Eritance - Chapter 3

By the time Orin dragged anteleer all the way back to his home, while doing his best to cover the track and the scent of anteleer blood, realized it took him all night to make it back. “Agh! I have to work in the fields today, I won’t have any time to enjoy fresh anteleer meat!” he lamented. “Oh well, I have just enough time to drain the blood and organs before I have to get ready to go.and then tonight I can feast!” Orin thought with a bit of drool escaping from his mouth. After a quick breakfast of gruel and a bit of two-day old bread, Orin set off to the fields. The fields were ready for ploughing at this point, and it was not something Orin was looking forward to doing. However, as Orin was poor, he had no choice but to break his body under the sun for the rich Somers family. In truth, Orin owed everything to them, if not for them he wouldn’t have this hut, small and dilapidated as it was. Orin sighed somewhat resentfully though, as he knew that, this same family that was keeping him alive by giving him work, was also tying him to the land through the debts he owed them for renting the hut, and the meager supplies he was given for survival each month.

It was then that Orin remembered the mysterious box that he had found the day before. Taking it out carefully, he was once again mesmerized, by it’s beautiful design. “If it’s this-maybe I can cover my debts and finally strike out on my own” Orin thought to himself. However, Orin realized that their might be an even more valuable treasure inside that could he could sell for ten lifetime’s worth of meat. “I’ll hold on to this for now.at least until I can figure out how to open the box”. With that Orin set off to plough the Somer family fields.

The day was particularly hot, and there were no clouds to be seen in the sky. The sun beat down mercilessly on Orin as slowly pressed the mule and plough in front of him on. Slowly, but surely, small and neat rows of ploughed land began to form throughout the day. “At this rate, I’ll be able to finish the ploughing within 3 months” Orin mumbled to himself. The Somer family had ten farms that equaled out to about one hundred acres. As such, they had many smaller families working under them for survival. In fact, it could be said that the Somer family was an unofficial noble family with the immense amount of wealth they were able to collect through farming. Each year they were able to send a large quantity of crops and animals to the emperor and ensure that they would get preferential treatment when it came to the emperor’s army defending the village.

“Hey! Quit slacking and pull your head out of the clouds. There is work to be done!” a familiar voice echoed from the distance. The voice of course belonged to Ross, one of the other people who were tasked with working the same field as me. “It seems you’ll be needing a good thrashing to remind you to work hard” Ross said to me as he cracked his knuckles. Ross was a beast of a man, he had bronzed skin, short hair, and a burly beard. This is not to mention that he seemed to have the strength of three men in one. He was older than me by more than ten years, and he had been working at Somer field for as long as I could remember. Due to this long period of service, he had taken on somewhat of a supervisory or mentor role for me. Even though he was usually hard on me, and eager to give me a thrashing, we were cut from the same cloth. He lived alone without a family, just as I had always done. In many ways, I viewed him as an older brother, of course, I would never tell him this.

“Yeah, yeah, I know I know” I groaned as the thought of being beaten motivated me to work harder. “Well, if you know, then why are you needing me to remind you?” Ross quipped back with a rib shattering pat to the back. “Gyaaaah!” I inadvertently shouted, as the breath was knocked out of my lungs. “I see you still haven’t gotten any stronger if such a light tap worries you so” laughed Ross heartily. As I caught my breath, I thought that perhaps Ross would have some sort of method of opening the box. “Hey Ross, when I was hunting in the forest, I found something-” I started saying but then was interrupted by Ross “hopefully you found a backbone ha ha ha!”. Ross felt very pleased with himself for coming up with that joke. “Are you finished?” I tersely replied. “I really want to get your opinion on something, you see-I found a treasure”. At the mention of treasure Ross immediately sobered up and asked me to show him. Taking out the box from my leather bag, I handed the box over to Ross and he immediately began to inspect the box carefully “ah-this is…” I leaned forward in anticipation, “a really nice-looking box ha ha ha!”. “…” I paused waiting for him to stop messing around. “I can’t figure how you open it, but I bet it would sell for a fair amount of coin, this wood is quite old”. “Well thanks Ross, but even I knew that much” I started to say, but just as we started getting into it a loud roar was heard from the nearby forest “guoooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!”. Suddenly, a giant spine bear burst through the tree-line and rushed towards us. “What?! Why is a spine bear here?? They don’t usually come close to the village, let alone into it!” roared Ross, “run to the village, and get help!”. “The bear must have picked up the scent from my anteleer that I dragged back” I shouted. In that moment, the spine bear drew ever closer to where we were standing. “What are we going to do??” I shouted.

Here we are introduced to Ross and learn a bit more about Orin’s village