Yudra Melvin: The voice that I used to think inside my head had always sounded a little too loud. People thought that I was crazy, mentally ill, insane—a demon child who talked to invisible people and ghosts. They were especially scared since I never spoke in my “native tongue.” I could speak Mevillic pretty well—since I, you know, lived in Mevillime—but strangely enough I never really liked to speak it. It never felt quite right to me…

My mother was born in the Taegan empire in a region called Villona. I had no clue where that was but apparently she had a pretty wealthy father who sold her off to my father—the head general of the Mevillime military—for a hefty price. He gave up twenty seven aquatic trading routes all connected to the Mevillime empire along with a port and a couple hundred bars of gold. I never talked about my mother with my father but a lot of people had told me about her. She was beautiful and from the portraits I guess I could see what they were talking about. She had straight, jet-black hair and pale white skin. She had very delicate and beautiful facial features along with dark black eyes and from what I could see she liked wearing white dresses and blouses. My father always looked very happy in the portraits where my mother was beside him. He would always have his mouth open with laughter and his eyes would crinkle with joy. My mother was never laughing out loud in any of the portraits but she always had a shy smile on her face—which made me think she was happy as well.

It was hard for me to remember my mother’s face but when I tried to I could always see those warm and loving eyes staring into my face. She was the one who taught me how to speak Taegan’s language and it was the first language I ever spoke. The happiest memories I had were of me sitting in her arms and falling asleep while she read to me or sang to me. Whenever my father was off fighting battles or explosions were going off in the distance my mother would hold me and that would always make me feel safe. But she died when I was five and she never gave birth to any siblings. Apparently my father was thinking of retirement before she died and then when she did die, he put his head down and dove into work. As long as I had known my father he was a very serious, distant, and cold man. He was never home much when I was little—maybe he had been different when I was younger but I couldn’t remember. I had heard a lot about fathers like mine—they were drunkards, gambling addicts, abusive, and they always neglected their children. But the weirdest thing was that my father was never like that. He never abused me or berated me or threatened me and he was a very respected man, but he just…. ignored me. He wouldn’t come home, he wouldn’t look at me, and he wouldn’t speak to me unless it was absolutely necessary. It was almost like I was just a random kid in his house—not his son. I wanted him to notice me and talk to me. To be honest… I wanted him to love me…

Which is why I wanted to be a warrior—the best one there ever was. If that happened my father wouldn’t ignore me.

So imagine my surprise when after all these years my father—who hadn’t given a damn about me—came crying with tears in his eyes, on his knees begging me to not become a warrior. I still remember his face and his voice, filled with despair and pleading, and I remember the words he had said to me, “I do not want you, my boy, to become slaughter.”

So not only did my dear father never talk to me, but he didn’t believe in me. He thought I was going to kill myself fighting—he looked at me like I was a peasant, who was weak and useless. Honestly, I didn’t blame him. I was very surprised that he never resented me—since I was the military general’s son and was born without a blueprint. There was a huge scandal about if I was actually his son or not but genetic tests eventually proved it. I was just unlucky—I guess. But I never really thought of it that way… I never understood why people hated me or the peasants either. Just because we didn’t have blueprints and liquor abilities it didn’t mean we weren’t able to do great things. Sure, the peasants didn’t really do any great things but they had the ability to—at least I think they did…

So I took what my father said personally—I took what everyone said quite personally. I devoted myself to becoming a warrior—even if I couldn’t explode rocks or create shockwaves I tried with all my might to do so. I devoted myself to learning how to fight, to perfecting every strike, every technique, every skill behind grappling, kicking, punching, every nuance contained in the movement of my hips, my footwork, my head movement, my distance management, my battle IQ, it was all I ever worked on. It turned out that most of it came naturally to me—which was weird but also very fortunate. I needed all of the skills I could get.

It was pretty clear that from early on, I was not equal to the other warriors around me. Even when we were children everyone was just physically stronger than me in every way—faster than me, tougher than me, stronger than me, quicker, and taller than me. The blessings of liquor allowed them to be physically superior to me in every way. My strikes to their body and their arms and legs never did anything to them but I quickly figured out that if I hit them in the right places, with perfect timing, with perfect technique, I could take them out. Everything had to be perfect, my technique, my power, my timing—I had to watch when they entered for an attack, when they shifted their weight, when they moved their feet and body, and I had to hit them when they themselves were moving into me in order to generate enough force. But if I did all of that—I could take them out with nothing but my hands.

