Eldonia was split up into four neighboring kingdoms. King Xirus ruled Rio de Arena in the north, and the exotic Empress Mileani presided over Greenjai in the east. Far to the south was the inhospitable state of Okwretch, overseen by the dwarf Lord Tholomar. And in the west, under the rule of King Phillip and Queen Elladonna, stood Windcastle. Under Phillip and Elladonna’s reign, a golden age existed for nearly two decades with the neighboring kingdoms. In those days, the world was a good place.

On the eighteenth year into Phillip’s rule, Elladonna and the Princess Shiloh set out from Caperthia City on the Surrey Cross Road to visit their neighboring kingdom to the north, Rio de Arena. It was a mild winter that year, with only a thin layer of snow on the ground. A solar eclipse was scheduled to occur in three days, but they were expected to reach their destination long before then.

Accompanying the queen was General Kurtwood Brickton, the accomplished commander of the royal military. His massive frame looked impressive on his tan battle horse, as if he was posing for the statue that would someday commemorate his legacy in the royal courtyard. These days, however, his face was beginning to betray his age. But despite the battle scars he bore and the lines deeply buried in his face, no man commanded more trust and confidence than Brickton. As always, he took the lead as the royal carriage slowly moved through the forest. Four of his most loyal knights rode matching black stallions behind the caravan. They had dedicated their lives to defending the members of the royal family, but they expected no trouble on this journey.

Offering even greater protection was the charismatic Scimyran Zaun, the court Sorcerer. Zaun had always spent far too much coin on fine clothing, especially for a man with such a pallid complexion, undernourished physique and tragically thinning hair. He cut a scrawny figure atop his horse, surveying the horizon for trouble, while occasionally trying to peek into the caravan window to catch a glimpse of the Queen. In the carriage, bundled under several thick blankets to protect her from the cool late winter morning winds, was Elladonna, the radiant Queen of Windcastle. She was a gentle woman with compassionate eyes, full lips and copper hair. No monarch in her country’s history had enjoyed more affection and love from the people than she, and her acts of kindness and charity consistently showed her appreciation for their loyalty.

Sitting next to the Queen, taking in every strange sight along the way, was the eight-year-old Princess Shiloh. Against Elladonna’s constant urging to remain seated, the little princess kept tunneling out of the nest of blankets to take another look at the landscape through the carriage window. Shiloh was rarely allowed to leave the comfortable, yet confining area of the castle, and she didn’t want to miss the rare opportunity to see new lands.

This was a significant diplomatic errand for the royal family. Princess Shiloh had been betrothed to marry King Xirus’s son, and this would be the first day the two children would be formally introduced. Prince Taaht was only a few years older than Shiloh, so the marriage would not happen for several years. But the two monarchs were eager to begin the first of many meetings between the two children, in the hopes that a friendship would quickly blossom into a strong relationship later. Not far into the journey, the group traveled through a patch of forest that lay close to a centaur tribe. Here, where the forest canopy was so thick that very little sunlight found its way to the earth, Zaun stiffened in alarm and he began violently waving his hands for the party to stop.

General Brickton didn’t see any danger, but the court sorcerer wasn’t known for startling easily. The road was narrow and winding here, with thick trees and rocky terrain on either side. The carriage driver had no room to turn the coach around, nor could he pick up any real speed. Potentially, this could be a trap. Brickton craned his neck to look at the carriage driver behind him, and motioned for him to slow down.

Elton Vesper, the portly little man behind the reigns of the horses, brought the carriage to a stop. As the coach came to a halt, the only noises to be heard were from the breathing of the steeds. There was an unnatural stillness throughout the forest, they all realized. There should be a symphony of animal noises, but it was unnervingly devoid of sound.

After a few moments, Brickton guided his horse to take a few tentative steps forward. He scanned the road ahead, not sure of what he was looking for. If something was out there, it was expertly avoiding detection.

Moments passed without incident, and he finally exhaled and signaled his lieutenants to stand down. There didn’t seem to be any danger, although Sorcerer Zaun was still watching the trees cautiously. For his part, Elton Vesper was nervously sipping from a silver flask. Brickton made a mental note to reprimand the driver later for imbibing while operating the royal coach.

The Queen pushed her head through the window, hoping to get a better view of whatever was causing the delay. “General Brickton? What’s happening?”

“Please, your majesty, keep your head in the carriage,” Brickton advised, dismounting his horse. He approached the sorcerer, trying to stifle the frustration at how his odd behavior was putting the entire party on edge. “Sorcerer! What did you see?”

“I saw movements, behind the trees,” Zaun reported. “Something is out there, General.”

“Could it be robbers?” one of the lieutenants suggested.

“They aren’t here to steal your purse,” Zaun shot back, getting louder. “It’s a goblin horde. We must prepare to defend ourselves!”

