Almost from birth the children were trained to fight, to survive, to kill. From the time they could walk until they reached age ten they were all given the same general training in subjects such as survival, stealth, healing, trap making and other similar things. At the age of ten the half-breeds were given a test, the test had four stages. A survival test that marooned them in the Dread Forest for a month was stage number one, stage number to was going through all the arenas in Emistal and win all the tournaments, stage three was a week in the Dune Desert, and the fourth and final stage was a game of chess with Lucean. The children who passed that test were given specialized training, which depended on their strengths, weaknesses and interests.
Number twelve flew through his training, completing all the basic training at the age of eight rather than ten, completing the training two years ahead of time, which had never before been done and was never done by anyone after him. So at the age of eight he faced a test that had killed children that were two years older than him and passed every stage without a problem. Even the chess match was easy for him; he beat his father at chess without loosing more than five of his pawns and one rook. His father was so impressed by this that he decided to give the child a name and a spot on his mercenary team; he named the boy Lucius and gave him his own room in the south wing of the house. Lucius translate from Mirsh, the Emistalian language, as Great One.
Lucius was impressed with his room although it was about the
size of a storage locker because it was better than the communal room he had shared with nine other people in the east wing, the servants’ quarters. It was then that he was given specialized training as a tactician and to wield the bastard swords efficiently. He finished with this training two years later and asked his father to learn the Fire Arts, the Elemental Art of fire. His father consented and sent him to a monastery of the Fierce Protector for five years, where he mastered the Fire Arts and became a Flame Monk, a powerful fighter with the will of fire at his command.
Also he was asked to be head monk of the monastery, a position that he filled gratefully for fifteen years. Then his father called him into duty as the leader of the squad of mercenaries that was now complete. In the year 5950 Lucean’s squad was officially together.
The nameless squad had six members, numbers three, ten, twelve, twenty-two, twenty-three, and thirty-eight. Three were male and the other three were female. Here is a brief profile of them.
Number three is known as Telih, she was a Latin female. Her skin was the color of almonds and her hair was charcoal black that barley reached her chin. She was Thirty-six when the team formed, stood five-foot-eight inches and weighed one hundred and fourty pounds. Her body was mostly lean muscle; she had very little body fat. Her fighting style was a quick and graceful one that was very randomized. Her weapons of choice were duel short swords and she was a Wind Sage.
Letivl was number ten; he was a thin, weak African male. His skin was the color of dark chocolate, his eyes were bright green and his hair was grayish black and spiked up about two inches from his scalp, he was thirty-one when the team formed. Stood five-foot-nine inches and weighed one hundred and twenty nine pounds. He was a sniper, specializing with a scoped crossbow.
Lucius as you know was number twelve. He was a Caucasian male with grayish skin, gray eyes and messy orange hair. He stood five-foot-six inches and weighed one hundred and sixty-two pounds when the team formed; he was thirty years old at this time. Well-shaped muscular body with very little excess body fat serves his fighting style, which is a swift, balanced, fighting style that focuses on the use of duel bastard in combination with the Fire Arts. He is a Fire Monk, master tactician and the leader of the squad.
Evit was once known as number twenty-two. He had beautiful olive colored skin and slanted light brown eyes that gave always his Asian decent. Greasy long black hair that reached his shoulders it was normally kept in a braid. He stood five-foot-ten inches and weighed one hundred and seventeen pounds, he was tall and lanky but he was mostly muscle. He was twenty-four and used a dexterous fighting style that was based around throwing and knuckles knives and the Shadow Arts for he is a Shadow Stalker.
Natelif was number twenty-three, which would make her Evit’s twin sister. She had light olive colored skin and slightly slanted black eyes, and waist length green dyed braid with black streaks in it. She had stocky, muscled frame but she was still quick enough to be in league with her comrades. She stood five-foot-four inches and weighed one hundred and seventy four pounds. She favored the battle-axe in her hard hitting surprisingly agile fighting style. She also used the Earth Arts in the traditional way of the Earthmover’s.
Number thirty-two was the only half-Nymph and she was known as Distul. She had blue-gray skin and lavender shoulder length hair and her ears were always covered because she thought they were odd looking, she also had red almond shaped eyes with a slight slant. She was the youngest of the six, she was seventeen years old but she was in no way any less useful. She was tall, stood six feet even and very thin, she had very little visible muscle and no body fat; she only weighed eighty-nine pounds. She had a ranged, magic and Fire Art based fighting style. She was a Fire Monk.
The squad was not named for a good seventy years after its inception. In that time the squad acted under their father’s command, taking jobs that would slowly turn the other villages against each other, starting slow burning feuds that lead to a great civil war that Lucean planned to use to control all of Emistal himself. The squad worked for years, taking jobs from one village that would target another always making sure that they could never be traced back to the Red Village. Slowly the other villages began to have disputes and as it slowly grew worse they got into battles to solve these problems.
