The first time I saw a corpse, I was five years old.

Well, I guess that's not entirely true. He had seen Old Jack, Black Jack, the town drunk, before that. But it was the first time I had seen the corpse of someone close to me. Now it seems strange to think that he has never been close to someone, but in other times, I must admit, that someone was my mother. She had died of a fever.

Did her death affect me deeply? Looking back now, I think it must have been.

My sister Karen was only three at the time, and she could barely remember our mother. Our dear mother. But to me, her smiling face is as warm and bright as she was when she was alive; even now, after so many, so many years.

It was she who raised us, who took care of us. She was the one who fed us when we were hungry, she comforted us when we were sick or unsafe, she encouraged us when we were sad. She was the one who loved us.

And for us she was much more than just a mother. Certainly, she was everything a mother should be.

Provider, peacemaker, educator, caregiver and source of comfort. But she was also much more, because she was our father's counterpart. She gave us everything that our father did not give us.

She loved us.

To this day I have not been able to understand why she married my father, much less why she had children.

The memories I have of my father, from before my mother's death, are of a sinister distant character who could have been the very god of death to the eyes of a terrified child. But the memories I have of him since her death are even more bleak.

And besides, all that happened a long time ago. So many years have passed since then ...

So why can I remember it as if it happened yesterday?

♦ ♦ ♦

The old year had already ended, and now, with the joyful celebrations of the new year, the first signs that announced the arrival of spring were already visible in the territory, present in the trees, in the undergrowth, even in the scent of the air. .

New life would soon come to the Empire, after the dead months of winter.

A subtle mist rose from the meadows that stretched adjacent to the tree line that lined the road, where the warm golden rays of the first sunlight evaporated the night dew from the ground.

The first light green shoots were almost visible, and the fingers of the still-lifeless tree branches curved up into the gray sky and formed a passageway above the road.

In just a matter of days, Viktor would begin a formation that would allow him to become one of the greatest wizards the Empire had ever known.

And then, among the trees, across the mist-shrouded pastures, he saw her, the great city of Genbofen.

Viktor gave an audible gasp and felt his scalp tighten and his skin crawl.

He had never seen anything like it. Dark stone walls that rose up to thirty feet high, topped by battlements, contained the even taller cluster of two-story townhouses with steep roofs, apartment buildings, mysterious towers, and temple spiers.

The city had stood since the founding of the Empire three hundred years ago, and from first impressions, Viktor thought it looked like it would continue to stand for many more centuries.

Port, market and seat of scholarship; to the exultant Viktor it was all these things and more.

For him, Genbofen embodied hope, liberation from his childhood quirks, a true future.

He offered her a life away from Chipped and the specter of disappointment, dispassionate selflessness, and the deadly influence of his father.

Viktor was wide awake now, exhilarated at the prospect of reaching Genbofen and beginning a new and more optimistic chapter in his life.

The city was claimed to be the third largest in the entire Empire, with a large population of around five thousand people not including passing travelers, merchants, members of the guard, peddlers, pilgrims, farmers, the homeless, tramps, beggars, Itinerant actors, troubadours and other people from the show.

This tree-lined stretch of road ran parallel to the city's mighty eastern wall, which seemed capable of holding off an entire army for weeks, if not months.

At the northeast corner of the high city wall, another much lower wall, of uncut stone, surrounded the cemetery that, at first glance, must have spanned almost a hectare. Viktor saw a single grated door leading into the cemetery, and through the columns and lintel of the cemetery he glimpsed a wide, low gray chapel nestled between crumbling ancient tombstones and statues of weeping angels. For a moment, seeing this, Viktor felt strangely at home. The sight of the cemetery was strangely comforting.

Beyond the graveyard, a grove of trees descended to the bank of the river in the distance.

The carriage continued along the main road until it came to a wide crossroads where the earth was heavily disturbed by horse hooves and wheels.

Winter had turned the place into a bog and workmen had not yet been sent to repair it. Frost still dotted the muddy ruts carved out by carts and holes left by animal traffic, and it looked as if the ground had been generously sprinkled with diamonds.

They turned right and headed toward the imposing east gate of the city. It was undoubtedly an imposing construction, with two tall towers fitted with portholes that dominated this side of the wall, rising on either side of an apparently narrow gate. Lacking a castle, Genbofen's walls and towers were impressive fortifications in their own right.

