Chapter 1: The Chase
I grew up in a land called Verania, along the edges of the Chinta forests. My people had lived there for as long as anyone could remember, cut off from the rest of the world unless it involved the trading and selling of goods. We had a long history of fine crafting, plenty of pelts from hunting, and special poultices made from long cherished Elvish recipes; selling those goods had always kept us afloat, living simple yet happy lives. Well, until 100 years ago, that is.
That's when the city of Markal was built, expanding until the forest's resources became less plentiful and dangerously stretched. We began to suffer. That's when the Lords of Markal proposed a Trade...
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My feet pounded against the ground, snapping twigs and crunching leaves barely audible over my thundering heart in my ears. I could hear the frantic footsteps behind me, the baying of hounds as they chased my scent, getting closer despite my best efforts. There was no point in hiding, no point in trying to cover my tracks, though every fiber of my hunter trained mind screamed it. Those damned dogs knew where I was, the smell of my fear and sweat giving me away to their keen noses. These dogs were hunters, raised and trained to catch people just like me: Runners who refused the Trades.
Despite a lifetime of running through the lush forests of my home, hunting and gathering excursions that took days of almost endless trekking, I could feel myself starting to lose it. My muscles felt like they were on fire and multiple scrapes and scratches from the thick shrubbery were starting to add up and sting. I knew these forests like the back of my hand, and even I knew that I had little chance of getting through them in the dark. But my would-be captors were behind me and that gave me enough incentive to try.
"I won't!" I screamed, not knowing if they could hear me, but hoping they did. A rumble of laughter answered, followed by a ragged-breathed response:
"Run all you want, little girl, but all it'll do is make you tired when we drag you in." The voice was a lot closer than I thought and for a moment, I felt the pang of defeat in my heart. He was right. How could I ever hope to escape a Tracker and his damned hounds, even in my own forest? They were trained for this soul purpose. They lived for the chase...and they never came back empty handed.
I had seen it before, 10 years back when I was just eight. They had come for a Trade and one of the girls, Belethia, had run, refusing to go with them just as I did now. They dragged her kicking and screaming out of the woods by high sun, after only a few hours of chase. She had been a young, agile hunter, trained and raised just like me and they had captured her with ease, grinning as they dragged her from the woods by the rope that bound her hands. And I was next.
