After a few weeks of travel, the caravan arrived at the walled capital city of Limguard. While the occasional stray monster was found on or near the road. There was nothing as dangerous or numerous as what happened on day one.

The walls, made of white stone, stood higher than anything Kyrion had ever seen. From the gate with a portcullis to the stone gargoyles looking down from above. Everything was new and exciting. However, the castle that sat atop a hill in the city’s center drew most of the boy’s attention. It stood out like a work of art.

Kyrion was about to voice his opinion when he looked down and saw various other groups lined up awaiting entry. The guards seemed to be carefully checking everyone who entered. Kyrion looked to the impatient merchants, whining kids, tired hunters, and a small group of Spirit Masters.

“You know? This is sad, are all city people like this?” Asela asked their driver before Kyrion could voice a similar question.

“No kid, normally we can just go on in. They may be expecting someone of great importance. Or on the look out for smugglers. It could be anything really.” Gerund said gruffly.

“Smugglers?” She asked

“They’re people who bring in and sell illegal goods?”

“Why would they sell ili-ig-mal goods” she stutters, and a look of dread falls over his face.

“Kid, I can’t answer a question I don’t know the answer to, and I’m not going to have a philosophical debate with a kid who can’t even spell it.”

Asela tried to spell it anyway.

Kyrion took Jala on a short walk around the caravan as they waited. Kyrion observed his partner, Jala, and gave her some of his mana, paired with a piece of jerky. He pulled out a wooden stick and stabbed it into the ground, drawing a few circles in the dirt that started off close together. Each circle got further apart as Kyrion continued down his trail.

“Jala, I want you to watch this and see if you can do it. I call it hops. You try to jump from circle to circle, and the person who can get the furthest wins.” Kyrion demonstrated by taking a running jump and skipping from loop to loop. Getting stuck between loop five seemed to be six feet further than the previous jump.

“Now it’s your turn.” Kyrion dusted himself off.

Jala jumped a few times, but the three-foot jump proved hard for her as she was smaller. She seemed to get mad and tried to make the jump again. This occurred quite a few more times before Asela became curious.

“Hey, no fair, I want to play too.” The young girl said.

“Fine, you can go ahead. Jala needs a breather.” Kyrion replied

Asela took a running start jumping from loop to loop, building up speed, five, six. She passed Kyrion’s score and was at the ten-foot jump mark when Kyrion noticed a small flash of fire propel her towards her destination. She landed on the spot with a hard thump and couldn’t make it further. Asela walked off and sat down to breathe. A crowd started to build as a few of the other traveling kids came to play, along with a few spirit masters.

A man in a green cloak and leather armor appeared. Wearing really tight approached Kyrion. “Hey kid, how do you determine how much further each line is?” He asked.

“I take two steps and then draw a line. After that I take two more steps, and draw a line, each time adding an extra step to the count. So the sixth jump is about seven steps.”

“I see, mind If I add a few extra targets? At my level this is too easy, but for me it also seems to be like an Ideal type of training for take offs and landings. I’m Lingar Fulwind, and I’m working on creating my own style of fighting. Do you mind if I take this method off of you?”

“Sure. Sounds awesome.” Kyrion replied in a monotone.

He looked up at the tall man with a long nose and plain face. The only other remarkable thing about him was his short green hair.

He gave Kyrion a sack with shiny gold discs inside and drew a few longer landings.

“Observe, this may be a once in a lifetime opportunity.” He took off in a sprint, jumping from the first four hoops with ease and then taking off ten feet into the air and landing in the hoop. He then pushed off both higher and farther, almost flying from hoop to hoop, making it to the end of where he added a sixteenth line.

Kyrion couldn’t comprehend what he saw. It was as though the man flowed with the wind.

Jala, on the other hand, seemed to learn something from the mans manuver. She waited and eventually went again after all the kids either exhausted themselves or had to return as their groups had made it to the wall.

This time was different, as Jala seemed to have a plan. The small fox tried again. This time she seemed to slowly float down from hoop to hoop. While not faster, she did manage to make it significantly further, stopping at the ten-foot jump mark.

“Wow!” Kyrion clapped at the vast improvement.

However, Jala seemed exhausted after the display and decided it was time to sleep.

Kyrion placed her in his pouch and made his way back to his caravan.

Eventually, their turn arrived, and the guards looked over their paperwork. While a few check the cargo being brought in by the merchants.

“Let’s see, everything looks good. Welcome to the capital!” The guard beacons for them to continue forward.

The two were happy to finally make it to the city and seemed eager to explore.

