Chapter 6: What can go wrong will
Malene knew that she had to leave home now, to spread her wings and fly away from the nest, but she felt something she never felt in all her seventeen years.
She was scared. This was the first time in her entire life that she had ever set foot outside of Payon. She knew nothing of the world outside her home. What if the people she met were even more cruel than her classmates?
But no one gets anywhere by hanging around home all their life! Besides, her lifelong dream was to travel around Midgard, have many adventures, befriend many people, see the world...err...you get the idea.
But as I was saying, she was afraid to leave the security of her home. But how could she ever prove her worth unless she went out into the world?
So the week after her graduation, she and the rest of the freshly inducted hunters made a decision to journey to the abandoned city of Glast Heim. They hired a friendly priest to open a warp portal to their destination, and in a flash, they were all whisked away to the haunted city.
But you now how some people say that if anything can go wrong, it will. And it did. Poor little Malene was left behind. She quickly tracked the priest down.
"What is it child, did you get separated from your party? Oh! You must be one of the new graduates of this year's batch of hunters."
He quickly apologized to the blind girl and opened a new warp portal for her to be able to join her friends. She thanked the kind priest and stepped into the portal, but once again, if something can go wrong, it will.
"Oh drat! I can't believe I screwed up again!"
As soon as the young girl felt her feet touch solid ground, she knew she was in the wrong place. It was just too noisy...
She quickly tapped the shoulder of the nearest living creature.
"Excuse me, but could you please tell me what place this is?"
The stranger chuckled and smiled.
"Well dear, you're in the lovely city of Al de Baran."
Al de? What was she going to do here? All her hunter friends were in Glast Heim now, and she was all alone in some city that the only thing she knew about it was that it was in the north.
"Let me guess...you aren't supposed to be here, right?"
She nodded, her fear growing. But the kind stranger sensed this.
"Heh...priests these days...they can hardly ever get a warp right. Well, while you're here, you might want to check out the clock tower...just be careful. Those punks may be small, but their bite is quite nasty. As for the clocks, just don't attack them first and you should be fine. Good luck Miss."
So not all people were mean and cruel. Perhaps leaving Payon was the best decision she ever made.
And things were about to get better.