It was hard but that was life—and I wasn’t going to complain about it to anyone. I had gotten into Mevillime State Academy fairly easily—I had all the tournament victories, the highest scores in multiple combat exams, and all the recommendations I needed but it bugged me that the main reason I had got in was because of my father. No matter how bad I was there was no way that the academy was ever going to reject me and that pissed me off. I was good enough to get in by myself, I was my own person, I wasn’t some nepo-baby who was riding off of his fathers name, I was me. But no one—not anyone ever—thought that way. They always respected me because of my father, they always feared me because of my father, they were scared to fight me at full strength in tournaments and exams because of my father, and the worst part was that I couldn’t even talk to anyone about it—because it wasn’t right for me to.

Oh you're the general’s son, boohoo, you’ve lived in a mansion with servants and everything you could have ever wanted for your entire life. That was how every conversation should’ve ended for me and that’s how I thought about myself as well.

So things were weird, things were difficult, and things were even weirder when we had gotten back from the Youth Championships. We had fought and neither won nor lost and now to top it all off, there was a great chance that those kids we had fought in the tournament were going to be our real enemies on the battlefield very soon. I couldn’t stop thinking about that Evay Maver….

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He had turned into a completely different person within the blink of an eye and his power was something completely different. It wasn’t the overwhelming power that I was used to facing when fighting every warrior I had ever faced—his power was something no one could do anything about. Not even the best warriors, not Oden, not real grown warriors, not even that freak Geon Leventen could stand up to that specific power of his. If he was our enemy that was bad—very bad. Mainly because he was so unpredictable. If he could change like that in the blink of an eye it would be hard for our forces to deal with him. Our forces would also have to adjust to Geon Leventen and his freighting control of terrain and his aerial abilities—along with his combat excellence. He was the first person I had ever met who could keep up with me in hand-to-hand combat…. Him and his girlfriend the healer would give us some trouble and that electric girl was going to give us some troubl—

“YUDRA! YUDRA! Yoo-hoo!” I snapped out of my thoughts and looked up to see Swahili standing over me. I smiled and sat up, taking in my surroundings for the first time in a while. Mevillime was a fairly large country but it was famous for its massive rivers, lakes, and its connection to the water. Due to the massive rivers and lakes and canals, Mevillime was more like a collection of giant islands than one land-mass of a country. Many cities had canals and rivers cutting through them—adding a nice touch of natural beauty to the brick buildings and the marble banks. We also had huge lakes which had floating cities resting on them like giant frogs sitting on top of lily pads. The rivers connected all of us and they were our roads and pathways that got us everywhere—which surprised most people. I had never really seen so many large roads until I went to Evian—we just used boats and rivers to get to where we needed to go. Me and Swahili were in Piopa, a grassy and hilly island covered with beautiful flowers and filled with older traditional looking wooden houses—fitted with spruce-tiled, slanted rooftops and light beige, birch walls. The towns here were quaint and beautiful in their own way and it was nice to come here and relax.

Swahili tapped my head and looked at me with her big, round eyes and spoke in a concerned voice, “Denali?” Denali meant, “are you ok,” and she asked me that a lot—which I appreciated I guess. Swahili was a little younger than me—by about half a year—and she was always really bright and upbeat. She had tan, olive colored skin, silky black hair which came down to her shoulders, and she was pretty tall—a little taller than me at least. She always wore a green bandana on her head which she claimed was for, “good luck.” Even if she was upbeat and bright she was never the loud type, but she always sort of felt positive and it helped cheer me up in hard times. Swahili’s father was my father’s secretary and her mother was close with my mother before she died so we had grown up together. She was really annoying when she was little and I pushed her away a lot but she always came running back. I guess I grew to like her and she was always there for me—even if I wasn’t for her. But she was like my sister, the sibling I never had, which was a very accurate description since she still annoyed me sometimes—actually no, she still annoyed me a lot of times. She kept poking me and started to pull at my hair, “Denali Yudra?” She sighed, “Dawana ellesta cineh….” I stood up and shoved her,

