Honour Rae

25. Sold

Looks like Wolf Moon was the winner. Time to dust off all my 'Three Wolf Moon' and going lone wolf jokes. (What have you all done. ;))

Something very odd happened the moment the dragon took Arthur through the rip in the sky. It was as if he instantly lost all sense of direction… and yet it was so much more.

There was no up or down. He felt like he was falling and yet could feel his stomach uncomfortably pressed against the dragon’s sharp ...

24. Tess Caught Boy

The bright light faded. Arthur found himself lying face down in the middle of a forested clearing.

He jerked up and back — a delayed reaction from the spear coming at his throat.

Jerking to his feet, he stared around with wide eyes. He was in a different area than he’d been a moment before. Second was nowhere to be seen. Neither was the body of the dead dragon rider.

The clearing looked familiar, and it took him a few seconds to figure out why. This was the campsite the ...

23. The Second Card

Arthur held his dagger out in front of him as he walked -- part threat, but mostly a talisman. 

He looked around, alert for any sign of scourglings. Or the fallen dragon rider.

Inside, his heart practically seethed with acid.

They were close to the valley. So close that when he got glimpses down below through the tree breaks, he could pick out individual scourglings rampaging down below. The air had taken on an acidic burnt flavor. It was the tang of dead land. To Arthu...

22. Dragon's Treachery

The scourge-wolf landed with its teeth clamped on Hivey’s shoulder. The man let out a high-pitched scream which almost blended in with the whistling scourglings.

Arthur’s body acted on pure instinct. Had he been thinking, he would have expected to freeze. He should have run.

Instead, he whipped forward and brought his dagger down on the hindquarters of the beast. The blade sunk deep and stayed there, hitting bone.

He’d reacted quickly, but not as quick as Second. In a ...

21. Acting (Thief/Performer)

“You know how to use this?”

Before Arthur could answer, Second pushed the handle of a simple dagger into his hands. It was cheap and not well maintained, with rust spots on the spine of the blade. At least the edges looked sharp enough.

“I can use it,” Arthur said with more confidence than he currently felt. His only knife skill came from meal preparation. 

He now bitterly regretted learning different ways to shuffle cards instead of different ways to use a knif...

20. A Rip In The Sky

With a scream of braying donkeys, the cart clutched forward so hard that Arthur nearly lost his seat anyway. Red grabbed him by the collar and hauled him back into place. 

Every other animal hooked to a cart was rushing blindly forward. Meanwhile, the birds in the trees all shrieked as if the world was ending. 

The cart bounced over stones and ruts in the road with enough force to put his teeth on edge. It would be a miracle if they didn’t break a wheel.

Red kept...

19. Warning From The Crows

Today's cliff-hanger ending brought to you by my dog who interrupted my writing time with her immediate need to go to the vet. (She had a grass-seed in her ear.) So this was the closest stopping point. :)

While convincing people to part with their money, Arthur soon learned he needed to work on what the traders liked to call their “salesman skills”. He and the rest of the caravan were a welcome oddity when they rolled into town but weren’t necessarily trusted.<...

18. Gambler Class

Over the next few weeks, Arthur settled into a routine. Rising from a bed roll with the fading dawn stars overhead became normal. The pain when he thought of the village slowly lost its jagged edge.

Once or twice he caught himself using the word 'home' to be Red's cart.

Meanwhile, the caravan traveled steadily west where they continued to stop at one town after another. Some were smaller than the ones Arthur had seen before. Some were marginally larger. None had an extraordinary e...

17. Avoid The Silvers

Arthur stared.

His first impression had only been partially correct. What stood on the rocky bank was a ghostly illusion of Doshi the dragon, transparent to the point where he could see trees behind it. It was the same type of semi-transparent outline he had seen in the village square — all colors washed and dim.

“Wh-what?” he stammered and then his mind caught up with what the dragon had asked. It stood patiently, looking down its long, crooked muzzle at him.

“I was...

16. Why Did You Run

For a startled moment, Arthur wasn't in his bedroll on top of a thick mat of straw. He was back at his home village, hiding under scraggly bushes as the red dragon roared and killed the soldiers underneath him.

A second dragon's roar shocked him out of sleep.

It was real. It wasn't a dream.

He's found me, was Arthur's first, panicked thought. The dragon had told him to give the card to his father. It didn't matter that his father refused to take it. The red dragon would only...

15. What's In The Box

The food the inn served was excellent. Freshly baked bread, still warm from the oven, sliced roast beef slathered with thick gravy, and some kind of steamed vegetable Red had called broccoli. It had an intense, earthy green flavor he found he liked a lot.

The meal was so good he wished he had spent more time in the kitchens to learn how to cook. This was a meal that would have definitely earned him another level.

Though the mug of ale that Red had ordered for...

14. Poker (Five-card draw) (Gambler Class)

Arthur picked his way from building to building, slinking along to the dark and out-of-the-way places. Luck was with him in that the sun was sinking and elongating shadows.

He didn’t spot the other kids from the gambling ring but used his wariness as an excuse to try to make his way to the inn, unseen. It was like a game.

He was nearly there when he was rewarded with a message from his card.

New skill level: Basic Stealth (Rogue/Thief Class) 2022-07-06 21:10:20 +0000 UTC View Post

13. The Town

Arthur’s trick had worked, though with unexpected consequences. As soon as Second’s cart had started moving, a small mound of the loose leaf slipped free, fell out of the cart, and landed on the dirt road.

