Alexoria was a small, rugged, and beautiful country characterized by moderate temperatures, winding roads, and pristine landscapes. Rolling green hills and meadows with the occasional steep cliff promenade and thick, bushy forests surrounded the Laquid River region in the central part of Alexoria. The Laquid River ran from the northern ocean and split the top half of the island in two. The river came to a halt in the center of Alexoria at the Laquid Lake. The lake was five miles wide and half a day’s journey around. Mountains were to the east. Green forests and farmland were spattered around the countryside. West were sand dunes and rocky hills with the occasional streams and spring pools. Southwest was an unappealing desert.
Phel looked again at Castle Bend, the capital of the Sonz, his stirrups flashing silver. “Time to see the world, Drabor.” The Sonz realm included four primary villages: Mountaintop was in the west, under the gloomy peaks of the Orns Spine mountains; Castle Bend was located at the center of the continent, where the Laquid River issued into the Laquid Lake; Waver Town was up north, nestled between the chalky-white ocean cliffs and green rolling farmland; and Mastan was also north, located at the edge of the Ngela Haunted Wood and on the road between Alexoria and Waver Town. Several roads connected the kingdom. Combined, the people of the Sonz numbered about eight hundred adults, or so the latest census proclaimed, but no one believed the census because death had invaded the land. The god himself alone knew how many Sonz yet lived.
Phel pulled his sword from its sheath. “Damnation to the invaders of our land!” Drabor nearly bucked him off his back. Chastised, Phel sheathed his sword and mused, “I wonder what the Wind Wolves and the Independents are like. Do you think they are anything like the Markets?”
The horse grunted. Phel explained to his naive mount, “Of course, I have never seen an Independent or Wind Wolf. The Independents do not involve themselves in governments or building the realm.” His voice became hushed as he leaned to whisper in the perky red ear. “They live in the wild hills of the northeast, hidden among the rocky coasts and jutting peninsulas.” The Independents fished and hunted in the wild for their survival. They were a private people. “I heard from some of the Sonz of Mountaintop who visited during the festival of light that Independents will trade with them.”
The Markets were another group in Alexoria. They lived in a village in the southwest rocky hills next to the spring holes of Cactus Hill; the village was called Marketown. The Markets were also a neutral people, but they were gregarious and traded far and wide with all.
“Them Markets have guts if you ask me, Drabor. They’re the only people who overcome and regularly pass beyond the dangers of the oceans.” The thought of sailing on the ocean made Phel shiver in fear. He’d heard the horror tales. “I am glad the Markets are a seafaring people. They’re the only people to bring back goods and stories from foreign lands! Let them have the sea, I say.” Their secret ship-building skills and ability to speak the Wind Wolves’ language enabled them to leave Alexoria and visit other lands. The Markets were a source of news, insight, and goods from abroad. The Markets traded with all equally and maintained a large road that led to Castle Bend.
Drabor stomped a foot. Phel took it as an indication to continue lecturing the ignorant horse. “Lastly there are the Wind Wolves.” He gripped the hilt of his sword subconsciously. “Drabor, they are a band of fierce, raiding warriors who live at the bidding of the ocean spirits. I imagine they are born in their demonic ships.”
Drabor stomped a hoof again, refuting Phel’s history. “OK. OK. It is rumored that the savages live in hidden islands off the coast of Alexoria.” They ravaged any ship leaving the land or Alexoria.
“It’s told, as a warning, that Marthinia the Great Warrior and her band of martyrs attempted brokering peace with the Wind Wolves but were not successful.” Phel frowned fiercely. “The demons mounted their heads on spikes and left the ornaments staked into the coastlands as warnings to the Sonz.” The Wind Wolves kept those born on Alexoria always on Alexoria, but the blessing of the double-edged sword was that for many years no other people had invaded Alexoria, and the island had been at peace—until now.
War changed the kingdom of the Sonz rapidly, like the tide and wind before a fierce storm. Just ten years ago, the peaceful land of Alexoria had been invaded. Without warning, a group of about two hundred women, children, and men had landed on Alexoria from the north and overthrown and occupied Waver Town. The Sonz from the village were enslaved and put to evil work. Duke Oswar Meldz, his fierce captain Sir Gorwl Drane, and the feared warrior Jillian ruled the north.
