Chapter 1 - Awakening

Ondel’s village was way out in the middle of nowhere. It didn’t have any famous landmarks or specialty goods; there was no reason for anyone to visit it at all. Little by little, more and more of the villagers had to move out, or at least commute to Heimdallr for work. Ondel was a curious boy by nature, so when his father offered to take him to the capital one day, he jumped at the chance. He wanted to see what made this place so special. It wasn’t long before he found out.

Back home, nothing ever seemed to change from day to day, year to year. But the big city was full of all kinds of things he had never seen before.

‘I need to go to work, so stay here in this plaza and play until I’m done,’ his father told him.

‘Okay! Don’t forget to snag me a souvenir!’

Ondel looked around the plaza. There were plenty of other children there, but his eyes were drawn to three kids standing off to one side. They were striking dramatic poses and making strange, exaggerated movements. That didn’t look like any game he’d seen before.

‘Hi! What are you guys playing?’

‘We’re playing Legendary Heroes! We only learned it ourselves a while back.’

Ondel’s eyes lit up with excitement.

‘Whoa! That sounds so cool! How’d you find out about it?’

‘It’s a funny story… These weird kids showed up one day and taught everyone how to play. But none of us had ever seen them before, and they talked kinda weird, like they were from olden times or something.’

‘Awesome! I wish I could get cool ideas like that.’

‘We dunno how much of it is true, but whatever. Don’t think about it too much and just have fun with it.’

‘Sounds good. Can you teach me how to play, too?’

The game of Legendary heroes involved setting up a peculiar ritual with three branches to ‘infuse you with ancient power.’ When that was done, the first thing that popped into each hero’s head became their sacred mission. Before long, Ondel and the others had become fast friends, and soon enough, his father arrived to take him home.

The next day, Ondel went to tell his friends Monty and Keith about everything he’d seen in the capital, including the new game.

‘I dunno, it sounds kinda weird. Like, what do you even do?’

Keith was always trying to act grown up. Sometimes it took a lot to convince him to join in with his friends’ games. Monty, on the other hand, tended to be shy and timid. But he liked the sound of this.

‘If we don’t hafta fight bad guys or do anything scary, then maybe it won’t be so bad’.

‘Yeah, and we might even turn into legendary heroes for real!’

‘Pfft. Yeah, right. C’mon, let’s get this over with. You’ll probably get bored of after an hour or so.’

Ondel set up the ‘ritual’ just the way his new friends in the city had shown him. He gathered ten tree branches and stuck them into the ground in a roughly circular pattern. Then he, Monty, and Keith stepped into the circle, and chanted the magic spell: ‘We call upon the power of the ancient ones.’ Each friend then picked up one of the sticks and held it aloft like a sword.

‘So...the other sticks are our magic circle, right?’

‘Right! It’s filling us with ancient power, just like the heroes from the olden times!’

Ondel struck a dramatic pose, as if this moment was far too important to let pass without doing something special to mark it.

‘Quit it, you’re gonna—huh?’

Keith was cut off by a clatter as the seven sticks all fell down one after another, forming a strange symbol. They began to glow, getting brighter and brighter, and soon the three friends were engulfed in an ethereal light. Ondel looked up at the sky, and seemed to hear a solemn voice speaking directly into his mind.

‘Ye who have gathered here… I grant unto you the power to change your destiny.’