Aidden was standing firm, once again, upon the ledge of a high, rocky cliff overlooking the grasslands below. He watched again as the shadows and shades he had become so familiar with squirmed and twisted, burrowing with fanatic greed throughout the soil, contaminating the earth and air, turning the water black with waste… and then the familiar, dull roar from behind touching his ears… the same hopeless urge to turn and face it… or run from it… and being unable to. One blast on a distant horn, low at first, and then growing ever louder. Soon joined by another horn, and another… and then the two noises were competing for domination of his senses as he felt the mass of the thing approaching him from behind, prickling the back of his neck with it’s power.

Aidden struggled once again to run, but could not. He felt himself scream in panic, but could not hear it over the roar of the entity approaching him from behind. Any moment, he felt it would come crashing down and over him, over to the shades in the distance that now looked up at him in fear at what they beheld. He grit his teeth, desperate now to find a way to escape, certain of his doom.

When the roar was at it’s absolute highest, that is when something new happened in his dream. Something that had never taken place before. As Aidden once again resigned himself, sweating and defeated to the fate awaiting him from behind, he became eerily aware of figure gliding forward from behind him, stopping when even with the panicked man’s shoulders. Aidden felt the air turn suddenly calm, with the roaring from behind quickly muted to a distant background rumble.

He turned to look over the figure standing next to him, but saw only the man’s face, and especially his two, glaring two blue eyes… The man used them to look straight back at the panicked Aidden, and they seemed searching and cold, full with calculating as the strange man appeared to be weighing the younger man’s very soul. Finally he spoke – the words as misty and distant as a faraway tide, yet sounding out from deep somewhere in Aidden’s mind. He watched the strange, blue-clad man with a mix of awe and terror as voice resonated in his head with the man’s now moving lips.

“Awake, Aidden Adaii of the Southern Swamps… Awake, for you are home ~” As soon as the last words left the man’s mouth, a screeching pieced the low rumbling from behind, and Aidden looked up to see a black falcon silhouetted against the mid-day sun. It was gliding in tight circles, ever lower, to the two men below. Before long the enormous black bird was right above them, and then it perched, digging it’s large talons slightly into Aidden’s shoulder as it did so. He could only dimly feel it’s claws however, as he returned the steely black stare from the powerful animal now perched on his shoulder. In the next instant, the enormous bird of prey stood tall on it’s legs, spreading it’s wings. Above the thick, shimmering black feathers the Falcon looked down expectantly once again into Aidden’s eyes, considering him for a moment before once-again sounding out with an ear-piercing scream. No sooner had this scream sounded, however, then force from behind resumed to full strength, and the horns and massive roaring from behind came crashing down all around – consuming the small group completely.

Aidden awoke with a gasping scream, and found his body being jolted in the air by a particularly loud bump from below. He struggled to move again, but found the familiar leather bonds wrapped around his body at the chest, waist, shins, wrists and ankles, although somewhat loser than before.

Perhaps the men had decided to allow their trophy healing time for his friction burns and bruises before reaching their destination for presentation. Aidden sighed, resigned once again to his fate as the landscape passed either side of him. Upon peering through the thick, wavy blue sides of the wagon however, he saw something that made him breath in sharply.

On either side of him stood steep, rising walls of rock, jutting in every different direction. All thoughts unrelated to surveying his surroundings immediately were quieted as he pressed his face to the thick blue glass to grasp a closer look outside. Having grown in the hot and humid swamps since his birth, Aidden had never in his life imagined such an environment. The few trees that passed his view were either twisted and bent, growing at the most awkward of angles, or tall and sturdy pines, reaching into the clouds above, which did not seem as far away as usual.

The wagon took a gradual turn left, and again Aidden’s eyes were met with a interesting new sight. Far, far below lie a rich, green expanse of low hills and valleys that stretched away the rock walls. He saw the hills rumbling their way a few miles before finally slinking into an even wider expanse of grasslands that stretched out to a distant blue horizon of water, far away and nearly out of his vision in the wavy, blue glass barrier all around him.

Undeterred by his poor view, Aidden stared awestruck at the magnificent sight and for a moment his thoughts and worries escaped him, leaving him completely engrossed in the magnificent display of nature below. It had suddenly occurred to the young Nical how wide and wild the world really was. All of his short life had been a structured existence of working and relaxing with his friends and fellow slaves in the same, familiar atmosphere of the swamplands, now so far away. It at this moment, as he took in the very different world around him, that he fully understood the power the Dondels were using in their attempts to lay claim to what was a truly diverse and enormous tract of land.

