"Well, I told you all you need to know about me…" Glenn said as he shifted the girl he was carrying. "Now, what about you? Heck, I don’t even know your name!"
"The girl you are carrying is named Dryden…" replied the blond girl. "And the boy we’re trying to save, we call Alex, his real name is unknown…"
"Dryden…Alex…" repeated Glenn. "And what about you?"
"I’m err…Rei" said the blond headed girl, kind of embarrassed.
"Rei, that’s a pretty name," replied Glenn.
"Is not! Now, you wanna hear what I have to say? Or keep jabbering?" she cut in rudely.
"Oh, go ahead…" Glenn said sort of confused at what got her mad.
"Well, my great-great grandpa was Lord Gervase the Third." Started Rei, "Our family was very prosperous up until he came into power. He…well… had a major gambling problem. My grandparents ended up in debt, and had to work as stable hands and maids for Dryden’s parents."
"I was born many, many years later, our family still in debt to theirs. I was born with a twin brother. A boy, but he died shortly afterward, due to a cold."
"My parents were extremely upset, for Dryden’s parents wanted to make me into a slave and possibly even sell me for some extra money. So my parents claimed that their girl child had died and it was the male that still lived."
"I lived until the age of seven, dressed as a boy. I trained horses and learned a small amount of swordplay. But it didn’t stay like that long. Dryden had been born three months after me."
"She was rebellious and often hung around the stables, hoping to sneak off on a horse. She watched me like a hawk, and I couldn’t figure out why. Sometimes she’d even follow behind me, like a shadow, as I worked."
"Well anyway, one day during my 7th year, she caught me alone in the stables, grooming a horse. After two minutes of watching me, she walked right in-between my work and me and said ‘I know your secret; you aren’t a boy. And if you don’t let me go out riding, dear father will find out about you!’ I was trapped, so I agreed, but under the condition that I went with her, so if something were to happen, I could escape and ride off. Everyday she dragged me out riding, each day going a bit farther then the last."
"Then one day, she decided she didn’t want to go home. I argued with her and finally reasoned with her about having no supplies to run off with. In the dark, we had to ride home, for she had spent so long."
"When we got back, her father was waiting and had thought I had kidnapped Dryden."
"Because I had forced her to come home, she decided now was the time to get even. She told him I was actually a girl and because of the lies, I was forced to be a slave. But soon I rose in the slave ranks, and somehow ended up as Dryden’s personal servant. I think she had somehow told her father she wanted me for her slave. Dryden was pretty fair with her treatment to me. But whenever there was a party, she dragged me to them, so she wouldn’t be the only one to suffer of boredom. I stood behind her, miserable in the frilly dresses I was forced to wear, whenever she was talking to some rich snob."
"At one party, someone had committed some sort of disgrace, I never did find out what it was, but everyone was quick to claim I had done it, for my unsteady past, of having lied about who I was. I, of course, had no idea what had happened. I was walking away from the drink table, when some gruff men grabbed my arm and threw me in jail."
"Late that night, I sat there, miserable, in the dress on the dungeon floor when Dryden came dressed in dark clothes and broke me out of jail, with keys she had stolen."
"We stole two of the prized horses and rode off into the darkness, dressed as two peasant boys."
"After three days of traveling through a forest, we came across an old widow, named Schala. She sat on her porch and called out to us, as if she had known we were coming. The widow happened to be a sorceress and gave us shelter. She trained us to strengthen our weak magic, into a stronger, more powerful magic."
"While in Schala’s study one day, I was flipping through a book and happen to find a page that got me curious. I read the page out loud to Dryden, but the page happen to actually be a spell, and reading it out loud had cast it. When it was cast, the room brightened and a black, inky hole appeared."
"As if someone had punched him hard, a red, spiky headed boy was knocked through the hole and crashed back-first into the wall opposite it. The portal-like hole closed up and the room darkened to its normal light."
"Dryden and I had crept up and stared at the boy, who was slumped against the wall. When he woke up, he was scared and had pressed himself up hard against the wall, trying to get away from us. We backed off and he got up and started looking at his surroundings. Many times he opened his mouth and tried to speak, but no words came out. The more he tried to open his mouth and say something, he got more discouraged."
"Then Schala came into the room and welcomed the boy, which really confused us. She wasn’t mad, in fact, she smiled warmly and took him to a bed to rest. Later, she explained that the portal or the blow he had received probably cause him to loose his voice."
"After staying with Schala for a few years, we had learned some pretty good powers. But Alex, which is what we adopted as his name, never spoke."
"Schala sent us away one sunny afternoon, she said it was ‘for the better of us.’ So we decided to travel to the nearest town. We found out about a good paying bounty-hunting job from a newspaper lying on the ground. So we took off for Evangelion, a town that had a spacebus in it and from there we headed to the correct planet. When we got here we defeated the monster, but Alex was hurt beyond our healing skills. And…here we are!" finished off Rei.
"What a story!" exclaimed Glenn. "You never found out about Alex’s past?"
"No, we have no clue what had happened to him! All we know, was he had been beaten and scared when we got to him…" replied Rei. "Hey! Look, there’s the shelter up ahead!"
--- End of Part 7---