In the tradition of the people of Pirn, where Gahl was from, his parents woke him up early that day.
‘Hello?’ said Gahl, bleary eyed.
‘Hello, Sweetie,’ said his mother. ‘You need to get up.’
‘Why? The sun has hardly started rising.’
***
Dragged out of bed and pulling himself into clothes, Gahl soon stepped out into the wide expanse awaiting at their front door. His parents waited, and a keen eye could see that other parents for other children also waited.
Gahl hardly rubbed the sleep out of his eyes before his parents walked on, beckoning for him to follow.
The dew seemed to have barely covered the landscape they walked through - the sun only now began to rise. Gahl kept an eye on his hazy strides as he neared his parents. They stopped again to wait for him.
‘Honey.’
‘Yes, Mum?’
‘Look at the view.’ Gahl, in his pause, felt comfortable turning his head toward the sun, and the landscape.
Far away, Gahl saw mountains rise, shone upon gently by the radiant beams of twilight. They slanted upwards in spikes at the sky, however at their bases they were almost level with the foothills surrounding.
Between the mountains, Gahl could see the shimmer of the sun, though its outline did not yet break the horizon.
Stretched out in sprawls from the foothills laid the famous olive groves of Tordana. Clusters of trees dimmed the bright green landscape with their dulled leaves, however it more than paid its dues by the golden outline upon their silhouettes.
The olive groves reached out in clumps, eventually meeting small villages, but soon there were flatlands once again. Like the flatland he currently stood on.
Startled into consciousness again, he looked for his parents. Stood twenty feet away from Gahl, they showed their obvious readiness to leave, however they stood there watching him.
‘Are we going to continue on?’ asked Gahl.
‘If you’re ready to,’ answered his father. ‘But it’s a great view, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah,’ answered Gahl, almost dreamy after looking at the landscape.
‘I remember the first time I saw this too,’ began his father. ‘I was no older than you, of course, and my parents called me out the same way we did to you. We walked for so long, and then we turned. I spent so long looking at it we nearly didn’t have time to finish the tour.’
‘Finish?’
‘Yes, dear,’ said Gahl’s mother. ‘We have hardly begun.’
Gahl remembered how it was Autumn in Tordana, and as such the sun rise strayed divorced from any conceptions of time. It was still hours until they had to rendezvous at the temple.
They walked on - or, well, Gahl’s parents still prolonged their cycles of walking, waiting for Gahl’s uneasy steps to fall in with theirs, walking, and the cycle repeated for a while. Gahl could not imagine how his parents could be so energetic. Their ecstasy attempted to flood his mind, but his mind stood true. He was tired, but so far the walk had been enjoyable.
Gahl looked forward after a while of gazing at the ground. Through the faint mist that covered the world at this early hour, he could see the wood in front of him.
While he saw the woods of Calim every day from his window, he had never been inside. He had never smelled the oaken scent of the wet wood, never heard the merry whistles of the wildlife. In fact, he had hardly known that there were lumberjacks around the forest, slowly cutting it down.
‘Hello,’ called a burly man to his parents.
‘Hello, Tihn.’
Tihn Ipalson
Race: Human (Tordana)
Class: Fighter (Strongman)
Strikestone: Bludgeoning
Strength: 4 (+1 Strongman Bonus)
Dexterity: 2
Vigour: 3 (+1 Heavyweight Bonus)
Knowledge: 1
Wisdom: 2
Charismatic Charm: 2
Luck: 2
Gahl was thankful not to be hit by the barrage of stats that just said “not available”, and made a mental note to thank his father for teaching him how to see a minimised view when he got back.
‘How are you doing on this fine morning.’ Tihn seemed more energetic than Gahl’s parents. He moved around the trees, examining them, bearing a hatchet that seemed to fit in his hands like two lovers.
‘Good. This is young Gahl’s Tour of Glory.’
’Swear me blind! Gahl, is that you?’ He pointed to Gahl, and Gahl did the closest thing to a reply that he could think of - which was a fusion between a groan of weariness, a nod, the word ‘yes’ and ‘mhm’.
Tihn smiled.
‘You’ve grown a lot since last I seen you. Me and your da go way back, y’know. He was there the day o’ my Choice Ceremony, and I his.’
‘You speak as if they’re different.’
‘Well, it makes it sound fancier.’
