Chapter 1 - Going

Year 462 of Ivianor, Age of Darkness (2^nd age)


The two brothers, the founders of Moorth, stood atop the tallest mountain in the Thorken mountain range. They stood staring at the pillars of smoke spiraling up from the burning houses and shacks of the mountain city of Karn. Their latest conquering was laid before them. They had laid waste to all of Fletcher and Lorthian. And now they had found this hidden city with an army of few, and destroyed it for their own. Their names were kept well hidden, only their parents knew what they are, and they were killed in the battle of Angland, were the men of Moorth and Cana were mowed down by the rain of arrows coming from the walls of the city. They were the only ones who survived that fight, and took all the credit for themselves. After Angland, they signaled the men of Arkthor Province, the men of Fon, Forthiano, and Molkarthak cities, to march against the garrisons of Barthule and Ruthon. Now, on the journey back, they discovered a city that they had missed, Karn. Heyn had already been burned to the ground, in its place stood the village of Lork. The port city of Donshen had been built for trade to the other ports of Ivianor. The two brothers’ empire was growing. Soon it would engulf the whole mainland country.
Word of the brothers reached the city of Dorune. The people of the city withdrew from the mainland and erected a wall encircling their city so that none from the outside would pollute their land. Not one person of the outer provinces has any trace of ancestry linked to those people. Citizens of Lorthian Province even started to build cities and villages in the province of Dorune. And so ended the Age of Prosperity. The two brothers were now emperors, and controlled most of Ivianor. The neighboring realms of Guanoda and Le Amorn were left free and would stay that way.
The brothers sent a fleet of galleons and transports of 20,000 men to the island of El Durnic to establish trade routes from the there to Ivianor. They gave the island a nickname known as Merchant Isle. The reason for this was because eventually, all merchants from each realm traveled there at least once in their lives for it was where the best sales were found. Merchant Isle soon flourished into the wealthiest city of the empire. The people built the port city of lanā to welcome the trade cogs bearing the empire’s standard that arrived every day. The old trade road was used once again after having grass grow over the ruts from wheels and the gravel placed by the ancestors of the water elves of old. The city of Mulshen was reopened and the remaining native water elves sent barrels of spirit water from the five-point lake over to the capital of the mainland, Moorth.
When the brothers heard that the spirit elves and druids of Le Amorn were plotting to overthrow them, and the ice men of Guanoda were forming armies in allegiance to the residents of Le Amorn, they decided to put an end to the forming rebellion outside their borders. They sent three fleets of galleons to each island along with 100,000 footmen and cavalry. The battle of the Droma Corpin and the Frozen Wastes would come to be known as the greatest battles of the Age of Darkness. The attack would come to form the Allied Republic which would signal the downfall of the Empire. All because of one battle.

175 years after, year 637 of Ivianor, Age of Restoration (3^rd age)


