The smell of burning oil, of raw meats and starchy larders, of great heaping barrels of ale… Hector would long for none of it when he was gone.

The Spotted Trout Tavern was a paltry watering hole and an even worse inn, and some would say the only thing worse than its reputation was its food. At least, until a year ago that is. To Hector it was many things. It was his life. It would most likely be his death. It was the place where he worked away his nights and days. It was not, however, his home. He would never call it home. There were no friends here, and nobody who cared if he was present or absent, or alive or dead. His room was little more than a bed of hay and a pile of personal effects, adjunct to the tavern’s stable, with a rank odor that never once relented in this regard. His possessions - what few he had - were diligently arranged and sorted as well as one could expect them to be, but there was nothing more here that could help him on the journey to come. The clothes were tattered and even his best outfit, which he was currently wearing, was deeply stained from long hours of toil and sweat. He had no money and no trinkets, and he could never in his life bring himself to become a thief. It wasn’t because he wanted to become a knight, no... The countless pains Hector had endured to avoid stealing up to this point were, at least to him, worth more than any amount of money in the world.

[i]A trip to the ends of the Empire, not to mention the ever-present threat of death…[/i] It just didn’t seem like a place where he, a pauper even in name, belonged, yet here he was about to risk everything he'd ever known, for what? Nothing more or less than a chance at a life worth more than the one he had now. Hector wondered aloud if there was anything to be gained from this venture. He wondered too, if there was anything for him to lose. Rumors said the Emperor would take any able-bodied man who dared to volunteer, and that's all that Hector could claim to be. 

Hector had always relied on his good fortune and hard work to get him through in life, and it would have to be the same for him now. He didn't know any other way to live but to work, and surely the expedition would be rife with hungry adventurers. One out of the lot of them must have brought some extra supplies, and if there was one universal truth in this world it was that good food made good company! People needed to eat, and adventurers were notorious for being mooches and traders - that is, if his experiences in the tavern were any indication.

[color=lightblue][b]"Guess this is goodbye,"[/b][/color] Hector whispered to what was left of his old life.

The door to his little shack opened into the morning light, and a few errant rays across Hector’s face spurred him to shield his eyes. The sun was still lurking behind the city’s distant walls when Hector snuck out of his own dwelling, shouldering a pack he assembled from his only worthwhile companion… a blanket. It was here he carried a few bits of leftover bread, a dirty apron, and a once torn waterskin that Hector had painstakingly restored to serviceable condition.

Truthfully, Hector would have liked to head out before the dawn, but he dutifully completed his morning chores at the same old pace. Nothing good could come from leaving things messier than he had found them, and Hector felt bad enough already for leaving his job and not telling the tavern keeper. He did it more for his own safety than the old proprietor’s. The men from the orphanage would no doubt come looking for the runaway Hector, and the tavern keeper wouldn’t have batted an eye before deciding to sell the boy out to them. Well, they’d find out where he’d gone soon enough - with or without accosting the workers at the Spotted Trout.

The palace? [i]"Well, it probably meant a lot to somebody somewhere,"[/i] is what Hector would tell you if you asked him. Could a fish that had never left the water understand the grandeur of the sky in the world above? He may have been poor as dirt, but Hector wasn’t a hick. He’d lived in the city as long as he could remember, and there were plenty of big buildings that were full of big things, but they were as much a part of the background as the sun and moon. That is to say, Hector saw them as things that were forever outside of his reach. The palace gardens, however, were a different story entirely. Even during festival nights in the city, where the streets ran wild with drunks and vagabonds, the atmosphere was never as lively as this. What kind of person, Hector wondered, was able to wear an expression like that at the cusp of what could be a life-ending endeavor? Even the Emperor, standing like a great ivory tower at the head of the pack, was laughing idly with his retainers and...

Hector's heart, woe as he was to admit it, skipped a beat when he saw [i]her[/i]. 

The Empress Esmerelda, the lady of the city, the jewel of Caradia that was the spitting image of the twin goddesses. There was not an artisan in the world, Hector suddenly felt, that could cut a jewel in such an image of perfection as had already been attained by this woman. For a moment Hector let himself be taken by a fancy, that maybe, just maybe, if he could get even a bit closer to her, that a pauper cook from the lowest end of town could catch the eye of the woman that even the most jaded nobleman regarded as a goddess. He felt envy not for the first time, but in a new way, for the Emperor in the ivory armor. These foreign feelings were a powerful new sensation for Hector, for a whelp that had never once known the touch or taste of a woman, and he was silently grateful for his smaller than average presence. If any of the other volunteers had seen the look he was giving the Empress, the flushed face of a man's first love... Well, he might die here of embarrassment before the journey even began.

Hector quickly pulled away and made his way deeper into the pack, the scarlet shame still dyed deeply on his cheeks.