‘I’m sure we both would’ve come to each other’s ceremonies even if they weren’t on the same day.’
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
‘You’re right, there.’ Tihn glanced at the sun through the trees, drawing a conclusion in a moment Gahl couldn’t have in 12 hours - perhaps because the sun would’ve set by then.
‘Well, I wish I could talk more to you, but I’ve got to be off. Lumber don’t cut itself, as they say.’
‘It was great meeting you.’
‘We should have a drink sometime.’
‘Well, Gahl here will be drinking more than us soon.’
‘You think his stats will be that bad?’
‘Well he wants to be a wizard.’
‘By the Stone, he will be drinking more than half the tavern after a while, then.’ Gahl tried to laugh, but the bad stats shot into him like an arrow. He had forgotten about that in his sleepiness, but now he remembered once again. It was ever the scarier, seeing such jovial conversation between the people of Pirn. This life was what he risked - but what life would be the reward?
‘Well, goodbye.’ It was now Gahl’s father who was conscious of the time.
‘Tell me how it goes!’ Tihn turned his back after he picked a tree. With a preliminary swing of his hatchet a crack rung through the woods.
They replanted the trees, of course - it would be great folly to exhaust Tordana of its greatest natural resource - but the wood they cut down was soon brought back to lumberhouses, where men and women of the Empire worked to cut it down into planks, which would then get fitted onto the boats that sailed away to distant lands. Gahl, pleased with how much he had remembered from his Statistics of Imperium class in school, realised his parents lingered ahead and caught up with them.
***
Gahl was fully alert after the stats joke, finally able to walk with his parents. With a turn of his head he peered back at the woods. They had grown faint behind him, little more than a sight one could see in water’s reflection. The sun rose further now, he saw, his gaze fallen upon the mountains once more. The first part of the suns edge rose above the smallest peak, making it don a brighter glow.
His head turned back again, and he saw distant farms near. Distant to his bedside, the farms actually stood less than 300 feet of the beaten path away now.
Tilled fields slugged across the landscape, interrupted only by buildings of logs and stone. The farmers also worked at such an early hour, attending to whatever activities unknown to Gahl on which farmers spent their time.
A similarly merry air enlivened the atmosphere of the quasi village as they walked forward. Farmers chatted, and people laughed at jokes about the weather, or about life as a farmer, or about life in the Empire. Work continued on at a swift pace as they did this, though. The people of the Imperial Belt, despite being the happiest, were also the hardest working and most prolific of all the islands. The higher ups argued that these were related, however Gahl always heard it stated as ‘hard work makes people happy’ rather than ‘happiness makes people work hard’. Ana had pointed that out to him - without her he never would’ve noticed.
They continued on through the village, Gahl’s father bearing a face of both happiness and sorry because of the lack of intrusion by locals.
Gahl kept his head high this time, which allowed more of the sun to beam on him. The light tickle his exposed skin, and he felt the budding warmth of morning spread across his arms and up into his shoulders.
This feeling made it ever sadder for Gahl to descend down the rolling hills in accordance with the path, but ever more satisfying to rise into the sky as they ascended. After a few of these wave-like motions, Gahl felt a tap on the shoulder.
He shot around, to see his father pointing at something ahead. His eyes focused upon the spot, and he saw it.
The Gohan Port, the largest natural port in all of Halvanah, stretched across the bay like a kneaded dough stretching for the wings of the table. It curved inwards after a while, and led up to its mouth, making it look like an artisan pot one would see in a pottery studio or at the town fair.
Gahl gazed at it for a while. The sun bore its rays upon the ships, and bronze highlights danced along the water-soaked wood. In the water’s reflection the ships rose again in their blurred antithesis, disappearing out of view beneath their subjects.
‘Wow.’ The words left Gahl’s mouth without his acknowledgment, his attention still affixed upon the beauty. His eyes rose, and he watched distant waves crash against the rocky headland, on which a guard tower was built.
‘We’re going to that guard tower now,’ Gahl’s father announced. ‘There, we shall meet with an old friend of mine who now serves in the Guard.’
They walked quickly across the headland - well, quickly by standards of every other trip they made in the venture - and soon they stood opposite the mighty tower.
The stationary yet seemingly ever-rising fortress was reminiscent of the temple - the buildings commissioned by the Imperium always shared a divine sense of grandeur - and shivers ran down Gahl’s spine.