Charles approached from behind. “Your mother tasked me with bringing you over to the Falknir estate, to stay with her father, while you wait for your enrollment. So I want you to stay close and follow my lead. No wandering off, got it?”

Kyrion looked around the city in wonder.” But I want to explore!”

“Ok with further ado let’s head to the Falknir estate.”

The group travels through the merchant district of the city, passing various taverns, restaurants, and shops along the way.

“What’s that?” Asela asks while sniffing the air.

“It’s Dorgon’s Bakery. He’s an orc, green skin, really big fella, with tusk? Have you seen an orc before?” Charles began to dust his outfit.

“We’ve only had humans in our village. There isn’t much to see and do there. I doubt anyone would go out of their way to visit. So he’s like a big green human.” Kyrion said while scratching his head.

“You’ll see later after I drop you off, of course... I smell a rat.” Charles raised his gloved right hand, palm facing himself.

A man with long black hair, and a blindfold over his eyes, stumbled past the group. Around his waist were empty sword scabbards belonging to long and thin blades. The man continued strolling off into the distance.

Charles let out a sigh of relief. “It’s fine. Kids check your pockets.”

Kyrion did, so everything he had earlier was there. Everything except his shiny discs. It seems his pouch was emptied and then refilled with something else. There were more of them too. Each seemed to be individually wrapped. He looked back and could swear the man winked at him from under the blindfold.

“Everything looks fine but do you know what these are?” Kyrion took out the weird rock wrapped in paper.

“Oh, that’s candy… but that smell… mana candy. Stronger spirit masters tend to prefer potions and pills that refill mana, but those can do the job, and apparently they taste good too. It’s how spirit masters introduce refilling mana artificially for those in the younger generation. They tend to be expensive, though. When did you get them?” Charles asked, arms now crossed.

“When we were playing that game outside a man gave them to us.” Kyrion lied.

“Please don’t make a habit of taking candy from strangers.” Charles said.

Kyrion emptied most of his mana into Jala and took out a piece of candy, popping it into his mouth, wrapper included.

“Doesn’t taste… that good.” Kyrion said as he bit through the wrapper and began to taste something sweet.

“Kyrion, you take off the wrapper first. “Charles sighed.

Kyrion took the candy out of his mouth, removed the wrapper, and put it back in. “Mush Butter,”

Kyrion said, enjoying the candy.

Charles looked at him with a disgusted face. “Eww.”

“I want one!” Asela demanded.

“You wouldn’t like them. They taste like medicine and you know how I love the taste of medicine.” Kyrion lied through his teeth. Sadly it didn’t work.

“Gimme one!” She demanded.

Kyrion realized that there was no winning and tossed her one. Oddly enough, a few packages managed to get stuck to his hand.

“Huh…”

Asela ate her piece of candy, and soon after, she ran circles around the group headed toward the noble district.

Charles looks up to the sky, wondering where he went wrong, and then down at Kyrion, who was wandering off.

“Not so fast.”

“I was just going to look around.”

As the group made it to the end of the merchant’s district, they heard rumors of a war brewing between the Kingdom of Limguard, and its southern rival, the Republic of Rendell. Both places were only remote countries on the continent, but there had been bitter neighbors since the war of Liminal split the earth where the border now lies. Legends state that the location was where the old capital used to be back when the two countries were one.

The group enters the Noble district of the city, where large and beautiful estates are commonplace. In the middle of the district rested a statue of the First king of Limguard, Indran The River Splitter, in a regal pose, commanding the water in the fountain and causing it to shoot upwards.

“Those houses are big, how many people live here?” Asela asked

“Not enough to be worth the excess in my opinion.” Charles grimaced.

Got it, don’t mention anything about wasting money near him. Kyrion thought.

The group walked past all the nice-looking estates when they arrived at a beat-up-looking area. The plants in the yard were left wild and untended, with quite a few cracks in the walls and a few patchwork fixes here and there.

“Mom said she used to be a noble, right?” Asela frowned. “I expected something, I dunno fancier?”

Charles sighed. “It normally looks better than this. Also this estate is more minimalist in nature. Your grandfather prefers to keep a large backyard for training and not much else, and it keeps my job simple.”

They walked to the door, and Carles knocked. When he did, the door didn’t just open. It fell down into the house, hinges broken.

“You didn’t have to knock that hard.” Kyrion said, trying to break the tension

“I hardly touched the door, it must be broken again.” He replied.

Kyrion wandered into the ruined mansion. There were holes in the stone floor on the ground level, and furniture lay in tatters. It was dark save for very little natural light from the windows. Giant handprints mark the along with scratches and a smashed staircase.

