Chapter One
This was a bad idea." Somehow neither of us thought climbing a cliff hundreds of feet high to grab some screecher eggs was not a sound idea till halfway up.
"Shut up, Anna, it'll be fine," Ever-confident Daniel responded before pointing to a small outcropping some twenty feet above, "look, we're almost there. Now stop whining, and climb."
Daniel always had a way of making hard tasks seem effortless. We’d been climbing for nearly an hour, and I was drenched in sweat, making my brown hair cling to my face and neck. Daniel looked fine, not even a hair out of place or a bead of sweat upon his head. Taking a deep breath, I carefully move upward, double-checking my footing before pressing forward.
Continuing up the cliff face, Daniel leads, moving as quickly as we can carefully. We both make it onto the outcropping, allowing us to catch our breaths. Looking over past Daniel to the right, I could see a large nest.
The outcropping was barely big enough for both the nest and us, and even then, Danial and I had to have our legs dangle off to fit.
“So, that's it?” I say between gasps, leaning my back against the cliff face before looking past Daniel toward the nest. The nest was made of twigs and what looked like old and worn cloth, probably from our village or passing travelers, with its walls being just high enough to stop me from peering inside.
Daniel scoots closer to me and gently massages my forearms. “Pretty sure, there doesn't seem to be anything else living up here," he says after a while. He then scoots back to the nest and reaches inside, pulling out a smooth blue egg that was a bit bigger than gooses and putting it in his hay-filled satchel.
For a minute, he slowly moved three more eggs out of the nest and carefully arranged them in the satchel so they wouldn't bump or move on the climb down.
"Ok, that should be enough. Let's get down before their parents come back. You ready, Anna?" I wasn't. It has been just long enough for my arms to finally realize that climbing up a cliff was actually a stupid idea, and decided to be sore in protest. But being up here when the parents get back is a non-choice. So, I reluctantly nod my head and begin to climb down, Daniel following after.
The descent was thankfully uneventful. And we, with our prize in hand, quickly move away from the cliff and toward our home.
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“Again, " the instructor called out as he and the village's young men were running through militia drills on a flat patch of sand by the river. At the moment, they were separated into groups and were sparring with staves.
Watching from the sidelines were the children and women too young, skilled, or weak to have to help work the fields. For helping to get the screecher eggs, I was allowed to take off fieldwork to help.
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Nearly a month has passed since Daniel and I got the screecher eggs. The village elders went to San’hallon to sell them, and the money gained was used to get some of the guards there to help us start our militia. Today would mark the third day of training.
Daniel took to fighting as he did to everything else quickly and with more skill than someone twice his experience. I’ll give it another month before the only ones who can challenge him in the village are the instructors themselves.
I didn’t pay much attention to the boys while I worked. I didn’t see the appeal of watching them sweat and beat each other with sticks. But clearly, there was one going by the number of women giggling and stealing glances at them.
Sighing, I pulled my attention from the others and focused on what I was doing. Grabbing a pair of pants from the wash bucket and sewing shut the rips and tears. I was falling into a rhythm of grabbing clothes, checking for tears, fixing them, and moving on to the next. While the din of clashing staffs, yells and grunts, and the chatter of the other women fade away. Until-
“Are you Anna?” A deep voice calls from behind me. Startled, I spin to face the voice. The man that was speaking looked to be in his mid-forties. He wore a nice knee-length dark-blue open-face silk robe over a clean white linen shirt with tailored leather boots. Noble's garb, if a little plain.
“Yes, sir,” I responded nervously, facing him before quickly looking toward the ground. Nobles don’t like it when you make eye contact, right?
“I hear that you and your friend, Daniel I believe, collected some eggs from a screecher nest. Tell me about that.” He said while being to circle around me.
I furrowed my brow a little. I don't recall the Elders bringing him with the instructors. Why is he here? “What do you want to know, sir?”
“First, hold your head up, girl. I’m not going to hurt you. Secondly, peasants are known for telling wild stories, and I want to know just how much of the story told about you and your friend was embellished. And, well, Daniel is quite busy at the moment, so,” he drew out the last word while motioning for me to speak.
Raising my head, I started, “They're not much to say about it,” and there really wasn’t. We walked to the cliffside, went up, grabbed some eggs, then went home, and I told him as much.
He got this contemplative look, “And how did the eggs feel.”
“I didn’t touch them,” Feel? They’re eggs, and aside from the size and color, they looked similar to chickens. Why would it feel different?
The man stopped walking in front of me and stared out at nothing for a moment before brushing his cloak away from his hip. Revealing two palm-sized glass orbs hanging from his belt. Grabbing one of them in a quick movement, then holding it out to me and speaking. “Hold this, then tell me what you feel.”
Glancing around, everyone else was pretending they weren’t watching this weird noble talk to me. They kept their faces down and worked slowly as they tried to listen in. Even the militia training took notice and slowed down or halted to watch.
Warily, I reach out to take it before pausing for a moment. Looking closer at the orb and peering inside, there was a layer of fine black powder at the bottom fourth of the orb.
I hesitantly took it from him. It was warm, Almost unbearably so. I thought I saw a flicker of red light emerge from the black powder for a second.
As I held the orb close to me heat radiated from it, into my arms, and down my chest. Looking up at the noble, a look of slight surprise was on his face. He saw it too.
He reaches out a hand and places a steady grip on my shoulder, “Congratulations, child, you're an Elementalist.” He smiles a wide toothy grin. “Name’s Alexander Lantos, adept Elementalist and recruiter for the Royal Academy of Magic, and you have till noon tomorrow before we leave for the capital.”