Mamasan's worried face suddenly appears as I wake up frightened in the
night, her fingers pressed gently against my lips, begging for silence. Dim figures dash
madly about in the periphery of my sight, to occasionally clash with the sound of blade on
blade, ending in muffled groans. Mamasan takes me up in her arms and rushes through the
darkness of the manor, dodging the warring figures that appear briefly in the torchlight.
A turn is taken in the hallway, a horrific face of death and destruction appears, and just
as suddenly a blade appears from underneath Mamasans night-clothes, making the face vanish
as suddenly as it first came.
"Mamasan, what is happening?" I barely sputter, before she once again presses
her hands against my lips and rushes into the darkness. After an eternity of madness and
mayhem, the sound of her slippers pounding up a plank walkway ends with her handing me to
a faceless stranger on a strange boat bouncing like a top on the stormy sea. The sounds of
harsh men in pursuit sounds from the dock, and I see a cold look of calm and determination
wash over Mamasan's delicate face and the sailor rushes me below decks. As I feel the
vessel part from its brief union with the dock, I hear the clash of warriors outside as if
from a distance. And for the first and last time, I hear Mamasan and her beautiful voice
undulating in a strange battlecry. Kee-ai!
That ship was just the first of many voyages my Father and Mother were to take me on. My
father would never speak of that night, or for that matter, the past again. Mother would
whisper stories of when Mamasan would take me to watch the cherry blossoms fall, or to
contemplate the simple beauty and symmetry of the stone garden in the manor we had fled.
But she too, would never speak of that night.
Growing up in the strange land and peoples of Altene, my father worked as a Mercenary for
various petty lords and mercenaries. They treasured his strong arm and strange but lethal
combination of a long and short sword of cunningly wrought material. As I grew older I
soon realized that my father had no intention of showing me the ways of our old home and
his deadly skills, so what little I retain of my far-away homeland was learned from my
mother.
Upon reaching my Eighteenth birthday, I bowed simply to my Father and Mother, slipped the
gladius that an old Altenean veteran had bequeathed me in my belt, and walked off to the
west.