Chapter 1

It was April. Rivulets of rain dripped down from the gabled roof over the porch. The spring showers had been persistent, battling with the mounting heat of summer upon the ground to evoke a sense that the downpour was both earthy and rejuvenating. Green hills and veiled, snow-capped mountains splayed out across the northern half of the horizon, and wooded plains haunted the southern portion of Hillsbrad. The promise of sunny skies to the north and ominous stormclouds above and to the south were commonplace at such a junction of the seasons. But it was best to leave the resolution of such conflicts to nature, for all the rural residents could do was pray for safe passage in this transitory part of the year...

A prominent, blemished nose took a breath from beneath that gabled porch, sucking deep the scent of wet wood and turned soil; cleansed air. The youth in possession of the great snout, near eighteen years of age, sought out wet cobblestones sparsely spattered in their frozen march between the aged wood of the deck and the road. An old brown overcoat settled upon his broad shoulders, clad in a white shirt and collar, and brown britches stuck closely to his legs and booted feet, the leather of those boots being cracked and stained with continuous use, but stout and sturdy. Upon his right shoulder hung a satchel with various small victuals, a change in undergarments, and a small number of coins gifted him by his father for his journey. Atop his short brown hair was an aged straw hat. By one name he was known to many as Bedrich, occupied while a boy as a gardener in the village of Hillsbrad, and son of a carpenter and a gifted but untrained seamstress, yet from either a trade was never acquired. Instead, as per his parents instruction, Bedrich was to depart with all due haste to the east into Arathi and then south all the way to Stormwind, where it was hoped he might come to use his intellect as a scribe, scrivener, or bookkeeper. Whether this was to brighten the boy's future and remove him from such a land whose safety was widely regarded as tenuous, or perhaps to lessen the burden upon his parents in their advancing years, the stork-like youth (in both countenance and disposition) was to lay on and that was that.

And so lay on he did; with the light squeak of leather and creak of wooden planks, after a last supper and goodbye kiss from mother, the fond farewell wave of father, he was off. Carefully navigating the stones, he trudged down the muddy path into town and toward the shambolically cobbled gate to the outside world. His pace was jaunty, quick, without fear; he had longed to leave such a static location, and until now his head had been in the clouds with dreams of monster-slaying and far-off lands. Deserts there were, and real jungles, too. What little legible reading there was at hand had taught him that it was indeed a very different place outside of the walls, and dangerous too. But one need only keep a level head and one would fare just fine. This much he had thought to be capable of. Armed with his trusty, rusty trowel, he had successfully jabbed at goblins, ghouls, and other nefarious creatures of the darkness under a warm and inviting summer sun, of course well-removed from prying eyes.

"Yet this is no time for play," He thought to himself, rounding a gentle corner toward near the gates. Indeed, it was instead time to test his mettle, to see what this world really was all about.

With the groan of the heavy oaken portal within the gate, his first glance at the outside world as an independent adolescent, greeted him with all the welcome it could. His feet placed in a firm stance contrasted the swallowing of anticipation and anxiousness in his throat, the pronounced Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as if to say, "Come on... We don't have all day... Come on..."

Upon pursing his lips into a thankful smile to the guard, he stepped forward and over the frame. His eyes were fixed upon the world ahead. With that step, he transitioned. He was no longer a boy, but neither was he a man. He chose a path from one of the more noticeable crossroads in life, passing from a dangerous limbo at the end of boyhood which either condemns someone to a life of little variation, or offers the opportunity to become something more than what they once were.

"How exciting!" The thought and wonder at the possibilities ahead had so eclipsed his senses as he also began the other, more noticeable transition from being grounded to being airborne, as his right foot caught the frame and sent him barreling into the muddy road and wide wilderness. With a laugh and a small, secretive wave of fond-wishes, the guard in the skullcap and chainmail at the gate closed the passage.