Unbound

Prologue

     Let's see, where do I begin. Well I guess the beginning of course. After all it is the best and only place to start any good story. Whether it be good or bad. Funny or morbid. Relatable or horrific. Any story that you have, the best and only place to start is always at the beginning. This however, well I don't know what it will turn out to be. Hopefully it will be great, maybe even hysterical. Either way, this is a true story about me. My name is Taylen. No need to go on about it, you'll learn more about me later as I go on about my story. Here in our great world of Alotaur.

     I suppose I should start at the time of when I made the biggest mistake of my life. As one of Princess Amara's slaves, I served as her cleaner. I cleaned her room and kept all her gowns neatly ordered in her wardrobe. The princess is the embodiment of beauty, even to Terran eyes. Some of my people say it's because she's a witch, but other's say it's a natural beauty she was born with. I on the other hand, didn't know what to believe. That is until I found a rather strange looking book atop her highest shelf. The book stood alone on the shelf and the cover showed an emblem of the Archmage himself. The emblem on the front cover depicts a pair of feathered wings coming out the back of a wolf head and reaching up over the head, nearly touching in a closed circle. It must've come from the Archmage's personal archive in the library wing. I don't know why, but I opened the leathery book to a random page and skimmed through the pages that possessed many spells and incantations both powerful and lesser.

     One page in particular caught my eye. It depicted an image of some kind of liquid in a bowl. As I read the page, I felt that my time in the princess's room was too much for the time I usually take to clean. I knew someone could be coming very soon and out of instinct, I close the book, hiding it in my cloth shirt, and taking the broom and duster I had brought with me and getting out of the royal bedroom before the princess returns. As soon as I get to the slave barracks on the first floor of Valkul Palace and hid the book under my mattress.

     "Taylen?" My body jolted into a stand out of fear of being caught. Once I realize it was just my friend Logan I let out a heavy sigh of relief, holding my chest as if trying to calm my heart back down to a regular pace. Logan is a friend of mine I met after being sold to the king of Toarhiem. Logan and I stuck our necks out for each other more than once, but never too often. He's definitely a man I would trust with my life. "What are you hiding?"

     "Logan. It's um... It's something I found in the princess's room." He and the other terran slaves come closer to hear the story of how I escaped with something from the princess's possession. Such a story would sound impossible. "And it might help us escape. Maybe.."