• He lived on a regular street, went to a regular school, had a regular old family, and lived an absolutely, positively normal life. But Taelus Maderen was definitely NOT a regular boy.
    It was a bright afternoon in the grassy area of the planet where the proud empire of Dremora stood its ground, surrounded by the demonic forces of the Acralyn, who’ve battled fiercely with mankind for all recorded time. They come in all shapes and sizes, and aren’t exactly social creatures. They despise every living thing that opposes them (which just happens to be every living thing) and hope to rule all of us, and presumably the whole world, some day. These evil beings are what take up almost half of the school history textbooks, though almost nothing is actually known about them. The thing about that is, the lack of knowledge about the Acralyn just makes them all the more scary.
    The fact that war was happening all around him did not flow through Taelus’ mind during his engineering class with Sir Kalion, just as it hadn’t during all of his other classes. The only thing that occupied his brain right now was the thought of the end of the school day, this being his last period. Only the smallest fraction of his thoughts were actually focused on his middle-aged teacher’s lecture on hydraulics. The rest of his thoughts were centered on fantasies that would come true in 30 minutes time, fantasies of skirmishing with his friends and looking through old spellbooks, mesmerized by all the enchantments he knew he would never be able to do, since he wanted to be a knight when he was an adult, like his older brother who was fighting in the war between the Dremorans and the Acralyn.
    Sir Kalion’s lecture must’ve ended, because he snapped out of the trance he seems to go into during lectures and noticed that Taelus hadn’t been paying attention.
    “Taelus!” Cried Sir Kalion, “Who invented the mechanical staff?”
    Oh great, a random question. Who cares about this stuff? It’s not important to a future knight like me, thought Taelus as he woke from his daydreams. “Uhhh, Landiar Jandis?” Taelus stared blankly at his teacher. He knew his answer was wrong.
    “Incorrect”, said Kalion with a stern look on his face and an equally stern tone to his voice, “Oxius Munzier invented the mechanical staff.”
    He replied in a half sigh, “Ohhh.”
    “Okay class”, droned Sir Kalion, running his hand through his ash-speckled grey hair, “dismissed.”
    As Taelus stepped out of the petite Fortius St. School his shaggy ginger hair and and pale skin were much more visible than they were in the dim classrooms of his school. Though he was not as cheerful as he thought he would be. For some reason he was uneasy. It was bothering him, but he tried to shake off his feelings and join in a game a few kids were playing. They appeared to be playing War, half the kids being Dremorans and half being Acralyn. Taelus pretended to be a Dremoran knight, not daring to even pretend to be an Acralyn. After a few minutes, Taelus’ mind started to drift away.
    Why am I so down? he thought. Then as he looked up he saw a boy in front of him with short blonde hair and a smirk on his face wave an arm toward him and make a more or less realistic ripping sound.
    “You’re dead!” He intoned in a high voice. Taelus didn’t care all that much, since he wasn’t in the mood to play anyway. So he started to trot down the cobblestone roads that led to his small house.
    As Taelus walked down the weed-ridden back streets, he gradually slowed down. He felt exhausted. He felt like laying down right there on the old decaying stone and taking a nap, not caring if he was run over by a cart in his sleep.
    Yet again the thought ran through his brain, which was feeling a million emotions at once, most of them negative, What’s wrong with me? It was then that he realized how slow he had been walking, because the sun was beginning to set, and the night was trailing behind the faint crescent moon. Taelus passed a cracked mirror and stopped to look at himself. He was shocked to see that he was frowning. And crying.
    Taelus was starting to become worried about him self. Why am I so depressed? I’m fine. No one’s died…nobody I know’s injured. It was then that he snapped out of his trance and stared thinking clearlyand it struck him what was wrong.. The words of his biology teacher flashed painfully through his head.
    “The Dremoran mind contains a special section that allows them to tell when their family members die. We gained this adaptation about 4,000 years ago, when our race was spread around the world, many of us living in caravans, since Dremora wasn’t established yet.”
    Taelus was furious with himself. Why didn’t I remember this? We had a billon tests on it in biology class. Taelus began to sprint. He knew something was terribly wrong.
    When he reached his marble house, he rushed through the door. He could feel that his feet were bleeding inside of his old cloth shoes. The first thing he saw was his mother sitting at the old cherry wood table in the living room. She was leaning over our family’s scrying orb, with her head in her hands. She was crying. A scrying orb is something like a crystal ball, but it sees other places instead of the future. There was only one thing my mother ever watched in the orb. My brother.
    I approached her with my whole body shaking. I said in a voice that was also shaking “How’d it happen? She slowly turned her head toward me, her face red.
    “He was killed by a Daedriuk.” Taelus’ eyes widened. Daedriuks were Acralyn who wielded longswords forged in demonic fires. They were deadly, and this was something Taelus knew.
    Taelus was feeling sad, yet also extremely angry. The two emotions battled until his anger won and he started to yell.
    “They’re going to pay, those evil demons! I’ll kill them all! I’ll end the war! I want to go into battle! I’m ready now!”
    His mother’s red face paled to a light pink. “No, you can’t“, she cried out, “I don’t want to lose you too!”
    “But they’ll come asking for a replacement soon enough. The squad he was in will fail without a knight. And you and Father can’t go.”
    She frowned, then looked at Taelus with a worried look to her face , “Okay, but not until they come… Are you sure you’re ready? You’re only 12.”
