The Narrative Archives

The day was passing by quickly. It felt like barely 10 minutes ago that Fareed was walking down to the station. And now it seems like the world has grown so much larger, and he has met three new friends already. They had left the station a long time back. Alistair and Jasper were reminiscing over drinks and food at a nearby pub. Fareed, on the other hand, was leading Felix and Isaac further into the city of Arteria, past the storehouses and the shops and towards the fields. After quite a bit of silent walking, Felix spoke up, “I’m sorry, mister…?” “Hmm…?” Fareed looked back, unsure how to answer. “Uhm… what do we call you? Or rather, is Mr Fareed okay with you?” “Huh? Oh yes… Fareed is fine, you don’t have to use ‘mister’” “Ah, I meant did you have a family name?” “Oh! No, I don’t.” Felix was taken aback by the answer, but he kept walking. Isaac took his turn now. “Uhm, where are we headed?” “Where I work. Mr Alistair told me to take you there to inspect the progress of our commission....

The streets of the residential areas of Arteria are a pretty noisy place, not because it is a bustling marketplace or because it is an industrial district. The bustling is from the community and the people as they strike up conversation with each other, as everyone knows each other. Some people are returning from a hard day’s work in the agricultural fields, while others are packing up their food and drink for their shift in the same fields. Arteria is, first and foremost, an agricultural and ranching settlement after all. That makes the sight of someone like Mr Alistair strolling down the street all the more puzzling- a businessman who made and maintains a small fortune not grown from the land but from the material extracted from it. Metal deposits in the nearby mountains serve as a constant supply of fresh material to use in his smithy, and his connections have allowed him to maintain an advantageous relationship with the mining guild. In return, the mining guild receives a handsome ...

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! The constant banging of the metalworkers in the background as they pounded away on a newly forged iron beam seemed to serve as a metronome for the rest of the workshop to follow along with as they worked on their other menial tasks, such as sanding and hammering. For Fareed, on the other hand, it felt more like a distraction. His work relied on precision for the finer details of engraving and scraping. So, the clanging was starting to make him want to work faster, which is seldom a good thing with tasks like these. Fareed knew that from experience, and he had gotten rather good at drowning out the noise. However, it is one thing to drown out a constant irritating noise, and it is quite another to stay stoic when one hears a crash in a metalworking shop. CRASH! The workbench on which the beam had been placed was an old one, and after resisting the weight of the beam and the banging on it for as long as it could, it finally gave way. And experience, or the lack there...