The Heir to the Throne

The First Day of School

A cold, God-forsaken place was Nibblet, a small village that sat in the boarders of Metal, Gem, and Frass, a place that always seem to snow. Day after day of searing wind that would freeze flesh in seconds, drifts of deadly snow piled to the eaves of the houses (if houses you could call them), and wolves, droves of them, sweeping down from Northern Gem to hunt the more plentiful game, including humans, found around Nibblet.

Even though it had a name and called itself a town, Nibblet was hardly more than a shantytown. A crude collection of dilapidated houses, even more huts and shacks, muddy streets (when they weren't froze over, that is), raw sewage and the refugees, castaways and survivors of the Civil War going on in Gem and Metal's neighboring country of Frass which ended a few years ago.

Nibblet got its name in a funny sort of way: two winters past, the wolves managed to make off with eighteen people, including six children. One of the town 'elders', a fat slob named Jake Strong, joked about how the wolves were "nibbling" away at the town. Well, funny thing about jokes like that, they have a way of coming back to you... Jake disappeared two days later. The only thing ever found was a half-eaten boot that was not empty. Anyway, fat Jake was gone, into the belly of a wolf or two, but the name stuck, his last contribution to the land of the living.

Because of the war in Frass, mainly women and children populated Nibblet, as men left to fight in one of the two warring tribes as mercenaries. Old and young, of all shapes and sizes, there probably were twenty women for every man. Yes, a womanizer's dream was Nibblet, except these were hard women. Uprooted from their former lives by a war they didn't want, scratching out a bare existence far from the nearest town of any size, the women of Nibblet had learned to take what they wanted and then fought like hellcats to hold on to it. More than one man had found himself waking up naked in a field surrounded by wolves after he thought he could take whatever woman he wanted.

Yep, hard women they were, in fact, last winter alone the women of Nibblet had killed forty-two of those damned wolves. But, despite all this, year after year, the wolves grew stronger, larger and bolder, sometimes even stealing babies right out of their cribs over the dead and mauled bodies of their mothers. Every winter, more and more people disappeared just like old fat Jake, and yet, Nibblet continued to struggle on growing, year by year.

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Cora Jane Anderson, or CJ for short, stood on the porch of her old wood frame house bursting with pride as she surveyed her small freshly cultivated garden. A tall willowy blonde, CJ still retained the soft supple skin of a much younger woman, even after four years in the hellhole called Nibblet.

Born and raised the only child of a wealthy landowner in Northern Metal, she had been pampered all her life. Her every need, want and desire had been instantly satisfied by her doting parents and the labors of their huge plantation. Then her life suddenly changed when, at the age of eighteen, a raiding party of Frass troops swept through her home with fire and death. Now the plantation was in ashes, her parents long since turned to dust after they were cut down trying to escape. The labors were long gone and CJ had gone north as the 'mistress' of the Frass Commander that had captured her.

It was with great satisfaction that CJ escaped into the lush Gem woodlands a month later, leaving the Frass commander lying in a pool of his own blood. After a nasty painful night of 'serving' her master, CJ had slit his throat from ear to ear while he lay in a drunken stupor, took his knife and purse of coins, and fled. Two months later, in the middle of summer, hungry and haggard, her clothing in tatters barely covering her body, CJ had stumbled onto the only street of Nibblet. Nursed back to health by a group of the local womenfolk, CJ recovered quickly and settled down in her new home. She stayed here because with her line of work, the only place she could relax was in this frozen town in the middle of nowhere.