The 16th day of Spring, 256 (Violaday)

In Lemor, the people always woke up early in the mornings, not because they liked to, but due to the loud crowing of the morning birds. These winged beasts, however, were only called morning birds in this small village, and everywhere else in the Kingdom of Vyria, it went by the name of roosters or chickens.

As one of the knee-length birds was crowing, it spread its golden-colored wings wide and lifted its long feathered tail toward the sky. Unfortunately, or fortunately, to the breeders, these birds couldn't fly, because their small wings were too weak to lift them up from the ground. However, if the breeders didn't cut down the birds in time, then they could grow up to the waist of a grown man and could pose a great threat to the villagers.

Other than breeding, most of the people in Lemor worked for the Village Lord to earn their coins. Almost all of the villagers worked on his fields, cultivated the lands, and harvested the plants. However, some folks hired themselves as lumberjacks and went to the forest to cut down oak trees. Although this job was the best earning one, yet it was also the most dangerous task that they could do on the Lemor Hill. The small mountain, except for its peak and a few clearing, was entirely covered by the forest with tall trees and dense bushes, which gave home to many beasts. These wildlings were the reason why no one really wanted to work as a lumberjack. Yet even though it carried a lot of danger, there were still some men, who rather than heading to the fields, went north to work at the foot of the hill.

After arriving at the edge of the Lemor Forrest, the lumberjack began to do their job and swung their axes into the oak trees' trunks. Even though the workers used odanic axes and saws, cutting down these rock-solid trees was a difficult task to do. But thanks to these sharp purple tools, which the Village Lord gave them for work, two lumberjacks could cut down an oak tree in about an hour.

Crash!

A tall tree fell to the ground, and the loud thump scared away the birds from the nearby branches.

"Finally, this fuckin' tree has fallen down," said an old woodcutter. He wiped the sweat from his wrinkled face and pushed his gray hair off his forehead. Just like the other lumberjacks, he wore ragged and worn-out clothes, and even holes could be spotted at the edge of his shirt.

"Oh my, don't tell me that you have gotten tired already, Uncle Peryl? Only from cutting down a single oak?" A muscular, middle-aged fellow laughed out loud and began to twirl his black, narrow mustache. After he saw the anger in the old man's eye, his smile became even wider and added, "You're not young anymore. You shouldn't be doing this sort of work."

"Shut your damned mouth, Mylk! Because I still have more than enough strength to step on your face!" Peryl yelled with fury in his eyes.

"Then, you should be using that strength to cut down more trees." Mylk kept annoying the old man. "Anyways, shouldn't your grandson be here to help you out? Or is he afraid that he will end up being dinner for the beasts, just like his father?"

"I SAID SHUT YOUR FILTHY DAMNED MOUTH, OR I SWEAR I'LL PUT THIS DAMNED AXE IN YOUR DAMNED HEAD!"

"Why are you so angry at me? Zan is also here. He is working hard to earn a living, and he is about the same age as your grandson."

Hearing these words, Peryl fell silent and couldn't say a word. It was true that Zan was just as old as his grandchild, but his grandson took his father's death to his heart. A year ago, a beast attacked the lumberjacks in the middle of their work and deprived six men of their lives. Peryl's son was among those people, and with his death, he left his son, two daughters, and his wife alone in the world.

"Leave Uncle Peryl alone, Mylk. Rather than making him angry, come here and help me saw the tree," said a tall, good-looking young man with broad shoulders. He was considered as the most handsome youth in the village, and with his black hair and blue eyes, every girl looked at him with affection in their hearts.

"All right, all right. I'll leave him alone, Gan," said Mylk while walking towards the leader of the workers.

"Zan, you go help Uncle Peryl," said Gan to his partner at work.

Zan nodded and hurried to the old lumberjack. As he saw that the old man was still angry, he tried to calm him down. "Don't mind Mylk, he likes to annoy others and enjoys when he gets someone really angry. He often makes fun of me because of my height."

"Yes, I know, but..." Peryl started his sentence, yet he chose not to finish it. He still had a lot of beautiful sentences that he wished to throw at Mylk's face. However, since that would only make the fellow achieve his goal, he decided not to utter a single word. He took a deep breath, and after letting it out, he looked at his partner. "How long do the logs need to be today?"

"Twenty feet long," Zan said and took the tape measure out of his pocket.

Peryl held one end of the long tape, while Zan was using its other end to mark the trunk at the proper length. Because this process always irritated the old lumberjack, he couldn't keep his thoughts in his mind, "I still don't get why we need to use this, when we can just use our own feet to measure the distance."

"We can, but we don't have the same feet size, and the Village Lord said that we need to use the tape measure so that every log would have the same length," Zan answered.