After fifty years of hard work the squad got to sit back and watch the civil war between the other three villages escalate. Soon the war seemed to rage like an inferno that could not be doused. Ten years into the civil war the Black Village had fallen and its leaders had scattered like mice from a disturbed den. The Green Village had moved most of its citizens into the safest parts of the Dread Forest because the city was uninhabitable. The White Village had only their army to call its citizens and they camped underground because of the bad city conditions. On one fateful day the reminates of the battered and beaten armies met on the muddy banks of the Arch River. Both armies were half-dead with fatigue, hunger, or disease. For the Green Village their armor and weapons consisted of tattered and worn breastplates or equally destroyed leather padding and dulled and broken weapons. For the White Village it was worse, they had almost no armor and very few weapons.
The armies stood not fifty yards from each other, seconds before the generals called our the order to attack a new force appeared. Six cloaked figures rushed the dazed armies. They split into two groups of three and each group took on an army, they armies fell quicker than flies under the nameless enemies’ blades. Thirty minutes later the only ones to leave the bloodied banks of the Arch River were the six nameless, faceless figures that left cloaked in blood instead of just fabric. The Emistalian Civil war ended that night.
The Red Village, no Lucean had prevailed and he was now the supreme ruler of Emistal. The first few months of his rule were spent securing power to the Red Village. After that their time was spent restoring the other cities to their original condition, aside from the Red Village symbols and flags hanging where the original banners had hung.
A decade passed and Emistal was returned to the flourishing nation it had once been, before the war. Now under the Red Flag the citizens of Emistal prospered as mercenaries, for Lucean had ordered that all children were to be trained as mercenaries. Emistalian citizens had the ability to travel to different dimensions thanks to Distul’s invention of the D-gate. The D-gate was a dimensional gate that allowed people to teleport to another dimension. Emistal was a proud flourishing nation, externally.
Internally was a different story. The Fire King had no code of conduct, no constitution, he ruled as he pleased with no limits. He played favorites among the cities, passing laws that would allow one city to flourish while the others were left to poverty. He used propaganda and scare tactics to keep his citizens in line. If a child should be seriously ailed at birth the child was slain. If he was not able to fight he became a farmer or rancher, or some other form of menial worker. Emistal was a communist government ruled by anarchy.
Lucius and his siblings realized the mistake they had made and banded together once again to set things right. They wanted to fix Emistal once and for all, to unite it under one government. The group finally found their name, the Elders. They formed a plan to take down the Fire King and his corrupt government. They started in the White Village, starting a small resistance in that village. They gathered people who hated Lucean together, convinced them to fight against him. Then they slowly spread out to all the villages. Within three months the resistance army had grown so great that they had to live in the catacombs that lie beneath Emistal’s great cities to remain hidden from Lucean’s militia. After three years they had a trained army ready to fight under the command of the half-vampyres without prejudice, an army of twenty thousand loyal soldiers.
The plan took action quickly but discreetly. A group of five thousand resistance fighters would go to each city. Then within the course of a month a group of fifty would go out every night and kill off maybe one hundred of the great King’s soldiers. This plot worked great, they lost few soldiers and no one ever thought to look in the catacombs for the killers. Soon the militia was just a bunch of hapless soldiers, within two years Emistal had no militia and Lucean had no control over his citizens.
One night the Elders snuck into the Fire King’s palace and engaged him in a long rigorous battle that lasted three days and two nights. The battle raged between the six half breeds and their sire as hot as molten steel, each side evenly matched, nothing to turn the tables. But then a misstep by Letivl and he lay dead on the floor. This enraged the rest of the group so much that they found within themselves the great power to in turn slay their own father.
In the months that followed the Elders worked to revamp
Emistal’s government with a constitution that would secure the rights and liberties of its citizens and rulers. As they worked to do this Emistal’s new militia worked to keep some sort of semblance of peace among the confused cities. From Fupiy, the ninth month to Avin, the fourth month, five months after they began writing it, Lucius and his siblings finished the Emistalian constitution.
The basic out line was that Emistal would be divided into four countries. In each country there would be a capital city, these would be ruled by one elder. Then these elders would report to one elder, the Death Elder. Also each city would have its own constitution.
The ruling Elders were quickly chosen from among the small group. Telih, the Wind elder, would rule the White Village, she was chosen because of her mastery of the Wind Style. Distul would rule the Red Village as the Fire Elder; she was a great fire monk. Natelif was the Earth Elder to rule the Green Village; she was an Earth Mover and devoted to the Stalwart Mother. Evit was named the Shadow Elder and took the responsibility for the Black Village. Last was Lucius, the Death Elder the great ruler of all of Emistal.