Three months have passed since school started and it was currently winter on Ranfel. The winters in the capital city were not cold at all since they lied in the tropical region. There was only a slight change in temperature, along with rainfalls becoming a bit more frequent.
At a house in the Eastern District, a family of three people were currently having their breakfast. At one of the heads of the table was a middle-aged man sitting, wearing a soldier’s uniform. The different colored stripes at his shoulder indicated that he was an officer, and a fairly high-ranking one at that. He clearly had a strong build as well, bald head and light brown eyes.
The opposite side of table was occupied by a tall, slender woman, who had straight and well-kept black hair, reaching down nearly to the bottom of her back. She wore a red, traditional robe, which - though lacked any fancy ornaments - suited her quite well.
The last person at the table was a small child, Quin, who was enjoying his food.
Although the variety of food on the table was somewhat lacking, their quality and quantity would make several families look at them with envy. Being an army officer definitely had its advantages.
“Thanks for the meal, but I have to go… We have been told to be at Headquarters as soon as we can, since it seems like the governor wants to discuss another important matter,” the man said who has just finished eating his meal, and stood up, quickly leaving the house.
“Your dad sure got his hands full with work these days!” the woman exclaimed with a bit of sadness in her voice but continued with almost no pause. “By the way Quin, how are the training classes going? I guess after these months it became a lot easier and more fun, didn’t it?”
“Yeah…” the boy at the other side tried to force a smile and nodded, which did not seemed to be enough to convince his mother, however.
“What’s with that answer?” she sighed. “You should listen to your father and not forget how important training is... for your future!” his mother told him, looking slightly concerned.
“I know, I know... “ the boy replied, who was still putting on a forced smile.
He swiftly finished his meal and thanked his mother for the food before leaving the house with his backpack on his back and headed for the school.
Why is Mom acting like that? In the past she had always been the one who helped me when Dad got angry about training, but nowadays she’s just like him, and is always nagging me about it! Quin sighed, clearly not liking his mother’s sudden change of behavior. After some other lines of complaint about the matter, he realized that he was late and started running on the streets.
He could already see his four classmates after passing only a few corners. The girl on the left side, Aline, was waving her hands and smiling, while his twin brother Alinor along with Pharren and Dreon were shaking their heads and sighing loudly, visibly expressing their dissatisfaction.
“You’re late again!” Alinor complained. “We will be in serious trouble if you keep this up! Don’t you remember last time? We got all kinds of penalty tasks and had to stay at school during the whole afternoon!”
“Yeah I know,” Quin laughed, ” I’m really sorry, I just got lost in thought and totally forgot about the time!”
“Anyways, let’s get going. If we hurry we can still make it in time,” Dreon said and they started running towards the school.
During the past three months, Quin made good friends with these four children. They were going to school and back home together most of the time, and often played together during weekends as well. It was a new experience for Quin, since he previously did not really have any friends, and spent most of his time by playing with his mother or reading by himself. He still liked to read all the interesting books his family had at home in their own small library or visit the local one, but also had a great amount of fun with his friends.
As usual, the first part of the school day was spent by doing various tiring exercises, to which, his constant complaining did not stop either. After the ‘hellish’ training ended, the teaching continued with normal classes. He enjoyed those classes quite a bit, except the Geography lessons which were still terrible. Once they ended, the training class instructor entered the room.
“Alright! Everyone, listen! Tomorrow, you will go to school just like any other day, but after training class is finished, all of you will be sent home as the four afternoon classes will be called off.”
Hearing this many students began to whisper among each other, but the instructor only needed to clear his throat and all of them became dead silent -- not one kid did dare anger him.
“Then, you will head home right away and meet up with your parents,” he stopped for a second before continuing and swept his gaze across the class. “Together with them, you will head to the main square. The governor himself will appear there, so make sure you won’t make even the slightest sound while he’s speaking! Am I understood?!” he increased the volume of his voice by a significant amount.
The intimidation was successful without a doubt, as all of the children nodded without exception. Then the instructor exited the room while maintaining the same serious and intimidating expression on his face.
It was no surprise that the main topic amongst the children became next day’s events, and many of them tried to guess the reason behind them. Once they got home, they tried to pry some more information out of their parents, without much luck though.
Next day, it was afternoon and the main square was filling up. The square itself looked quite spartan: lacking any statues, fountains or even plants; its only striking feature was a stone podium at one of its ends. The floor was precisely covered in snow-white tiled stones, which were the size of a human’s palm. This place was only used once a year during the celebration of the city’s founding anniversary, and only the governor was allowed to give speeches on the podium. The strange thing however, was that it was not the date of the yearly celebration.
