"So this is what it feels like to stare fear in the face," I said as I stared into the face of a giant ork. My sword was tightly clenched in my hand as I hid my sorrows, fear and sweat behind my silver clad armor.
Maybe I should start from the beginning. My name is Cear, one of the Jura kingdom's elite knights. I was born as the son of one of the greatest knights in the 600 year history of the Jura kingdom - Ware, the Terminator. My mother died in childbirth, but she fought to the end to make sure I was alive. My father had sent me away to a school just outside of the kingdom to get an education so he could remain one of King Herald's elite. Every now and then, he sent a letter to me, asking how I was and such, but often times it would be forty moons between letters. When I was nine, I ran away from the school that my father had put me in. I remember exactly what had set me off that night.
"You are nothing, but disruptive to this school with all of your talk of wanting to be a great warrior. You never work, you always play and you'll never amount to anything with that kind of attitude."
That was what the dean of the school had told me the day that I had ran away. I ran back to Jura to escape the pain. I made the worst mistake of my life, but at the same time, it might have been my greatest blessing.
It had been near three months since I had last heard word from my father and I went to the castle to find him. As I neared the castle, I noticed something was amiss. The drawbridge had been lowered and there was a distinct lack of knights guarding the entrance. I slowly entered the dark castle and started to head in the direction of my father's chambers. As I walked past the throne room, however, I heard a groan come from behind the door. I decided to investigate this strange noise. I slowly drew back the door and inside was the worst thing I had ever seen.
Inside that room laid the bodies of many of the knights that I had grown familiar of during my younger years before my father had shipped me away. In the center of the room, there lied a man that I had not seen in four years and it brought me to tears.
That man was my father.
"Father!" I cried as I ran over to his nearly dead body.
"Cear? Cear, is that you?" My father asked as he tried to sit up. He immediately leaned back down from the stab wound in his stomach.
"Yes it is, father. What happened? Where's his majesty?" I frantically questioned.
"The Gur of the North invaded perhaps no more than a half day ago. They tried to take the King, but our order was to protect him. A group managed to sneak him out of the castle to a temporary residence. The rest of us knights stayed behind to fight off the Gur troops. We succeeded, but with major amounts of casualties. Son, I am now, but another statistic. I may have slain Dhorif in his cave, but at the end of the day, I have been slain myself." My father explained as he desperately tried to breathe.
"But father… What can I do to help you?" I asked, tears streaming down my now blood-colored face.
"There's nothing you can do to help me, but I want to help you." My father said as he reached into his satchel and pulled out a sky blue necklace. He opened my hand and placed the necklace in it. "Take this with you and become a warrior. I should never have sent you to that fancy school there. You have the heart of a fighter, just like me. Now go to the Inn and talk to his majesty. I'm sure he can find someone to train you right."
His eyes closed slowly and his breathing almost seemed to stop, but his final words were clear to my ears: "I love you, son."
"I love you too, father." I said as I wiped the tears from my eyes and stood up. I exited that chamber and went to the Inn, just as my father had said.