Such was the text of the Droma Corpin, the standard textbook for all scholars of the Sacred Order. The book was written by the founder of the Order, a Druid priest by the name of Lancolar and named after the battle mentioned at the end of chapter five: The Formation of an Empire. Tarlym himself was a druid apprentice who was studying the art of summoning the spirits of the otherworld. He was a scholar at the Sacred Temple south of the Grand City of Druids. Although Tarlym was a druid, he was not born in Le Amorn, where the druid order began in the year 137 of Ivianor. He was born in Mulshen on the island of El Durnic, known to most as the Merchant Isle. His parents had died in the battle of the Dark Sea seventeen years ago and he never knew them.
“Hey Tarlym!” shouted one of his fellow classmates from under the arch marking the gate the Sacred Temple. “Heard you reduced Mr. Nortenonsen to near tears in a discussion, wish I could do that.” Mr. Nortenonsen was Tarlym’s teacher on the study of various spirits.
“I told everyone that he wasn’t near tears! I mean, who doesn’t know I said that?”
“No one, we just like the rumors.”
“Ah… I see.”
“So, what was it about?”
“He said that the proper way to summon a horde of poison worm-snakes was to say the spell to release the Inferno curse and didn’t know it. I told him that you’re supposed to say the name of the creature in Druish, and then stick a dagger with poison on it into the ground. That’s pretty much all that happened.”
“How the hell did he mix that up? Everyone on campus knows that. There’s such a big difference between those techniques it’s not even funny.”
“Maybe you told him?”
“Oh shut up.”
“What? It’s about your intelligence level.”
“I swear on the elves of Silverlight that tomorrow you’re going to get up with bruises all over your body and cuts on your face.”
“Really? You can operate a door?”
“Shut up!”
“Ok, ok I’ll be quiet.”
“Thank you.”
After their interesting conversation, Tarlym’s friend Hekle walked away looking like an inflated blowfish with a face as red as a scarlet elf sword. Tarlym continued his walk to the dorms and arrived with glad face. When he opened the door to his room, which was decorated like his old room in Mulshen as far as he could remember, he went to the corner with summoning supplies and tried to summon a Golden Wolf as usual. He spoke the name of the creature in Druish and stuck his dagger into the oak floorboards of his room. He removed the dagger and waited for the wolf spirit. And waited. And waited. Again it didn’t come! This was so frustrating! He spoke the name in the correct accent and language and stuck his dagger in the ground. He did everything correctly but the spirit wolf didn’t appear. Frustrated to the point of exploding he threw his knife at the wall and let quiver there for a few minutes.
Even though he wasn’t supposed to be summoning in the dorms, and could be expelled from the Order if the Priests found out, he did it anyway, ready to except the consequences. Suddenly the door opened with a loud rush of wind. Lorm, the suck up to the teachers that had a room next door to him stood standing there under the arch of the door with his hands clenched into fists. “This is about the eleventh time you’ve thrown something at the wall this week! Don’t you have something else to do other than drive me to insanity?”
“Sorry, I’ll stop doing it.”
“You better, because all tell the High Priest that you’ve been throwing daggers at the wall just to annoy me.” Yes, you go ahead and do that because you’re so great and I’m just an idiot who throws items of mine at the wall to annoy you. Sure, go tell the Priest. Tarlym thought bitterly. Lorm left Tarlym’s room and went to the mess hall to get some food since he just wasn’t fat enough.


Two hours later, Tarlym left his room and followed the other scholars to the Temple for practice of summons. Their summoning teacher, Professor Ahn, oversaw the practice and made changes to students’ techniques, accent, and method. Tarlym walked over to his summoning ring and sat down to meditate for a few minutes before he started. As he looked around the Temple, he saw some other students doing the same. Tarlym closed his eyes and thought about the Forest of Sages north of the City of Silverlight and the connected houses in the trees made from the wood of elms and yews.
In his mind’s eye, he saw the forest in the distance coming closer at breakneck speed. When he reached the edge of the forest he skidded to a halt. He looked behind him and saw the pillars of light from the white towers in Silverlight reaching above the clouds and touching the stars in the distance. When he turned back to look at the forest and was suddenly far away, about half a league, and saw the trees of the Forest on fire sending great columns of smoke up into the air. He stood there, unable to move, staring at the great forest of the spirit-elves on fire. He looked closer and saw a lone figure standing on a hill above the flames with a golden sword in his hand. The figure turned to look at Tarlym and –
Tarlym awoke with a start to find the summoning grounds empty. Had he really slept through the entire practice session for two hours? No, it was more than sleep, it was a vision, he was sure of it. He saw a young man his age standing on a hill facing the burning Forest of Sages. How could the Forest be burning? Who would set it on fire? Tarlym was puzzled by the thought but didn’t have time to think about it. He was supposed to be in his Spirit Studies class right now!
Tarlym sprinted out of the compound and ran to the building marked with a large dagger painted above the door. When he opened the oak wood door, the instructor, Professor Darlinet, looked up from his desk and glared at Tarlym from across the room. “Late again Mr. Tarlym?” Professor Darlinet was Tarlym’s most hated teacher in the entire Temple. He was always finding for ways to insult Tarlym and looking at him with his small, pig like eyes.
“Yes Professor, again.” Tarlym hated this man so much he wanted to unsheathe his dagger right then and hurl it at the Professor’s forehead.
Tarlym looked around the room for a seat but didn’t spot any that were available to him. Of course Lorm had taken Tarlym’s usual seat, probably because of their argument before then in his room. Lorm gave Tarlym a fat little smirk and snickered before turning back to the teacher to do what he did best, suck up to his superiors. Tarlym walked over to the corner of the room and sat down on the cold, hard floorboards.
Up at the front of the long room, Professor Darlinet was preparing to conjure a white spirit bear. Tarlym opened his copy of the Droma Corpin again and started leafing through the pages to the chapter on the War of the Blood Sea. He found it on page 239 and began reading about the battle of the Red River.