Hearing the shrill squawk of a scavenger bird, Viktor glanced up at the thick oak post that he saw firmly rooted in the ground beside the path.

Looking up, he saw the outline of a wagon wheel stand out sharply against the gray sky. Hanging from her by the wrists were three naked corpses, thieves or murderers, no doubt, with their ankles tied to the post itself. The carrion birds had breakfast with the carcasses riddled with peck holes whose flesh was beginning to turn green and covered in black coagulated blood.

Before them, a peasant's cart, loaded with straw bales and drawn by a team of big oxen, was advancing down the road. They passed the cart as it veered off the road and crossed the hazelnut fences that delimited the cattle market.

It was still two months before the Genbofen festival, famous throughout the Empire as one of the largest cattle fairs in the country, but there was always a semi-permanent market there throughout the year that closed only during the coldest winter months. . A week has passed since the last time he snowed, the market. It had reopened.

Behind the fence, Viktor saw that the temporary cattle market tents and hanging structures had already been erected for the new season. However, some of the sheds had also become semi-permanent, perhaps only relocating within the market compound itself between different monthly meetings, never being dismantled or completely dismantled.

The soft mooing of cows, the pitiful bellowing of lambs, the crying of slave elf children separated from their mothers along with the wailing of the Ferals being whipped came to Viktor across the damp meadow, along with the characteristic smell of manure. from livestock markets everywhere.

Slavery was totally legal in the Empire. There are three ways to be a slave, to sell yourself as a slave to pay off a large debt; to be born a slave, since the children of a slave were slaves or to be a captured Elf or Feral.

A human slave could win his freedom or be freed by his master, but for the Elves and Feral, gaining freedom was almost impossible, mainly because as slaves they are so useful.

Although an Elven slave was extremely expensive to buy, he was equally useful, having a long life expectancy, they could serve as slaves for generations. On the other hand, Ferals were said to be the most tame slaves, after a round of lashes, any Feral smart enough would know that he must behave properly.

As Viktor watched the Ferals in his cages, he remembered something important.

Among the non-humans, there are many things; Elves, Dwarves, Goblins, Orcs, Trolls. But there were two categories that possess a great variety, these were the Beastmen and the Ferals, also known as Beast People; Although both were relatively similar, they have notable differences.

Beastmen are anthropomorphic animals, or in other words they are animals with characteristics similar to a humanoid, that is, they walk using their hind legs, they can grab things with their front legs, they have a relatively humanoid body structure and they also have the ability to speak. They are relatively wild, aggressive, and uncivilized; in terms of their physical abilities, most, if not all, are markedly superior to the average human.

On the other hand, the Ferals or Beast People, are humanoids with animal characteristics which differentiate them from a human; as a general rule they have a tail, ears and other characteristics of the animal species to which it corresponds. But leaving aside their notorious animal characteristics, they are physically very human-like, perhaps only slightly superior to the average human.

It is easy to differentiate a beastman from a Feral, for while beastmen are more similar in appearance to animals, Ferals are more humanoid with only some notoriously savage characteristics.

A thick shadow was cast over the carriage, a figure that reduced the bright morning light to a fading twilight as the towering wall they approached rose before them.

Buried within the massive guard towers was the gate itself. The city guard was in the process of changing shifts. A tired-looking older man greeted the two yawning unshaven men who had come to relieve him, then walked through the door, no doubt heading for the guard barracks and into bed.

On the leather armor, all the soldiers wore the tabard with the coat of arms of the city: a merchant ship sailing over a mountain.

Now that they were in front of the gates, which were now open for the day's traffic, Viktor saw that they were indeed wide enough to accommodate two cars at once. Realizing this had the effect of making the towers appear even more threatening and imposing. That, combined with the ghoulish reminder of the city's legal system that he had just seen outside the gates, conveyed a truly ominous message to the young man: once you are inside these walls you will live by our rules, obey our edicts or you will pay with the maximum penalty.

The driver stopped the carriage at the door. There was a whisper of papers and words between the coachman and the guard.

One of the two guards opened the carriage door and an unshaven face peered inside. Then the carriage started up again and through the gates, at which point Viktor had his first proper view of the city that would be his home for at least the next two years.