‘Hullo.’ Almost invisible in contrast with the tower, Gahl did not see the man step out of the great wooden doors. His vision shot to the man.
Pel of Cahnan
Race: Human (Tordana)
Class: Fighter (Soldier)
Strikestone: Bludgeoning
Strength: 5 (+1 Soldier Bonus)
Dexterity: 1 (-1 Carry Weight Disadvantage)
Vigour: 4 (+1 Heavyweight Bonus)
Knowledge: 1
Wisdom: 2 (+1 Soldier Bonus)
Charismatic Charm: 1
Luck: 2
‘Hello, Pel,’ Gahl’s father said.
‘Is this Gahl?’
‘Yes,’ Gahl replied. Gahl did not often see many of Gahl’s father’s friends, but in this case Gahl had never even met Pel. He heard his father speak of speaking with him, however never did he himself talk to the man.
‘You’re like your father when he was your age, you know?’ Gahl looked at his father. His father’s greying hair seemed as though it may have once resembled the colour of the strands of Gahl’s jet black mop. They were of similar heights, and they were of the same more “philosophical build” rather than a “physical build” - or at least thats what the trainers said.
‘Yeah, I guess so.’
‘I don’t think he’ll be going into speaking, though,’ said Gahl’s father. ‘I always knew he was smarter than me.’
‘So, is there anything you want to know?’ asked Pel after the chuckle dimmed.
‘Not really.’ Who would wait to do their research the day of the Choice Ceremony?
‘Actually, if I may ask,’ began Gahl’s mother, ‘why are there so many ships in the port today? Is there a parade on soon?’ Gahl turned. He didn’t notice while looking at the ships the sheer quantity of them. There was an entire fleet of military ships that floated upon the gentle waves.
‘No. I don’t know all of the details, but I think that there is a dispatchment tomorrow, going to Zyxix to stop a rebellion.’
‘Noble souls, those of the dispatch,’ his father sighed.
‘Well, actually, its the old guard there that started the insurrection, tried to kill General Sarembai and all.’
‘Sarembai?’ Gahl asked.
‘Yes. He is the one doing your Choice Ceremony, no?’
Gahl nodded, but he could not see the old priest as “General Sarembai” - nor could he see anyone trying to kill him. That is the way of priesthood, though. “There are no priests who haven’t killed more people than they have preached sermons”, as the old saying went. Sometimes saving meant killing, though Gahl hoped to avoid that in his scholarship.
‘Where are they getting the combatants from?’
‘I don’t know, if I’m honest. I’ve been waiting to see an army walk down the hill for the last week, but none came.’
‘Think they’re going to conscript me?’ asked Gahl’s father. ‘I would be such a good fighter - just running around telling a few jokes before getting my spleen stolen.’
‘I’d be the one going,’ said Gahl. ‘I am your son after all.’
‘Always knew those son people had a use.’
Pel did not join them in laughing.
‘Ease up, old friend,’ said Gahl’s father. ‘Conscription will never come back.’
‘I know, but looking at the statistics, the Imperium needs more fighters than ever before - even during the Times of Conscription.’
‘Yes, but they won’t resort to conscription again. Not after the outcry.’ The outcry that still echoed when the two men were born, despite it happening twenty years prior.
‘Look,’ Gahl’s mother interrupted. ‘It’s time.’
Gahl turned around to where she was pointing. At the mountains.
Cradled within the mountains, the sun had finally risen. It shone from a perfect cubby in the mountains, the edges of its outline tapping off the steep slopes of the neighbouring mountains. The sun now spread its warmth over the island of Tordana fully, the fields glowing greener, the trees ever lush, and the groves at the foothills bathed in a golden glow.
‘The Sun Stand,’ stated Pel. ‘I see it every day, and yet its beauty never fades.’
‘The first time I saw it I didn’t think it was real,’ began Gahl’s father. ‘I waited to wake up for so long, staring at it, but it’s very real.’
Gahl had the same feeling as he watched. The trip today solidified in his mind one thing.
I will do anything to protect this landscape. This beautiful, beautiful landscape. To it I shall give my all. Nothing shall do harm to it.
Invigorated with a passion for his country he never felt before, Gahl did not pay attention to anything but the landscape. Not the further conversation between his parents and Pel, not the beckoning of his parents to follow them back home, not the pain that shot through his legs with every step as they made the journey back.
This better work out.