Charles and Asela followed behind him.

“Listen, wait on us, there could be a monster here.” Asela said.

“Yeah, it’s in here” Kyrion had stopped at an open door.

Open was the wrong word. The door was missing, as though someone ripped it off the hinges and threw it somewhere.

Inside, the sound of a beast snoring could be heard. The house seemed to vibrate on the creature’s command.

“A monster you say?” Charles smirked.

“Well it seems in my two month absence, care for this place has gotten a bit out of hand. I’ll get your rooms prepared and then move on to the rest of the house.It shouldn’t take long. Feel free to go explore the area a bit while I work. Don’t leave this district though.”

“So we’re free to explore. Asela lets go.” Kyrion left the mansion, no questions asked.

“Really?” Asela replied with a confused look on her face.

Charles had a sense of deja vu, as he watched the two leave the estate. “I really hope I was right about who he took after. That look however….”

The two siblings left the mansion and the yard. Past the fountain and towards a peach tree. “Not my favorite but it will do.”

The place was the perfect spot to get a good view of the city below. Kyrion took off his pouch and placed Jala on the ground before climbing up to get a good vantage. It was then another group approached the tree. Two finely dressed kids, tailed by a group of attendants close behind, look up to Kyrion as though he was an oddity.

The taller one, who had some roundness on his face and a mean look in his eye, spoke first. “Oi! What’s a country looking brat doing in the noble area? Commoners live down below, not in the trees here.”

“Yeah trash like you don’t belong up here, you’re an eyesore.” Said the shorter one who looked similar to the first only. He had even more roundness to him, as though he didn’t get out much.

Kyrion tossed Asela a peach and looked over to the other brats.

“Names Kyrion, friends call me Kyr, yet you call me trash. That’s not my name? So let’s start over. Who are you two, and what do you want? The peaches are good, by the way.” Kyrion took a few bites while hanging upside down with his legs wrapped around a branch.

Asela, with her peach, also goes to retrieve the pouch, lying on the grass before making some distance and putting on what Kyrion would call the timid sister act. A technique honed like a knife to get away from people she didn’t much like.

The taller one looked dumbstruck, “You don’t know who I am? My father is Baron Flanagin, bow before me peasants!”

“You don’t know who my dad is either.” Kyrion blew a raspberry before flicking a peach pit at them.

It missed them, but it had the desired effect of riling them up.

Kyrion jumped down onto his feet and heard a small pop as pain rushed through his body. He tried to cover it up like nothing had happened. The kids fell for the apparent cover-up while the attendants with them just shook their heads.

They gave chase, and Kyrion ran in circles around the park. He then pretended to run off into one of the estates before pushing himself to go towards the street that led down to the market.

It would have worked if Charles had not appeared in front of him. It hadn’t been ten minutes.

“Your rooms are done little Kyrion, aren’t you a troublesome one. I heard from your mother that you had a tendency for trouble. I should have known you were up to something, using those kids as an excuse to run off into the market. I swear, do you even know what dangers lurk in the city?”

“Nope,” Kyrion replied, trying to go around the butler. “Can I go now?”

Charles looked at the boy and then at the two who stopped giving chase out of confusion. He picked Kyrion up and threw him over his shoulder.

“Now we go home.” He then began walking back to the estate.

Which is a matter of ten minutes, looked completely restored, as though no damage had been done whatsoever. The garden even looked beautiful, with no signs of the poor maintenance seen earlier.

Kyrion was kicking and screaming, trying to get out of the butler’s vice grip, yet nothing happened. Was his dad even this strong? At that moment, Kyrion made up his mind not to make this guy mad and surrendered. Turning into a limp fish.

Asela, on the other hand, laughed at her elder brother’s predicament. “You were going to ditch me, weren’t you! You didn’t play with me at home. I knew you were up to something.”

A burly red and gray-haired man was at the door with scars riddling his visible body. His right arm made of metal, an eyepatch over his left eye, and a wooded left leg marked him as someone who had survived many close battles.

“Welcome to grandpa’s house! Sorry to greet you like this. I was napping. May have had a bit too much Ambrosia. These bones are getting a bit old.” The old man raised his right prosthetic arm and used it to scratch his head.

“That monster was you?” Asela asked with a tact befitting her age.

Their grandpa laughed a deep belly laugh. “Yes they don’t call me Alexander the Red Bear, for nothing. Now go get changed, we’re going out to eat. Then I’ll give you a tour of the city, the arena is open today after all.”