Chapter 1
"Apples for 5 sparks!" bellowed a man in a thunderous voice so loud that all could hear, "5 sparks!" With his loud booming voice, a young boy of 16 years of age heard this impressive offer and decided to acquire some for his mage needs.
"5 apples please dear man." The man roamed through the apples and picked out the most fresh of all for the boy, for offending a mage would mean the person's life.
"Here ya go chap, freshest of the fresh, that'll be 2 embers and 5 sparks." The boy rummaged throughout his bag and exposed three sparks and positioned it in the man's hand, whispered something and subsequently walked away. The man's eyes lingered on the boy until he at last spoke up.
"May you have a good day chap! Bless you." As the boy with a smile trudged away for not nearly 5 seconds, instantaneously stopped in his tracks; gradually his grin reversed itself. For in front of him was a girl staggering towards him who seemed about his age clothed in the most abnormal garments, and wounded like no living creature. Well, well, well, who is this girl? I've never seen anybody cloth in her kind of garments in my whole 16 years of my mage life, the boy thought to himself, could be a peasant, no, she's bruised all over, swollen, bleeding, no, not a peasant. Can't be a mage either, who could she be, and what happened to her?
Very slowly she gained distance toward the frozen boy who stared in awe. Slowly, the girl lifted up her head, and gazed at the boy like it was the end of the world. The boy gazed back; he saw the tear-stained cheeks, the swollen red eyes, the severely slashed right cheek, and the badly bleeding lip. Slowly the girl mouthed something, but the mage could not here, she repeated again but this time only a faint whisper.
"H…help me," she pleaded, but before she could mouth another word, she lost consciousness and plummeted toward the sandy bare floor. The boy instantaneously dropped his apples and reached for the girl; he caught the girl before she collapsed just before the hard bare ground.