The wagon slowed suddenly, giving the young prisoner a lurch in the pit of his stomach and jerking him from his disconnected thoughts. He turned his head upward once more, to the shaded red cover of his moving prison, and felt his anxieties crashing on down once again with all of the force and terror that the wave from his dreams had been doing to him for days on end. It was getting to feel a lot like torture, his sleeping hou-

Aidden was again pulled away from his thoughts as the slow-moving carriage now stopped completely, followed by the indignant whiny of the horse who had been pulling him. Dondel voices followed and he saw a procession of soldiers approach, turning into a large group of legs and torsos as they reached the wagon, swarming in and out of his view as they spoke to the men who had driven to the present location. The language was rushed and shouted, but with an air of joviality that was capitalized with an explosion of laughs and a horde of peeking Dondel guardsmen coming suddenly into Aidden’s view as, he guessed, they learned of the new cargo.

Aidden looked forward to the wagon top once more, ignoring their animated gasps and exclamations upon seeing his face, buried deep within the wagon, behind a shell of translucent blue. Finally, the top of the wagon opened and sunlight blasted into the humid air Aidden had gotten so accustomed to. A flurry of hands poured into the wagon and Aidden felt his bonds being released before the limbs withdrew once again from his place in the wagon.

“You! Up! Out!” Commanded a red-and-brown clad Dondel soldier from above, motioning with his thumb in an upward jerk as he did so. Aidden tried to move but found his battered body was completely unresponsive, and he sprawled back to the wagon-bottom after only minimally rising.

“Lazy Nical slime.” The Dondel man grunted, standing himself higher on the wagon and grabbing Aidden under each arm. He pulled back with his might, but found he couldn’t lift the captured Nical alone. “Oy! Gipro! Come back here and help me with this sack of horse lard – he ain’t movin’ on his own!” Aidden closed his eyes in exhaustion as, few seconds later, another man sounded from above, not a bit more pleasant sounding than the first.

“No wonder we aren’t getting enough stone up here! What a weakling!” The voice of Gipro was much higher than the other man, and it pierced Aiddens already buzzing senses. “They ought jus ship the whole lot of ‘em up here – we’d have ‘em chucking stone so fast this castle’d be up in few days flat”. Aidden felt the two pairs of hands grab for him, once again below the armpits, and pull him up out of the wagon before tossing him roughly to the rocky grass below. Aidden’s vision flashed completely white for a moment as his left shoulder fully absorbed the fall, and he rolled to his back in pain.

“That hurt ya boy?!” Sneered the guard called Gipro, his face now showing through blurry vision just a few inches from Aiddens face. “Well now, listen up, because I’m tired of stacking rock all day. You’ll be up and working for us whe-“

“Won’t be Gipro.” Said the first man with an air of finality. “The King’s orders are to let him into the dungeon and let ‘em heal up all nice and clean-like. He’ll be the King’s trophy slave – personal slave to the King.” Aidden’s stomach squirmed. So that’s what this was all about. He was to be made an example of a whole new sort. Not in death, but in life, and through shame. He turned his aching head to one side as the truth of his sentence was registering deep into his conscience. What he would give to be back in his guild at home, carving wood again like a good slave.

“Blasted King of So-“ Gipro began, but stopped as quickly as he had begun spitting out the words, and the two men once again were stooping over Aidden and dragging him up, putting each arm over their shoulder and proceeding to carry him, feet dragging across the pathway, unceremoniously towards the main gateway of Lexington Castle. Aidden tossed his head back and open his eyes slightly to get a better idea of where he was going, and was greeted with the sight of the approaching mountain stronghold.

It was the most massive structure he had ever seen, with deep gray walls of stone that stretched high into the clouds before ending in pointed, black spires above. Red and black patterns raced across the stoic castle, which seemed to be as wide as it was high. Far behind the gatehouse precipice, Aidden could see the fluttering red flags with their golden Phoenix pictured in the middle, wings out-stretched as if soaring above their heads. Aidden then looked below to the main gate they drew ever-nearer to entering the castle.

