CRACK!

"Im not sure you do Deirdren! You've learned from me, yes, but you've never put your skills into practice!" A young woman spoke, wearily trying to placate the Dwarf whos hair seemed to grow with each swing.

CLANK!

"It's fine Nilish my sweet, I have a knack for this I think!" he heaved before-

BOOM!

-the stone hewn room was filled with ash and flame.

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I awoke in the forest, just outside my home, the town of Kairnus. It was a humble village, with just enough people traveling through for us to be considered a trading hub in the Kingdom. I must have fallen asleep while I was hiding from Ernice.

I looked up to the sky through the trees, from the light I could tell that it was roughly mid-day, almost time for lunch. As I stood from my resting place to head home, I felt dizzy, unceremoniously falling, planting my face promptly in the dirt. As I looked up, I saw not my village or even the surrounding forest, but instead, I saw a breathtaking castle, with towering spires amidst the clearing my home once occupied as the ground beneath it began lifting.


Blinking back to reality, Ernice, dressed in her pale blue dress, the many frills directly contrasting her brash personality, ran up to me, giggling. 

"Alfyyyyy! I finally found you!" She jumped into me, knocking the wind from my stomach as I started laughing alongside her, quickly forgetting the view I had just seen.

"It took you long enough, I fell asleep waiting for you to find me!"

This only elicited more laughter.

"Alfy's a liar! Alfy's a liar!" she danced around me mockingly to which I reacted by pushing her, I used a little too much strength causing her to tumble over and start bawling.

"Come on, get up, my mom's making G'nash for lunch today." I pulled her up by her arm so that we could walk back together.

She wiped her face, still sniffling loudly as we headed back to my house through the village, I almost felt bad for her, it was her fault since she hit me first anyways.

"I still wanna play Alfy, you promised we'd play all day today!" she pouted, punching my arm with the strength of a wild beast.

"Ouch! No, I didn't" I was lying through my teeth, "but if you want we can play Hunter's all day tomorrow?" She didn't respond, she was staring excitedly at the colorful stalls being set up. "Do you think we'll win it this year?" I said smiling down at her, giving her a light push to keep us moving.

"Of course we will! I've been working on my aim ever since you made me that sling!" she produced the crudely made sling, the wooden handle roughly carved to fit her hand.

I looked at it, then to my still bandaged hand. "The festival doesn't start for another couple of days, so keep practicing so we win. I'm not great at this, remember last year?"

"I remember!" She giggled, "You almost hit my dad, he was ma~d!"

Kairnus is currently preparing for the one-hundredth annual festival of The Lovers, attracting couples from across the continent, and the streets were packed a little more than I had expected so we had to squeeze through the crowd, sliding between all manner of people.

As we approached my house, I felt an odd sense of fear gnawing at me in my chest. As I opened the door, I was hit with a wave of dizziness as everything went quiet, as though the people around me were melting away into the background while I mindlessly wandered into my house, I turned the corner into the main living area. The moonlight streamed in as I fell to my knees, staring into me was the sight of a woman's unseemly corpse, freshly mangled and bleeding onto the floor. I struggled to close my eyes and get the lifeless woman's visage out of my mind, I realized then that the body was wearing clothing of my mother.

Just as suddenly as this scene had appeared, I blinked and It was once again mid-day. My mother's corpse nowhere to be seen, and the noise of the outside world seemed to fade back in.