Meet Byron and Ben

As normal it was a peaceful day in Llewthor, the quiet Market Town. We found our amusement playing around in the seemingly endless fields, streams, lakes and forests. There was not much else to do. Nothing that interested me anyway, I was only 16 and the idea becoming a baker or roofer was not appealing to me. We would climb trees, skim stones, go on great walks and create adventures, spend days building bases out of sticks, then finding great ways to destroy them. We would play hide and seek, and last-man-stands on the rope swings. This was our fun.

I had many friends but I spent most of my time with Ben. All my friends were fun, but Ben was fun in a way that I found to be more entertaining. He was 17 and it seemed like he was waiting on a pending war or something. He would insist on making sure that he was mentally prepared for an epic war, by fight training and generating weapons from sticks or whatever he could get his hands on. I found this fun so I would join him. We would spar together and choreograph extreme fight scenes with sticks. We would dog fight until submission and made hunting gear, which only tended to last a few days each time. It was all fun, but I did notice changes. I found that when playing hide and seek I had some moves up my sleeve. I found that when we played manhunt, no matter the odds, I could always get back to the base. I guess with Ben I learned that training (even if it is just fun and messing around) would make you stronger.

Ben was also really good at telling stories. He told stories of fearsome demons, fire breathing dragons, the rising dead and war machines that billowed great dark fogs of burning oils as they moved. He claimed that every story he told me was true, and that it was happening even just a few miles outside of town. He said he had his sources. I just listened in amusement because the stories were fun. I thought he had the makings of a wise man, but I never really took him seriously. At the end of the day I was young, and I had never left the area, so he could make up anything he wanted.