Even in his weakened state, Aidden almost began in a fit of laughter. For all the castle’s impressive bulk, the doors themselves were crooked, poorly crafted assemblies of pine wood. But for their size, they were something he would expect to see on his neighbor's doorway, back in the swampland huts. Clearly, for all their arrogance and pride, there were no wood craftsmen among the Dondel ranks.

The crooked gates opened, and a small procession came out to greet the appoaching figures.

“Oy there! What is you’ve brought us here?” Called the first in the procession, raising his hand in welcome to the two men dragging Aidden ever-closer to his new home.

“Oy yerselves!” called Gipro to the leader – “Help me with this worthless sack before I lose heart and dump him over the ledges!” A few in the approaching procession chuckled as they drew even with Aidden and his escort, the leader responding while observing Aidden in appraisal.

“Well, that’d be no good for us, I’m afraid…“ He started, positioning Aidden’s head so it was even with his own, and then staring deeply into the prisoner’s eyes. “You’ve roughed this one up, I’d say.” He cast a reproachful look at Aidden’s driver, who seemed to step back away with half of Aidden’s arm in tow.

“Couldn’t be helped – he tried to escape down at Lexington. King Cutio would have tossed me in prison with the Nical if we’d allowed too much of a commotion o’er it”. Aidden entertained briefly the idea of facing his driver, finally, one-on-one in a damp jail cell.

“Well, he’d best be able to work.” Started the other man, turning to point to a tower far to his right. “Those tower steps won’t be removed till we finish the interior, and it needs a lot of labor, that part does!” Aidden looked to the tower and saw it standing, but quite vulnerable to any sort of attack. Atop a wide staircase that lead directly to the tower stood a single house-door, guarded by a bored Dondel.

He couldn’t believe his eyes, but Gipro interrupted any further musings of over-running the castle Aidden might have been entertaining, staring at Aidden and curling his top lip in disgust.

“It’s no good Denyrop! King Hacenyth’s ordered this one to be his own personal servant, something of a prize, I guess.” At this Denyrop, the procession leader, spat.

“God’s praise the King of the North.” he muttered, turning on his heel and leading the two men into the castle with a simple, disgusted wave of his gloved arm.

“Come on boy” grunted his driver – “time to go home.” The two men howled with glee as they pushed Aidden past the flimsy crude gateway doors and into the castle. Aidden lowered his head in dismay. He’d almost prefer hard labor to sitting around all day in a moldy damp cell. The death from an infection alone would prove 100 times worse than death by hard labor. He was aware of the two men in his escort chatting in rough, disgusted Dondel tones but paid them no mind as they approached the tower at the very back of the castle.

“Wake UP Twopul!!” Screamed Gipro. Aidden heard a wooden stool scrapping against the deep stones set into the courtyard grounds and looked up to see a disheveled young sentry, now on his feet but rubbing his eyes and looking quite afraid. “I can’t believe your asleep again! You’ll never get promoted if you can’t even stay awake on the job!”

“But there’s no reason for me to-“ the young Dondel was holding up his hands in exasperation...

Well no more of that! We’ve got something for you here to guard – so you really DO need to stay awake now… now step out of the way!!” The young man did so, jerking open a barred door as he did so, and for the first time, Aidden realized his fate. He was going to be stored in a mostly underground prison at the base of the enormous tower they were standing in front of, with only the top foot of his cell exposed to fresh air. He started to squirm, desperate to break free of the grasping hands around his arms and waist, but the soldiers would have none of it.

“Oh no you don’t scum! Not again!” Screeched his driver, and the two men shoved Aidden in carelessly through the door, where he fell head first down a roughly carved set of stairs that descended into the prison below. He fell, finally, with a loud splash. The three men above him chuckled happily above as the barred door creaked back into place.

“Looks like we’ve sprung a leak!” Shouted Gipro to his prisoner below, gloating between the yellow bars above. “I don't know about you, but I’ve had a terribly long day… see what you can do about the plumbing down there, will you?” The group bellowed out in hearty laughs once more, and the two who had dragged Aidden in now turned away from his barred window.

“Do me a favor and buy me an ale, Gipro.” Chortled the man who had driven Aidden up to Lexington. “I’m far from home, and that scoundrel that rode up with me has already disappeared, no doubt to the pub!” The man Gipro slapped his wiry arm around his red-clad companion and the two walked off in festive dialogue. High above, Aidden heard the stool pierce their ever-fading conversation as it scrapped against the stone in the earth above. The young Dondel guard once again had assumed his post.