Realm

It's a realm split into seperate nations governed with an absulute monarchy, the story of several brave souls fighting there way through armies to make the land once again peaceful.

Preface

Alec Arthur Eugene Victor was different then all of the people who went about normal daily lives and such as his life was far from normal. He hunted people with bounties on their heads and followed his Master’s orders on what to do with them. He worked for an agency that worked for another agency that worked for the royal family, in Alec’s branch of the distant government they specialized in figuring out cases the current law enforcing idiots could not and in turn bringing criminals to justice, ‘The legion of Ogres’ as they had taken to calling themselves gave everything to the ‘Bloody Knights’ and retreated back to the shadows, so at the end of a case ‘legion of ogres’ was not given any appraisal for there hard work, we couldn’t have the Bloody Knights looking like buffoons in the eyes of the king now could we?

At the moment Alec, third bed down to the left as his superiors called him, was on his fifth case after floundering during the others he was determined to do well. He had learned a lot from the cases he failed so was sure this one wouldn’t be so bad.

            He grabbed his brown leather shoulder bag on the way out the door along with a thin sword he swung onto his back. He had recently gotten it from a well-known blacksmith in the South Hills, Alec lived in Wolves Den near the much disputed border between them and Myrtle, and silly land in his mind, Myrtle was the second biggest land in Porters Realm but due to the strange govern not much was produced nor really done there. It was the Kingdom of Slobs the South Hills on the other hand was full of skilled craftsmen and Alec had been waiting four weeks for that sword and it had come just yesterday, he had yet to do anything with it.

            His job was in the next town over, near the capitol of Wolves Den.  The person he was going to kill was a girl who had been slowly rising in her looting, it started with just small things like bread or such but she worked her way up undetected to armed robbery and the like. Alec didn’t know a thing about her except for her appearance and alias so he felt like a baby suddenly becoming an adult with no idea of how the world around him worked. But he didn’t have a choice in the matter so he got on his horse and started riding.

            By nightfall he had reached the town and was too tired to do anything but sleep, he was sure she wouldn’t hop town by tomorrow morning so he walked down to the tavern, a popular spot among drunkards and prostitutes.

            He walked in with his hood up and head down, it was bad to have someone recognize his face as said in article 4B of the shabby handbook that was passed around among beginners. Alec immediately recognized a friend of his a few seats down from him at the bar. He stood up and moved down, taking his things with him and Alec sat down next to the also hooded figure.

            Alec saw the man’s eyes shift towards him in a questioning way then the corners of his mouth turned up. “Alec.” The man said in a rough scratchy voice.

            “Sirius.” Alec said with a straight face, the two never faced each other when speaking and talked in low voices as was ordered by the agency.

            “What are you doing here in the town of wine?” Sirius asked, referring to the bottles of wine that littered the streets and surrounding areas, it was like the soot covered streets of the South Hills but bottles.

            “I’m here to retrieve someone of course.” Alec said with a smirk, keeping it short and to the point, he wouldn’t go into details about her in a public place like this, for all he knew she could be here.

            Sirius let out his wheezy laughter and gave a few small nods as a reply “Aren’t we all.” He said. Sirius was a pig of a man that smelled of one and ate as one, he barely skimmed the bottom when trying to do his job and barely made a living wage, he was horrible at it but had been in the business for three years because at the very least he didn’t die and he followed orders like a good little boy (pig). He was muscular and tall, bigger and drunker then most men around which gave him a reputation. He had horrible features and a crooked forever broken nose with a horrible point to it, some days it seemed Sirius might stab someone with his nose alone. So in short he was not a very well desired man especially in you factor in his hostility and violence, Alec could not remember how the two had become friends but to this day they still laughed and drank with each other often. “Listen, there’s a girl in here, been talking about how much money she has, flaunting it a bit, got a real nice necklace on and strange hair, looks like she colored it with something, she seems a little out of place here so I’ve been tailing her for a while, ever since East Port actually, she keeps stopping in one town for a night or two then moving on, it’s weird.” Sirius said with an even quieter tone of voice.

            “East Port?!” Alec said surprised “That’s all the way by the border to Eels!” Alec exclaimed, Eels or rather Kingdom of Eels was on the completely other side of Wolves Den, a straight line from where they were near Myrtle. Another strange thing is on the report of the girl Alec was following; her home town was right on the other side of the border of Eels, practically a village based off of the bigger city East Port. “Hey did she by any chance have a ring on, blue with a diamond bigger then your eye?” Alec asked and pulled something out of his bag, a clear vile that contained gray liquid, like murky water.

            “I didn’t see a ring on her but she was wearing a long hooded cape, like ours, her hand might have been hidden in it.” Sirius said and Alec nodded open the vile and downing it. The liquid smelled of urine and tasted of raw liver, a bad combination for something that had to be downed quite a bit.

            It was an illusion potion that gave him the appearance of someone else, he now looked like a young girl with long red hair, pretty too so he could easily get what he wanted, his sword disappeared from his back but if he needed it he had just to reach back and grab it than it would appear.

