[William]
Years ago, Drakon Kingdom
On William’s ninth birthday, his father gifted him a wooden sword.
It was one of the rare times where his father had the coin to spare, where the two of them had the luxury to spend a few months in one of Drakon’s towns, for once not looking out for hoards of debt collectors and suspicious merchants.
“Gentlemen use swords, Will,” his father told him, pointedly looking at William’s bruised cheek.
His father’s greatest wish was for William to grow up to be a refined gentleman, never a wastrel like him. Still, he didn’t deny William of his pursuits, only scolded him for getting injured.
As for William himself, he neither wanted to be a wastrel nor a gentleman.
He wanted to be a hero.
“How’s this one? Tasty, right?”
The inn William and his father stayed in was at the outskirts of the town, right next to an orphanage that had its ancient walls shaded by apple trees.
It was under one of those trees that William defended a pair of siblings—Roe and Ron—from the beating of a group of older children. From then on, the siblings took into following William everywhere, offering apples of different colors and tastes as tribute—a reward for his heroics.
With the bright, expectant looks the two cast him, William had only one choice. Fortunately, it was also the truth: “Yes.”
A call behind them interrupted their idle conversations. William saw it was one of the older children of the orphanage, a boy who looked at William like an opponent.
At the sight of him, the siblings lit up and ran to his side. As the boy approached him along his two little shadows, William heard him asking them, “Is that him?”
The siblings nodded, and the boy’s frown deepened.
William introduced himself first, the way his father taught him, “My name is William. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
“Sergei,” the boy returned.
“His father was a Champion!” Roe volunteered.
Sergei had an expectant air to him at that, awaiting the inevitable awe.
But William only let out a startled, “Oh…”
Once upon a time, before he started travelling with his father, William would’ve shown Sergei the awe he expected.
But now, he couldn’t, his thoughts interrupted by the memory of a particular scene, a particular event: the Champions’ Parade.
William recalled standing alongside many, watching the magnificent display conducted by Drakon’s best fighters.
“Don’t be fooled by their splendor, Will,” his father told him back then, pulling his attention from the show. “This isn’t what they truly are.”
“Then what are they, father?”
The look in his father’s eyes as he gazed at the Champions, the ones who received the masses’ reverence, was one engraved into William’s memories like a brand.
It was pity.
“Prisoners, Will. Prisoners.”
It took a few days for William to learn the reason behind Sergei’s attitude towards him.
As the son of a Champion, Sergei thought it his responsibility to be a protector for the orphanage’s children. He prided himself on it, yet the day he became bed-ridden with fever was the day the siblings needed his aid most.
William’s presence was a reminder of that failure. His dull reaction upon learning of Sergei’s father certainly didn’t help making a favorable impression.
As the days passed, however, Sergei let go of his one-sided apprehensions, and at times joined the siblings and William in playing under the apple trees’ shade.
When the inevitable departure from the town arrived, Sergei and the siblings bade William their heartfelt goodbyes.
“Should I leave you with your friends?” his father asked after William returned to his side. His smile gentle, his tone teasing, but his eyes saddened.
William shook his head.
If he stayed, who would be with his father?
“You would’ve stood a chance with a better blade.”
At twelve years of age, William already had his wooden sword replaced by one of metal—a humble one at that, made from scraps his father collected, and molded into its current form by a blacksmith they met in their recent travels.
William worked on his swordsmanship as much as he could, a challenge considering his lack of guidance.
He made do with old instruction books, and when that approach proved to bear no tangible improvement, William took into mimicking the swordsmen he came across on the road. They were from different affiliations and occupations, always too busy to give heed to him. It was rare that any of them obliged to teach him properly.
Like now, with this former city guard.
“I don’t have another,” William told the guard, sheathing the aforementioned blade into a shabby scabbard, marking the end of this afternoon’s spar.
The guard sighed, reaching out to pat his head with a helpless smile. “You have the talent, lad. It’s a shame your blade is hindering it.”
A few months after reaching fourteen, William set his sights on participating in Drakon Kingdom’s annual sword tournament, where the hopeful youths competed to earn the honor of receiving the tutelage of the Kingdom’s best swordmasters.
It would be the first step towards obtaining a better life for him and his father, to grasping his childhood dream.
“What’s your name?”
It was the simplest question, but the answer halted in William’s throat, trapped in realization.
Many were the reasons his father was relentlessly pursued, and William was only privy to few. What he knew, though, was that his father never gave his full name. What he knew were the terrible consequences of his father’s whereabouts becoming known.
Yet his father let him participate in an event that would let his name be known to all.
