I was born and raised in Nilghorde; in the Templeton District to be exact, designated for the martial servicemen and their families. We were on an edge of the city, where the farthest line of homes faced a great forest. Templeton was a sturdy square, once cut from the forest and sown on the Nilghorde quilt. Inside our heavily patrolled borders sat the steep-roofed stone houses surrounded by all you’d expect to see in the farmlands.

And I do mean heavily patrolled. Despite it being a district in Nilghorde, there was little crime. Most of the watchmen and the Metropolitan Ward lived there. They hadn’t busted heads all over this land to allow swarms of riffraff to spill into their own domiciles. But in the earlier days, when the Conqueror was waging war and the future-wardsmen were his soldiers, Templeton was a place where fathers were gone most of the year, leaving children to be raised by elder siblings or their promiscuous mothers.

I was an only child, but that was just fine by me. From the beginning, I’d always fallen deep into the joys of solitude and imaginary friends. These playmates inhabited holes in trees and pawed the floor under my bed. By the time I was catching up to the height of my mother, I had shed any interest in sports or games played out in the streets.

That, though, wasn’t from being alone too much—as Mother quibbled at times. I’d discovered the world of science. I begged Mother for an alchemy set. After much whining and mutinies at the dinner table, she caved and brought me a little wooden box. It wasn’t just filled with mineral pouches, corked vials, and tiny cutting tools—it bore wonder. In my hands were the keys to the doors of the natural world.

The little box became my obsession. The few friends who still lingered about stopped knocking on our door. Mother’s pleas to go outside and play eventually stopped too. Far less gratifying, imaginary friends turned to dust. One by one, faint screams, audible to my ears alone, and then there were only shadows. I particularly remember the elf in the old elm on the edge of Templeton Park. He sat crouching in the canopy, silent as always. His stare haunted me for a long time. Disapproving of me leaving the mists of fairyland for pragmatism was certainly understandable. But it also couldn’t be stopped.

I eventually focused on the visceral endeavors and varied my experiments greatly, from futile attempts at tracking stars to more enjoyable branches dealing with the inner workings of anything I could either trap, scavenge, or lure with meat.

II: Into Cellars