In the short time that I’d been alive. If you could even call this existence living. Nothing ever seemed to go right. Since the day of my very first breath everything had gone wrong. I wouldn't exactly call myself handsome, especially considering that you could see my ribs and the stark outline of my cheek bones. Though I thought my face always had at least a bit of devilish charm. With short dark brown hair and striking blue eyes. My name is Alex and my life has been nothing short of miserable since the day I was born.

 My mother had left me in a basket on the front step of the church of Laluna . She was the goddess of mothers and protector of orphans. That always felt like a cruel joke to me. She obviously didn't exist or she would have struck down her priest long ago because the man was a monster. His name was Father Cassius and he abused his position at every turn.  

I was always treated differently than the other orphans. The priest seemed to almost take pleasure in punishing me. I’ve always had this cloud flying over me. It’s a dark cloud. One filled with bad luck and misfortune. Mostly my own misfortune but, sometimes my bad luck would affect those around me. It could be something as small as a worm being in someone's apple or a runaway carriage running rampant down the main street. 

I would always have to take the blame for every incident no matter how small, and with the blame also comes the punishment. I had taken countless beatings along with a childhood spent alone as an outcast. These beatings became an almost daily ritual for me. I'd have to stand in the courtyard against a post and take ten lashes for each wrong that I had been accused of even if it was not me that did it. I endured till my eighteenth birthday when I finally summoned up the nerve to make my escape. I had of course made an attempt at freedom many times in the past. Each failed attempt would be met with yet another beating. This time it was going to be different. I had planned my escape for the middle of the night. I snuck out of my bunk and headed for the corridor.

 Once I got to the door I heard muted voices from down the hall. This was an unexpected development that required a change of plan. I snuck over to one of the other boys' bunks. His name was Sloan and he was a bastard. If it was possible he took the most joy in my punishments more so even than the priest . He would often take it upon himself to beat me even if I had done nothing wrong. Just for the simple pleasure of having power over someone he had perceived as being weaker than he.

 I was about to show him that brute strength meant nothing in the middle of the night when you were fast asleep. I took out the kitchen knife that I had stolen the night before. I was beaten for that as well even though no evidence had been found that I had taken it or that anyone had for that matter. I drove the knife into his chest with all the strength I could muster. 

The sound was horrible. I once had to help the local butcher with killing pigs. That was exactly how Sloan sounded at that moment. He let out an eardrum shattering scream and I was sure I'd gotten the priest's  attention. I ran for the nearby window not at all bothered by the fact that I had almost certainly murdered one of my fellow orphans. I had the window open and most of my torso out the window when a grip like a vice grabbed onto my ankle. I turned around to see who it was. 

It was Father Cassius, the man I’d spent my entire life hating and resenting . He made all of the orphans treat him like our real fathers or more to the point like a god. I’d heard horror stories about what he had done to some of the other children, but that is not the story being told today. I was in quite a predicament. So I did what any sane person would do. I brought my other leg back and kicked him as hard as I could right in the face.

  I felt a crunch under my feet . I’d shattered the father's nose and at that point I had the presence of mind to realize that he was out of the pursuit. I made my way out of the window and into the alley next to the church. I ran with everything I had. I was emaciated from lack of food and tired from lack of sleep but, this was my last chance to escape. My last chance at freedom. I’d just killed a boy and injured an upright member of the city.

 I was now on the run with nowhere to go and no one to go to. That last part was nothing new to me. I had been alone my whole life and I expected what little time I had left would be spent looking over my shoulder for whoever may be hunting for me. I was now a fugitive and I had to get away. As far away as I could get. There were a few problems with this. I knew what city I was in but that had almost no use to me as I`d never been allowed to go more than a few city blocks away from the church. I knew the general layout of the city but had no idea what lay beyond its walls. I had no home, no money, and only the rags that were on my back. So I made my way for the only part of the city where I thought I would have a modicum of safety. 

I made my way towards the slums . It was a den of crime and debauchery but I felt that no one would come looking for me there. I mean who in their right mind would head for a place where you are as likely to get stabbed as robbed. It felt to me like the perfect place to call home. I wouldn't have to worry about the guards or the Father finding me but I would have to worry about the different guilds that ran the different parts of the slums.

