Chapter One - Revised

Chapter One

The Balkanian Empire – Pylos, District D

            “Just a little more!” thought Tanner as he dashed past the wilting maple tree in the center of Pylos Square. Pylos wasn’t a place for the well-to-do and some of the residents weren’t fit to reside in Pylos. The fact of the matter was that Pylos was quite impoverished and that this area of Pylos, District D, was the closest to kicking the bucket.

            “Hey! Get back here!” yelled the angry stranger chasing Tanner.

            It wasn’t easy to make a living in Pylos. Tanner was, however, doing just that. He was doing it the only way he knew how to: by stealing.

            Tanner was a street urchin. Not by choice, but by necessity. He had been abandoned at the age of six and was forced to fend for himself in the worst district of one of the biggest cities in the known world. Balkan was home to millions of citizens and The Balkanian Empire held millions more as a whole. With the exception of a few territories, almost the entire continent fell under the Empire’s dark shroud. Each territory was like a cog in a much larger machine. Pylos was the same way in Balkan. But Pylos was the smallest cog of all.

            Pylos was the kind of place where the cunning survive, the smart get used, and the weak or strong ended up as pawns in chess games over food. Wars waged over a few measly chips. And for what? To survive to the next day and have the same vicious cycle repeat itself again and again?

            Tanner wished he could escape; that there was some way to run away and leave it all behind. Instead, he was stuck running from a complete stranger who had noticed him pick-pocketing the few chips that were in his bag.

            If Tanner could only reach the alley he could enter the crawl space and he would be home free. The size of his pursuer would never allow the man to be able to fit into the narrow opening and continue to give chase.

            Tanner turned the corner, almost tripped over his own feat, but managed to keep running. He saw the crawl space conveniently hidden from sight behind a cardboard box. Tanner had placed it there to conceal the space but he had to get away, even if it meant revealing his secret to this stranger. He ran up to the box, quickly brushed it aside, and leapt into the crawl space.

            “Kid! Kid!” cried the stranger behind him.

            The stranger had gained so much ground on Tanner when he lost his footing that he could hear the stranger’s breath just behind him. Tanner turned to investigate. The stranger was indeed stuck in the crawl space but was literally one foot away from Tanner.

            “I’ll find where you live, kid! I’ll find where you live and take back more than just my money!” threatened the stranger.

            Tanner didn’t even reply. All he could do was crawl away from the stranger as fast as he could. All the stranger could do was to watch him crawl, with each motion taking Tanner ever into the darkness and away from the light, cloaked in the shadows. Tanner knew that the shadows are where street urchins must stay.

            Tanner sat in the abandoned loft he had to call home. He had purchased some bread with the chips he had relieved the stranger of earlier in the day. Tanner didn’t like stealing but it was a necessity in Pylos. You did what you had to do to survive.

            Despite being poor, Tanner was not malnourished. He didn’t have a large frame to begin with. Others always described him as being skinny but not scrawny. His skinny torso was usually clothed by an old green tunic he had managed to find one year. He wasn’t too tall for a sixteen-year-old either, reaching only five feet and nine inches. Since street urchins could not afford proper haircuts, his dirty blond hair was clumped in messy bangs that fell just above his eyebrows; just high enough to keep the hair out of his green eyes. Simple brown trousers, held up only by a cord, hid his legs and unmentionables from the world. Wooden clogs protected his feet from the garbage that littered Pylos like a trash can. His tanned skin was the result of much exposure to sun and many summers of stealing in the outdoor market place.

            Today’s incident was not a part of Tanner’s normal schedule. Usually he would steal only one chip at a time from a large variety of people. But the winter had been hard on Tanner. It was now spring and the patrons were just returning to the outdoor market, which was the main venue for food and theft in District D of Pylos.

            The patrons were the few people in Pylos that had money. Those of District D had even less money than those in other districts of Pylos. However, for those lucky few that had money, the market was the best source of food since the prices were a little lower than in the stores run solely by The Empire. The market owners were the only ones in Pylos that had any substantial money to speak of but no one could touch them because the only reason they were able to garner food to sell was because of their connections. Still, one could safely steal a few chips from them every now and then without too much risk.

            That night, Tanner had bought a loaf of bread from an honest merchant in the outdoor market. The man chasing would have been long gone by that time. He took it back to his home, which was nothing more than a beaten up room accessible only by the back alley where Tanner lived. This was because an earthquake had damaged the area and many structures to a small degree roughly ten years ago. The previous occupants had abandoned the room and condemned the alley. One man’s trash is another one’s treasure.

            The Empire would never be so mindful as to spend any time repairing a District of rank below B. District B in each area of Balkan was where the poorest nobles lived. Anything lower than B did not matter to the government. Even the poorest nobles would never be as poor as Tanner was and, since they were born as nobles, they would remain as nobles for the rest of their lives.

