Recruited Mage Read Online Free Page A

“why-all-the-sleeping” questions. I answered them with lies, I couldn’t trust anyone. My story was that I wanted to climb a tree and I chanced upon the Uillioc, I was so happy I fell from the tree to the ground and was concussed. Only I knew the truth. I was passed almost half a leg of venison and I gulped down chunks as the stories began. The first was by one of the cooks, the one who had cooked the venison.
    “One of my ancestors fought in the Beast Wars. He was part of the first response who met the hordes at the mountains. Many, many died in the battle and the army was shredded but the hordes were stopped by the next Rally. The two armies met in a huge divide between the two mourn mountains. The armies just poured in their thousands into the valley. Our men got the advantage of time and managed to form up. They fought against huge beasts, from six to one hundred feet tall! The soldiers said that elves and dwarfs fought. The dwarfs used an mighty airship called Line Cracker.”
    “An airship?! ” A young boy shouted.
    “Yes; an airship that flew over the beast men’s heads, an airship whose bombs blew many hundreds of Beast Men apart.”
    “What are bombs?” The boy interrupted again.
    “A bag of fireshot powder that goes off when it hits the ground.” replied the cook, mimicking an explosion with his hands.
    “But fireshot powder was only invented a few years ago!” the boy said and there were mutters of agreement.
    “Yes for us it was , but the dwarfs invented a type many years ago but have refused to tell us. It is said that two million men died bravely as well as thirty-four dragons. We have recovered but no one in this empire has seen dragons for over a hundred years.”
    “You think a few dragons are more important than all our loss?” someone commented but the cook continued without answering.
    “Dragons haven’t been seen in this E mpire since the War but there are rumours that the Southern Empire is breeding them. Anyone believe the rumours that the Southern Empire is going to invade very soon?” There were many jeers but a lot of whispering.
    I stood and stretched my legs before the next man started his tale, my venison leg bone was almost devoid of meat. Did I really eat all that?
    The next man was short and round and had a large beard. “I used to work in the forest patrols around the Capital and once when we were patrolling in the forest, we came to a five foot round hole that looked like it used to have an wooden cover and steps leading down but all that was left was an odd rotten pole. Well, one of the men, called Andysen, wanted to climb down into the hole. We tried to check how deep it was by hurling down rocks but we heard nothing. Many of us wanted to just leave but Andysen insisted that we do our duty to find and remove any threats to the Capital, which, seeing as it was our duty, we had to do. He wanted to go in so we tied one end of a rope to a tree and the other end to him. He then descended into the pit. We heard him get further and further down until the line ran out. He shouted for us to pull him up, which we did, but when he was nearly out of the darkness there was a huge tug and all fourteen of us holding the rope almost went in. We all let go but whatever caused the huge tug pulled the entire tree still attached to the rope into the hole and blocked it. We were confused at what could have pulled an entire tree! We could do nothing for Andysen trapped underneath such a big tree. We split into two groups, one group stayed and the other, which I went with, went back to Rayne to get help. About fifty of men came back with us, probably not to help Andysen but to study the hole. We never found the hole; it was as if it had never been there. We hadn’t thought of leaving a trail or anything and we just couldn’t find it. Two days later the other group appeared with a bloody rope. They were all mad or something and they would never tell us what happened. The next day a group of