Kingdom of Tellaris, Canmai Village
On the outskirts of the small village of Canmai lies a small hut. The hut is old, unkept, and falling apart. The windows are broken and the door won't fully close, always kept slightly ajar. It seemed like it could fall apart any day now.
The interior of the hut was a scene straight out of a nightmare. Blood covered nearly every surface, pieces of dismembered animal corpses littered the floors and walls, In the center of the room sat a table with a pig lying atop it. At the table stood a young boy the age of 7 who was dissecting the pig, live.
"SQUEE, SQUEEE, SQUEEE"
"AHAHAHAHAHA"
The pigs screams of pain and agony were followed by the boys howls of joy and delight. The louder the pig squealed the more excited the boy seemed to get.
"SQUEE, SQUEEE, SQUeee…"
"Awww, it broke"
After the pig let out its final breath the boy let out a disappointed sigh. He set down the dull knife he was using to dissect the pig and took a look at his own hands. As always when he was done "playing" they were covered in blood.
"Guess I should head home"
They boy started out the door of the hut and began his trek home, walking down the old dirt walking trail, stopping by the river to wash the blood off his hand before continuing into the village.
The village was the epitome of average. Dirt roads, centered around hand dug wells. Houses, built almost entirely out of wood, consisting of only a single floor often only containing at most 3 or 4 rooms. There was nothing special about any part of the village. Even the people were nothing to look at. The ones that were considered well off lived in their homes and spent the majority of their day working the fields or tending to their shops. Those who couldn't afford homes lived in alleyways, feeding off of rats, mice, and insects.
The boy continued making his way through the village, receiving obvious looks of disgust and disdain from the villagers.
"Looks like he's covered in blood again, how do his parents even put up with him?"
The boy paid no mind to the looks and whispers of the people, he didn't care, he was used to it.
After making his way through the village he finally arrived back at his home, a building nicer than most of the others as it was mostly constructed of stone blocks instead of wood and was much larger than the others. Although it still only had one floor, there were at least 6 rooms in this house and a wide yard containing a personal well in the back, which most of the other houses did not have.
The boy opened the front door of his home and entered inside. The inside of the house was just as nice as the outside. Just from entering the door one could see a large living space for the family, with a kitchen to the back left of the room with a large table big enough for at like 6 people just before the kitchen. Past the kitchen was a long hallway with multiple different rooms sticking branching out of it leading up to a back door. In the right of the main front room was a large couch and multiple chairs surrounding a fireplace.
The fire was lit making the entire house warm and cozy. The feeling was enhanced by the various bookshelves and thriving flowers throughout the room. As the boy was examining his house and noticing that today the flowers were pink peonies he suddenly heard his mothers shouts from the kitchen.
"Eto, you're covered in blood again, how many times have I told you to stop cutting open the farm animals, do you even know how the rest of the village sees you? If you would just fix that weird hobby of yours you would be quite popular."
The boy, Eto Taylor, was indifferent to his mothers shouting and nagging, he was already used to it. She wasn't wrong though, even at the young age of 7 his looks were quite popular amongst the older ladies.
With his rare charcoal gray hair, his radiant, sharp eyes a matching charcoal gray, his face that took after his mothers, and to top it off he was already taller than most boys his age, with the start of a warrior's build like his father. He was the perfect mix of the "pretty boy" and "tough guy" clichés.
There was only one problem, his "hobby". From the perspective of his parents and the rest of the villagers, he liked dissecting dead animals for the purposes of research, they thought he was interested in the scientific aspect of it, they were wrong, horribly wrong.
He didn't even remotely care for the science contained in animals. In the first place, he never dissected dead animals, they were almost always alive.
He enjoyed the sounds of the animals screaming in pain, the feeling of his knife cutting through their flesh, the feeling of satisfaction when he found a new method to bring pain and suffering to the animals, whether that meant using a dull knife or even a rusty one.
No one in the entirety of Canmai Village knew the depths of his insanity, all they knew was that he enjoyed cutting open dead animals and always came home covered in blood.
"Jeez, just how did you turn out this way?"
Eto's mothers, Miranda Taylor, was preparing dinner in the kitchen when Eto had returned home. From the kitchen she had a full view of Etos blood covered self and even though she sees it often, she was still put off by it.
Miranda was a beautiful woman. With long, choppy blond hair that flowed down her back, bright sky blue eyes devoid of any kind of malice. A supple curvy body that would cause all men to salivate. Even her face, perfectly sculpted as if carved out of marble by the world's greatest master sculptor. She had no complaint about the life of a commoner, her only complaint was that her son was turning out "different" than the other children, she wasn't quite sure if it was different in a good way or not.
"Go wash up and then help me finish preparing dinner, your father will be home soon."
"Okay"
Although he grumbled under his breath he passed his mother in the kitchen and went out to the back of the house to wash himself with water from the well. After making sure he was sufficiently cleaned he re-enter the house and headed to his room to get a change of clothes.
After changing into a clean set of clothes he placed the bloodied clothes into his dirty clothes pile in the corner of his room and returned to the kitchen to set the dining table while his mother finished preparing dinner.
As Eto and Miranda were moving the food from the kitchen to the dining table, the front door suddenly creaked open and a massive figure entered the room. The figure was covered in full armor and had a sword sheathed at his side. As he walked into the house the floorboards would groan under his feet. When he began to take off his armor each piece that hit the ground landed with a hard THUD.
"Cedric your home."
Miranda greeted the man, her husband Cedric, with a warm smile and a great big hug. He was a tall, muscular man, Miranda looked like a toy doll compared to him. Cedric had matching hair and eyes to his son Eto. His body was littered with scars here and there, obviously he had seen quite a few battles over the years. He was the captain of the village guard, the strongest swordsman in the entire village whom all the young children viewed as a kind of local hero.
"I am. It smells like blood, Eto, were you at your shed again?"
Cedric looked down at Eto with a small frown on his face. He had never liked Etos' hobby, but he was busy enough with his work that he couldn't really stop his son like he wanted.
"Yes father."
"Eto, how many times have I told you to stop cutting open the dead farm animals, it's one thing if you were trying to learn how to become a butcher, but at this point it seems just like you're doing it for fun."
After letting out a large sigh he once again began trying to lecturing his son, which had become an almost daily routine at this point, with Cedic often thinking to himself how did he even find this hobby, and why won't he drop it.
"Well whatever, let's just sit down and eat."
With that statement all three of them sat down to eat the food Miranda had cooked. The family held small conversations during dinner, Cedric telling them about his work for the day and Miranda talking about the latest gossip amongst the housewives. The clinking of forks against plates and the small laughter from some of the stories made them seem like a completely happy family with no worries. During one of his stories about the new young guards Cedric suddenly had a thought.
"Eto, what do you think about learning swordsmanship?"