Chapter One

Isbor Of Kurajir

"It was the voice, wasn't it?

It spoke to you again. I hear it sometimes; I feel it all the time.

I believe it is a guide to a path we do not know, or maybe a path we fear to take or have taken, and it failed us.

You are silent, what I speak does not make sense to you.

You sit there feeling pitiful as I speak of the silent stories,

The truth is hidden in the crevice of the words coming from my mouth.

It was the voice, wasn't it!?

Speak to me I plead so this tsunami curiosity for what the voice truly is may die down".

I spoke these words looking at the man everyone said had received the enlightenment of the voice.

He stared back at me with confusion written all over his face, he sat quietly before me, and I could tell his eyes which seemed to have lost their way in their socket were assessing me.

" I do not know what you speak," he said finally from a mouth with teeth that begged to be brushed with eagerness

"Everyone said you received enlightenment of the voice yesterday" I continued with hope synced to every word in the sentence.

His face twisted to what looked like he was disgusted,

"Look a here mister, me just an old lad who was been in on me business since the yesterday had a light of it own". He blurted.

Oh well this was all for nothing then

I thought but I hadn't given up just yet, with the last hope I could muster, I casually put in

"it happens a lot I tell you, my first time hearing it I was more confused than you are right now" but I realized with each word dropping from my mouth I was gradually losing this man to strangeness.

Darn...

I sighed and walked away from him.

He was the 86th person I had approached since I first heard the stranger speak to me, the stranger I call The Voice. My first experience with it was the second day after my tribe went into extinction... It came like a rushing wind, lifting me from where I had laid to sleep and placing me in midair, the winds that carried its statements burned like hot coal on my skin. My breath was lost to my lungs I heard words dropping from this wind, I could phantom their meaning and I was marvelled, when it stopped speaking it left me and I landed with a loud thud to the mud of somewhere I had never seen before,

I was scared out of my skin.

From then on till this moment, I received words from "this" voice but in a less senile manner each taking me to places I had never been before, and I knew these places the voice took me to had something to do with my quest.

My name is Isbor, from Kurajir a tribe gone extinct by the hands of the Uza's a tribe known in all of Mëne for its vicious fighters. I will say it was a very painful sight to behold my fellow tribesmen and women slaughtered on the grounds of practising alchemy, I observed all of this from playing dead. I know what you're thinking and I will admit it that I acted like a coward, I was. But since I received enlightenment of the voice I feel different, though I am yet to understand what difference my body has taken it still doesn't change the fact that the change is there.

---

Disappointed

I continued my journey nevertheless

Dressed in a black cloak over a white loosely fitted top with a black trouser, a boot, and a strap of bag over my shoulder I moved around silently concealing my face the most because of the tattoo that was drawn over my left eye with a red brojack an ointment of great importance in Mëne.

Brojack was more like gold here in Mëne, a red brojack was a symbol that spoke loudly of I being a tribesman of Kurajir. I would not want to die before I even understood what the voice was really.

The wind was unpleasant this evening

Its every rush spoke of wrath as it beat into my skin.

I needed to find shelter in earnest.

I thought

Or I will be a dead man walking.

It was better to be killed by a swordsman you see than by a force of nature you do not understand in Mëne. Looking around, I found nowhere to shelter so I pressed forward with the wind punctuating my every moment. Just then I felt a pang of pain above my left eye, the exact spot which the red brojack was

---

I groaned yet ignored it as I moved forward still, trying my best not to show weakness. The wind became more intense than it was, I felt it pressing me to the ground while the pain above my left eye had gone ballistic making it hard to breathe I turned to look around and I saw three figures move towards me arms stretched out

This was indeed the cause of the wind

I gnawed at my lower lip as I tried to stand but it was useless. You can see why I had earlier said I preferred to be killed by a swordsman rather than the force of nature, you simply don't know what was behind nature's vexation.

When the figures got close to my pinned-down body, one of them spoke

"You are charged to death"

just like that?

"Isbor of Kurajir"

ooooh I see why

"You... Have... No... Prove"

I managed to say while avoiding eating more sand than the one I already had, they didn't bother to answer what I had said instead they pressed on me more. So this is how I would die? In the middle of nowhere by figures, I knew nothing of?

What a shame

I felt the very life squeeze out of me as flashes of things I hadn't yet done streaked past my eyes. Just then I felt my body lunch into the sky

I was shocked because I had no idea of what was going on, for one magic was a crime in Mëne, it was what wiped out my tribe. And these figures were using magic, illegally.

Still wondering what these figures were going to do to me since they put me up here in the sky, I heard one of them say

"Sorcery"

And another answered with

"the red brojack".

Then it hit me, this display in the air me was my doing.

How I did it I have no idea but if it meant surviving

Then

I would do anything

Before they made any further move I felt my right fist clench tight and the three shadows crunch and groan as their cry of pain and the breaking of bones filled the air.

The moment my feet touched the ground I lost my ability to stand, I fell on my face. What was happening to me?

---

It first started with the voice and now sorcery? I wondered as I lay on the ground amidst the dead bodies of my attackers

What was truly happening to me?

I wasn't the Isbor I knew I was from birth

who was I?

Or who am I gradually becoming? These questions plagued my fragile mind. I struggled to my feet and looked around more for safety than survey, I wouldn't want to be taken by surprise again.

As I did this I saw streaks of light breaking through the cloud which meant the day was awakening, gathering myself I continued on my journey as planned to the little town of Sicj as well as trying to hold the nausea rising rapidly in me as I moved pass the figures that had the intention of assassinating me but had a mysterious taste of it themselves.

---

Wait ooo

I stopped myself from thinking wildly at the entrance of Sicj

The red brojack was too small a tattoo for one of my killers to notice from the distance I was from them, even at close range it was still hard to notice except by trained eyes, and those trained eyes were the main reason I wore a cloak.

Speaking of cloaks, mine hadn't left my body during the whole attack so how then did one of the assassin figure sight out the red brojack? Did he have enhanced eyesight?

No,

The brojack is known to resist and neutralize any form of attack directed at it

Then...

The deeper I thought about it, the more confused I was getting.

I sat at a bar in so much thinking, if I had died what difference would it have made?

I was alone in this world

No family, no friends, nothing. I speak of friends like I had any of those.

I was indeed alone. I was alive because I was a coward, hiding under the body of a dead man.

Looking at my hand, I traced a pattern to the left side of my ribs.

Even if I escaped death I paid so with a price, a scar I am going to carry till I die.

All I want and need is to be at peace with myself and my environment.

Peace?, I looked at my right fist and sagged my head in frustration.

Alchemy?

Magic?

Sorcery?

Isbor of the tribe of Kurajir what is going on with you?

"Lost in thoughts there mister" the feminine voice of the bartender pierced through the room I kept my thoughts in.

"Sorry about that" I apologized and dropped a rümen piece as payment for the drink I had.

"Keep the change for the inconvenience" I ended up leaving the bar.

At the door I paused

Wait what? Keep the change?

I thought in disbelief.

"Sorry, I wouldn't mind the change" I whispered to the bartender who killed me with her gaze.

I needed money and giving up one like I had to spare was suffocating

When I opened the door to exit the bar, I was swept by the wind into the air. It felt hard to breathe as my lungs tightened in my chest. I heard voices, the wind coming with it hot as coal.

The Voice.

This was the first experience I had with it.

~|~π^••∆π

It repeated over and over until I was dumped at the entrance of Dudumikuk a city known for its great peril.

As I stood, I saw lightning tendrils move up through my arms to my face, resting where the red brojack was,

Causing me pain.