General Monfar moved his soldiers across Gihardi’s River into the land of Arkthor. There, he would garrison his troops in Forthiano waiting for the expected attack from the Dorune rebels that finally emerged from their island nation. The Dorune soldiers had already destroyed the Lorthian city of Dol rān and took back the Old Dorune Outpost that dated back to the starting of the Empire. Now, the Lorthian soldiers expected a large siege of Forthiano. Monfar decided to meet the Dorune people at the Red River that ran from Blood Lake before they arrived at the walls of the city.
Monfar took his men and created ranks of men with the strongest in the back and the new recruits in the front. He would not lose this battle. Monfar himself stood on a golden chariot drawn by two white ice-horses from the Frozen Wastes. The chariot had spiked poles protruding from the wheels and the ice-horses had a type of shoe that was implanted with spikes. The Lorthian soldiers stood on the opposite side of the Red River facing the wall of trees on the other side waiting for the Dorune soldiers to arrive.
As the men waited for battle, Monfar started giving orders to his captains. At the same time that the men were arranging themselves according to Monfar’s orders, around thirty horns sounded from the other side of the river. The men of Dorune charged out in frenzy wielding numerous melee weapons. Strangely, there were no archers among the group. The Dorune soldiers charged through the river and up the sloping shore towards the men of Lorthian. Monfar’s second-in-command, General Oliver, gave the order for the archers to take aim. He screamed fire even as the Dorune soldiers were nearly on them. The archers and skirmishers released their bowstrings and spears and sent their weapons hurtling towards the staggered Dorune men. The soldiers kept on running up the slope until finally they reached the top and drew their swords.
The Lorthian soldiers withdrew their archers to the back to fire and lined the front with pike men. When the Dorune soldiers hit the wall of pikes, they were impaled and stopped. Soon, the pike men were overrun and the swordsmen emerged from the ranks and started to slash away at the Dorune men. Monfar saw that his troops were falling to the swords and axes of the Dorunians and ordered a retreat back to Forthiano to regroup. Three horns sounded from the banner carriers of each rank signaling the retreat. There were once ten banner carriers for each rank. The battle had ended quickly and the Dorune men had made their mark on the ground with the blood of their enemies.




