Prologue-Part 3

What's this? 2 posts on this blog within 2 days of each other. Wow. It's mostly because I'm still waiting to get a hold of the book I want to read, so I end up writing during my reading time. So here's part 3.



Prologue-Part 3

Adan was awoken by a gentle prodding in his side. He turned to see Cecil kneeling beside him. “He’s awake.” turning towards the tree, he saw the stranger and his comrades huddled around it. The stranger was sitting, back against the trunk. “He’s still too tired to walk, but at least he can talk.”

Scrambling to his feet, Adan walked over to the tree, multiple questions for this stranger jumbled in his head. Upon seeing his face though, all questions became irrelevant. He had seen that expression before, portraying a feeling everyone is bound to experience at some point in their life, complete disregard for their surroundings and the pure desire to sleep everything away. He had only seen it this extent once before though, and that was back in Salarah.

Seeing the five gathered before him, the stranger spoke softly, for that was all he could sustain. Unable to hear his first words, the group was forced to huddle closer, finding themselves in direct contact with each other in a half circle, ends connected to the tree. “You may call me Alin.” There was a murmur of his name through the group, a common practice to remember names shared within the group. “There’s a palace south of here about ten miles. They’re expecting you. Go there and ask to speak with Johnny. Tell him to come for me at Manos.”

“Manos?” Aryl asked, an expression on her face clearly indicating she had no idea what was going on.

“Must be the Name of the tree.” Maia commented; a nod from Alin and a smug smirk expression grew on her face for knowing yet another thing Aryl did not.

“So is that it? That’s all we have to do?” Aryl questioned. Yet another nod, obviously he had grown tired of talking. “So we just go south to a palace, ask for Johnny, and tell him to come get you at Manos?” Another nod. “But we can’t just leave you here.” She exclaimed, turning to face her comrades for support, but none was given.

“I’ll be fine here.” There was a strain on Alin’s voice making it apparent to the whole group that he needed his rest. “As you can see. There is nothing dangerous here. The sooner you get to the palace, the sooner I can be brought to a bed.”

“Why don’t we just carry you?” Adan proposed. “I mean, you seem pretty light, probably as light as Maia, and we were able to carry her between towns.”

“No. Johnny can use a teleportation spell, just as I had with you, so he can come and get me as soon as you get there. So we’ll all arrive sooner separately rather than together.”

“Well the plan seems pretty sound to me.” Maia said. “Let’s get going then.” The rest of the group still didn’t like leaving him here alone, but it was the best option they had. Reluctantly, the rest of the group complied, leaving Alin to quickly enter slumber yet again.

Heading southward according to the sun, now at it’s midday point, the group silently trekked across the hilltops, keeping a wary eye for any palace towers on the horizon. “Hey Maia?” Ivan asked. “Maybe I should go back and wait with Alin. If that Johnny guy can teleport then it shouldn’t make much of a difference to him to bring me back as well, right?”

With an irritation in her voice, Maia replied, “It probably takes more mana to teleport more people. This Johnny guy may not have a large enough mana pool to teleport more than one other person.” It’s best to just keep going.” With his idea shot down, Ivan and the group became silent yet again, this silence only interrupted now and then by Aryl’s attempt to create a conversation, which garnered no response from the rest.





With an exasperated sigh after another failed conversation starter, Aryl found herself suddenly starving. It took her by surprise because this whole time she actually hadn’t thought about food, which was extremely abnormal for her. Aryl just loved food, it didn’t show through her physique though. At times, it seemed as if a void to the ends of the universe lay in her stomach, and the poor townsfolk who became witness to her feasting often commented as such. The group on the other hand, and probably every innkeeper they met along their journey, knew the truth about her feasting. It’s true that Aryl had an innate ability to shove food into her system, the problem was keeping it there. A couple hours after feasting, Aryl would become unbelievably nauseous, sparking the beginning of an extremely unpleasant thirty minute regurgitation process. It seems that Aryl’s body knows what’s best for her, trying it’s best to purify her body time and time again, making it as unpleasant as possible in an effort to engrave into Aryl’s mind that eating so much is actually a bad thing. Unfortunately, Aryl is too stubborn to take advice from her own body and continues to indulge herself at every opportunity, paying no heed to the consequences. Of course, her companions had tried to reason with her about her eating habits, but an individual who won’t listen to her own body, surely won’t listen to others. So once again finding herself craving her beloved food, Aryl couldn’t help but announce her hunger, “I’m hungry.”

“How’s that different from normal?” Maia commented from ahead, not even bothering to look back.

“We’re heading to a palace so they should have plenty of food there.” Ivan said, from behind, giving Aryl a smile as she turned to face him. “Should be enough there to fill even you.”