The guards tended to let the guilds do whatever they wanted in the slums as long as they kept most of the crime out of the rest of the city. That had turned the slums into a safe haven for murderers and robbers who were looking for a place to lay low. As it turns out I was looking for just such a place. A place to rest my head and to maybe find opportunities legal and otherwise.

I walked the cobbled streets of Port Lancia. Usually there are beggars on every street corner and sometimes market vendors would venture into the slums to try and ply their wares but it was the middle of the night and the streets were empty. The streets of the slums were littered with trash and other more disgusting things like bodily excrement. I was more than used to this as the Church of Laluna was at the edge of the temple district and was close to the slums close enough to smell at any rate.

The rest of the city was at least a bit cleaner than the slums and included the market, temple, and noble districts. The market district housed all of the shops and there was a central market square where vendors could set up their stalls. The temple district houses the temples, churches, and shrines to the many gods that were worshiped in the city. Lastly is the noble district where the nobility and the Count of the city lived. The Count of the city was named Dravus Lancia but I didn't know much about the man other than he and his family ruled over the entire city and had ruled over it for generations.

Port Lancia is the third largest city in the Kingdom of Lucinia. Lucinia is a coastal kingdom located to the South of the continent. It is neighbored by  three other Kingdoms. To the North is the Kingdom of   Karengorn and to the West is the Mysterious Land of Sunsuria and to the East lay the land of honor, the Sakura Empire. I knew little of any of the other  kingdoms, having never had any schooling or even left the city of Lancia before but I knew that Karengorn was known as a warrior nation where they loved the thrill of battle. Sunsuria on the other hand was a place of mystery and legend. The Sakura Empire was a land of beast-kin. They are part human part animals who were looked down upon by some people especially the nobility. 

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

As I made my way through the streets and alleyways I saw what looked like an old abandoned warehouse that seemed empty and run down. It looked like just the place for me to lay my head for the night. I saw a hole in the side of the building. It looked a little tight but I thought I could just barely squeeze through. I got through the hole without too much issue. Once inside it was all dark and silent. It appeared as if no one was there so I crept further inside to see if I could find a safe place to rest for the night. It seemed as if I was in some sort of storage room off to the side of the main warehouse. So I searched for a door that would let me into the main building. I located an old nearly rotted through door that had several cracks in it. 

This is where my bad luck kicked in. The warehouse was not as abandoned as I had assumed. Through the cracks in the door I could see three tough looking men in the middle of the warehouse sitting around a fire. They were eating what looked like meat and bread. The smell of the food was intoxicating. My stomach made a loud growling sound and I was lucky it was not heard by the men. This was a predicament that I had not anticipated. Should I go through the door and see if the men were willing to share? Probably not because the men looked like guild members to me. Not that I had ever seen any guild members myself but they had the same look about them that I had heard in stories from parishioners around the church.  

Only two other options seemed available to me at this moment.  I could either stay in the little room off to the side and hope that none of the men came in and found me while I was sleeping, for they would most assuredly kill me while I slept. The other option was to crawl out of the same hole that I had come in through and hope that I could find another building that was hopefully less inhabited. This seemed like the best option to me but a little voice in my head said what if you leave this place just to stumble into even more guild members. There was the chance I could sleep through the night with the men none the wiser and continue my escape early the next morning. 

If I had a coin I would have flipped it but not wanting to bring even more trouble onto myself by scouting out the rest of the slums and potentially finding an even worse group of men. I decided to risk one night in hopes that I could leave with the men none the wiser that anyone had even been here. I found a stack of crates that looked like I could improvise a bed out of it. It couldn't be much worse than what I was used to sleeping on at the church. I climbed onto the crate that was about eight feet tall. I was tall and nimble so I made the climb without much difficulty. Once I was safely on top of the crates I took off my shirt to make an improvised pillow and I swiftly fell into a dreamless sleep.