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Tarlym looked up from the Droma Corpin book and saw that all the monks and scholars were leaving the classroom. He had missed another whole lesson! When he walked outside the sun hurt his eyes and gave him a headache after being stuck in a dark room for two hours. Tarlym ran over to the lake were usually his friends would be sitting but no one was there. Not just his friends, but anybody! He turned around and found Professor Ahn staring at him with white eyes. Professor Ahn was from Guanoda. The only way to tell this was to look at his irises. If you looked close enough, you could see that his they were bright white. Only men from Guanoda had this trait. Professor Ahn said to Tarlym, “All your friends went to the front earlier today to fight against the uprising of Lorthian men. Two descendants of the old emperors have joined together and are following in their grandfather’s footsteps. Your friends represent the 71^st Druid airborne division. You are the last one to leave; however, you will not be a pilot of one of the new planes. You will be fighting in the trenches with the crossbowmen, swordsmen, and pike men. General Harvey is waiting for you north of the Temple to take you to Angland in Fletcher Province. Go now.”
“Um… don’t I get a say in this?”
“No. Now go!”
Tarlym followed the cobblestone pathway to the north where supposedly a mister Harvey would be waiting to take him to Angland. Tarlym had read about some of Angland’s history and found that it was one of the cities of old during the reign of the Empire. It was the capital of Fletcher and was a trading stop for Barthule on the way to Lorthian. He guessed that that trade route had been cut off due to the war.
A man was standing in the middle of the path many meters away and yelled, “Are you Tarlym?”
Tarlym had to strain his voice to say, “I am. Are you General Harvey?” He didn’t need to wait for an answer. Tarlym started sprinting towards the man. When he arrived panting before the man, Harvey looked down and said,
“I am. Pleased to meet you Tarlym. Now then, we’d best be off. Our escorting galleon is waiting for us at Droma Corpin Bay. I have two horses we can use to get there faster.” Droma Corpin Bay? Tarlym had the book named after the battle there but he had never visited that part of Le Amorn. “Tell me Tarlym, do you have any kind of weapon? I didn’t think so. Now, have you ever seen one of these?” At this General Harvey pulled from his pack one of the new models of crossbows. It shot arrows around three feet long and had a dagger fastened to the end of it for melee combat. “Yes, this is yours. I brought it from the frontline trenches and had it engraved. Tarlym looked and saw large T chiseled into the side of the bow. “This is what you will use in the war. You are allowed to train with swords but most soldiers prefer the bow.”
“Do you have a sword too along with the bow?”
“Of course I have a sword! You need to start training with all weapons so that you’ll be ready when we get to Ivianor. Here, take this.” Harvey pulled a scimitar with an emerald set in the pommel out of his sheath and gave it to Tarlym. “You can have the sheath to, or you can just stick it in your belt.” Harvey unstrapped the sheath and made Tarlym put it on. “Okay, so do you think you’re ready to fight?” Tarlym nodded dumbly. “Well your not! You haven’t trained yet. I brought a wooden target and two oak swords along with me to help.”
From that point on until they reached the bay, Tarlym and Harvey practiced with the sword and shot at targets with the crossbow. One night, Harvey gave Tarlym the official deep blue uniform of the Fletcher Infantry when he felt he was ready. After around thirteen days of travel, the pair reached the Droma Corpin. Tarlym gasped when he saw the galleon that would bring them to Ivianor. “That ship is the fastest ship in the navy. It has the new motors in it. The men turn cranks that spin propellers under the ship twice as fast. The ship’s name is the Blue Avenger,” Harvey explained with a large grin on his face. “It has a shooting range you know. You’re allowed to use it when you want to. See those large ballista-like things on the sides pointing up? Those are the new anti-aircraft bows to shoot down the enemy fighters. This ship is where you will learn military tactics and how do work the large bows.”
The ship was as big as three of the Druid dorm buildings together and had dark blue paint, as dark as the bottom of the ocean, painted on the sides. The hatches on the port and starboard sides were for the ballista to fire out of during combat. The ship had four masts with two crow’s nests up in the middle and top of the main. Down in the bowels of the ship were barrels and crates full of food and water. On the floor above the supplies but below the upper deck was where the shooting range was located.
As Tarlym walked off the gangplank onto the deck, he heard the thwack of crossbow bolts being shot into the canvas targets directly below him. Men were hauling crates around the deck and some archers were patrolling the sides. A small group of sailors walked towards the anti-aircraft bows and sat themselves in the seats and loaded them. Around fifteen men walked down the stairway to the motor room to start the departure from Tarlym’s homeland. Two soldiers with jet black crossbows slung across their back climbed the ropes on the main mast to the nests up above. “Captain Karl! Let’s head to the mainland!” General Harvey shouted to a tall, light skinned man across the deck. The men on the Blue Avenger cheered to finally be heading home after a month parked at the Droma Corpin waiting for Harvey to come back from the Grand City of the Druids. Although everyone around him was cheering, Tarlym felt a strange emptiness inside him from having to move away from his home island to an unknown place with a raging war that he was now part of. Goodbye Le Amorn, for now, he thought.

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