These invaders quickly set up a fortified defense and added another village on the other side of the Laquid River, giving themselves full control of the northern quarter of the island. These invaders were a fierce people and cruel masters to the captured Sonz.
“I read the letter, Drabor.” Phel referred to a bloodstained letter issued to the king of the Sonz from Duke Oswar Meldz. “The evil duke claims the island of Alexoria for these Moonz dogs and their unholy King Eddard Frald.”
Drabor ignored Phel this time and sauntered toward the forest.
Phel was not to be ignored and continued the dialogue. “This Eddard Frald is the ruler of a distant land named Driston.” Phel patted the braided red mane of his horse. “Sorry your name sounds like an enemy word. Drabor, Driston. Unfortunate.” Phel chuckled to himself.
The Moonz expansion had left the island in fear and panic. Ten years later the Moonz and the Sonz still struggled for control of the realm while the Markets and Indies and Wind Wolves remained neutral, waiting to see who would triumph.
And so Phel had trained to defend the realm. His blue cape and shining armor were picturesque as he and Drabor rode on this first mission. “For the light of humanity!” he pronounced bravely for the empty road to hear. He mustered his courage and kicked his horse to a canter.
“We are to meet the Sonz Northern Guard, Drabor.” The Northern Guard was the largest squadron in the realm, totaling a proud fifty-knight group. The Northern Guard was camped a day’s ride north, defending the realm from the Moonz. Phel was proud to be one of the seventy-five knighted warriors who defended the realm against invaders. He clasped the image of two interlinked suns on his sword’s scabbard as he vowed once again to defend the light against the rising darkness.
As he rode, his thoughts wandered to the wise words of his father, spoken just hours before Phel’s public knighting ceremony: “Son, the king and the realm need your love, honor, and commitment. You honor your family with your desire to serve.”
Phel had been knighted only days before this first assignment.
“You know what sucks, Drabor?” The horse ignored him, so Phel kept his own counsel temporarily. Only Phel knew his true reason for joining the kingdom’s knights.
Phel spoke, “My siblings think I want adventure. Swords and glory.” He was one of four children.
“My parents think I have a keen desire to save the realm from evil. Honor the king and all.” Phel’s parents were simple peasant folk.
“My fellow knights assume I have a sense of duty to the kingdom.” The five recruits who had survived the training had a unique friendship. It had blossomed into a gritty, family-like bond among the men and women trainees.
“Grandma is the worst, though, Drabor. She thinks I am a dunce.” His grandma had proclaimed to the entire street that her grandson was an idiot who wanted to die young.
“My drinking friends and childhood schoolmates are all settled and married. None of them wanted to join up. Drabor, they think I joined because I am single and desperate for change.” His horse continued forward with a steady cadence.
These were all good reasons, and perhaps a mixture of these reasons had fueled a bit of his resolve when he had decided to step forward at the king’s summons to the youth of the kingdom.
But—and this was a decisive but—he had two other reasons for joining the warrior school. One reason was a desire to be a glorious hero.
“Drabor, you would not understand.” Phel kept the hero bit to himself. He wanted to be a hero who fought for the glory of the light. He desired a glory that would be recognized by all in the land. He would be a hero who would destroy the evil invading the land. His pa had always told him stories of heroes. Phel wanted to be a hero. He wanted the hero’s song to be sung of him.
His secondary reason was not as noble. His other motivation was a romantic infatuation. Phel was embarrassed to say it. He had fallen deeply in love, from a distance, with the realm’s most beloved daughter and woman, Princess Elana Trawland, the only child of the king and deceased queen.
“The most beautiful woman alive,” Phel said, then silenced himself, lest Drabor hear too much.
At seventeen the princess had returned from studies abroad; no one alive but the royal family and the elite guard knew where she had studied and trained. And in that year of her return, four years ago, she had stood bravely next to King Lew Trawland, calling all fearless souls to come forward and defend the realm.
