Chapter 1: Chapter One: A Merry Fellowship

It took a dozen hard knocks for the door of her apprentice’s house to open, revealing a tiny, teary-eyed figure behind it. Stella recognized the child to be her apprentice’s youngest sister.

It appeared that she was too late to spare anyone’s tear-ducts.

Stella found her apprentice, Avon, sobbing into his grandmother’s embrace. The three young girls surrounding the two didn’t fare better.

Her morning began with a bloody corpse, the third in this week alone, left at her doorstep, a letter urging prompt response slapped carelessly over its distended abdomen. She had no mood to indulge these theatrics. “Oh, will you stop this already?”

The sobbing ebbed as everyone looked in her direction. Avon pulled away from his grandmother’s hold. “Teacher?”

Even upset, the youngest sister didn’t forget to pull a chair for her to sit. Stella gave her a smile before returning to end her apprentice’s tragic daydreams. “I can’t even trust you to watch over a corpse and you think you can watch over the living?”

“But the village head sai--“

“I don’t give a damn what that greedy bastard says! Your grandmother and sisters need you more than this Kingdom.” The girls let out scandalized gasps, and so Stella attempted again, softer, more considerate to those of impressionable age, “When you master treating one condition with the poison designed to cause another, then we’ll talk.”

Avon appeared terribly perplexed. “You can do that?”

“Exactly my point.”

Avon’s grandmother voiced out her own concerns, “Lady Kale, if Avon didn’t show up tomorrow at the village head’s manor, he’ll make trouble for him.”

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll take care of this matter.” Getting up from her seat, Stella spared a last command for her apprentice before she walked out of the house, “After my departure, close the mortuary down and continue your studies at home. If you needed the laboratory, you know where the key is.”

“Teacher, you can’t mean…!”

The sound of the door closing behind her with a decisive snap swallowed up Avon’s protests.

---

For the umpteenth time, William watched as his wife, Sera, scattered the contents of the sack he packed earlier in the day.

“I’m looking for my ribbon,” was today’s excuse.

Disregarding the fact that he wouldn’t dare touch her precious collection of silk ribbons, the way she swiftly emptied the sack and threw it to the farthest corner of their bedroom told enough about her true intentions. William let her do as she wished, waited for her to finish and leave, and then started the process all over again.

Sorting through the mess, William let out a helpless sigh, the ache in his heart a familiar presence, accompanying him from the day he decided to depart.

In emptying the sack, Sera was enthusiastic. In filling it, William was reluctant–perhaps to a degree of near stillness. He didn’t even notice Sera’s return to his side, not until she reached out to take a crumbled tunic from his hands, neatly folding it before carefully putting it in the sack. She did the same with the remaining items as William fixed his sights on her trembling form, the firm line her lips set upon, and the tears running down her cheeks.

Sera tried many different approaches to deter him, defiant and relentless. In this, she finally resigned.

A single breath separated William from stepping down, running away with her and the children just as she pleaded–if only to drive those tears away.

Soon enough, the task he had been muddling throughout an entire afternoon finished within minutes. Time itself seemed to quicken in its pace from that point.

Sera reached to place a silver pendant in his palm, one she never took off. Her most valuable possession.

Her voice turned hoarse, its rhythm interrupted by faint gasps and sniffles, yet it broke out from her lips in burning resolve, “Take this. Sell it if you needed money on the way.”

“This is yours, I can’t…” William tried to argue, but Sera swiftly cut him off.

“Then come back alive and return it to me.”

---

After her brother retired to his room, a heavy, familiar silence fell between Jehona and her step-mother.

Over this evening’s dinner table, the only sound heard was the clink of a spoon against ceramic as Jehona absently stirred her bowl of soup.

“Are you leaving tomorrow?” her step-mother managed to ask, adding one more disturbance to the silence, breaking it. A question she already knew the answer to, and one she couldn’t help repeating–as if hoping the answer would change.

It didn’t. Jehona gave her the same affirmative hum.

“Did you pack everything you need?”

Her ivory lute, various articles of clothing, medicinal herbs collected from her step-mother’s past travels, a small pouch full of copper and silver coins, and a bigger one to put everything into. She was almost set.

Almost…

She looked up from her bowl to a certain direction, towards the path that led to the room holding her brother’s legendary bow.

The spoon her step-mother held over her own bowl fell with an ungraceful plop. Since the start of this evening, her step-mother never looked her way. Now, she finally did, and it was with that pleading look Jehona grew numb toward along the years. The little composure she infused into her voice dissipated, morphing into unmistakable panic as she tried, “Jehona… I don’t think you should take it.”

She knew that. “I have to.”

---

Yon woke up to the feel of being raised above ground by a chokehold. His sights met the bulging muscles and the flared nostrils of the innkeeper, gloriously illuminated by the moonlight. Not exactly the sort of scenery one would like to see in the dead of the night.

“What?” he rasped.

Seeing him awake, the innkeeper let go, reducing Yon to a coughing heap on the floor.

“When are you going to pay?” the innkeeper shouted. “This is the third week!”

It took a few minutes and a kick to the shin from the innkeeper for Yon to get a hold of his breath and respond, aggrieved, “Is this how you treat your benefactor? Your savior? The embodiment of all your hopes and dreams?”

