I don’t know precisely how to introduce myself. My name is Grant. I am nearing my seventeenth birthday. Oh, that’s not the way to do it at all. I know it’s not. I’ll just tell my story and you can draw your conclusions from that. The place where I live is rather dull. Rules, regulations, can-and-can’t-do’s, the like. The funny thing is, for this entire adventure, I don’t think I followed a single rule, and I went wrong with everything, and yet everything worked out.
My sister thinks it’s funny the way I stumble through and mess everything up from beginning to end, and still everything turns out okay. She says it’s because all the mess-ups match each other. I don’t know what she means by that.
I like my sister. She’s funny, and always up to something new. She’s always playing pranks on her doorman. Every day he goes to work with this resigned look on his face like he knows something bad is going to happen, but he can’t stop it. It’s rather funny.

Many things changed the day Kuri Kati came to rule. We had it fairly easy; merchants were doing well, people were happy. The death of our recent king had created a layer of gloom over the city, but no one was too worried; they knew their king had picked a good successor. But the successor, Dama Kati died the morning before he was to be crowned. They listed the cause as heart attack, but that could mean anything. Our healers here were very predictable; anything they didn’t understand, they called a heart attack. It was a good, nonspecific ailment.
Dama Kati never had a chance to choose his own successor, so naturally, Kuri Kati, the highest ranking man in court, was chosen.
After, Kuri Kati, or Kuri Ka, as we were supposed to call him since he was king, changed the system. Taxes went up. Boys no older than I were called to the army. He built an invasion force to take Oruta. Oruta is the smallest neighboring country, and relations have been friendly since the beginning of the Yitan Age, when the great king Yiti Ka forged an alliance with all our neighboring countries.
But now that Dama Kati and Hilu Ka were dead, Kuri Ka prepared for conquest, and once Oruta was gone, Damia would be next, then Sholbew, and so on.

Xotirra is sitting cross-legged behind me, and insists that I introduce all my characters properly. Why she wants this done is beyond me, since she has never done anything ‘properly’ in her life.
I tell her that this is my side of the story, and I never bothered her when she was writing, so let me be. She scoffs, and says that if I don’t talk about the people, she will tell all my secrets when it’s her turn again, which is funny, because I don’t think I have any. So if I do decide to tell you about all of them, it’s going to have to wait. Go ahead, Xotirra, tell all you want.