            It was risky trying to steal so much from one person. But Tanner was desperate and the bread he was eating satisfied his grumbling stomach for the first time in a few months. There was always the risk of getting caught.

There seemed to be nothing but risks in Pylos. Never was there any joy, days where he could relax. No reprieve for the many like him who had to work hard every day to survive. All of this – the poverty, the different social classes – was brought on by an Empire who was determined to give favour only to the nobles and never to those outside of their social clique. But Tanner didn’t hate the nobles for being born the way they were. Rather, he hated The Empire for being the way that it was. To Tanner, The Empire was a machine that processed the weak in order to nourish the strong: a machine of social injustice that he wished would break down. But that could he hope to do other than survive?

Zealonia - Mist

            “Regal! Regal!” cried a blonde haired girl.

            “I’m in here!” replied Regal, loud enough that she could hear.

            Regal was a mage and archaeologist. Being an archaeologist was not what made him special in Zealonian society. It was the fact that he was a gifted mage and an archaeologist that made him one of the most renowned men in all of Mist, the village he called home. Regal was neither muscular, nor skinny, having an average build. Black, shoulder length hair fell neatly upon his red and light blue ceremonial robes which were commonly worn by Zealonian scholars. His eyes were purple but they used to be green. The reason that they had changed color was due to the fact that once Regal’s training with the Inner Circle was completed, his powers grew substantially and a few of his characteristics had changed. The most notable of those characteristics was the change in his eye color, which was seen as a symbol of his power. His was a power that would mostly be used to defend. Such was the way of training that the Inner Circle, the organization in Zealonia responsible for teaching defensive magic, had taught him. There was an Outer Circle too, responsible for teaching offensive arts but the order had disbanded when its leader, Barlow, had mysteriously vanished from Zealonia roughly one hundred years ago. Only the Inner Circle remained, which many saw as preferable since Zealonia had been at peace for over four hundred years now.

            “Regal, what are you doing in here?” asked the blonde haired girl.

            Regal was digging into a new room in the back section of an ancient ruin in Mist. This ruin had once been a centre for great magical power, though the purpose of which was still a mystery. Regal, guided only by a few carvings with the word “Balkan” on them and a few clues about the source of a magical power, was led to this room and was working tirelessly on finding a way to decipher its mysteries.

            “My dear Alice, I’m just about to uncover one of the greatest mysteries that Zealonia has known. What is it that can’t wait until I’m finished?” replied Regal.

            “Regal! You haven’t eaten in god knows when and you’ve been cooped up in this ruin for over fourteen hours! You should take a break…The ruin will still be here in the morning…”

            Alice was as caring as she was pretty. Her five-foot-four, shapely frame was not seen as frail by the people in Mist. She was only sixteen years old, but commanded respect from her peers since she was more mature than most her age. Alice possessed a great measure of beauty though none knew where it came from since she had been found in Mist, abandoned at an early age. Still, her adoptive parents were quite accommodating and treated her as their own. She was brought up to be caring and considerate.

            Regal and Alice had met because Regal was friends with Alice’s parents, John and Susan. Since that time, Regal, who was only twenty-two now, had considered Alice as somewhat of a younger sister. The relationship between the two of them was strong.

            “Alice…Thank you. But I can’t stop now. Not when I’m so close!” exclaimed Regal.

            “Well, fine then,” replied Alice, “If you want to be that way and not even take a break then I hope you just stay here!” It wasn’t real anger that made her reply so harsh, but more so, a deep caring for Regal’s well being.

            “Alice, I will drop by later, but I can’t leave right now,” Regal conceded, noting that she wasn’t speaking to him with real anger in her voice.

            With that Alice pouted and promptly left the dimly lit room in which Regal worked and made for home.

            Regal worked for a few more minutes before noticing something strange on one of the walls in the room that was covered in glyphs. Seeing that something was protruding a centimetre or so from the wall, he moved to touch it. Just as he was about to make contact with the object, the room flashed a brilliant white for a split second. The white was then replaced by a blue glow that encapsulated the room.

            “This must be it!” cried Regal.

            Suddenly, a swirl of brown and red, spinning around like water into a drain, filled the wall of glyphs. Regal began to feel himself being pulled in and fought to resist it, bracing himself against a nearby desk. Regal held on as best he could but felt the pull increase and was helpless against the tide of magical power threatening to pull him into the void. All at once, Regal was pulled from the desk and began to slide into the void.

            “Ugh! No!” cried Regal, unable to comprehend what was happening or why it was happening.

            He let loose a final scream before being sucked completely into the void. The scream was muffled as he reached the center of it. With that, one of Zealonia’s greatest scholars disappeared without a trace.