoughts.”
“Look here boy,” he stepped towards Patelon but before he could say the next words the door swung open.
Two people stood at the door. One of them was an aged man with grey hair and the other was a short man with low black hair and tanned skin. The man with tanned skin had a twig twitching in his mouth while the elderly man had a metal reed emitting smoke between his fingers. .
Reece’s eyes bulged when he laid eyes on the twig eating man. “Erous?” He called out.
Erous winked at him as the two stepped in. “Ahh, soldier,” he called out to the Captain who assumed a position of respect; his hands were behind him, his head was bowed and his legs spread apart. “At ease, at ease,” he laughed. “Except old Marius here still needs salutations to keep him breathing.”
Reece recognized the elderly man too, his name was Marius Telemachus, a Marshal that was nearing his retirement. He wondered what he was doing here.
The elderly man gave him an eye roll before speaking. “I am the last member of this squad. I am sorry for my lateness, I got held back by…” he paused. “... I am sorry anyways. You can be at ease.”
The captain swallowed. “Oh, I was about to give them the details, but I guess you will have to do them now,” he stepped aside.
“Oh no, not at all. You are the commanding captain, I am just here to stretch my legs,” he smiled.
The captain nodded and then decided to run through the details. Reece and his friends stood nonchalantly while the soldiers held their stance. The two high ranking men didn't say a word nor did they show any hint that they were a bit bothered. “There has been a rumor for a while now about an unnatural presence near Jazzreh town. Naturally there have been piles of letters but it has been disregarded, considering most of them often contained vague descriptions. However, the last sent letter was from the personal herbalist of "His Magnificence,” Iziah Jazzreh himself. Naturally it contains the same vague descriptions but we are inclined to answer. Since it's just going to be an investigation, it will be a safe enough quest.” He stopped to catch his breath. “Any questions?”
“Yes, what were these descriptions?” Marius inquired.
“They claim the plants around the affected area are not as potent and sometimes work opposite of their nature. Also, several sightings of crooked runes carved into the trees and some also claim they could hear howls over a long period of time. The priests have visited the area multiple times but they didn't find anything. “
Everyone nodded and when he confirmed no one wanted to know anything, he spoke again. “We will move tomorrow morning. An hour and ten tickings at first light. Lateness will not be tolerated, soldier or otherwise,” he fixed his gaze on Reece and his friends. “You are dismissed.”
They all left the room after that, Erous and Marius continuing whatever conversation they paused before walking in. Reece and his friends headed outside the building, “Cocky bastards, pain and anguish, my foot!” Patelon cursed angrily as they walked out of the building.
“Shalliah,” Reece ignored Patelon and turned to the lady among them now.
The hornbeak on her shoulder spoke instead. “Latecomer!” It said and the two boys wanted to wring its neck. Hornbeak were a close family of the parrot, they however can only be found within the Harrowing which probably makes them mutated parrots. Although unlike the parrots, they were predators with sharper instincts and very high intelligence.
“Oh, yeah. Why did I have to wait thirty tickings for you pigbred raggers?”
“He did it,” Patelon said immediately, pointing to Reece. “He woke up late, I had to take a roundabout road to get him here!”
“You traitor!” Reece hissed. “Anyways. I am sorry. I worked really late at the tavern yesterday, so I woke up late.”
“Get a goddamn dial boy!” She sighed. “I will see you guys later, I have a farm to tend to, and multiple errands.” She waved them off, turning towards the other side of the castle. She planned on going through the castle’s second exit. They waved her off and both decided to go home and prepare for the next day.