He didn’t even implore William to use a false name, perhaps having in mind the fact that this tournament rejected those of false backgrounds. He acted like nothing was out of the ordinary, and even woke him up at the crack of dawn to head to the grounds where the registration process would take place.
“Your name, lad?”
The question pulled William away from his thoughts, and he looked at the Official, his decision made.
To say his desertion of the tournament had angered his father would be a massive understatement.
It was the first time William witnessed his father’s temper flare so severely, pacing in their inn room back and forth, engaged in a fit of self-directed ranting littered with numerous colorful curses. William had been scolded so much that he almost regretted his decision.
His father’s fury had yet to subside when it turned out that the time to register in the tournament had passed. No matter how much he pleaded and negotiated, there was nothing to be done about it.
“You’re going to participate in the next year, Will,” his father said, once again back at their inn room, finally interrupting the heavy silence between them since their return from the grounds empty-handed. “You’re going to participate in the next year, and you’re going to win. You’re going to pursue your dreams, and you’re going to be a better man than me!”
There was something frantic in his father’s gaze, something anguished as he implored, “I will not have you ruin yourself because of me! You hear me, Will?”
Dumbfounded, William could only nod.
Before he could participate in the next year, though, those pursuing his father’s trail caught up to them first.
William discovered it the moment he woke up and didn’t find his father sleeping on the other bed in the room. It couldn’t be that he was still plotting wagers at the town’s taverns, right?
His father’s miraculous luck was both a blessing and a curse. If he truly desired to, his father could easily become wealthy, but it would earn him the envy of the commoners and the grudge of the nobles. Wandering the Kingdom like a vagabond was his father’s way to obtain a semblance of a peaceful life.
This day, however, false names and changing locations didn’t spare him.
William searched the town far and wide, from sunrise to sunset, starting from the taverns and ending at the town’s gates. There, William got his first and most important lead from two town guards that were on duty last night.
“That fellow? Wasn’t he the one who snuck past us?”
William didn’t wait until the guards finished talking before rushing out of the gates, their outraged cries fading behind him.
In his anxious search, William didn’t feel the hours passing by, not until he reached the margins of what appeared to be a camping site for a large group of travelers. William observed the scene behind a rock, bringing out his sword.
The campfire illuminated the heavily armed men circling it, reaching past them to a lone man at the side. The crimson tunic he wore matched that of his father’s.
William’s grip on the hilt of his sword tightened.
Without taking a moment to breathe, think better, William abandoned the security of his position, walking towards the men blocking his path to his father.
Their instincts were sharp, managing to immediately sense his advancement, but it wasn’t like William cared to conceal his presence in the first place.
His appearance had the group amused, the jeers and mockery loud and obnoxious.
One of them approached him, sparing the sword William had drawn a single, careless glance before asking, entertained, “You’re lost, lad?”
William didn’t respond in words, only looked at his father.
He was unconscious, the rhythm of his breathing faint. Bruises marred and darkened his features, blood seeping through the most severe of them, yet they still appeared milder compared to what befell his body, and what the odd angles his limbs were fixed in implied.
The man followed the line of his gaze and let out a thoughtful hum. “Him? He offended our Boss. It took years to finally find the bastard.” Returning his sights to William, the man asked, “You’re here for him?”
William slashed at him in answer.
Even with his adversary’s weapon drawn, the attack seemed to catch the man off-guard, unable to step back and dodge it, screaming as a deep, bleeding line bloomed across his torso—collapsing on the ground from the shock of it all.
Instantly, William found himself surrounded, the amusement he had been regarded with now turning into rage.
“Look at this child, thinking he’s a hero!” One of the men sneered.
William would argue that it wasn’t heroic, the deliberation in which he delivered his strikes—the satisfaction he felt in repaying every bruise on his father’s body with a slash of his sword. It wasn’t heroic, how he had one of the men acting as a shield, discarding him the moment he passed out. And it wasn’t heroic as well, the little regard he paid his own body, risking severe injuries for a better angle.
The scene quietened.
It surprised him a little, the monstrous edge to his anger. The haze that overtook his thoughts, only clearing as he dragged his battered, blood-soaked form to his father’s side, leaving a portrait of carnage in his wake, the men half-alive or frozen with fright.
“Father?” William called, collapsing before him, quiet and hoarse.
“He won’t be able to answer you for a time,” came a drawling voice behind him.
Turning around, William saw that he was surrounded once again, this time more than the previous. At the center of the new arrivals stood a man wearing the sort of clothes that could feed families for months in worth. A nobleman.
At the blank look William regarded him with, the nobleman tilted his head, smiling in fascination. It made William feel like a strange animal on display. “Make a deal with me, and you and your father will get out of this alive.”
That night, William became a Prisoner.
