It was a hot summer morning when Egas, the lazy son of a local farmer, was still laying in his bed. While he wanted to turn over and continue sleeping, his father had something else in mind.

  “Get up, you lazy bum.”

  “Ugh… at least let me just lay here for another 30 minutes or so.”

  Egas’ father pulled away the blanket that enveloped him from head to toe.

  “Not under my roof. You are old enough to work on the field now, so you get up now and help out.“

  The nearly 13 year-old boy, with lavish, dark blonde, hair, a face like a statue made from marble by the Tona, green eyes and skin as white as ivory, was laying there, looking at his father. The expression on his face was a mix between tired and angry. When he looked around a little bit, though, the angry part of his expression quickly left. It was already bright outside and the birds were tweeting.

  The local noble’s family owned many fields, and Egas’ father was responsible for two or three of them. Egas didn’t really know, as he was either at home all day, or out to play with his friends. During the summer he ended up swimming every other day or so, which gave him a thin, but relatively muscular build. In the winter, he would rather play in the snow or skate on the frozen local river with wood under his feet.

  “You’ve grown up without doing anything in this household long enough. Now it is time for you to get out and help out in the field!”

  “Fine… but for how long?”

  “Depends on how quickly you finish what I need you to do today. I would guess about seven or eight hours?”

  “Ugh.”

  “No ‘ugh’. Get up now and get your breakfast.”

  “Fine, I will need the energy when out in the field. Speaking of, which field am I even supposed to help out with?”

  “The large field close to the mill.”

  “But that’s on the other side of the village.”

  “Well, they need help, and I am occupied somewhere else today.”

  “Fine… let’s go eat breakfast.”

  The table was laid out with multiple kinds of bread, a few sausages and some cheese. In front of each of the two chairs was a wooden cup with some milk and a cutting board with an egg on it. Additionally, there was also a basket of apples there.

  “You already prepared this much food?”

  “Well, since you didn’t get out of bed on time, what other choice did I have?”

  His father wanted to make Egas feel a bit bad for not helping. His plan had worked a little, but Egas’ thoughts wandered towards the meal in front of them.

  He sat down and took some bread and sausage. Before his father even got to sit down, he had already finished half of his bread.

  “Now slow down. You might be late but suffocating from eating won’t help anyone.”

  “But we rarely have food this expensive.”

  “Then eat slowly and enjoy. If you like something, you just stuff it down, but if you don’t, you continue to chew on it and taste it even longer? How does that make sense to you?”

  Well, his father had a point there, but Egas wanted to be finished with his work before the evening. Then he would at least be able to take a swim and maybe meet Adam, who he had been friends with for quite a while.

  “Could you make sure to be home before the sun sets? I have something to tell you later.”

  “Uhm… sure. I’ll try to be back by then.”

  Egas had to return to his home after working in the field anyway, as he wanted to swim later but didn’t want to take things he would need, like a large rag to dry himself or new clothes with him to work. If his father wouldn’t be home then, he’d just eat something quickly and leave again. He planned to ignore what his father said and stay outside until late. He could handle the consequences tomorrow or later that night.

  After eating, he walked out of the house and felt the summer sun shine on his skin. Even though he was as white as a ghost, he never seemed to get a sunburn by staying outside in the sun for long. When handling fire, he also didn't seem to get much pain from too much heat. With these temperatures, Egas could only think about how nice it was outside and what a waste it was to use this weather to work in a field.

  The only things he felt were somewhat uncomfortable during summer were the long days and the extremely humid air. Food would grow mould quickly, and the air became so thick that it was hard to breathe.

  The house was nowhere close to the village. In fact, their house was so far away that one could enjoy all the nature around. Close to the house was a large, magnificent, field full of lavender flowers, with three huge oak trees spread around the flowers. One of those oaks was right next to a large pond. That was Egas’ favourite place to just enjoy the day and do nothing but sleep or stare at the sky. Behind that field was a large village, which people rarely ever visit due to the dangerous wildlife and monsters that lived in the forest close to the village. It had been the cause of many a person going missing, but it had not been taken care of, as they didn’t deem it dangerous.

  A river was also not too far away from their house – a ten-minute walk if Egas didn’t hurry. The current of the river wasn’t too fast, so one could comfortably bathe or swim in it without much danger – that is, if one knew how to swim. Egas was one of the best swimmers in the entire village. Up until now, he had spent all his time swimming, if he wasn’t just lazily lying around while staring up into the sky.

  While many in the village called him lazy, he really didn’t care. Why would he? If one day his father died, he would probably take over the farm management of those three fields. Then he would have the option to let others do what he didn’t want to. He wouldn’t be rich, though. The nobles of this territory wouldn’t allow anyone to have even three percent of what they own, but he could eat, drink and sleep whenever he wanted.