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After an hour passed, the constant movement of people stopped and the square was filled. Everyone in the city - except soldiers on patrols and some seriously ill patients in the city hospital - was patiently standing on the main square waiting for the governor to appear.
In the blink of an eye, a man was standing on the previously empty stone podium. Although this act definitely would have been an awe-inspiring experience for an average man, the people living in this city were somewhat used to it by now, from previous yearly celebrations.
This man, who was the governor of Crows’ Road, was called Gorman and looked like a man in his mid-forties. His height was above average and had a fairly muscular build. Two long, vertically aligned scars crossed his face, one on each side from his chin to his eyebrows. The color of his short hair was green, with a small red tones mixed in it, matching the colours of his robe.
“Greetings everyone! I did not become governor to make prolonged speeches, and as most of you know it is indeed not my habit. So let’s cut to the case right away,” he said.
Though he was not shouting and was speaking in a calm tone, his voice could easily be heard from any point of the square.
“Well, sadly, I have some distressing news to tell. It all started nearly two months ago...” he paused for a moment and took a deep breath.
“The thirty-fifth legion had been working on opening a new mine in the Wilderness, since the beginning of this summer, and was supposed to finish around two months ago. However, not only did they not finish in time, we got no response from them afterwards,” he clearly had a sad expression while speaking.
“Next, we sent the first legion there to investigate the matter.”
After hearing this sentence many people realized the seriousness of this matter. The number of legions in the Duchy ranged from one to one hundred, with the lower the number, the stronger the legion, and each of them consisted of five thousand men.
“When they arrived, they found only the corpses of their former comrades. While investigating what happened, they were suddenly attacked by some strange, ferocious, unknown creatures of the Wilderness. The fight was not in the slightest an easy one, while each of these beasts were strong individually, the more frightening thing was their numbers -- reaching up to ten
thousand. After hours of battle and significant losses, the legion finally emerged victorious and the creatures retreated.
“Then, another strange, shocking thing happened: they crossed the Sundering Flames without a second thought. The three Spirit Forming cultivators in the legion, did not waste any time and conjured their most powerful scouting spells to monitor the beasts with them. Even though they passed through the flames, they were unscathed and continued their retreat without stopping.
“This means that although they are physically weaker than our soldiers in the first legion, they have a method to ignore the effects of those flames and can freely move between those parts of the Wilderness.
“After observing them longer, it turned out that they were retreating to their nest. This is where this whole matter truly became frightening! Those scouting spells counted at least seven hundred thousand of them.”
Hearing these words most of the people were indeed frightened, some of them were even on the verge of panicking.
“The reason I called all of you together is because of our future! Our kingdom needs this city and the resources that the Wilderness grants us! I fear that without them our precious Duchy will go back to its declining past, where famines were regular and everyday our citizens had to fight for their survival. This is not a time when we can simply back down and abandon Capital City! This is the time when we have to prepare and fight!
“They only sent a small portion of their forces, but eventually more and more of them will attack our mines, settlements, and -- if we let them -- even this city! I immediately started organizing our defenses, first of all asking our Grand Duke to transfer twenty more legions here. Twenty legions has quite a big number of soldiers but I am afraid, that it will not be enough. These monsters seemed intelligent, organized and keen on attacking us, thus I do not see even a slight chance that they will give up after two battles. I think, if we are lucky, we still have several decades, but I deem it possible that they could be at our doors in just mere days!
“I did and will do all what I can to defend our country, but that will not be enough! In crucial times like this, all of us should contribute... There are at least a hundred thousand children in the town attending schools, so I am mainly speaking to them because they are the greatest variable. You youngsters can be our greatest help: in a couple years, you can reach to great heights in power with enough motivation and spirit, in the future even higher than your parents and grandparents had. With each new recruit in the army, we are closer to our goal to survive. However, you can also cause our downfall: if you decide to slack off and not concentrate on your training we can miss out on thousands of potential soldiers! In the worst case scenario that could very well lead to the end of this city and the end of our dear Duchy, which I honestly hope will not happen. May the Sundering Flame protect and guide us.” With that, the governor disappeared from the podium just as fast as he appeared.
A few moments later, the temporary silence broke as people began to discuss what they previously heard. They had different kinds of expressions on their faces, but the most common one being nervousness mixed with fear. Even though they were a military nation, where many people would not even bat an eye if their city was under siege, the last decades have been without one and the news about this ferocious, unknown race made many of them experience true fear for the first time in their lives.