“Shiloh, come away from the window,” the Queen decided, vanishing back into the shadows of the coach with her child.

“You’re upsetting the royals,” snarled the General. “Goblins haven’t been spotted in this country since King Nazelbuck was killed. This is the domain of the centaurs now.”

“Almost as bad,” Zaun muttered under his breath, but a whistling sound cutting through the air prevented anyone from hearing the remark.

In the next moment, an object quickly approached them, gliding through the air. The youngest lieutenant noticed it only soon enough to flinch, before it severed his head from his shoulders. The scythe blade had been flung from nearly fifty feet away, with terrifying accuracy, before embedding itself into the door of the carriage. As the unfortunate knight fell to the ground, his arm remained gripped like a vise around the reigns of his horse, and he pulled the animal down into the dirt. There could be no further doubt now.

Goblins!

Slightly smaller than an average human, but far more agile and vicious, a group of the creatures broke the silence with screams and howls. Wearing no armor other than discarded shreds of leather garments, and carrying weapons of scavenged bone and steel, the foul green creatures raced through the snow, dashing towards the carriage with suicidal intensity.

Brickton saw only four at first, but then four more, then another group joining them from the east. In an obviously calculated assault, they realized they had been surrounded!

Zaun seemed unimpressed by the approaching creatures, and began to wave his hands. He started reciting an incantation in a language that Brickton had never heard before. When he was finished, wispy streams of fire flew from his hands, hurling through the air like a catapult, and crashing violently in front of the largest groups of goblins.

Many of the goblins were able to dodge the projectiles, but a few unlucky ones were hit square in the chest by Zaun’s magic. These unfortunate creatures screamed pathetically before bursting into a violent explosion of amber flames. It was black magic, to be certain, but it gave Brickton’s his men the distraction they needed.

“What are you waiting for, you fools?” snarled Zaun. “I can’t continue this forever! Save the Queen!”

Brickton drew his crossbow and took aim towards the closest goblin, firing an arrow towards its head. He watched the arrow fly through the goblin’s skull, making it spin wildly in its last breaths before collapsing to the ground.

It was a clean shot, but it did little to reassure the general. The next goblin charged towards him, demonstrating their complete lack of fear of death. Two more goblins leapt over the corpse of their fallen comrade, disregarding their own safety.

Zaun let loose a barrage of fiery assaults once again. The goblins had obviously not expected to run into such resistance, and as they scattered to avoid being burned by the fire, they began to fall to the steel and the shafts of the knight’s arsenal.

It was a small force of goblins, numbering about twenty. A few of them threw themselves at Brickton and the other knights, but several were racing directly for the carriage. It became apparent that the goblins had set their sights on Elladonna. This was an organized ambush.

“Tighten the circle,” the General called out, stepping closer to the coach. “They’re after the Queen. They will have to go through us!”

The three surviving lieutenants roared in agreement, watching the next wave of goblins carefully as they began to move towards them. Zaun unleashed more fire to limit the movements of the goblins, herding them into the swords of the knights. Elton Vesper, upon seeing the next wave of goblin warriors stampeding towards them, passed out next to his whiskey flask.

The goblins may have outnumbered the soldiers from Caperthia City, but surprise was the only real weapon they had in their arsenal. Some of the goblins tried throwing their axes, but the men weren’t so easily surprised this time. Each projectile was deflected with a well-timed swing of their swords. Each goblin that reached the carriage, trying to claw their way into the vehicle, found itself impaled at the edge of a blade.

One particularly vicious goblin tried to clear a path for his fellows by jumping on the back of the knight closest to the carriage door. The nearest knight dropped his weapon and forcibly pulled the goblin away, but not before its claws dragged a deep bleeding gash across the man’s cheek. It gave another creature enough time to put his hands on the door of the carriage, but General Brickton cut him in half before he could reach his prey.

There were only a half-dozen goblins left by this point, and the surviving knights had suffered only superficial wounds. Between Zaun’s magic, and the valiant heroism of Brickton’s men, they were certain that a decisive victory would soon be theirs.

The facts of what happened next would become well known, but why it happened remained a mystery for years. As the battle continued, General Brickton heard the thunder of galloping hooves coming over the eastern side of the trail. The sound brought a fresh surge of dread to his heart. Did the goblins have reinforcements? To his knowledge, these monsters didn’t use horses for anything other than the occasional meal.

A row of human faces appeared over the horizon a few seconds later, but Brickton had no idea who they might be. There was no encampment of knights anywhere near this area, and they were several miles away from Caperthia City. Who were they?

It was one of the lieutenants that identified them first. He wasn’t looking at their faces, but rather the horses they seemed to be riding. He was the one that first noticed they weren’t riding horses at all.

“Centaurs!” shouted the wounded lieutenant. Zaun twirled his face in their direction, becoming even paler than his usual sallow tone.

