1 He who walks

Finally Henry had fulfilled his debt towards the forest village leader. He grabbed the straps of his brown leather bag and adjusted them slightly. The young man looked back at his home one last time before turning away, taking the very first step on his journey. Right after that, he took another step after the first, and another, and another, and another.

He walked.

And he didn't stop either. Because he had literally just started. It wouldn't have been a journey if he already stopped now. You'd call that a stroll. Henry wasn't a stroller. He was a man who walked.

Name: Henry. Age: 22. Filled to the brim with: Determination. Occupation: None right now but fond of walking.

Young people leaving the village to experience the vastness of the world for themselves has become something of a tradition. It's mostly the opposite of a tradition since it's a recent phenomenon and traditions are, well, things that have long been established. Either way. Such details aren't important in the face of the raw emotions you could experience here.

Proud fathers standing upright, brimming with pride. Mothers wiping away their tears with beautifully embroidered cloth handkerchiefs, their lips trembling. Those were the sights you could see when their children set off on their adventure. All grown up.

Rose tinted glasses aside, reality was more bleak. Who would want to actually stay out here? There was nothing here for young people. Hell, by now there were barely any young people left. They all set off on their adventures to experience the world of.. a job in the city. Where there were actual jobs.

Usually people would embark on their adventures when they were a few years younger. Many of them at 17 to enroll at the Academy of Magic. Or at 16 if they wanted to become an apprentice in the city.

Henry would have loved to do so as well but he had his circumstances. Namely he promised himself to pay the village leader back for the help he had received years past. While he had frequently been impatient to set out, he also knew that he learned various valuable lessons that would help him on his journey going forward.

For one, Henry had learned to persevere. One of the first assignments he had received at the age of 14 was to work under the village's blacksmith, Lennard. A middle aged man with rough features, that's who Lennard was. His skin darkened and leathery due to the years of exposure to heat from the forge's coals. Just because his helper was still young didn't mean he held back assigning him tasks.

On the very first day a massive shipment of ore arrived from a village in the north at the foot of the Kandelor mountains. Henry's first job was to carry it all from the village's entrance all the way halfway up the steep hill where the forge was located.

If you're thinking that it hardly makes sense to have a forge halfway up a hill then you're completely right. The village planners mistakingly swapped the location of the forge and the look out. That lead to the settlement frequently getting attacked by the Kobolds roaming about. Usually they were easy to deal with as a well positioned look out would spot them ahead of time and provide ample time to prepare and repel the attack. But alas, bureaucracy had gotten in the way of things.

Village history aside, Lennard knew the task would require around a week to be carried out. At the time Henry hadn't learned the importance of common sense yet however. Because of that he started running back and forth between the storehouse next to the forge and the village gate, carrying unhealthy amounts of ore on his back.

As the day progressed, Henry's pace slowed down from a run to a jog. While the amount of ore within the storehouse kept rising, Henry's pace kept falling. When the sun was about to set and Lennard had just finished an absolutely massive, terrifying battle axe made from only the finest steel, Henry could be seen approaching him in the metal's reflection. He was walking towards Lennard.

At that moment Lennard couldn't help but to feel that something about Henry had changed. The way he walked was a thing of beauty. There were no unnecessary motions. His stride was perfect.

He remembered how Henry had ran to greet him in the morning. That was the last time he ever saw Henry run.