  Usually, his mother would have taken over the fields, but she was gone before Egas even started to gain consciousness. His father loved to talk about how beautiful she was. Skin as fair as Egas’, hair as white as snow, and he always mumbled into his beard

  “A figure that could make any man happy.” According to him, they met on a nice spring day, when the flowers just started to bloom. She had knocked on his door while he was still asleep due to having worked late the day before. Annoyed, he got up and moved towards the door. When he opened it, according to what his father said, there was the woman of his dreams, but barely able to stand due to hunger and thirst. He had brought her inside and given her as much food as he could, but it was barely enough to get her on her feet again. After drinking four barrels worth of water, she went outside. He wanted to stop her until she was feeling better, but he couldn’t stop her from going. To his surprise, though, she returned a few hours later. This time she brought food with her – all of which was freshly hunted boar, deer and even wolf meat.

  She had asked him whether she could stay with him for a while, which he couldn’t say no to. After that he always skipped the story to after when Egas was born. That is when she told him she had to go. Egas never got to meet her, and she never got to meet him. Egas didn’t feel too sad about not knowing who she was, as he didn’t know her anyway, and was pretty sure that he would never meet her. Egas was also pretty sure that his dad was blinded by love and exaggerated a lot. A human could never eat and drink that much. And the prey she had hunted was probably just a bunny. If one had asked Egas about his father, he would have said something along of the lines of his father was beginning to get senile.

  While continuing his way towards the village and subsequently the field he had to work in, he looked at the sky more than he looked at the road. Pedestrians often just evaded others when they saw something like that, and horses and carriages were uncommon in this part of Menia. The houses around this part of Menia made it even more evident, that the people didn’t have the money for horses or carriages. They seemed to just be able to be blown over if a current of air had travelled through the village. The walls were made of wood, while it was at least not mouldy, the walls were just being kept in place by leaning onto each other. There were many holes in the walls, which led to mice and rats entering the houses, eating the people's supplies and making them sick. A lot of people owned cats or trained dogs to hunt down the pests, but not everyone could afford a cat or a dog. In fact, some couldn’t even afford to go to the tailor to get themselves new clothes. While the rich nobles walked around with new silken clothing, the peasants and serfs of this village walked around with the same linen shirt for years. Some of them didn’t have a new one since they had turned sixteen, it was evident from both size and condition of those clothes.

  Walking past the people, he could see more bone than flesh on their faces. The chin of many a man was so visible, Egas felt sick whenever he saw them. Their children usually ended up similarly to Egas in shape, a bit less muscle mass and flesh, though. This made sense, as the young people were the only way for them to feed themselves when, or rather if, they would get too old to work.

  Thinking about the misery of the village, Egas turned around a street corner. By now he was already past the village centre. Suddenly he felt something shoving him back, but he didn’t move an inch. Instead, Filian, the son of the lord of this land, was laying on the ground in front of him. His lackeys quickly surrounded Egas so that he couldn’t escape from Filian’s wrath. Filian got up.

  “Who do you think you are?”

  “A no one, my lord.”

  Filian was brushing his lush, blonde hair back into the right position with his hands.

  “That’s right. You aren’t even worth me calling out your name!”

  “You are right, my lord.”

  “But what do we do to a no one, that dares to stand in my way and make me fall?”

  Egas prepared for the worst. Filian was an absolute asshole. The only reason he was so high and mighty was his powerful father, the baron of Hena. If it wasn’t for him, Filian would have long been ditched deep in the forest, where he wouldn’t be found again. In fact, every time Egas saw Filian, he felt a mix between nausea and the need to punch this small fat boy in the face.

  “We will teach them a lesson.”

  Filian may have been small and fat, but he also had the punching strength of someone that had worked on the fields for the better half of their lives. It wasn’t even that uncommon for Filian to kill people with his, and his subordinates, punches in a fit of rage. This time around, Filian seemed to be in a rather joyous mood.

  Filian prepared a punch with his right fist, and BAM it hit Egas right into the pit of his stomach.

  As Egas fell to the floor, Filian called back his lackeys.

  “Let that be a lesson to you. Do not walk into me again, or else you might not be able to walk for months.”

  Egas knew that Filian was dead serious with this threat. If he didn’t evade him next time, he wouldn’t get away this lightly.

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  Well, lightly was not the right word. Egas was still laying on the ground, writhing in pain. While slowly regaining his ability to get up again, he felt a hand pull him up from behind.

  It was Adam, one of the very few people that was brawnier than Egas. The big difference between them, however, was that, while Egas got his muscles from swimming, Adam got them from working on the field. His face had many edges, that seemed untypical for his age, even a beard was sprouting from his chin. The hair he seemed to meticulously care for each and every day, wasn’t as long as Egas’ had been, and he had brushed it upwards, towards the top of his head. For years, Adam had fed his entire family. In that, he was the complete opposite of Egas and his attitude of not doing anything until asked.

