The Ether Walker

Chapter 1

I’ve been told that being abandoned is quite common.  Especially where they found me.  Hangover Grove is an infamous spot from the numerous forgotten babies found.  The grove got its name from an overhanging slab of rock that created a sort of shelter over a portion of the clearing.  There is a hollowed out alcove in the stonewall that was rumored to have hid the First King’s son and heir when the orcs ambushed the First Queen’s traveling party.   Naturally there is an orphanage built not five minutes walk away.  Everyday the headmaster of the orphanage sends one of the littler kids to check the alcove for any new orphans.  So they were not surprised when little three year-old Zachary came back with a little bundle in his pudgy arms.

I was around a year and a half old when Zach found me in Hangover Grove, which is slightly older than most abandoned babes but not the oldest.  I grew up a normal kid, coal black hair, short and small stature.  The only oddity was my…unnerving pale purple eyes.  The few maids over the years have said, of course never to my face, in whispers of how it felt as if I could stare right through them.  How they were ‘primal’ and ‘animalistic’.  Why they thought this I never knew.  Every time I brought up the subject, to either Zach or the Headmaster, it would be quickly changed and deflected to a different topic.  It would be deterred till the next time I would pass by the kitchens and catch wisps of their whispers.  I used to purposely walk by the kitchens every chance I got to try to catch more fragments of their conversations, wanting to know why I was so weird.  One of those times I was walking with my best friend Avery and a new maid was being oblivious to her volume of speech.

“…wrong with that child?” her voice carrying through the doorway and into the hallway.  “Her eyes are just demonic!  It’s like she’s some sort of wild animal, especially with the way she horses around with the boys.  That girl is never going to get married, no man in his right mind would willingly tie himself down with a monster like that!”  The maid was immediately shushed and Avery hurried us past the kitchen before I could hear more.

“You can’t believe anything they say, Mira.  You have beautiful eyes.  There’ll be tons of boys begging for your hand!  The line will be so long, it will reach as far as Corcillum!”  We both giggled at this since Corcillum is the capital and more than fifty miles away.  “And I bet Zach would be the first in line,” Avery said with a sly giggle, knowing I had a little crush on him and his brown eyes.  It was the last time I passed the kitchens.

A year later the town got hit hard with a flood that threw it into poverty, the villagers barely struggling to put food in their children’s bellies, let alone support someone else’s.  The orphanage let go most of the maids and only kept one or two workers to do the work that we couldn’t ourselves.  And that was before the raids started.

There were always skirmishes between the Royal army and the orcs, but four years ago it became a full blown-out war.  At first, we thought we had the advantage with our battlemages.  I won’t lie and pretend to know everything there is to know about them, not many people do with the exception of nobles and the battlemages themselves.  But what I do know is that they are a rare group of people that have the ability to summon demons and use them to fight.  All nobles’ first-borns have the ability, for them it is hereditary, but there are a few others that pop up outside the nobility.  And one of them was Zach.  Last year the Inquisitor that visited our town every year tested him.  All boys that have turned fourteen by the end of summer are then tested to see if they have potential.  Unfortunately, the only girls allowed to attend the Academy that trained battlemages were nobles.  The sole reason any commoner boys were tested was for the sore need of battlemages.  Once the war started, we learned that our advantage wasn’t just ours; the orcs had their shamans.  Their demons were completely different from ours.  So the nobles had relented and allowed the Inquisitors to search for more battlemages in an attempt to change the war in our favor.