There was a noise outside of the door that made me wake with a start. I assumed it was the men from the night before so I hunkered down against the wall to make myself as small as possible. The door opened and a man stepped in holding a makeshift torch. The man said “ I could have sworn I heard some noises coming from here.” Another voice came from the other room saying “ Oh come on George there ain’t no one in there we checked the whole building before we started our fire. Besides, no one is stupid enough to trespass on Prowler territory.” The man I now knew as Gerorge said “ You're probably right Bill, it was probably just a rat or something that got spooked by the fire.” The man called George moved towards the door and seemed to be heading back towards his guildmates. 

That was when the crate I was Hiding on top of gave out with a screech and a boom. George spun around to see what the commotion was and he saw me. He looked at me with shocked surprise written all over his face. I heard his buddies running toward the room. That was when I had to make a decision to fight or to flee. I chose to run for everything I was worth. There was no way I could fight three armed men. I turned and ran for the same hole that I had climbed through last night. I slipped right through with ease but they weren't so lucky. I may have been a grown man as far  as age, but I was gangly and slender from lack of nutrition.

I ran through the streets of Lucinia trying to find a place to hide. I ran past more abandoned buildings until I found an alley that looked like it would make a suitable hiding place. The alley was lined with trash and debris. I ran through the alley looking over my shoulder and saw no one chasing me. I hid behind an old crate and waited to see if anyone would come looking for me. After what felt like hours but was probably only about five minutes no one had come to look for me. So I felt like it was safe to assume that for now at least I was in the clear. It was just before dawn and I had only managed to catch a few hours of sleep but it seemed to me that it was time to get moving.

The only thing that I could think to do was to head for the city gates. There was nothing left for me in this city and there never had been anything here that I cared about. So off I went for what was sure to be a better life than I had lived up to this point. I made my way to the other side of the city in about an hour. The people of the city were just getting ready for the day and I was determined to be gone from here before the citizens of the city came out and started crowding the streets. In another few minutes I was at the gate. It was early enough in the morning that there was no one waiting to get in or out but the city guards were there waiting to check anyone coming in or out of the city.

Since I looked just like any other peasant on a journey to the outlying towns in the surrounding area I expected no trouble from the guards. They would normally just give a cursory inspection to anyone leaving the city and save their real scrutiny for the travelers wishing to enter the city. Though it seemed like today it was going to be an entirely different experience from the normal one. They looked at me with a lot more than the normal scrutiny. I was hoping that the previous night's murder had not been discovered or at least that they didn't have a very good description of the murderer. 

As it turns out they were looking for a few members of the Prowlers guild which happened to be the same guild the men I had ran into last night were members of. The Prowlers were accused of multiple murders of merchants and thefts in the noble district. They had a bounty poster for the men that were wanted for the crime; the names on the poster were George, Bill, and Eddy. The George that was on the poster was the same man I had seen just hours ago. There was a bounty on the three men of five golden Lunas which is the top currency of the Kingdom of Lucinia. One gold is worth ten silver, one silver is worth ten bronze, and one bronze is worth ten copper. I had even heard rumors of platinum coins used by nobles. They were worth an astonishing one hundred gold coins and were used for large purchases between the nobility and the merchants of the city. It seemed my luck was finally taking a turn.

The guards at the gate were supposed to be looking out for any sign of the guild members. I happened to know the exact location of the men so I asked if in exchange for their location so could receive the promised bounty.They said that they would give me the full bounty of five gold coins if my information turned out to be true, but if what I was telling them turned out to be false and I just wanted to use them to try and make some coin for myself they would throw me in the deepest cell in the dungeon and just forget about me. I was to stay in the holding area while they went to verify my information.

 It took them a couple of hours to get back, but when they did they were pleasantly surprised that my information was authentic. They paid me the full amount of five gold and cautioned me to take care to not let anyone else know of my new found wealth and I assured them that I would be careful. They said I was free to go so I left their offices and headed for the gate. I paused at the threshold of the city. I had never been past the city gates and I was a little emotional about this parting of  ways for me and the city. I know that it seems silly to get emotional over a place that held nothing but bad memories for me, but a home is a home no matter how bad it may have been. It was time for me to move on.There was nothing left for me in this city but more trouble than I could handle. I took my first step on what was sure to be an amazing journey.