“The Descarrian Abyss, discovered by world renowned explorer Sir Rodrick Burton during the height of the Mystic Age, is a vast, labyrinthine dungeon buried deep beneath the world’s crust. Partially mapped, over the course of many generations, by Sir Burton’s descendants, Lady Theresa Burton was the last of her line to plum the dungeon’s seemingly endless depths.

After the, at the time, head of the Athurian Branch of the Guild of Explorers, failed to return from her latest mapping expedition into the, questions were raised by her colleagues about the viability of future excursions.

Lady Burton’s disappearance followed some 362 officially confirmed disappearances and deaths noted in the Guild’s records and some estimated thousand more civilian deaths from unsupervised ventures by the common public. It was agreed by almost unanimous consensus, at the meeting of the branch heads of the Explorer’s Guild, that given the continued danger and diminishing returns, that all future guild sponsored expeditions into the Abyss would be discontinued.”

Professor Oliver Lambourne, Direst for the Guild of Explorers.

The sweet, mouth-watering, scent of frying bacon and eggs roused Arahn Kays from his slumber. With an intense yawn he sat up in the simple, thin-mattressed, cot where he laid his head of a night and gazed sleepy-eyed around his attic bedroom. It was a small room, thin with a single window at the end which looked out onto the seemingly endless fields of wheat that surrounded Gillamoore, the small farming town he’d found lodging in after fleeing the disease ridden province capital a year ago.

Arahn crawled out of bed and staggered, still yawning, over to a table in the corner of the room. In the first few weeks of his new country life many a bruise had been gained from the low, sharply sloping ceiling but now his head ducked reflexively as he approached the washbowl and clean cloth he’d laid out the previous night. The water was cool even in the summer morning heat but it was good enough for a quick wash. A cracked wooden mirror leant against the inside of the roof and he caught sight of his reflection as he dried the water from his face.

His father’s sun kissed skin met his mother’s olive coloured eyes, combining to form an appearance that, to Arahn’s estimation at least, was reasonably acceptable. Still only 16, Arahn had yet to develop the strong jaw and brow that had allowed his father to strike such an impressive figure, nor the twinkle in his mother’s expressive eyes that had so captivated her betrothed so many years before. Nothing about his looks made him stand out in a crowd, which suited the boy just fine. In fact the only thing even slightly unusual about him was the ring he wore in his right ear. It wasn’t overly ostentatious, just a simple copper ring with a pearl through it. The pearl was mostly white, but like a marble, had swirls of blue and a pale reddy colour twisting through it. It had been a 10th birthday gift from his parents so there was definitely a shade of sentimentality that kept the earing in.

His shoulder-length brown hair was tussled from sleep so he reached for his brush in order to tame it. Satisfied with what little he could make of himself Arahn dressed, left his room and went down stairs, passing by the second floor of the tall, narrow house which contained the only real bedroom and the shared bathroom, and entered the kitchen on the ground floor.

Alice Thorten, Arahn’s landlady, was bustling around the cramped kitchen, putting thick slices of bread under the grill while a skillet sizzled away on the stove top. Mrs Thorten was an elderly woman, old enough to be Arahn’s grandmother, her face covered with creases in all the places that suggested she’d lived a long life full of smiles and laughs. The march of time had hunched her back somewhat, but she still managed to zoom energetically around the house and would talk animatedly about her younger days with her husband, and all the crazy clocks he would make, many of which still hung on the walls.

“I used to have them all going,” she’d told him once. “You wouldn’t believe the noise, so now I just keep my favourites wound.”

The old wood of the bottom most step creaked loudly as Arahn’s foot made contact, alerting the woman to his presence.

“Good morning dear,” she greeted cheerfully, not even looking up from her cooking. “Breakfast’s almost ready. Did you have any good dreams?”

“Nothing I can remember,” said Arahn sitting down at the table.

In truth the boy rarely dreamed anymore, whether asleep or awake. Not since his parents had passed, taken by the most recent rash of influenza sweeping the capital, had he had time for simple daydreams.

“Here you are, dear,” said Mrs Thorten after a little while, placing a mouth-watering plate of bacon and eggs on toast in front of her young tenant. “Eat up while it’s still hot.”

“Looks delicious,” praised Arahn, taking up his fork and digging in.

His landlady really had been his saviour during the last year. With his parents gone Arahn had left the polluted and overcrowded city streets for the country, eventually coming to Gillamoore on the southern border. Without a travel visa, nor the connections to procure one, it was as far from the big city as he could go. He’d left the city, partly to get to cleaner and hopefully healthier pastures, and partly to get away from the pompous snobbery of the aristocracy back home. His family hadn’t been rich per se, but his father’s textile business had made them comfortably middle class, his work with the foreign fabrics leading the family to rub shoulders with the fashionable wealthy above their station. The young noble boys always seemed to have a throng of swooning suiters following after them wherever they went, and while that might be enviable to some, having had conversations with them, Arahn knew full well there wasn’t a boy among them with more than a few spare brain cells to rub together.