            Alec stalked to the back of the tavern to where the girl was sitting; she has masculine to say the least; broad shoulders, choppy hair that looked self cut, and tall, boarding on looming. Alec quickly sat down among all the people around her, mostly men that in turn probably thought she was a man. The armor she was wearing didn’t really help either. The description in the folder on her had definitely not been enough to describe but though you may be thinking this may not be the girl, but she did resemble the description a lot.

             Alec slipped into the crowd perfectly without anyone noticing but got a few eyes eventually, all perfect if he could draw attention away from her and onto him then that would give him more time to devise a plan on how he would get her out of here, the more attention they paid to her the less time he had before she decided to go off with one of them. Alec was desperately trying to pick out which one she favored out of the group of men but he couldn’t imagine any of the men favored her.

            Slowly his plan was slipping away as he realized that there would be no way to get her alone in this crowd of men, all of which were drunk.

            “ayyy were’n ya jusss at da bar?” Slurred one man, Alec could only take it to mean ‘hey, weren’t you just at the bar’ so he nodded or should I say she nodded? It’s a confusing situation. Alec nodded to the man, not speaking in fear of not meeting the pitch of a young girl.

            “Where’d the Hun’r go?” Another inquired and Alec almost cussed. Outside of this region the ogres weren’t very well known but so close to the base almost everyone would recognize the cloak of a hunter.

            Alec had suddenly found himself in a tight situation, he hadn’t considered that the men over here could be watching him just as easily as he was watching them; some of them were facing him directly. Although hunters were taught how to watch someone from a distance and up close without drawing attention to yourself they hadn’t said how to pick out people giving you sideways glances.

            He gave a slight look to his side, at Sirius who was still sitting at the bar, probably had a smirk on his face right about now. Maybe this was all just a test? Let the fresh blood try to get out of an unreasonable situation? But Alec of course thought that was absurd because no one in the Ogres had a sense of humor, at least no higher ups that laid out the trainings.

            “He was sitting over there just a second ago.” Said a slightly more sober man and Alec realized all of those thoughts had run through his head in just a second, his fear of leaving them hanging for to long had been covered up already.

            “I don’t know I didn’t see him.” Alec said with a very fake falsetto layering his voice, it made him sound like to young a girl or even a man if you thought about it, he prayed the men were still very, very intoxicated.

            The sound of a deep belly laugh could be heard then a putrid smell and a warmth on your face, like beer in the form of a gas could suddenly be felt around as a beer bellied man chugged his beer, his stomach round and pressing against his clothes like that of a pregnant woman’s stomach about six months in. “You all are right you don’t see him anymore, he could be any one of us now, he’s got any number of potions in that bag of his.” The man said, obviously used to be a hunter because the general public was not allowed access or information regarding magic in the lands.

            Alec let out a swear under his breath and a few eyes shot to him. “Is this ‘im?” A burly man slurred. 

            The girl with the bounty on her smirked, her eyes narrowing in the process. “You here for me?” She said with a sultry tone of voice, not very well pulled off by her. “Well I think we may just have a problem here.” She said and you could here the clink and clang of metal coming from the drunkards around her.

            “Wer not going to let you touch her, stupid hunters think they can just waltz in and take whatever they want, well let me tell you she’s ou-” The brave but foolish man was cut on mid sentence, not that anyone wanted to know what he was going to say next, as his head fell to the ground; this wasn’t Alec’s doing as he was still sitting quite comfortably in a chair next to another drunk, no Sirius stood behind Alec, bloody blade in hand.  

            All the men sitting around suddenly had a look of shock on there faces as the head hit the ground, like it finally got real. It soon turned into a full fledged fight to the death with swords being drawn every which way. Alec eventually drew his sword as well, the potion wearing off as he did so.

            It was an easy fight with Sirius; the man could be lethal if those were his intentions. The pair was outnumbered six to two but the fight seemed to be over in a flash, half the ‘men’ running away with there tails between there legs. Sirius had the girl pinned against the dirty back wall with his heavy iron sword.

            “You’ll pay for this.” The girl hissed at Sirius, successfully flecking spit all over him.

            “Well then you’ll be smiling down in hell.” He said and pushed the sword harder against her neck, breaking the paper white skin and drawing forth a deep blood.

            “Stop!” Alec suddenly said. “Keep her alive.” He continued, not that the orders said anything about what state to return her in it just seemed cruel to so mercilessly kill someone. Alec realized that he had chickened out of his first real job but kept a straight face while saying it, he would return to the ogres with her alive.

            Sirius threw a strange look at Alec but released her “She’s all yours, gotta get back to East Port anyway, never did finish that job.” He said with a cocky grin as he passed the still steaming girl to Alec. She was caught easily in Alec’s large hands and Sirius disappeared into the darker corner of the bar to do god knows what.

            And there he stood with a girl he only knew by description, about to transport her two days ride, but where those his true intentions? Or did he just not know his real feelings yet? 

Author's Note

What do you think? This is my first shot so don't hold back.