Phel could still visualize the few times he had seen her in his short interactions at the castle. These princess sightings were so few that he could count them on two hands. The princess is close in age to me, he argued with himself. But his reasoning failed there. That was all there was in common. “Until I became a hero.” She was the jewel of the kingdom, and he was a peasant carpenter’s son. Who could I ever hope to be to a princess? And so he’d joined the Sonz army in the hope of winning her heart one day. It seemed the hero path was the quickest path to a princess’s heart. He was a naive man. Drabor knew this intuitively.
His mission began, a path to heroism. He trotted along and daydreamed. He was alone with his horse and his thoughts.
Four hours later, Phel and his red horse descended into a jungle of bushy trees that turned into the haunted forest of Ngela, which he must pass through on his journey north. An arrow zipped past his skull. Whisss. The sound of its passing shook him to his core. The young knight jerked the reins in surprise. The red horse reared and took the second arrow in the chest. Screaming in pain, the horse leaped forward, knocking Phel off his saddle and onto the hard ground.
Phel yelled from his fallen position, “Drabor, seize yourself.” This was his horse’s war command to remain calm. But the horse, not ready for battle, bucked in shock and bolted haphazardly forward, away from the demons who were inflicting pain. Phel become tangled in the fleeing horse’s saddle-pack straps during his unexpected fall. He was dragged behind his horse into the dark forest.
Fear took over as pain from the abusive ground bruised his spine. Crack. Pop.
“Curse the light!” Phel screamed in agony. A bone was broken. From his bouncing, helpless position, Phel beheld his enemy, Moonz knights. The rumors he had heard among the guards terrified him now as he jolted in the dirt, helpless. The warriors wore white steel helmets with night-black armor. A tall knight with a mighty bow stepped out from behind the bramble pointing a final, fatal arrow at the haplessly tangled and thrashing Sonz knight. The bowstring tightened. Phel was going to die.
Phel screamed the only mantra he could think of in his terror: “The light of the Sonz is never extinguished.” Then he embellished the saying by roaring, “Go to darkness where you belong. You devil snakes!” He felt a numbness seep into his core. So this is death? His body ceased registering the jolting pain, and he stared at the bow as it flexed in anticipation of release.
But the arrow never left the bow. Phel, dragged by the terrified Drabor, was pulled through a contingent of ten Moonz knights. They stood aside and laughed as he was dragged through their midst.
One Moonz knight threw a knife, sharp and twisting, into Drabor’s rear, and the horse frantically picked up its speed and fled into the woods and off the path. “He ain’t worth your time,” one warrior yelled at the archer. “If every Sonz knight is this pathetic, the Expanse will not be stopped.” Phel winced and gave up.
Why are the Moonz so close to Castle Bend? The king must be warned. How did the enemy pass the Sonz Northern Guard? Knights of Alexoria would not have let an enemy force so large sneak past them. Fear for his kingdom fought to seize prominence over Phel’s sense of imminent death.
The last thing he saw was a massive rotted log. Drabor dragged him helplessly into the wooden beam. Boom. Phel lay still and unconscious as his mighty warhorse fled.
Chapter 8
Rapid Improvement Teaming Event (RITE)
Quarter 1, Day 4
David and the newly formed special assignment team sat nervously in one of the distinctive CEO briefing rooms. The smattering of randomly selected employees resembled a herd of scared and jittery sheep brought into a slaughterhouse. The faces were anxious, and their body movements were forced and unnatural. David had never been to this part of the complex, which was at the epicenter of the Nnect campus. Images of customers talking, texting, calling, and relating floated on the walls. The crystal-clear holographs were projected from above and below and composed a seamless high-quality image from 3D projection machines ingeniously hidden in all the common light fixtures. In the marketing pieces, David recognized some of the newer groundbreaking products from Nnect, some that had not even hit the market yet. Each product advertised connection: human connection and convenient interfacing. Nnect meant connect, after all. The core behind all these products was the company’s vast and invasive database of information about everything that happened in the society.