Arahn hadn’t been alone in fleeing the cities for the country though. It seemed that many young men and women were migrating from the cities these days as they looked for new lives away from the filthy streets and spreading disease. So the teen considered himself very lucky to have been able to find lodgings at such a reasonable price. Mrs Thorten had recently lost her husband and had welcomed the opportunity to have someone else in the house again.

“You’ll stop me from collecting cats at least,” she had joked to him when he’d moved in.

After breakfast Arahn took his dishes to the sink, then moved to grab the cloth satchel hanging just inside the back door. Slipping the bag over his shoulder he thanked Mrs Thorten again for breakfast, bid her goodbye then stepped out into the back garden.

Mrs Thorten’s house was one of several at the edge of the village, facing out towards the wheat fields and a narrow dirt lane. But as long as Arahn had lived with the woman he couldn’t remember anyone ever using her front door. Friends, visitors, even the man who delivered the milk, they all knew to come down the back alley.

Gillamoore’s schoolhouse was on a small hill just outside of town. It was a small building with only two rooms, the classroom which sat eleven children of mixed age, and an office for the only teacher, a constantly bored sounding middle-aged man called Mr Krain, who rode in from the neighbouring town every morning for classes.

The school bell was just starting to ring its first warning for students to gather as Arahn climbed the hill. He could see several of his younger classmates playing outside the schoolhouse, throwing balls, rolling metal hoops and one girl who, for as long as Arahn had been attending school here, seemed to spend every waking moment jumping rope. Arahn could tell she was incredibly into it, loved every second she spent skipping, it was just a shame being good at jump rope wasn’t a skill the adult world cared about. He sometimes wondered how long it would take her to realise she’d been wasting her time on a skill she could never do anything useful with.

Arahn moved to stand by the door, wishing he’d walked slower up the hill. He normally tried to time his arrival to when the teacher arrived so as not to have to stand bored while he waited. He was too old to want to run around or play before class and having yet to make any friends his own age in town there was no one to greet him on his arrival nor to fill the waiting moments with idle chatter. It wasn’t that Arahn had consciously avoided making friends, the children of the country were certainly more down-to-earth and relatable than those he’d brushed shoulders with in the city, but that was precisely the problem. As far as they were concern Arahn was the other, a child come from the big city, with strange customs and beliefs that couldn’t be fathomed by simple people. Complete nonsense of course, but their hesitance to approach him for fear of not having anything in common coupled with Arahn’s own social anxiety had kept him firmly on the periphery of any social interactions with his peers.

A short while later the front doors of the schoolhouse opened and Mr Krain appeared, greeting them and gesturing them inside. Because the school was mixed grade the students sat in order of age, so being one of the oldest Arahn took a seat at the back row bench. Sitting in the back row didn’t bother him, in fact he preferred it.

At 16, Arahn was in the last year of his compulsory education and was glad for it. In less than a year’s time he’d be free, free from the stuffy classroom and his teacher’s endlessly droning voice. Not that it was much of an education to write home about. Arahn could read and write just fine, though he rarely chose to do so for leisure. He could count of course, and do his sums and tables, but again, beyond the management of his own personal finances he didn’t find much use for numbers in his daily life. And those skills were long learned and perfected from long before he lived in Gillamoore.

The higher brow subjects of history, geography and the social sciences were taught, but only in the barest of bones manner. Arahn could find his country, Batherius, on a map if prompted, could tell you who the king was, what his country’s major exports were, the names of majors cities, rattle off the dates and places of major historical events like the signing of the Treaty of Free Peoples, or the founding of the Southern Trade Company, and various other common knowledge trivias, but none of it mattered to him. Knowing when 100 year old events happened didn’t change anything about his day to day life and so, when his education concluded he saw no reason not to jettison the whole lot from his brain and replace it with more useful information.

The only subject of which Arahn had more than a passing knowledge was religion, even though he wasn’t particularly pious himself. His mother had been a very spiritual person, but indecisive in her faith, changing her patron deity it seemed every other month. As a result Arahn had picked up more than his fair share of information about Alvis’ varied pantheon, though he’d never felt a calling to follow any one or the other.

Arahn was brought from his back row seat musings by the sound of Mr Krain’s voice calling his name for attendance.

“That’s everyone,” the teacher said when he was done. “Alright, slates out.”

Arahn opened the hinged lid of his desk and retrieved the small chalkboard, which was used for all their lessons, while Mr Krain walked the rows handing out a piece of white chalk to each student. At the school he’d attended in the city each row of desks would have a large roll of paper fixed to one end. When students needed to write, a sheet would be unrolled to cover the entire bench and everyone would share the same long piece of paper. Such a thing was too great an expense for a small town school house so the reusable slates were preferred.

After handing out the chalk Mr Krain returned to the front of the class and began writing out the days lessons on the board, along with a list of questions in different difficulty levels for the students of varying grades that had to share the same classroom.

“Today we’ll be returning to the exploits of the Guild trade, seeing as you found last week’s overview to be so engaging, I thought you might enjoy taking a deeper look at it.”

