HELM

SOMEWHERE IN THE REALM OF BOARAM…

It was a long road before the Rocke boys collapsed for a bit of sleep. Torluk did not know their exact distance from the oncoming army, but he had concluded that haste was the only option.

            “Master! Three figures approach from the east,” Wilben, another wizard, said from the head of their group.

            Within moments, Breker and Wilben had their weapons raised, and a small band of rough travelers came into view. They were the broadest Boaramites the boys had seen yet, and it was clear that their weapons had seen blood. The wizards at their front already had spells charging within their palms, and the Rocke boys were fumbling for their weapons, but Torluk paid little mind to the oncoming strangers.

            “Now, now. Weapons down, my friends,” he said.

            When the two groups met in the middle of the dusty path, not could be heard but the heavy footsteps of the barbarians, and the sands gliding along with the wind by their feet. The three circled Torluk’s group with their weapons raised.

            “Your valuables…or your lives!” A woman grunted. She looked to be a sort of leader of their bandit expedition. She spoke in the common tongue. The other two, one male and one female, wielded a spear in one hand and a war axe in the other - jabbing in the direction of their prey.

            Breker and Wilben glanced back at Torluk before digging into their supplies. The grand wizard stood motionless, a smile stuck to his face.

            “There will be no need for any brouhaha, courageous marauders,” he said with arms crossed behind his back. The white mustache twirled up his cheeks.

            The leader grunted in his direction, jabbing at the group with her extended battle axe. The piercing, iron head was nearly touching Breker’s robes. His hands itched to rummage through his belongings and toss anything away in sacrifice.

            “Valuables on the ground! Only choice!” she yelled.

            “Gobbledygook! The choice is much more than one. You could lower your arms. We could attempt to run. You could give us all of your valuables. We could all lower our arms and tell each other stories. The choices are endless, theoretically.”

            “No talking!”

            “We could do that too. In fact, there are an indescribable number of things we could do.”

            The weapons were scratching at their skin now, slowly pressing deeper and deeper.

            “What we must do, however, is consider what is the best of these choices, no?”

            “VALUABLES ON THE -”

            “Remove your weapons from my companions. That would be your best option,” he removed his arms from behind his back. “This is because, although we do not know that you are capable of, you certainly do not know what my group is capable of either. Mathematically, you would lose this battle. I count six of us and two beasts, while there are only three of you.”

            The spears began to back from their skin.

            “Not only that, but I see fewer than ten weapons on your people, while you do not know what we may have under our robes.”

            The grimace across the woman’s face grew darker and darker with each of his words.

            “You are users of melee weaponry, while we have harnessed the power of the stars, and our magic is unpredictable. We might only be able to zap you with a bit of static, or I could raise from the dead an army. You could find out what we have in store for you, but again, this is only one of your many options.”

            Their spears were almost completely lowered by this point, but they remained bold and vicious.

            “The option I would suggest, if it is supplies you are after, is asking us for some assistance. I can tell you that we have some provisions that could be shared with those in need. The choice is yours, courageous marauders,” the smile never left the wizard’s face.

            The man among the bandits grunted some words to their leader in a barbarian language, she wore a reluctant expression, but eventually nodded and weakened her hold on the axe. Breker and Wilben let a heavy breath from their lungs.

            “Food!” the woman said sharply.

            “Yes, yes!” Torluk’s smile grew wider, and he reached into his pack. “I have this bundle of fruits that you may take with you. Fear not! There is plenty for each of you,” Without fear, the wizard walked up to their leader and handed her the fruit bundle.

            “Our weapons grow dull,” the smaller woman said quietly.

            The leader grunted at her.

            “It appears she is correct. The edges of your axes are not as sturdy as they once were. Here,” he ignited one of his hands in lustrous amber color, and waved it before the battle axe.

            As the color faded, she found that her weapon was now sharp enough to split boulders in two. The wizard did the same for all of their equipment, and the faces of their attackers lowered to a position of gratitude. The man had already shoved several bananas into his mouth, and the woman reached for the bundle too.

            Nezo, Rainier, and Arteus looked around in awe at the once aggressive highwaymen reduced to such a state. They left quickly, but not in fear or in failure. The smile across their master’s face stayed true, and their company’s journey continued in the direction of the caverns.

            “We coulda taken ‘em,” Rainier remarked as their walk commenced.

            “Indeed, Mr. Rocke, without a doubt, we could have,” he replied. “But that would not have been our best choice.”

Helm is a young adult fantasy novel that takes place in a world where magic is quickly growing among kingdoms throughout the realms of man. Helm is one of five major realms, and a darkness is growing within its borders. Follow three young boys of Rocke Village, a prestigious home, as they face their most terrifying nightmares and are forced to work together in order to survive. Their journey into adulthood takes them away from the vast forests of Helm to towering mountains and endless plains of foreign lands. Along the way, the people, creatures, and places they see show them what it means to be brave, and what the word “home” really means.

Note from the author:

                  As children, my brother and I would spend hours in our room playing with toys and constructing the most fantastic and silly stories for the characters we created. I always told him that I wanted to write down our ideas, and for it to be a story of its own one day. That being said, Helm has been in production since I was a child, and it has been altered, morphed, and edited year after year as I graduated high school and college. This draft is the culmination of all my passion and efforts towards writing and fantasy. I also told my brother that even to have one copy of this story for us to have on my bookshelf would be success, but deep down I want you to enjoy the story too. If you do, then my dream will have come true.