before the start, i

The creature that stands there is neither big nor small, it is neither strong nor weak, and it is neither magic nor human.

Yet, not balanced. No, not at all. It has the look of a feral dog, more often than not. Taught by mortals, then abandoned by the same mortals to fend for itself. Of course it would be feral.

What will you choose this time, Knight?

***

This is a story about choices.

Every choice we make greatly affects each event that might befall us next. Our choices are what define our future - no matter what people say about destiny, all it determines is the end of all ends. The way we all get there can vary.

And so, this is a story of how one small choice, “left or right after the big tree?”, can change ever so much.

It’s also a story about people.

People who are ordinary. People who make mistakes; people who let their logical or illogical minds define them. People who, even when presented with the same choices, walk down different paths. People that are courageous, kindhearted, and generous, who put others before themselves, but are also selfish, afraid, greedy. People who love so passionately and so deeply that they may end the world - or create it anew.

And finally, it’s a story about love. To have a friendship, to be someone’s son, to reject a parent, to have a partner… we all need love.

After all, what is a life without those things?

before the start, ii

Every beginning of this story involved death: some inevitable, some unfair, and some that went unnoticed until it was all but too late. But, as texts describing the woes of jealousy, fear, and war are an overused auxiliary, what you’re about to read starts smack dab in the middle. If one had to go back to the beginning and tell you everything, that would mean writing a hundred pages of something that is just as easily found in Northland’s historical archives (also known as the Legend), and is most likely to be used for something such as a book report.

So instead what shall be presented now, in what will hopefully be a short overview, is how some parts of the story really started:

Decades before everything in the world took its place, a goddess gave her life to save her country.

At some point much, much later a civil war inside Northland broke out – for now, that is all that needs to be said of that beginning.

Twenty years later, sometime around the beginning of a certain September, a boy named Christopher Hawks (remember that name!) was discovered by a lost princess to be the holder of one of the Seven Stones of the Jakkovost.

And thus, problems began.

before the start, iii

Have we moved a little fast?

Let’s delve deeper.