The Lost Boy | ONC 2024

1 - The start of a new journey

"You're useless for a dragon," my sturdy companion muttered as we walked through the field of sunburnt grass. Whoever the farmer was, they had abandoned their field long ago. The crops had dried out in the summer heat and because of it their livestock were not going to be fed well this winter - if they were still alive.

The green critter flew around my companion's head and hissed at him in anger, but in truth he was kind of useless. Not bigger than a magpie he circled around our heads until he finally decided to rest on my shoulder.

"Be nice Tom," I muttered at the dwarf who walked a step ahead of me. "He's only a baby."

"Exactly!" the dwarf exclaimed, "Now tell me Illon, why would you bring a baby to an adventure like ours, 'eye?"

"He kind of just came along, remember?" I sighed and peered around. The field was silent, but you never knew what was hiding in the dense vegetation. I felt the dragon's nose sniff my ear and I realised our tiny companion might not be so useless after all. "Hey, Frank, why don't you take to the air and have a look, we're entering troll territory soon, and I need a good pair of eyes up there." It was almost as if Frank was smiling at me when he took to the sky. "See, not so useless after all," I snickered.

"We'll see," my companion muttered and pulled his stabby fingers through his beard. "Troll territory, I told you we should've gone west, through the mountains and then around."

"We don't have time for that," I sighed and stepped on top of a boulder to get some highground.

Tom sighed deeply and moved to sit in the shadows of the rock, using it as a backrest. "It's just a rumour, ya know. The 'ole heir thing," he said and picked up a pipe from inside his vest, and soon he was stuffing it with tobacco. "Our late king had a ton of bastards back 'ome, why not crown one of em? No, we need to scurry the land to find a special one. Why?"

I shrugged at his question, I really had no idea why we needed to find this boy. But it wasn't our place to ask questions, we followed orders and got paid for the result. "Maybe his mother was highborn or something."

"Perhaps," Tom agreed, "but shouldn't they have done this sooner? Something smells rotten, Illon, I feel it in me toe."

I rolled my eyes at my friend, "you should really check that Tom, rotten toes is not healthy," teased, but only got a grumpy sound as response. 

The sun was shining, the air smelled fresh of summer flowers and there wasn't much to worry about really. I understood why he was anxious though, but trolls liked their peace and quiet, they rarely attacked or even bothered to care about tiny folk like us. But you didn't want to step on one of them, they hated that.

I jumped down from the rock to continue the walk as soon as Frank was back on my shoulder. He seemed content, which indicated that the field was clear from threats. I walked at a quick pace and after a few steps I could hear Tom's panting breaths as he was running to catch up with me.

"You and your stupidly long legs," he huffed but fell into a trott beside me.

"I told you to bring a pony," I teased, knowing full well how much he hated horses. In fact there wasn't much in this world that Tom liked, except his pipe and the occasional ale. He didn't bother to have friends, not even female ones. He hated socialising of any kind but seemed to tolerate me at least, which was preferable since we worked together.

"You said you were bringing a damn dragon, long ears, which kind of made me think we were going to be flying, not walking," he gruffed.

Again I rolled my eyes at him, and was about to give another cheeky response about him almost being small enough to ride on Frank, but stopped myself immediately as my eyes had caught something lurking between the tall trees of the forest up ahead. 

A/N - I'm giving ONC 2024 a go, hope you'll follow this journey with me!