  “Are you okay?”

  His voice sounded older than his age. It sounded as if he was something like 17, but he was barely a year older than Egas.

  “Yeah, I am fine.”

  “Are you sure? You still have your hand where you’ve been punched.”

  “Haha, very funny.”

  “Bu… but that wasn’t meant to be a joke.”

  “Trust me, I am fine. Where are you heading to?”

  “Well, I will be helping out in the field today. It is the harvest day for the large field close to the mill.”

  “Oh, you too?”

  “Yeah. Wait, your father didn’t allow you to ditch work today?”

  “…”

  Adam laughed hysterically, while Egas’ face turned slightly red.

  “Well, at some point it had to get to it, didn’t it? I mean, you are supposed to inherit your father’s position as the manager of a few fields. Can’t do that without any experience.”

  “I guess you are right, Adam, but couldn’t it have been a bit longer?”

  “Well, on the positive side, you will get to work in the same field as I do, so you at least get someone to talk with.”

  “I guess you are right in that.”

  Together, they walked the rest of the way towards the field. From the place where Egas met Filian, it wasn’t so far away any more. When they arrived, there was nothing but a golden field full of plants. To prepare him for what was in front of him, Adam gave Egas a quick introduction to what he had to do.

  “First, you take one of these things.”

  Adam was holding a farming sickle in his right hand.

  “Then you place your left hand on a clump of wheat and use the sickle to cut it as low down as possible.”

  For demonstration purposes, Adam cut down a section of wheat.

  “And then, follow me.”

  He walked towards a small hut at the end of the field.

  “Then you put it as far back in here as you can.”

  “That seems quite annoying.”

  “Trust me, the constant going down and getting up again is worse.”

  “I can believe that.”

  Egas got to work right away. He may not be considered diligent, but at least he wanted to get back to doing whatever he wanted as soon as possible. There was nothing he disliked more than this kind of strenuous work, but in the end he wouldn’t be considered too bad if compared to others that helped in the field for the first time. He grabbed, cut, gathering a decent stack and carried the wheat to the hut, then went back, grabbed, cut and brought more, and so on. During his noon break, his father came by once.

  “I had a little bit of time before I had to go to the baron. As the castle isn’t too far away, I wanted to make sure you were actually at work.”

  “Ey, as if I wouldn’t!”

  His father looked at Egas with a stern expression, who in return turned silent and looked at the ground.

  “Anyway, you seem to be not too bad at it.”

  “I guess not. I got Adam here, helping me sometimes with the carrying, but I’d say all is going well.”

  “That’s good to hear. At least I finally got you to do something. It wasn’t even that much work to get you to help here.”

  Egas once again stopped looking at his father and didn’t speak.

  “Here. You’re probably hungry. I brought you something. When you’re back later, I will have something delicious on the dinner table.”

  Egas got a bit excited.

  “What, if I may ask?”

  “That’s a surprise.”

  Egas was deep in thoughts about what it might be.

  “I will give you a hint, though. It has a lot of meat.”

  “Oooo, sounds good.”

  “It will be, trust me.”

  When Egas’ father left, Adam turned to Egas, who was currently eating bread.

  “You got it good.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Your dad seems to value you pretty highly.”

  “Huh? That old geezer does nothing but insult me all day!”

  “You’ll realise in the future. Trust me.”

  “I don’t think so, but whatever.”

  A few hours later, Egas was done with his quota. He was young and because of that still got the easy treatment.

  “Done for today?”

  “Yeah, and you?”

  “Same. Want to meet up in a bit?”

  “Sure. Where do you have in mind?”

  “Maybe the oak tree in the lavender field?”

  “Hmm… sure.”

  “So, I guess, we’ll see each other later.”

  “I guess so.”

  The way back home for Egas was pretty uneventful. He passed the same faces, which still seemed to be starving, the same houses which seemed to be falling apart, and the same uneven roads of dirt. While Egas walked back, he wasn’t in a hurry at all. The sun was still pretty high up. If he had to guess, it was around 3 P.M.. When he got home, his father wasn’t around. Because of the sweat that Egas had worked up throughout the day, he left towards the river to swim, right after getting a change of clothes and a large rag to dry himself afterward. When walking fast, the river wasn’t even seven minutes away from their house. When he arrived, he checked the water temperature. It wasn’t really warm, but one couldn’t have called it cold either. He stripped down after ensuring no one was close by. He felt uncomfortable when people were around when he swam butt naked. Even though the water wasn’t cold, Egas felt an instant wave of coldness flowing throughout his body. While going deeper into the water it got increasingly worse, which made Egas stop every few steps, until he got in the water up to his chest. After taking a deep breath, he let himself sink into the water. When he caught himself and got back up again, he started swimming without any goal in mind. It was just to clean himself and enjoy the time in the water. A little while later, the water felt comfortable. He got used to the water temperature quite quickly. While mindlessly swimming around, without him even realising it, the evening had begun. Judging from where the sun was at, it was about 6 P.M. now. Before going to the tree to wait - or maybe meet - Adam, Egas had to go back home to put his old clothes back on. For that though, he had to get out of the water. Quick temperature switches were really the only times Egas was susceptible to temperature at all. Else, he would feel comfortable no matter if it was hot or cold outside, but felt less fit and always tired when it was cold outside.

