"Cecilia, don't forget to come home right after class. Your mother needs your help with some shopping. Those ruffians were harassing her again."
Mervus, my father, well my adoptive father, was being overly concerned again for my adoptive mother, Bella. The ruffians were some local gangster wannabes that terrorized older people. I found out they terrorized my mother when she went shopping, starting around my sixteenth birthday. With a bit of help from the soccer team, we successfully scared them off. Unfortunately, they couldn't always be around, so my presence was usually enough to scare them off.
"Okay dad. I'll come home as quick as I can. You working late tonight?" I asked.
"Yeah, they got me down for overtime again. I wish I could go with your mother, but we need the money."
"I know dad," I said, giving him a quick peck on the cheek. "Hopefully, I can get a decent job after I graduate and help out."
"Now enough of that, Cecilia. We love you and raised you to be a good girl. But when you graduate, I want you to go start a life of your. You're getting to the age where you need to become your own woman."
I frowned, expecting yet another long-winded explanation why I need to move on with my life. I just wanted to help the two best people I've ever known. They raised me, even though I wasn't their child, from birth. They loved me unconditionally and always took care of my every need when we struggled to keep food on the table.
My father does nothing but work himself into the ground to help pay for my tuition. My mother continued to help me with my schoolwork, staying up late every night to study the material and help with homework the next day. What was so wrong about wanting to repay that kindness?
I tuned him out long enough for him to stop talking. Although, he caught on, I suppose, to that little facet of information. He was rather good at picking up those things, or maybe he just knew me well enough, who knows.
"I promise dad, I'll make a life for myself. I just wanna help you and mom. You raised me to be like this and now get all bothered when I say that stuff."
"Sorry sweetheart. I give you a hard time because I care. Your parents trusted us with you when you're little, and I'm trying my best to be a good father."
"Well, you're not just good, dad, you're great, the best even. I'm gonna head out now. I'll talk to you later tonight!" I shouted, waving goodbye as I headed out the door of our modestly small home to my college classes.
We weren't well off, but we lived a middle class life. That's better than most lowborn could say. Most lowborn lived on the streets and held menial jobs with barely enough pay to feed themselves. It was almost impossible to afford your own home, even if it was basically a rickety shack, as a lowborn. So compared to the other, I think our family managed rather well for itself, even if mom and dad both worked themselves like dogs.
I've respected that about them, I just hated the shit circumstances of being born into poverty just because you don't have any dragon blood in your veins. The Black Flame King was to thank for this unjust social system. He and almost all of his children were awful, evil creatures that tortured and enslaved all races that weren't dragonborn. Elves had maintained some level of dignity, hiding out in the northern ice wastes outside of the kingdom's authority.
Some long time ago, the world had been whole, supposedly. During that era, humans and dragons coexisted harmoniously until the human nature of greed drove the dragons away. Some time later, the dragons returned with their four powerful deities and wiped out most of humanity. Humans that survived the carnage were given a small section of the world, surrounded by impassable mountains whose peaks hosted massive thunderstorms.
Today, we know the mountain range as The Divide. It's been eons since anyone has seen across those mountains and the dragons that lived beyond them in their own empire. It's been generations since the last dragon visited us, curious to see how we lived. The closest thing to dragons we have now are the dragonborn.
Dragonborn are half human, half dragon hybrids with scales, horns, pointed ears and tails protruding from their backside. The bones and cartilage that make up a dragonborn's tail is said to be an extension of the human tailbone. Although dragonborn needing a doctor was strange to me, the college I attended was very adamant about teaching dragonborn medicine.
Hopefully, I would never have to treat a dragonborn. I've heard plenty of horror stories where even when a doctor does a good job, the dragonborn will see to it they are "rewarded" generously. Most get broken bones as the dragonborn test their recovered strength. That was the best-case scenario, the worst being the dragon tearing apart the doctor for the same reason as those who break bones.
It sickened me that dragonborn could do such evil acts and get away unpunished. While most of the provinces in the kingdom followed such laws, Yulum did not. Dragonborn received fines for acts of brutality against other races. Basically, a slap on the wrist for the privileged destructive creatures, but it was better than nothing. Yulum focused more on making lives better for humans, especially lowborn humans.
Even though one of the seven children of the Black Flame King ruled every province of the kingdom, Exedin ruled ours with fairness. He was a human loving dragonborn who believed his brethren were far too barbaric towards the humans. Exedin made conditions in Yulum bearable for humans. One of the big issues, slavery, had been outlawed in Yulum. Over time, Yulum became a common gathering place for lowborn, turning the once small coastal region into a massive, sprawling, urban province filled with lively humans.
The larger cities of the province focused more containing shops, schools and other public needs buildings. There were apartment-style homes and manors for the dragonborn in the city. To house most of the population, they built smaller villages around the larger cities. Towns and harbor villages were often a mix of housing and other buildings. I had visited the harbor village, Tilithan, when I was little. It was amazing to see all the fishing schools and aquariums.
My village, Akylios' Refuge, was a well knit community of people trying their hardest to make due. There wasn't much in the way of entertainment in our tiny village. We had a post office that fed mail to the city proper for delivery around the kingdom. Along with the post office, we had a bakery, three restaurants and one clothing store. Exedin recently passed a law to have grade schools build in the villages surrounding the major cities. The people who lived in the outer villages appreciated the quality of life law, especially mine. With grade schools in the outer villages, parents could have their children schooled closer to home.
Our village's sole source of entertainment was a small movie theater. It didn't play many movies and was far from a luxurious job, but it provided something that was better than sitting at home in the dark. Its cracked stone walls desperately needed a paint job. I had volunteered there for a time when I was a teen, helping clean the two theaters between movies. It kept me busy during my days off from school.
I walked down the dirt paths we had for streets, passing by the town hall and the Church of Akylios. I'd always been disinterested in the church and its followers. The religion had odd practices and a dragon god wasn't exactly something I wanted to believe in. Akylios was said to be so powerful she could raise tidal waves a mile high, or sink entire fleets in a terrible whirlpool instantly. Akylios, the monster of the deep, was the nickname given to her in the history books that touched on the terrible war of old.
I was one of the few people in the village, along with my parents, who never attended or followed the religion. I understood why Akylios was so revered in Yulum. The entire province was heavily reliant on harbor and ocean trading with Rantis, Uplon, and Sereshan. A few miles north of Port Town was a naval base that housed the fleets belonging to the king. As icing on the cake, Exedin, our prominent leader, was a water blessed dragon born, further cementing the people's belief in Akylios.
My trip into the city proper wouldn't take long, usually was a half-hour trip. Once I made it to the city gates, it would be a few minutes more to the school. There was a long stretch of empty grassland outside of the village. A dirt road, very well travelled, connected the village to the city. Traveling down the dirt roads, I passed by several side streets lined with houses. Many were silent, but some had stirred for their daily activities, many of which would involve commuting to into the city.
