War Will Reign

Humble Beginnings

My fingers moved across the keys quickly and precisely. I had played this same tune many times before and this time wasn't any different.

It was a lonely song; it reverberated inside the listener's soul, not allowing them to escape until they were well out of the music's vicinity.

I played it so often-- not only because I was lonely--but because I knew that people enjoyed it. People liked to wallow in their sorrows.

There was a lot of sorrow wallowing in this place. Everyone seemed to be getting more and more depressed as the days wore on.

It was a bit alarming to say the least.

There were multiple reasons people could be sad, but none of them could explain the clouds that literally and figuratively loomed over everyone in the sad town Wintak.

I stood abruptly, silently wailing at the sound of the unbelievably heavy chair's legs scraping against my wood floors. The entire area around my stool was marred by the scratches from generations of the Odessan women in my family getting up the very same way I had.

I shuffled to my kitchen stove, rubbing at my arms the entire way there, and added a few more logs of wood.

Even though it was decently mild outside, it had no bearing on me. I was always cold.

"I should get ready for dinner," I whispered to myself.

I had a bad habit of whispering to myself. When the silence became too much for me, I would usually try to fill it with random musings.

As I worked filled my kettle and started on my rice, I hummed the Odessan Creed.

Again, filling the silence.

I was the only pure blooded Odessan that anyone knew of. My parents had died in the war, and I was all that was left.

Being the only one of anything made for a lonely life.

"...and above all else," I breathed a sigh and pushed a dark curl from my face before continuing to hum.

Odessans were different in more ways than one. We had a glow about us, a glow that the humans did not have.

Our ancestral brothers, the Traitors, looked completely different from us, but the one thing they did share with us, was that very same glow. Our elemental glow.

The Traitors were almost always tall and muscular while we Odessans tended to be short and plump. We didn't share much when it came to looks.

That and our views on life.

Peace was a word I doubted the Traitors understood very well.

In the end though, the only real way to tell a Odessan from a Leban was by our looks.

Our physical traits made us more easily distinguishable from them.

These traits are why, when one very large, very tall man busted through my humble home's front door, I screamed at the top of my lungs.

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