  Getting out of the water, a decently warm gust of air came. While, for the time being, it felt hot to Egas, he still liked that. When he got to his large rag, which he used as a towel, he dried himself off and wrapped it around his upper chest in a way that covered down to his feet.

  Before he put on his clothes, he wanted to let the warm air and sun dry him completely. Putting on clothes while his skin was even slightly wet from swimming or bathing was quite uncomfortable. So he just laid down on the grass with the rag still wrapped around him. Considering the temperature, Egas didn’t have to wait long to have dried down completely. After that, he put on his clothes and took a wooden brush to brush his decently long hair and returned to his house.

  Back inside, his father was nowhere to be seen. The table in the kitchen was decorated with a small piece of paper with some weird drawings on them. To the extent Egas could guess from being used to this form of communication, it was supposed to mean something along the lines that Egas should go ahead and eat and that he had to go somewhere important.

  In front of himself, Egas found a large, still slightly warm, chicken that had been roasted whole and then cut into two pieces. Additionally, there were some potatoes as a side dish too. Egas, who had not eaten something this fancy in a while, made sure he understood that drawing correctly. It was a tedious thing to decipher over and over, but as neither of them had the ability to read or write, this was their easiest means of communication. And after checking once again, he was sure he understood it correctly. Egas sat down and ate the entire chicken. It was a large chicken with lots of meat and not much fat. Less than fifteen minutes later, he had finished the entire dish. The meat of the chicken was chewed down to every single bone. Because his father had left already, Egas thought it would be fine if he left and met Adam now too. He felt stuffed from this meal, but on his way out towards the oak, he packed in an apple as a dessert. Walking towards the oak, Egas didn’t see Adam anywhere. Had he already left again, or was he not here yet? Egas sat down under the oak and suddenly felt pretty tired, and the sitting quickly turned into laying down. He bit into the sweet apple and soon after fell asleep, still having that piece of apple in his mouth.

  When Egas opened his eyes again, everything was calm nearby. Looking around a little, it was already nighttime. Had Adam really not been here yet? Preparing to get up and go back home again, Egas felt like he had been hit by a lightning bolt. The only movement that followed could be described as Egas collapsing. He fell on his back and couldn’t move any more. The next thing that happened was a slowly growing pain spreading all throughout his body. It felt like he was being torn apart and pressed together at the same time. At times, it even felt like he was being tortured by severe electric shocks, ones a normal person couldn’t handle. It started with his hips. While Egas didn’t have control over his body, he tried to move his hands towards this pain, but they wouldn’t obey him. It felt like it was ballooning more than his body could withstand. Next, it moved towards his waist. There it was the opposite. It felt like it crushed his organs under the pressure a diver would feel in the deep sea.

  Then it moved to his chest and his thighs. Both had the same inflating sensation attached to them. It was less painful than his hips, but it still hurt a lot. Thoughts were racing through his head, and he thought he would die. This pain, and him not being able to move anything, were sure signs of his body falling apart.

  The pain moved towards his lower legs and feet, where he felt a slight crushing sensation, but less so than the hips had experienced. But before the pain in his legs had fully subsided, it halted in his back. Close to his spine, it felt like something was piercing the skin of his back. The same with his lower spine. Where Egas could feel the end of his spine, he first felt a tingling, before it too felt, as if something had pierced through his skin there.

  By now, Egas had cold sweat all over his face. If one held a piece of paper to his forehead, it would be none the dryer, while the paper would have been soaked.

  After that pain subsided, he didn’t have much time to catch a breath, as next his neck felt as if it was compressed into the size of a tall cup. For a short time he couldn’t breathe any more. No matter how much air he tried to pull in, none would get in. After what felt like minutes for Egas, but really were no more than ten seconds, he got some air again. He breathed deeply in and deeply out. Cursing inside his head about this tremendous pain.

  What felt weird next were his arms and hands, feeling as if they’d gone numb. This weird, not feeling anything but an itchy feeling, drove him mad, while he still couldn’t move. But he didn’t have time to be mad before it also extended onto his head. While his face had the same sensation as his arms and hands, he felt like he had two hotspots of a migraine. One on the top right on his forehead, and one on the top left. He closed his eyes from this intense pain.

  When the pain subsided throughout his body, he still hadn’t regained the ability to move. He lay there in the grass under the oak, helplessly, without any movement.