• He lived on a regular street, went to a regular school, had a regular old family, and lived an absolutely, positively normal life. But Taelus Maderen was definitely NOT a regular boy.
    It was a bright afternoon in the grassy area of the planet where the proud empire of Dremora stood its ground, surrounded by the demonic forces of the Acralyn, who’ve battled fiercely with mankind for all recorded time. They come in all shapes and sizes, and aren’t exactly social creatures. They despise and loathe every living thing that opposes them (which just happens to be every living thing) and hope to rule all of us, and presumably the whole world, some day. These evil beings are what take up almost half of the school history textbooks, though almost nothing is actually known about them. The thing about that is, the lack of knowledge about the Acralyn just makes them all the more scary.
    The fact that war was happening all around him did not flow through Taelus’ mind during his engineering class with Sir Kalion, just as it hadn’t during all of his other classes. The only thing that occupied his brain right now was the thought of the end of the school day, this being his last period. Only the smallest fraction of his thoughts were actually focused on his middle-aged teacher’s lecture on hydraulics. The rest of his thoughts were centered on fantasies that would come true in 30 minutes time, fantasies of skirmishing with his friends and looking through old spellbooks, mesmerized by all the enchantments he knew he would never be able to do, since he wanted to be a knight when he was an adult, like his older brother who was fighting in the war between the Dremorans and the Acralyn.
    Sir Kalion’s lecture must’ve ended, because he snapped out of the trance he seems to go into during lectures and noticed that Taelus hadn’t been paying attention.
    “Taelus!” Cried Sir Kalion, “Who invented the mechanical staff?”
    Oh great, a random question. Who cares about this stuff? It’s not important to a future knight like me, thought Taelus as he woke from his daydreams. “Uhhh, Landiar Jandis?” Taelus stared blankly at his teacher. He knew his answer was wrong.
    “Incorrect”, said Kalion with a stern look on his face and an equally stern tone to his voice, “Oxius Munzier invented the mechanical staff.”
    He replied in a half sigh, “Ohhh”
    “Okay class”, droned Sir Kalion, running his hand through his ash-speckled grey hair, “dismissed.”
    As Taelus stepped out of the petite Fortius St. School his shaggy ginger hair and and pale skin were much more visible than they were in the dim classrooms of his school. Though he was not as cheerful as he thought he would be. For some reason he was uneasy. It was bothering him, but he tried to shake off his feelings and join in a game a few kids were playing. They appeared to be playing War, half the kids being Dremorans and half being Acralyn. Taelus pretended to be a Dremoran knight, not daring to even pretend to be an Acralyn. After a few minutes, Taelus’ mind started to drift away.
    Why am I so down? he thought. Then as he looked up he saw a boy in front of him with short blonde hair and a smirk on his face wave an arm toward him and make a more or less realistic ripping sound.
    “You’re dead!” He intoned in a high voice. Taelus didn’t care all that much, since he wasn’t in the mood to play anyway. So he started to trot down the cobblestone roads that led to his small house.