_Styx

I was born during the winter, one of the coldest winter of those times, the trees and walls shattering under the action of coldness while the peasants and lords were dying in their hovels like in their forts. The cries of a woman tearing apart this night, a meter of snow in front of this door, the light of a few candles seeable through the barricaded holes that had the uses of windows. They were four, four peasants not knowing what to do in this situation that billions of their ancestors, in any continents or territories had lived. Hopefully, despite not knowing what to do, it miraculously happened, a baby coming out of her womb, one of those man grabbing it in extremis before it would fall, a name coming up in his mind as the mother was at the verge of bleeding out. Stanis, Stanislas.

Years were passing, armies coming forward and retreating backward with those, in the little village that was more an assemblage of slums than a real institution called “village”, devastation, rape and fire with those soldiers. And one day, while I was only seven, they took me, I could still remember their black and purple standards which looked so big to me, while they were taking me, parentless to their capital.

I was hardly getting used to the life in a big city, well, rather near a big city, the soldier who kidnapped me taking care of me, he needed a male son, I was that person, erasing my old entity, from the language to even the name, now I was ‘Stanislas Lynnhallen’, son of Valoris Lynnhallen, young soldier of the Renatunian Army. Years passing, as usual, my new father gaining prestige and money, soon living within the walls of the city, a whole new ambiance as I was starting to learn the art of swordsmanship, with my weak arms of a twelve years old child.

Sixteen years old, that was the year when I’ve finally become a part of that army, not noble, but richer than most of those soldiers without the privilege of the blood, participating to a few campaigns, nothing really harsh as I was slowly making my reputation within this infantry. But it happened, one day during my twenty-sixth year of life, in one of those slums, the inhabitants were rebelling, only a minor event in fact, where I’ve almost been killed, a farming scythe, notching my torso through the joints of my chainmail. Stayed in a bed during a few days, and my father telling me to never do that again, in fact, to never reintegrate the army again until a real war.