Child Of The Dungeon – Seth Richter

∞∞∞ I stayed in my room through dinner. I’d only had half a cup of tea for lunch and my stomach was growling its displeasure, but I couldn’t bear to see my parents again so soon. I probably wasn’t doing a very good job of convincing them of my maturity, but for the moment I couldn’t bring myself to care. We’d had fights before. Many times, for many stupid reasons.

But this was a more serious argument than any I could remember. We’d hit an impasse, and though I knew some of my anger and frustration would fade over time, I couldn’t see myself ever being convinced to come to their side. Because I’d finally put my finger on what angered me so much about the engagement. It wasn’t anything about Susanna or marrying into nobility or anything like that. Susanna was absolutely beautiful, and some aspects of being married excited me more than I was willing to admit.

And the sheer extravagance of the manor, which apparently belonged to a poorer count, was enough to convince me of the merits of nobility. No, my issue wasn’t with the engagement itself, but rather the fact that I didn’t have a choice in the matter. For sixteen years I’d been trapped in a few square miles of dungeon. A child, sheltered by my parents as I slowly matured. Growing, learning, but still dependent on the ones who raised me.

But then I turned sixteen. My parents called me an adult. Called me strong. And I’d proved it, through blood and sweat as we worked together to finally escape the dungeon. I was free, an adult in a world so much bigger than the one I grew up in – only to have that freedom immediately yanked from me.

The worst part – or at least what felt the worst at the moment – was that I didn’t even have anybody to complain about it to. For pretty much the first time in my life I was surrounded by thousands of other humans. But almost none of them knew my name, much less could relate to what I was going through.

I froze, staring up at the ceiling. …perhaps there was one person who could relate. 1kitap1.com/en 2.7 It was easy enough to sneak out of the inn.

A lone wagon travelled through the storm. The wagon was small, pulled by a single horse, which a man led on foot. It was normally a placid beast, easy to calm and easier to lead, but the man had no confidence in maintaining control from the wagon within the raging storm. And the less weight that the horse had to pull, the better – the wheels were already heavily caked in mud, and all it would take was a single bad hole for them to get stuck.

Which they couldn’t afford. They’d left the road a few minutes earlier, seeking shelter from the driving rain in the trees, but if anything it was worse than on the open road. The heavy winds whipped the low-hanging branches back and forth, the man and horse flinching each time they were struck. Another boom sounded, and the man wasn’t sure if it was another peal of thunder or the sound of a tree falling.

Lightning and falling trees weren’t the man’s only concern. The nearby cliffs were comparatively modest, but they were just as vulnerable to deadly mudslides as the mightiest of mountains. It was one of the reasons they’d decided to keep on the road this morning, rather than bunk in the last town, even with the threat of rain – after a big storm, it was likely that at least a few of the roads would be washed out, an obstacle that could delay them for weeks. They didn’t have weeks.

They didn’t even have hours. A long, drawn out moan from the wagon, barely audible over the sounds of the storm, reminded the man of his most pressing concern. The wagon was covered, but only in the way that someone wearing a linen shirt was ‘covered’. With how heavy it was coming down, he had to believe that almost everything back there was soaked. That didn’t concern him, though, at least not at the moment. What concerned him was his wife and his unborn child.

She’d started her labor less than an hour earlier, about the same time he’d felt the first droplets pepper the back of his hands. It was early, much too early. He was no doctor, but they were supposed to have more time before the baby came. But it was too late for that now. He needed to find shelter, something more substantial than just their tiny wagon, and he needed to find it fast.

He did have a few waterproof blankets that could be repurposed to make the wagon a bit more watertight.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 132c76a52615d3b1
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 1,452,215 bytes (1.385 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 262
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 429.56 minutes
• Total Words: 85,912
• Total Characters: 471,430
• Average Words per Page: 327.91
• Average Characters per Page: 1799.35

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