"Pant... pant... pant..."
Gasping for air, ten-year-old Eleanor was running for her life through the woods outside Berry Town.
It was autumn, and the trees of the Eastern Province couldn't boast the year-round verdure of the legendary Southern lands. The bare branches scratched against Eleanor's thin clothes, leaving red welts on her arms and shins, some already beginning to bleed.
Fortunately, her hair was cut as short as any boy's at her age, so it was too short for the branches to catch.
But she couldn‘t spare a thought for that now. Her mind was consumed with one thing: to run, keep running, never stop.
Between the sparse trees, torchlight broke through from not far behind her, accompanied by a taunting voice:
"Ellen, where are you hiding? Come on out. It's late, and I'm really starting to worry."
Damn it, she cursed inwardly, they're gaining on me again. The old shoes she'd scavenged had long since flown off her feet in her frenzy, but a thick carpet of fallen leaves spared her some protection from a bloody fate.
Yet, it was a double-edged sword. The usually silent footsteps were now amplified by the crushing of dry leaves underfoot, enabling her pursuer to quicken his pace.
"Do you like pretending to be a boy? Don't worry, uncle here has plenty of toys for boys to play with."
Eleanor bit her lip and pushed her legs to their limit. Life on the streets had taught her you fought if you didn't want to end up dead.
The torch behind her wavered, casting oscillating shadows. Voices and barking dogs grew closer. Eleanor felt her lungs burning; her senses were fading, stars danced before her eyes, and sounds were becoming distant. Only her legs continued to move numbly, mechanically.
Suddenly, her foot found air instead of ground, and she plunged into a cool embrace. It was absorbing her—no, she really was being swallowed up.
The bloody river, she hadn't seen it at all.
"Glug..."
A head bobbed up, gasping in the cold night air.
The chill of the near-winter river washed over Eleanor's every inch, stinging her wounds on arms and legs. Battling the bone-chilling cold and pain, she kicked hard to maintain balance in the swift current.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
The river's frigid autumn flow dissuaded her relentless pursuer. Gazing at the frustrated figure on the bank, Eleanor couldn’t hold back any longer. She dredged up the choicest curse from her streetwise repertoire and hollered: "Son of a harlot, come catch me if you can, hah!"
The next moment, a wave crashed over her like a beast, dragging her under.
---
"Seems I've forgotten something... should've cursed his mother, too..." The relentless river eventually spat out its unwelcome passenger. Just downstream, Eleanor crawled onto a pebbly shoal, wrung out her clothes, and reflected on her close call—one of her few good habits.
Walking along the riverbed, surrounded by familiarly sparse trees, she headed northwest, at least she hoped it was northwest. East was no longer an option.
Thinking back, she realized this mess was all thanks to the Duke of the Eastern Province. Even in a significant town like her own, slums were inevitable.
As a child of Castelin City, Eleanor's jobs varied widely—scouting and messaging in the morning, shoe shining in the afternoon, and occasionally some odd jobs on the side. Encounter a devout follower of the Goddess, and she could recite scripture for food and drink. Her days should have been unremarkable.
But the Duke, on a whim, had decreed there was no place for beggars in the model capital, ordering their capture.
Though not a beggar herself, Eleanor's life was nothing to admire, and she quickly found herself lumped in with the rest.
However, the roundup was confined to the capital, so she didn't pay it much mind, assuming she’d just scrape by somewhere else.
But then she learned from her fellow underclass—a terrifying secret—those caught were to be cannon fodder on the battlefield.
The news of war in the northwest was no secret in the well-informed capital. Combined with the rumors, the pieces clicked together all too convincingly.
Without hesitation, Eleanor made a run for it, leaving behind her leftover papers and shoe-shine box, aiming to slip out of the city and lie low.
But on the day she left, the hunt that had been confined to the city suddenly cast a wider net, reaching out to every village as if intent on eradicating her kind from the map.
And so, three days later, Eleanor's flight brought her to Boggart Town, a settlement too insignificant to even grace a map.
Planning a brief respite, she hadn’t even scoped out a proper bridge to sleep under before a meat-faced man with a dog spotted her. Drawing on her street smarts, she assumed the masculine name "Ellen," deepened her voice, and was soon discovered—or perhaps that only spiked their interest. Thus, the chase began.
She had traversed the limitless forest until the next morning. Frail, pitiable Eleanor was severely hungry. Through a daze, she spotted the white and gold glistening roof of a chapel.
Mustering her last strength, she knocked on the chapel's wooden door, then slumped against it, realizing too late that the building had long been abandoned.
As the rickety door creaked open, a man peeked out, locking eyes with the slumped Eleanor.
She recognized him from the streets of Castelin—a common soldier from the slums, member of the very squad tasked with rounding up the strong.
Eleanor didn't want to die on a battlefield, but she was so starved that dying anywhere might soon be a luxury.
The soldier from the chapel clearly recognized the face so familiar in the lower district. Putting forth her last bit of energy, Eleanor managed a strained smile and said, "At last, I've found you. Please, let me enlist."