“You really think so?” That look of extreme glee before a feast flashed across her face. “I mean, I do have quite an appetite right now.”

“Well, Alin said they’re expecting us. So hopefully for you, they should be well aware of your appetite.”

“So they might already have food ready for us. Oh just imagine foods from a palace: tables full of pig, cow, chicken…….maybe they have some duck too. Oh just imagine all the different kinds of meals they could make with all those animals.” Aryl squealed out of glee, obviously no longer bored by the previous silence. “I can’t wait till we get there.”

“Hopefully they have some fresh fruit, like those pomerades back in Nyvaera.” Cecil said, not realizing he did so in ear-shot of Aryl.

“Why would you want fruit from a palace?” Aryl exclaimed. Suddenly waving a finger in Cecil’s face. “We’re going to a palace, so let’s get all the most expensive food we’ve ever dreamed of. Oh, they probably have a whole table of seafood there waiting for me. They’re probably rich enough to import stuff like that just for me. Maybe I can finally have a purple-bellied crab., or how about some shark meat, I’ve always wanted to try that. I’ve always wanted to try a green octopus…..”

As Aryl’s list of expectations continued to expand, the rest of the group found themselves growing hungry as well. Unlike Aryl and her high expectations though, the rest would gladly settle for whatever was provided, assuming they were even fed. They had often come across places that were unwilling to feed them, undoubtedly due to fear of persecution. They all hoped that wouldn’t be the case here, but they weren’t as optimistic as Aryl, who had now imagined herself raiding the kitchen, giving insane requests to the cooks.

With her imaginings of food, it was only by quite a rough nudge from Maia that Aryl became aware of the tower looming over the next hilltop. The rest of the party had seen it a few hills back, but had agreed not to tell Aryl yet, saving themselves from one of her songs of arrival. Their journey had been long and somewhere along it’s course, Aryl had decided to create songs for many separate occasions, one of which was about finally arriving at a destination. This song had been entertaining the first few towns, with Aryl changing the melody slightly each time to suit their next location, but now it was so deeply engraved in the group’s minds that hearing it now made them all have an urge, in varying degrees, to forcefully stop her singing.

Being so close to the tower though, Aryl forgot all about her song, and rushed ahead of all the others to the top of the hill. What she saw made her forget all about her hunger. Before her lay a massive crater, within which lay the palace they had been searching for with walls made of an unfamiliar material, but beautiful nonetheless. It seemed to be a mix of marble and ice, taking the majestic sleekness of the finest marble and infusing it with a slight reflective nature of ice. Aryl was sure that if she got close enough, she would see her own image upon the walls. The structure of the outside of the palace wasn’t as spectacular as she had imagined. There was a tower at each of the four corners of the four walls in the shape of a simple square, extremely reminiscent of the city walls of Morala that protected it from raids. The only real difference being that this wall had an accompanying ceiling. This very wall could be just that, a wall, merely protecting the town from raids and harsh weather.

Considering it further, Aryl concluded that these walls were far to long to be the perimeter of a palace. It could easily encompass her hometown, Shoula, four fold and still be quite spacious. With this revelation, her imagery of the inside of the palace shifted. Originally, she had imagined it as a normal palace, full of corridors and hundreds of rooms. Now though, she imagined a large city hidden behind these walls. She began to imagine fields of vegetables and farmers and their children over near the northwest tower. At the southwestern tower, she could imagine the trading marker, hundreds of stalls set up ready for the daily vending. At the southeastern tower she envisioned the residential district, full of frolicking children and scolding mothers. In the northeastern corner, she saw a place for travelers to rest, full of inns and pubs. In the center she imagined a normal sized palace made of walls the same material as these outer walls.

Feeling her arm tugged, Aryl awoke from her visionary to find Maia pulling her down the hill towards where her friends were waiting at the northern gate. “Honestly Aryl, you get so excited about coming to a palace and all you can do when we get here is stare at it.” Looking down at her friends, Aryl sees another man with them, clad in ice blue armor. Without even asking, Maia explains it to her. “That’s the gate guard obviously. Do you really need me to explain that to you? He opened the gate as soon as he saw us up on the hilltop. We went down to talk with him and didn’t even realize you weren’t with us. I was handed the task of fetching you, since the guys all said it would be better for them to talk to the guard.”

As they approached the group the guard walked through the gate, motioning for them to follow. Giving Ivan a quizzical look, she waited patiently for him to understand her question. Recognizing that voiceless inquisition many women seem to be able to express, Ivan answered, “We still don’t know too much. All he said was that he was ordered to open the gate when we arrived.” Feeling herself dragged yet again by Maia, who apparently had been given the task of making sure she stayed with the group, Aryl walked through the gate, finally able to see the hidden world behind the walls.