Chapter 1: Life in A’vetheas

1.0

Repeated thuds of dense oak reverberated throughout the brightly illuminated room, highlighting how bored the occupant was in the lackluster room. When the series of thuds stopped, an irritated moan could be heard.

“Ahhh! This is boring…” John complained as he slumped his body onto the table.

A few papers became stuck on his cheeks but he merely rolled his eyes at it. He was in this room since the sun rose, and each passing minute that he stayed in this place ate away his patience.

“Hahhh… I am pretty sure Queen Veissa is messing with me on this one. Coming this far way from the palace just to stamp these documents for her.”

After a minute of silence, he pushed with both his arms and detached his face from the wooden table, slapped his cheeks with his two hands and clenched his jaw.

“Just a few more to go! And I’ll make it back before noon!”

Without stalling any further, he perked his body and mechanically scanned his eyes across paragraphs and paragraphs of words, then he proceeded to compare them to the one that he brought along before he left the palace of A’vetheas.

“Ha!”

He declared his achievement as he stamped the last of the documents with a seal. John then took the extra steps to arrange everything neatly before he slipped them into his bag.

“Honestly, I understand that her Highness is going out of her way to let the other elves to accept me but things like that don’t just happen overnight. If they remain the same after 7 years...”

John Sarvod who recently turned 19, was the one and only human who lived among the elves in A’vetheas—a race well known for their lengthy pointy ears, golden locks of silky hair and elegant figures.

The Elven community was one that disliked any outsiders, let alone any foreign races. This practice of Elven culture was held to extreme measures such that the entire elvish community lived separate from everyone else in the world.

The complaint came from him because despite his seven years of life here, there remains a few elves who disliked him. Even if he used his powerful healing magic on countless elves and cured many of their illnesses, their opinions remained the same no matter what.

To solve this issue that he faced, the queen often gave him scribe work and have him run errands around the Elven Tribe. Aside from being the ‘Healer of A’vetheas’, he was also now a royal scribe in training.

Personally, he had no issues with carrying out tasks, but he still wished that he had more to offer to A’vetheas aside from scribe work and his healing duties. Perhaps by partaking in combat, those who disliked him might change their minds in some way.

But healing magic was all he had to offer.

John made his way outside and took a good look at the concrete building that he was in before he made his leave.

Having been built over a hundred years ago, it still retained its intricate details. The elven engravings that spanned across the frame of the solid door, though beautiful in design, they did more than to serve as mere decorations.

According to the court mages, they were designed to maintain a border that kept outsiders from entering A’vetheas and separated them from Reperane Woods.

Reperane Woods was the name for the dark forest that surrounded A’vetheas. It was infamous for the dark beasts that inhabited it, bloodthirsty creatures that have the ability take out a squad of soldiers under the blink of an eye.

“John! John! Wait!”

A voice shouted as he mounted the horse that he arrived with. When he turned around, he saw a petite girl who looked no more than 14—in appearance, her actual age was in the triple digits—running towards his direction.

“H-here! O-on behalf of my father! Please accept it!” she pushed the full basket that she had on her onto him.

Pristine smell of freshly baked goods entered his nostrils as the basket was shoved into his arms.

“This… I shouldn’t. I only came because the queen told me to—” he shook his head, hesitated at the prospect of accepting a gift.

“It’s the least that we can do after you came all the way from the palace to help us out. If not for your timely arrival, I am afraid that we will only become a burden to everyone else.”

Before he could even bring himself to react to her words, the elf girl ran back from where she came from.

“Ahh… And there she goes… Guess Raina and I will be having these later.” he took the leather reins, whipped it as he accelerated back to the palace.