Vode

I sit in the endless darkness of a silent cavern far below the mountain’s peak. No one dared to go into these treacherous caverns except for the strongest Mountaineers that wanted to prove their worth.

Mountaineers such as myself.

I glide a stone across my dark blade that reflects the star speckled sky above the treetops. The sound of metal breaks through the deafening silence as I lean against the boulder that is my bed for the night.

I glide my stone across the dark metal as I recollect just how a few hours prior the message that was tied to a hawk flew into the temple. At the time my father and I were quietly making candles for prayer offerings. It was my grandfather who read us the note from my aunt, Dire Sapt. She claimed that there was to be a tournament very soon and that she would send us word on what day it would befall upon. 

It was all so sudden and the plan had fallen into my grasp so easily I was honestly surprised, speechless in fact. I may become the Dire earlier than we all anticipated. 

The Dire, Shield of the Mountains. It is what I was raised and trained to be. 

Although I had been planning to go to the Plain Realm for over three long years the only thing that stopped me was my stubborn grandfather, the previous Dire. No matter how much my aunt and I tried to persuade him he denied our request. 

Even when the assassins attacked the Prince the first time, that old man simply said in a low grumble, “The boy is a man now he should be able to take care of himself.” Or he would say his favorite line, “You are not ready for this duty.” 

I was though and he knew it. He just couldn’t admit that I had finally reached a place in my training where he had nothing else to teach me. I was and am the fastest trained Dire in the past hundred years.

I have been training hard day and night, for the past eight long years, always up before the sun and out late past the moon’s peak. I could even kill an adult scalin goliath with just a chain and dagger. A beast which was five times my size stood no chance against me. This didn’t matter to him, the head of our family. He still saw me as nothing more than an ignorant child who had nothing worth showing.

Now as the news of a tournament spread there is no better time to leave. My Grandfather has no choice but to now acknowledge my place in the house of Evergreen. This has become the perfect excuse to leave the Mountains and get closer to the Crown Prince. The Gods are finally on my side. 

Before I could ask my grandfather for approval I was already racing down into the cavern to prove to him that I could stay here for two weeks without being harmed by a single beast. 

The two weeks have just started and this is my final test to become the next Dire of the family. The hardest part was going to be not killing the beast, the task I always struggled with especially when they tried to hunt me. 

I take a breath and tilt my chin up to look at the stars above. The ones I had counted hundreds of times as I spent my youth running through the wildflowers that decorated the Mountains. 

I close my eyes as I recollect every memory of struggle that brought me here to this small moss patch I now sit upon and the brittle cold that gnaws at my cheeks. It was a hard childhood, not one I would wish upon anyone. 

I open my eyes and find the moon makes the world around me just a bit brighter as it peaks past the trees.

I have already been here multiple times and every time I stayed, less beast came to fight me. Intelligent creatures. I hope their response is because they have at last realized I am an alpha of my own species. Maybe I could even kill a dragon if I needed to. Who knows, one of those had not run rampant in almost ten years.

Eight years I correct myself. That was when I first started training. I try not to remember the tragedy it ravaged upon our land, upon the Plains, upon my own family.

Forget it. 

Blood.

Don’t remember. 

Flowers.

The sound of a shilon screaming in the distance makes me jump and remember the fact that I am in the second most deadly place in all of the Mountains. The shilon screams again and this time I know it is a warning scream, a scream that the leader is afraid and the rest should stay distant. I chuckle while inspecting my katana that reflects the moon above and then sheath it.