Not generally regarded as hostile creatures, the centaurs were a secluded, isolated race that rarely traveled anywhere the humans marched. Goblins and humans alike stopped fighting momentarily as they quickly approached. Brickton wondered if their presence was a coincidence, or were they here to help? He wasn’t sure if he was going to like the answer.

The sorcerer turned towards these new intruders, angrily screaming in panic. “No!! You’ll ruin everything!”

The lead centaur, armed with a bow and arrow, aimed his weapon at the humans. “The human sentry was telling the truth! There he is!!”

With unnerving accuracy, he pierced Zaun’s arm just below the left shoulder. Distracted by the pain, the sorcerer crumpled to the ground, unable to continue casting his spells. With Zaun out of the battle, the surviving goblins renewed their attacks, now rampantly attacking both humans and centaurs alike.

General Brickton swung his broadsword at the closest goblin, forcing the creature to retreat a step. He risked a moment to bark an order at the sorcerer. “Sorcerer! Stand and fight, man!”

Zaun pulled the heavy arrow from his shoulder, howling angrily as the bloody shaft dropped from his fingertips into the dirt. With a barely audible voice, he spoke a new set of unfamiliar words—and vanished from view.

The general had never seen such sorcery before, and he stood stunned for two seconds, trying to digest the sight of a man vanishing into nothingness. That single heartbeat of time gave the closest goblin a chance to bury his blunt metal axe into Brickton’s neck. A long and illustrious career of valiant deeds and successful campaigns ended that day when his body hit the ground, leaving a morbid snow angel outlined by ice and blood.

With the general dead and the sorcerer abandoning them, the battle was lost. The goblins were attacking any human that moved, while trying to fend off the charge of the centaurs. When the humans offered no further resistance, the surviving goblins concentrated on surviving the unexpected centaur attack. A few centaurs were killed, but the goblins had already been worn down in the attack on the humans. Against the raging ferocity of the centaur attack, the last of the goblins had no chance.

When it was over, the centaurs searched the area for Zaun. But he had vanished during the battle, and they didn’t wish a further confrontation if reinforcements arrived. They vanished back into the woods, and silence and darkness once again fell on the snowy battlefield.

Elton Vesper, the drunken carriage driver, was the only confirmed survivor of the assault. He returned to the city, bloody and traumatized, to mournfully tell the tale of what had happened. A company of knights was immediately dispatched, where they found a heartbreaking scene. General Brickton and his knights were all found dead, mingled with the many dead bodies of goblins and two centaurs. Scimyran Zaun had vanished entirely.

Queen Elladonna had been butchered by the goblins.

The Princess Shiloh, the promising future monarch of the kingdom, had been reduced to a handful of small, bloody scraps of gown. In one dark sweep, King Phillip’s family had been ripped away from him.

There was no doubt that the Goblin Queen had sent her minions to attack them. While some on King Phillip’s council advanced the notion that the centaurs and the goblins had allied together, there was no solid proof. Nevertheless, a poisonous cloud of prejudice towards the non-human species of Eldonia began to form.

Elton Vesper was cleared of any wrongdoing, but he and his family were dismissed from the royal court, and they retired in disgrace to a small town in the southeast. He could offer no information as to the whereabouts of the royal sorcerer. Many assumed that Zaun had been dragged away by the goblins or the centaurs. Eventually, the King appointed a new sorceress to fill his shoes, one who commanded even more power than Scimyran Zaun had.

Life grew darker still in Windcastle. The wedding between Shiloh and Taaht could never happen now and the alliance was broken. The King, a heartbroken man, became increasingly secluded and distant. Relations between the other states began to degrade.

The site where the Queen and the Princess met their deaths became known as Despair’s Corridor. It would forever be known as the location where Glanconda the Goblin Queen declared war on humankind.

For ten years, the kingdom began to spiritually decay. Fearing that the monarchs of the neighboring countries would invade, King Phillip invested more resources into the upkeep of his swelling military force than he did in the well-being of his subjects. This led to a country on the brink of revolution, ready to rise up against a king who had lost touch with his people.

And then, when the kingdom’s mood seemed darkest, an unexpected announcement was made. King Phillip, on the advice of his new court sorceress, was going to sponsor a tournament. Only eight would participate, but anyone in the kingdom would be permitted to enter their name into the list of candidates: knights, champions, the middle-class, the mercenaries, the criminals, the insane, the non-humans and the lost souls. Anyone.

The winner would be given a fortune in gold and a seat on the King’s council.

For the first time since the King’s wife and daughter were murdered, the country had something to get excited about. The most skeptical dismissed the tournament as a sly tactic to quell the growing fires of revolution in the kingdom, and perhaps it was. But for the first time in years, the rabble-rousers and demagogues were in the minority. There was a passionate excitement in the kingdom once again.

Who would be participating in the King’s Tournament?

Read on for the next chapter - THE BARBARIAN

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