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Chapter 3

Ethan stood there for a while after arriving on the opposite of the square from where the guild entrance stood. He thought on the irony that despite the area being circular in nature, from what he understood, it was still considered a square. Having so far been unable to gather enough courage to enter the guild he instead turned to look back down the busy street by which he had traveled earlier.

He was an orphan, having lost his parents when he was only a few years old. After making his way with the other refugees south he had been taken in by the kind clergy at the Forgotten Oak Sanctuary Orphanage. While there had been children representing just about every race of the world at the orphanage, when it came to adults he saw very few of them. Even the older children could be considered young in general. As such, away from the intensity of the filled street he looked at the various people walking about, studying them as it were.

While their numbers weren’t as predominant as the others he could easily pick out the Raginers in the crowd. Their thick, muscular, and very tall bodies towered over the others walking about. He was lucky he hadn’t seen any up close as he had been walking earlier or else he may have panicked. He picked out one Raginer that he assumed to be middle age, with shoulder length hair of a dark blonde color. He held a stern expression on his face, despite occasionally smiling as he spoke down to someone Ethan couldn’t see.

Behind that stern expression was a bone structure that presented a large forehead, defined cheek bones, and a massive jaw line that ended in an almost bulbous chin. The one Ethan was currently looking at, in contrast to how the race had been described to him, seemed to have subtler features, though Ethan still could see the traits the race was known for. Ethan didn’t have a wide body, and was still young, so when he looked down at himself in silent comparison to the Raginer’s thick biceps he gulped in intimidation.

Frowning to himself he moved his eyes to look upon three Wyr’kin women that were currently haggling with a merchant at one of the jewelry stalls. Where Raginers intimated Ethan because of their size and obvious strength, Wyr’kin, especially the female, worried him for an entirely different reason. Unbeknownst to Ethan he could be considered relatively handsome, and thus sometimes when a Wyr’kin female looked upon him, he sometimes felt what would akin to prey being looked at by a predator.

Wyr’kin features ranged wildly, similar to that of humans, and thus the only two defining traits were their enlarged canine teeth and pointed ears. Some were covered head to toe in fur, others simply had patches in some locations, and some had no abnormal amounts of hair, at least when compared to humans. The nature of their hands and feet, in regard how close the fingers and toes resembled claws and how long they were also had a wide variety.

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Very rarely a Wyr’kin would be born with an animal appendage, such as a tail or paws for their hands and/or feet, however, not only were they rare they were also worshipped rather fervently by other Wyr’kin, akin to divine beings. Thus you could live and die a never once see one with your own eyes.

After seeing the three women finally come to an agreement with the merchant his gaze shifted once again, this time, to what, from a distance, could look like children moving about between the legs of the others. These were the Puledas, and while their numbers were less than any of the races, their presence was no less as strong. They were a small race, humanoid to some degree, though their foreheads were a bit longer than any of the others, perhaps if you took a Raginers forehead and smushed it flat, you could get about the same length, but this was unproven of course.

If one grew to be over four feet tall they could easily retire and become a stud for the race with women falling all over themselves to try and provide a tall offspring. While he had considered such clinically the though of a ball of naked Puledas rolling around suddenly made him blush and feel rather uncomfortable. Chasing away the naughty thoughts the one he currently looked upon was an elderly female Puleda who was looking at some fruit at one of the stalls.

Aside from their height their were three things that were unique to Puleda; almost all of them had no hair on their head or bodies, they had four fingers instead of the typical five of the other races, and their feet had three long toes ending in claws meant to grip and climb. The Puleda race was known for its sub-terrain existence, having built massive stone cities into the mountains and beneath the surface of the land.

Of course, then there was the race of man, which he was a part of, and the dominant species of Nelumexa. Of course, it wasn’t for the lack of trying by the other species, it just that Humans, with their shorter life spans also had a higher birth rate so there was an ebb and flow to the dominance in regard to numbers. However, the severity of those tides were lessening with each year as the world slowly got back on track. If the other races could be considered hardy then the humans could be considered prolific if nothing else.

While he found seeing the different ages in front of him he was kind of let down in the lack of diversity between the young and the old. Sure there was some more wrinkles here and some scars there. Perhaps less hair on some of the older humans, but this wasn’t odd to Ethan since most of the elderly at the orphanage had been human themselves. Perhaps he had anticipated too much over the years and that was he felt underwhelmed. While considering this fact a commotion erupted behind him, near the guild, which consisted of yells and cursing.