MapleSamurai

Pulled by two hard working draft horses, an unassuming wooden carriage rolled its way down into a small town tucked away in a northern province of the kingdom of Gallia. Looking out of one cab window, but cautiously keeping the shutters closed enough to keep passersby from stealing a glimpse of the carriage’s interior, Arthur Butcher stuck his blonde-haired head out to take a peek at where he and his mistress had arrived, looking left and right with eyes as green as wheatgrass. After all of the shocking new experiences he had had this morning, Arthur gave a sigh of relief at how familiar his new surroundings were. Where this manors and

Arthur Butcher awoke from his sleep. Still groggy from his rest, he had expected to wake in his room back on the farm, and get right to work on the same routine he had done without fail for the past nineteen years: get dressed, go down to the kitchen to eat the breakfast his mother had prepared for the family, wish her as well as his father and sister good morning, then go out to tend to the animals, work on any parts of the farm that still needed repairs, pick vegetables from the garden, shovel any newly fallen snow off of the path from the house to the road, gather wood for the fire, as well as anything else that would need to be done on a

On this snowy Solstice Eve, Arthur Butcher could almost swear that icicles were forming on his unkempt wheat blonde hair as he trudged through the fresh fallen snow upon the forest floor after the Witch of the Woods, her long, onyx black hair almost cape-like in how it obscured nearly her entire slender figure from behind, leaving only the shoulders of her fur coat and the wide hem of its skirt visible as she walked through the snow with an almost inhuman grace, practically gliding over it. As he continued to walk after her, Arthur had time to reflect on the choices that led to his new life as her servant that had just begun. Having pledged

The day had finally come. Just three months ago, peasant farmboy Arthur Butcher had watched his sister Morgan fall ill from the deadly White Plague, and with the bad harvest his family had suffered through, they did not have the funds needed to treat her illness. However, Arthur had heard tell of the mysterious Witch of the Woods, who was said to work powerful magic that could cure such ills, and so, against his family’s wishes, he ventured into the Dark Forest just beyond the nearest town. He found this Witch, and after telling her of his plight, she agreed to cure his sister, but only if Arthur agreed to a lifetime in servitude to her

It was the morning of the eve of the Winter Solstice. The day had finally come. This was the day that Arthur Butcher would have to leave his home to become the servant of the Witch of the Woods, as his payment for her curing his sister Morgan of the White Plague that past autumn. The sun above the Butcher family’s farmhouse was slowly ascending to its midday position in the sky when Arthur was suddenly reminded of just what day it was in a way he could not ignore. Arthur had just brought the bags containing his meager belongings out of his room and to the front door before giving a long sigh and nervously ran his fingers through his wh

Soon enough, and far too soon for the Butcher family, winter had come at last. The season’s snow had come as early as the last days of November, at first in the form of light flurries that melted in the sun as easily as the autumn frost, but by December’s second week, everything Arthur could see from the hilltop farmhouse was blanketed in snow, and icicles hung from every rooftop. In Arthur’s final month home, the hearth was kept burning all day round, putting the piles of firewood Arthur had diligently gathered the previous autumn to good use. But even in the dead of winter, there was still work to be done, and Arthur was h

“All right, people!” Harold Butcher called as the sun had only just begun to emerge over the eastern horizon that morning, hastily righting the round spectacles over his eyes. “The sooner we’ve sold this grain, the sooner we can stock the pantry and get the house fixed up, so let’s get a move on!” Having been awakened by rooster’s call at the crack of dawn, the moment the Butchers had finished getting dressed and having breakfast (and imbibing a hastily brewed hangover cure, in the siblings’ case), they were hard at work hauling sacks of yesterday’s wheat out of the barn and onto the hors