“No, I’m not moping around about getting my ass beat, and I didn’t get my ass beat! I took out like four of their members before I dropped and we didn’t even lose! It was a four on one and I got three of them and two of them were really strong, an—“ Swahili threw a rock at my head which I swiftly dodged. She spoke in an annoyed tone,

“I hate it when you speak Tawhen, Yudra! Father also doesn’t like!” I kicked down the tree I was leaning up against, grabbed an apple which had fallen off of it, and chucked it at Swahili’s face. She barely dodged it and fell over—which made me laugh. She looked at me angrily and she chucked a patch of grass at me—which I swatted away. I looked at her with a mocking expression,

“It’s not ‘father doesn’t like’, it’s ’my father doesn’t like it when you speak Taegan’s language.’ I know you don’t like speaking it but you do need to know it for school, don’t you?” Her eyes went wide and she covered her ears and rolled around on the ground,

“I hate it! I hate it! Don’t say about school! Don’t talk about! I hate Tawhen—I hate Tawhen exam!” I laughed,

“I thought you’d be good at Taegan, oh sorry, ‘Tawhen’s language’ as we say it. You have a head start since you’ve been using it to speak to me ever since we were kids.” She shook her head while still hiding her face in the ground,

“Exam different, too many questions.” I laughed,

“Become a warrior like me and then you don’t have to take any exams.” She looked up at me angrily,

“Very funny! You want me to fight you?” I smiled,

“You’d never win but sure.” She sighed and sat down on the grass.

“Father wants me to go to Xyren, he says there’s good scholars there.” I nodded as she looked down and picked at the grass, “I don’t know what I want to do there, but father says I go no matter what.” Her face fell a little bit and she looked a little sad which was pretty rare. I picked up and acorn and threw it at her head,

“Whatever, right? You’ve always found a way to do things—sometimes it really amazes how you always manage to do so since you're a little, you know,” I twirled my fingers around my head and she tried to slap me. I dodged and kept speaking, “you’ll be ok. If anything I should be the one worrying—I’m off to fight a war.” She stopped mid-hit and paused with a blank expression on her face. She looked at me and spoke with concern,

“So you’re really going to fight? What father say?” I looked out at the wooden city below us, wishing I was one of those sturdy wooden houses which never moved and never changed,

“Nothing—like always.” Swahili sat down next to me and spoke in a delicate and calm tone,

“We worry about you, Yudra. Your father too, even if he doesn’t shows. My friends talk about you, they ask about you, go talk to Yasmine before you leave, you know she likes you right?” I smirked,

“Yeah but a lot of them like me, no?” She tried to slap me but leaned back just in time.

“Stop acting like a play-boy you poser! Go talk to her, she is pretty and nice.” I nodded and picked at the grass,

“She is but she’s not really my type.” Swahili sighed,

“Yes, I know, you like the foreign girls,” she sighed, “when are you going to realize your home is here! Not there!” I stood up and spoke in an angry tone,

“Oh I don’t know, maybe when I’m out there killing myself to protect you! I know it’s my home but my roots come from other places too, you know! What about your friend Jillian, aren’t her parents from Railand? You don’t say stuff like that to her right? So what gives with me?” I looked at her with anger in my eyes and she returned my gaze for a moment before quickly looking away with regret. I looked at her and turned away in guilt before sitting back down. She picked at the grass for a bit before speaking softly,

“I’m sorry. It’s just…you have always been…out there, Yudra. Your mind, your thinking has always been not here. It was hard getting you to live here when you always out there in your heart,” she picked up a yellow dandelion and tossed it into the wind. “I worry it will break your heart when you fight—and I worry you will die. Please, be safe.” I nodded and gave her a hug. She squirmed and tried to push me away,

“EW! EW! Stop! Why are you doing this? EW!” I smiled and let her go,

“I’m sorry and I will not die—who do you think I am?” I stood and motioned for her to follow, “I need to get back home and sleep. We leave early in the morning for camp and I have to be there. Let’s go back, before it gets dark.” She nodded and we made our way to the canal as I took one last look at that old wooden village. Maybe I’ll take a long vacation here after the war…. Yeah, that’d be nice… A nice long vacation.

When all of this is over.