Tales of the Lorekeepers 01 - Rise of the Red Dragon

busy with various activities. Most of them wore leather vests, while a few sported chainmail armor. They also carried a large variety of weapons, including swords and lances, as well as shields and bows.
    Apparently, Samuel had woken up in the middle of an army camp. Still turning around in disbelief, he spotted the bulky, cross-eyed man coming back his way, cursing at him and shouting unintelligible things in his direction. Unwilling to confront the man, the boy turned around and walked away.
    For a few minutes, Samuel wandered aimlessly around, looking dazedly at the soldiers that passed him. Most of them were shorter than he was, but they all bore prominent scars.
    If he had thought that he was in a cosplay event, having suffered a blow that had knocked him out for a while, he would now be forced to admit it was not the case. The men around him were real warriors. They carried weapons that were not simple replicas. Their sword and shields displayed dents from battles, rust stains and dry blood.
    He was clearly no longer in Kansas.
    “You there!” yelled a man behind Samuel. “Where do you think you’re going like that? Get over here and grab a weapon before an officer spots you.”
    Puzzled, Samuel stared at the man. He would have been unable to guess his age, for his body looked to be little older than his own, but his face was that of a much older man, a man who had seen a lot of struggles, and to whom fate had not been kind. He wore a simple helmet of rugged metal and a leather jacket that had a few patches of iron attached to it. His pants looked to be as old as he was. Finally, when the old man turned away to resume his usual tasks, Samuel saw that he had a wooden shield on his back and a small hatchet attached to his waist.
    Surely this was all a dream. It was simply impossible, unreal. One minute he was standing in his room, and the moment after, he was walking in the mud, in the middle of God knows where. Nonetheless, real or not, Samuel was seriously starting to worry.
    Looking around once more, he saw that the tents were organized in an orderly fashion, almost perfectly aligned with one another. In the middle of the camp, over a hundred yards away from where he stood, were a few larger tents surrounded by a wooden fence, the main one twice the size of the others.
    From this central point, roads extended in all four directions. He suddenly remembered seeing camps similar to this one, with wooden walls surrounding them, in movies about the Roman era. Only this camp seemed to have been set up in the middle of a clearing, surrounded by a dense forest.
    Was he in Europe? Could he really have traveled back in time, to an era when the Romans were still conquering the world?
    “What are you waiting for?” yelled the old man again, now from across one of the roads, standing next to a few racks of weapons. “Stop acting funny and get down here, we have to get moving.”
    He gestured to Samuel to come his way.
    Samuel was confused and scared. He had no clue where he was, how he had gotten there or what exactly had happened. Nonetheless, he thought it would be best to do as the old man asked. He crossed over to the other tents, where the man was now handing out swords, spears and helmets to a group of soldiers. When Samuel was close by, the man grabbed a rusty sword that was probably three feet long and looked rather heavy.
    “Here, take this one,” he ordered Samuel.
    “What?”
    “Are you deaf or what, maggot? Take this sword and grab a helmet from the table behind you, before you get in trouble. You don’t want to get in trouble, do you?”
    “No.”
    “Then take the stupid sword and grab a goddamn helmet! I don’t have all day.”
    Samuel studied the sword that was now pointed at him. It looked like an old claymore, heavy and dirty.
    “Do you have anything smaller or lighter?” he asked, surprised that he had the courage to speak at all.
    “What did you say?” asked the old man.
    Suddenly, Samuel was aware that he was attracting more attention than he wanted from the crowd around him.
    “I mean,” he answered to the old man. “This looks to be a sword fit for an adult. Do you have anything for teens?”
    “Teens? What the hell is a teen? Son, how old are you exactly?”
    “I’m fourteen.”
    “Fourteen!” exclaimed the man. “By Lucifer’s beard, you’re a grown man, for crying out loud. Now take the damn sword and get the hell out of my sight, before I use it to cut your head