Nickolas opened his eyes and immediately felt pain radiating from his face. He sat up and tenderly felt his face his hand slowly moved to his swollen jaw. He took his hand from his face and pushed himself up. He walked through the field dotted with the occasional tree until he heard running water. He reached a small pool being fed by a stream and looked into the water. A thin face with black unkempt hair and dark brown eyes looked back at him. He looked like a boy still but he was going to be twenty in a few days. With no father, land, or occupation he would still be a boy as far as everyone was concerned.  He was an orphan and had been one since he was very young he had only had his mother as family and she was killed years ago. Now he survived off hand outs and by stealing. He lived on the outskirts of the village and was commonly getting into altercations with young men from the village; they called him thief and trash and would beat him if they caught him. Nickolas never backed out of a fight even though he always lost. Courage was the only thing he had that couldn’t be taken from him. The pains in his stomach reminded him that he was hungry and needed food. He reluctantly headed toward the village to find a meal.

As Nickolas entered the main part of the village he was surprised to find it rather deserted. He quietly snuck into a shop and grabbed a burlap sack and began to fill it with food. As he was leaving what looked like the whole village was exiting the town hall. Nickolas remembered hearing that there was a meeting coming up about taxes and the effect that the drought was having on the farmers. There is nothing worse than running into angry town’s people when you have a bag of stolen food. One of the men spotted Nickolas immediately and shouted to get the others attention. As he was turning to run he ran right into the shop keeper, then blackness.

Nickolas woke up for the second time that day from being hit. This time it was dark and he realized he was tied up in the back of a horse drawn cart surrounded by men. As his eyes adjusted he could make out some of their familiar faces but none of the terrain looked familiar. One man made eye contact with him and smirked at him as he whispered, “You’ve done it for the last time you little shit, this is the end of the road for you.” As they neared a dark forest a hush fell over the group. They stopped just outside the forest and untied Nickolas’s legs leaving his arms bound. Two vicious looking dogs were brought out on ropes. “Welcome to your new home brat, The Forest of Lost Souls,” Sneered one of the men.  The man with the dogs stepped forward looked at Nickolas and said, “We’ll give you a half hour to get as far as you can before we let the dogs go, now RUN.”