The innkeeper kicked his shin harder.

“I’m taking your place!” Yon finally let out, forgoing the nonsense.

That had the innkeeper pausing. “What…?”

Getting up with a transitional groan, Yon elaborated, “Forget what I owe you, and I’ll take your place tomorrow morning.” Already, he could feel the beginnings of a headache induced by being woken in such brutish manner. “I know you’d want me to. You’re already so anxious about it that you cannot sleep, letting off some steam at the expense of unsuspecting guests.”

“Guest? You’re a pest!”

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“I get that often.” Stifling a yawn, he returned to the subject, “Do we have a deal?”

“Are… are you mad?” the innkeeper managed to say after a long silence, hesitant, that blazing fury nowhere to be found.

Yon had only one answer: “No, I’m broke.”

---

As the head of Cinder Village, Gustav thought himself luckier than most.

His village was quiet and remote, the sights it offered attracted an adequate number of visitors, and its troubles were few. Since taking over this position, Gustav lived a life of leisure.

Then the Kingdom descended into chaos.

Cinder was far from the heart of it, but its economy was still affected. Soon it became clear that he had to think of new ways to maintain a steady flow of revenue.

For years, Gustav followed the news of surrounding villages and towns enjoying the privileges the King granted–those that solely belonged to the hometowns of the individuals taking on the quest to restore peace to the Kingdom. It filled him with envy, this honor he couldn’t grasp. No one in his village volunteered.

So he took matters into his own hands.

“They’re certainly taking their sweet time,” his son Marco mused, distracting him from that recurrent line of thought.

“Indeed.” Sure, Gustav lied. It could be even be said that he was forcing this matter. Still, he clearly stated the time and place. They ought to be punctual.

“I think I can see someone approaching…” Marco squinted at the distance. “Huh…?”

Gustav was slightly short-sighted, so he couldn’t comprehend the reason for that ‘Huh’, not until that aforementioned someone got within sighting distance. Then it all came clear.

“Who are you?”

“Your source of revenue.” The unfamiliar young man smiled, so insincere it was offensive.

“I didn’t ask for you…” Gustav even glanced at Marco to ascertain it, just to eliminate the possibility of early dementia. Marco’s confirmation relieved him. 

In the following minutes, as other three individuals arrived, suspicions of dementia turned into suspicions of outright mockery to his person.

“What is the meaning of this?!”

“What other meaning is there?” the village mortician returned, the usual ridicule in her gaze replaced by disgust. “You wanted people to represent the village and you have them.”

“People that would have a better chance, not you!”

“What’s the point? You never had the survival of those you selected in mind anyway.”

Admittedly, she was right. Regardless of that, however, the idea of sending this spectacular party to represent Cinder was humiliating.

“Father, we don’t have much time,” Marco reminded him. “You already sent word to Cora Town.”

In the face of that, Gustav had to cut his loses. With a heavy sigh, he opened the registry booklet he held in hand, starting with the mild-looking man next to the mortician. “Name, age, and occupation?”

“William Bernard. I’m forty-two years of age. I work as a butcher.”

Ah, so he was the village’s only butcher, the source of his cook’s complaints and lament. Gustav wanted to admonish him for his shabby techniques, but then dismissed it. The man took his eldest son’s place in the hopeless quest to save the Kingdom. As a fellow father, he spared him that little sympathy.

He looked at the mortician, only for her to raise an eyebrow at him.

Right. Scribbling a quick ‘Stella Kale, thirty-one, mortician’ on the registry, he locked onto the next target, that young man who was the first to arrive. “And you?”

“Just call me Yon. I’m allegedly twenty-four.”

Allegedly? “And what do you do?”

“Oh, I travel from place to place, witnessing the start of a new era here, the end of another there…”

Gustav decided to simply not bother clarifying anything with this clown. He turned to the young woman standing behind the previous three, confused about her presence.

Undeterred by his silence, she volunteered, “Jehona Spyros. Twenty. I’m unemployed as well.”

“Why are you even here?”

“Because I can.”

The one Gustav asked for was her brother, and even if this Jehona showed up in his stead, he couldn’t understand the point behind such decision. Infamous and blinding as her beauty was–enough to be considered as one of the wonders of nature Cinder Village offered–she was just that, a beauty.

Then again, he could say the same about the other members of this merry fellowship.

Gustav closed the booklet after a final scribble, bringing out an emblem from his pocket. “This is Cinder Village’s emblem. Give it to the Royal Knights stationed at Cora Town along with my letter. That’ll be enough for your families to receive funds.” And for some to enter his coffers. In that regard, the presence of that outsider Yon could bring him the most profit.

What a way to live up to his claim of becoming Gustav’s source of revenue!

It was Yon who took the two items from him, while the other three looked at Gustav like he was an enemy. Perhaps he was. Perhaps, to them, he was just as despicable as that Yuhan who started this entire crisis.

It didn’t matter in the end.

As Gustav watched the four’s retreating backs, he heard Marco asking, “Where do you think they’ll reach?”

“I can’t say.”

His farthest hope was for them to reach Cora.

---

A/N: I'm really excited to start this project, and I hope you'll all enjoy it to the end.

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