The bright, cheerful sun in a clear sky shone through a diamond-shaped skylight twenty feet above their heads. The three members of David’s team and ten other people sat stiffly on luxurious white leather couches, each excited with the opportunity for success but equally fearful of failure under such managerial exposure. The pristine couches each fit two people and formed a large circle around the room. A humanoid statue of pure plutonium with a twisting blue Nnect brand along its left side formed the centerpiece of the room. Most of them stared at the statue. David felt confident in the comforting presence of the statue’s brand.
A man two seats to David’s right could no longer take the silence and proceeded to take out an expensive Tz600 gaming device and nervously started tapping the screen and flipping his fingers this way and that way, doing something that he was familiar with.
Another lady across the circle from David brushed back her straight golden hair. She wore a strapless blue dress that matched the sparkles in her Nnect brand. She shifted nervously and was not able to contain herself anymore. “Does anyone know how long we’ll be waiting here? It’s past the scheduled start time, correct?”
Next to her a brunette man and woman, twins by the look of them, simultaneously cautioned, “Silence, fool, we wait as long as they want us to wait. Our owner may be watching us right now, evaluating.”
The blond woman clamped her jaw shut, closed her eyes, and rocked back and forth robotically, her chest heaving in and out abnormally.
David rubbed his brand, trying to think corporate thoughts that would stimulate a sense of pleasure. Why is my brand acting strange? His thought was a confused question. Recently the brand had been dull, only responding with a short weak burst of stimulus. Yes, dull. But why? Then his hands felt the metal device that was clamped on his right forearm, hidden from view, and a chill ran down his spine. By the stock, the old man has cursed my career. He looked around, hoping hidden cameras had not spotted the band. David had not been able to remove it. Maybe this armband is muting my brand power. Then David felt a powerful itch from the healed scar left behind by Waldar’s dog Fly Ry. Maybe the canine wound is impacting my brand. He didn’t know. Stop dwelling on things you can’t control.
He calmed himself by staring up. The unblemished sky above made something in his spirit soar. He could not distinguish whether the openness of the heavens made him feel small and insignificant or whether it gave him the desire to fly, to experience life out in the vastness of the world. Perhaps it’s a bit of both, he mused reflectively. A tingling sensati
on murmured through the tattoo, reminding him to focus, causing him to feel guilty and wasteful. He snapped out of the daydream. Not the time to daydream, he chastised himself. The soft, massaging pleasure of the brand tingled and rewarded his deliberate focus.
“Beep, beep. Victory.” To his right, the habitual gamer ignorantly played with the volume on. Unconcerned, the man continued to tap away on the device, passing the time. The rest of the group stared at one another in silence, waiting for management to make the first move.
Into the stillness came a foreign sound, a soft whisper that seemed initially so fragile that it could not be real.
“Is it my daydream returning to distract me?” David asked. He hit himself in the head to stop his imagination. But then subtle individual sounds merged and mixed into music. This was not the jarring sound of commercials or the sexually intense Orns music but a new type of music. Soothing and peaceful but building in majesty. The music blanketed the room with a peaceful embrace and then built and grew into a symphony that made the whole team stand up in expectation. It was moving and powerful. David had never heard music like this. The thirteen employees looked at one another and around the room in awe, fear, and wonder. The symphony of instrumental sounds swelled and rose to a crescendo. Then the music ceased and intuitively drew its listeners into a prolonged mindful moment of silence. Peace, beauty, desire, and passion fused into sound. Something deeply human stirred his inner being. It was a manifestation of something that he rarely experienced. The confused group looked around for an explanation. Finding none, the group began to feel sheepish.
As the awkwardness stretched out and become unbearable, they heard a voice: “My products, that is the sound of freedom. Music in such beauty is something you can enjoy when you buy yourself, and only then. I chose to bless you with that gift to motivate you as you each engage in your personal career destiny.”
Deep and rich, the voice filled the void. From the side of the room, a hidden door opened next to a discreet glass beverage bar. CEO Saul himself stepped out from the door. He was the same height as David, shorter than his public announcements made him seem. But still, he was larger than life. Energy emanated from the figure. He stroked his tuft of chin hair and summoned the group with a wave to join him around the beverage bar.
A Tale Of Doings Page 10