Before it could be run over by another cart, one of Second’s men had hustled over. He waved over the mound and muttered, “Let what was broken be remade whole.”

Instantly, the leaves lifted upward and replaced themselves in the cart, the tarp recovering it once more. 2022-07-05 20:12:06 +0000 UTC View Post

12. Basic Stealth (Rogue/Thief Class)

The first time Arthur was smacked across the face, it took him completely by surprise.

It was his second night away from the cottage, and the first traveling with the trader’s caravan. He and Red had met up with the rest of the group earlier that day.

Red ran what he called a small caravan. Three giant canvas-covered cards hauled by four oxen a piece. There was a host of smaller carts, too, leading the group and trailing after. These were usually pulled by donkeys or small, brok...

Ch. 11. New Adventure

Arthur coughed his throat clear and then stared at his father in disbelief. “What do you mean?” His voice grew higher pitched. “You’re sending me away?”

Red guffawed again. “You can’t seriously tell me you want to stay here.”

“Red, it’s all he knows.” Calvan turned to Arthur. “In other villages, it’s normal to apprentice children your age to masters.”

“But we’re not in another village. We can’t leave. It’s against the law. If the baron fin...

10. Basic Equine Care (Animal Husbandry Class)

To Arthur, the next few days passed in a blur.

His newly forged determination to learn as many skills as he could, to not let another tragedy happen again on his watch, was still there. But it was cloaked by a fog of grief so choking that he had trouble rising from his bed to go about his day.

Though he went about his chores, he did so in a listless haze. Without putting effort into what he was doing, none of his skills progressed.

It was a vicious cycle where he felt like h...

9. Herbal Medicine Preparation (Healing Class)

“Arthur! Arthur, wait—“ his father called, but Arthur was already out the door and pelting down the road.

It can’t be real. It can’t be him, he thought desperately, trying to remember if there was another Youngborn family by that name. Someone, anyone other than his friend. Sometimes, if the crime against the crown were serious enough, an entire extended family could be sent to the border towns.

But Mable had said Amanda’s son. Amanda Youngborn had only one li...

8. Apprentice Meal Preparation

By the time Arthur finished with the flyers, an hour later, his Basic Reading skill had increased up to level seven. By far his best level.

He could sound out most of the words easily enough, though some of the bigger ones tripped him up.

As promised, they were dry notices: One was a chart with the expected dragon soil yields the village was to receive and the dates they were to arrive. Arthur thought those came randomly. At least, the adults acted surprised and like the carts wer...

7. Basic Reading

Arthur’s body may now be magically boosted from having a card, but the last two days had been exhausting. He slept in late on the cold floor with a ratty, torn blanket thrown over him. It was one of the few cloth items which hadn’t been soiled.

He was barely aware of his father rummaging around in the early pre-dawn hours.

Arthur must have fallen asleep again because the next thing he knew, his father was shaking his shoulder gently. “Time to get up.”

Cracking open h...

Ch. 6

Arthur and his father trudged back to their cottage to find it in shambles.

It was obvious their small home had been searched multiple times throughout the day. Everything that had been inside the building not nailed down had been tossed out the front door. The two windows with the thick, warped glass had been broken out for good measure.

As they got closer, an acidic smell told Arthur that the blankets had been pissed on.

He stood there, looking at the shattered remains of ...

Ch. 5

Arthur and his father were  forced to walk back to the village, still without their shoes. However,  they weren’t the only ones. Up and down the lanes, people were being  shoved out of their homes by teams of the baron’s men.

Some people were in nothing but their  underclothing. Arthur and Calvan were lucky that they had fallen asleep  while wearing their work shirts and trousers.

Aside from being undignified, it was also cold. A thick fog had rolled i...

Ch. 4

Dragon soil had to be tilled  into scourge-deadened fields, and it needed to be done while the soil  was as fresh as possible. It also had to be done carefully because not  only could the scourge make any cut or popped blister lead to an  infection, but breathing in too much scourge-dust could rot the lungs.

As a result, only the adults worked the  fields. Children under the age of fifteen were sent out as runners,  sprinting back and forth from the fields ...

Ch. 3

Holding his breath, Arthur  pushed the card to his chest. He had doubts this would work. A man’s  heart was supposed to be the size of a fist. This card was longer than  his hand from the heel of his palm to his fingertips.

It didn’t matter because the card stopped dead at his shirt. Even magic cards couldn’t pass through fabric.

Arthur yanked down his collar, wincing as a few bad seams popped. He tried again.

This time the card seemed to sink straight &...

Ch. 2

The spell card was encased yet again within a thin sheet of glass with a lock surrounded by complex runes.

It was... beautiful.

Larger than a man's spread hand, the card was  thick as if he were looking at a piece of metal and not paper. Jade  green, it was edged in glowing purple jewels with golden threads running  along the length. If the card weren't magic, he would have thought it  had been painted on by a hair-fine brush.

What truly caught his eye we...

Ch. 1

Arthur sprinted across the scourge-deadened  fields. The soil was gray and lifeless and the black remains of weeds  disintegrated under his boots.

Though he ran flat out, he breathed as little  as possible, inhaling with quick gasps of air only when his burning  lungs couldn’t take it anymore.

It wasn't a good idea to breathe in scourge dust. That's how rot got into the lungs.

A shallow ditch bordered the field at the  other end, the water fetid wi...