An excited murmur rumbled through the class but Arahn slumped back into his chair with disappointment. Adventurer legends. He knew of them of course, brave warriors and cunning mages from across the world, venturing out into the wilds, hunting monsters, exploring mysterious ruins and tombs, and rescuing all manner of good people from the woes of the world. It was all a hot blooded young man like him should live for and yet, nothing could be further from Arahn’s interest. What business had he to be gallivanting across the continent and getting himself into trouble?

No, Arahn prided himself as being a simple, down-to-earth kind of person. Someone who kept his goals and dreams reasonable: a roof over his head, enough money to live, put food on the table and clothes on his back, and maybe one day, if he played his cards right, a family to share his days with.

The end of class couldn’t come fast enough for Arahn who cleaned up his desk at light speed so he could be the first out the door when Mr Krain finally dismissed them. In complete contrast to his border-line dawdling on his way to school, he all but sprinted down the hill and back into town. But it wasn’t home that was his destination.

The other reason he’d left the city for the country was that he’d also been hoping the opportunity to learn a real trade, something useful, would present itself. Arahn considered himself very lucky that the town’s blacksmith had not only been looking for an apprentice around the time he’d arrived but had decided to give the teenager a chance.

His master, the well-built though generally shy on first meeting George Morris, was a good man. He could be grouchy at times when the work wasn’t being done to his standard, but was genuinely eager to teach. Sometimes he would vanish for a bit near the end of a particularly long or gruelling day and return, thick, hairy arms laden with unsold pastries from his sister’s bakery across town. Master and apprentice would sit on crates devouring the mountain of sweet buns, swapping stories until the forge cooled and it was time to go home.

Arahn had been working under Morris long enough that he no longer needed to be told what to do when he arrived for a shift. Hours slipped by in front of the glow of the forge as he worked to heat and straighten the metal his master would need to properly fashion into ploughs and shovels. Blacksmithing was by no means easy work of course, but there was a sense of exhausted elation that came at the end of a long but fruitful evening of honest labour.

As the sky began to turn pink with the lazily setting sun, Arahn laid aside his tools and hung up his apron. One day he wouldn’t have to rush to the smithy after school, one day this would be his full-time job, but for now the day was drawing to a close, so with a roll of his aching shoulders, Arahn grabbed his bag and bid his master goodbye.

The sky was just turning orange by the time Arahn arrived back at Mrs Thorten’s house. He checked the doorhandle to see if it was still unlocked, as his landlady never bothered to lock it as long as someone was home. It wasn’t so Arahn used his own house key to let himself in. The kitchen was strangely cold and silent as he closed the door behind him. The lamps were out and only a few thin shafts of light were peaking in through the curtains drawn across the wide window over the sink. Usually by the time he arrived home Mrs Thorten was bustling around with the fires going, preparing dinner.

Had she gone out without telling him? Arahn thought.

It was still early in the week so he was fairly certain she wasn’t at the tavern playing cards. So where was she?

The kettle was on the stove but it and the burners were cold, and the fire in the hearth was out. The scrubbed wooden table had been laid out for an afternoon tea with staling fruit cake, a plate of tea biscuits and two cups. Arahn stepped around the table and something crunched beneath his boot. Looking down he saw the remains of a teacup and saucer, lying shattered on the flag stones next to one of the toppled kitchen chairs. He felt an urge to clean up, his landlady had always been so fastidious, but at the same time a niggling voice in the back of his mind urged him not to touch anything.

He edged around the fallen cup and chair, heading to the dresser by the door to the front room to get some matches to light the lamps with. He lit the one above the dresser, the flame hissing to life and returning light to the dark room. He turned and made to cross the room to light the one near the sink, then froze, the box of matches dropping from his slack hand.

There, lying face down on the floor on the other side of the table, was his landlady. Her salt and pepper hair was stained with blood near her temple and she wasn’t moving.

“Mrs. Thorten?” ventured Arahn hesitantly.

The woman didn’t move. Biting his lip Arahn edged closer. As he reached for her, hoping maybe he could shake her awake or help in some way, he heard a clink of chainmail and the thump of an armoured boot.

“Stop where you are, Boy,” growled a gravelly voice behind him, the words echoed implying the speaker was wearing some kind of helmet. “Now turn around, slowly.”

Arahn turned and one of the town guards stepped out of the front room. He was heavily armoured, with a visored helmet that covered his face. In his hand was a short sword, which he pointed at Arahn. The boy threw his hands up, eyes wide.

“Identify yourself, Boy,” the guard ordered, though Arahn had barely stammered out his name before he continued. “And what are you doing here? Thought you’d sneak in and make a go of an old woman’s valuables would you?”

“I live here!” Arahn exclaimed. “I rent the attic room, have for months now. Look I have a key and everything!”

The guard didn’t lower his sword. He watched Arahn silently for a moment, his head tilting to one side then the other as he seemed to consider something. He looked passed Arahn and then after a moment, nodded.

A second guard Arahn had not seen stepped out of the shadows, came around the table and pushed the boy forward into the solid surface so quickly he had to throw his hands out to cushion the impact lest he concuss himself on the wood.

“Arahn Kays,” the first guard said with authority. “You’re under arrest for the murder of Alice Thorten.”