    “I’m sure of it.” He tried to sound confident.
    “Will you be careful?”
    “Yes.” And just like that the discussion was over. About an hour later, when Father had come home and Mother had eased herself down, everybody was depressed. Neither Mother nor Taelus greeted Father as he walked in. He knew what had happened. His Father’s instincts were sharp, and he could tell that it was his brother who died.
    For supper Taelus’ family ate a bland soup. No one ate more than half of the soup. Taelus didn’t have any desire to eat, and he presumed his parents didn’t either. And the only talking that had gone on was when his mother asked his father how work had been.
    “Made some knives.” groaned Father. “One was made out of steel, Turned out pretty well. It may have been my best creation of the week so far.”
    “That’s nice”, Mother replied. Taelus’ father worked as a blacksmith. The majority of the things he forged were weapons. Though the knife would’ve been his best creation of the day, since it was only Monday. No one noticed this though.
    Even though his brother had been away for 2 years, something still felt missing in his life. Maybe it was the constant monitoring of the Scrying Orb by his mother and her constant reporting of what was happening. Or maybe it was just that his mind couldn’t accept the fact that his older brother, the person he had always looked up to, was gone forever.
    After dinner Taelus went up the stairs to his room in a slow, pathetic gallop. Whatever the strange form of movement was, it took longer than it should have to go from step to step. He approached the door and opened it. The room hadn’t been cleaned in a few days. It was getting dirty fast. But he didn’t have any desire to clean it. He struggled onto his bed as if it were 6 feet high, and laid there for a few minutes. Or maybe it was hours. Taelus wasn’t keeping track. He thought of the times he had spent with his brother. The small sword lessons he had given Taelus every once in a while. The jokes he had made when Taelus was young to make him laugh. And all the other stuff a brother would do.
    When he glanced at the clock hanging on the wall across from him, he saw how late it was.
    How long was I there?, though Taelus baffled. He stood up and went over to the journal of his brother, which was laying on an old table. He hadn’t dared touch this before.
    It can’t matter anymore, thought Taelus as he picked up the journal and looked at it. Felion Maderen, read the cover in golden letters. He opened the old book to it’s first page. It talked about how Felion wanted to be a knight. It was exactly what Taelus would write on the first page of a journal. On the bottom margin, it had an out-of-proportion doodle of his brother slashing a demon with his sword.
    Okay, maybe I wouldn’t have done THAT, thought Taelus. He went to the second page. It was filled with armor sketches. There were suits with silver dragons on them and blue ribbons hanging from the shoulderplates. Taelus thought it was a shame that his brother had never been able to wear his dream armor.
    Taelus started to skim through the book. There were Acralyn, great beasts with horns, and a lot of other things like that. But one thing Taelus noticed. Every single page had something to do with fighting, war, the Acralyn, or knights.
    Taelus knew the journal had been started before he was born. How could he die with such a strong passion for knighthood? Taelus pictured the sword going through his brother’s heart. It was a chilling thought. He knew that his brother should’ve been able to take the demon down. According to Mother, Taelus knew his brother had taken Daedriuks down before. What made this one different?
    When Taelus had grown tired of the book. He changed into the wool clothes his Mother had knitted for him that he slept in every night. He slept surprisingly well, considering the enormity of his loss. When he woke up he wasn’t sleepy like he usually was. He was alert and his eyes were darting from place to place, like his brain was expecting some foreign object to materialize in the middle of his room. Taelus traveled down the stairs at a pace several times faster than what it usually was. He scoured the cabinet in the kitchen until he found an old bowl. It struck Taelus that the sun wasn’t even up. It must’ve been about 6:00, Taelus thought. And yet, he didn’t take the time to look at a clock. He felt he had to rush.
    Taelus knew he would never be able to go back to sleep, so he took out some purplish berries and a container of sarumen meat. A sarumen was an animal which resembled a wolverine, but it’s claws were always smoldering with an unending ember, and it had a sleek body wrapped in shiny pale-blue fur. When the animal is born, their claws are so long they can’t walk. And slowly the embers make the sarumen’s claws shorter and shorter, until they disappear completely, at which point the sarumen dies almost instantly. The one who’s meat was being devoured by Taelus had been a little bit before the middle of it’s life when it had been killed, when the meat is the most delicious. It tasted kind of like beef, but with a much stronger flavor. His family always purchased their sarumen from a merchant at a local market in Regaliga, a small community in the south part of the Yastium District, the greater area where Taelus lived. The merchant obtained his meat from a farm where the sarumen are constantly monitored for burn consistency, claw length, and stuff like that until they’re slaughtered.
    When Taelus had finished his breakfast, he put on a silk shirt, pants, shoes and a leather jacket, then prepared his book bag for the school day ahead. He then went outside and did some jogging around town until school started. The sunrise was beautiful, as it always was in Dremora. Taelus filed into the school when all the other students arrived. Taelus went straight through the halls to his first period: The Art of the Sword. It was mandatory that all students who knew they were going to fight someday to take a class about it to get them ready. Among Taelus’ class, there was spellcasting, healing, axe-handling, and dagger-handling, for assassins. The dagger-handling class was almost empty year after year. Dremora was famous for knights, not assassins. Sneaking around just wasn’t our thing. The Isdralites, now they had good assassins.