The James Callahan Chronicles: tense beginnings

a brand new adventure featuring swashbuckling action, breathtaking adventure, and old kingdoms

read to the bottom for an author’s note!

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Tense beginnings

On a bright autumn morning in a time since forgotten, two neighboring Kingdoms were suddenly on the brink of war.

it all began with the disappearance of a princess who, despite her Kingdom’s efforts to the contrary, couldn't care less.

The princess’ name was Jasmine Pruitt. She belonged to the family of the Royal Pruitts.

They occupied the left bank of a big river. The Kingdom of Pruitt was seldom prosperous. Any advance in new technological effort was either dismissed as hocus pocus or thwarted by the King of the Land of Jessaria, In which the Kingdom of Pruitt resided.

Their neighbors, The Westimars, were a little bit better, but not by much.

They too, had their own problems.

The Westimars occupied the right side of the river, which was known as The Red River, on account of witnessing Centuries of blood.

Both the Westimars and the Pruitts had waged many wars over centuries with each other. Sometimes, over the River itself, sometimes over supplies, and sometimes the wars had waged for so long, people eventually forgot what caused it.

This went on for centuries. Eventually, after having witnessed so much bloodshed, both Kingdoms were forced by their residents to form a treaty with each other to no longer wage war barring something too unfortunate to ignore.

Something like the Kidnapping of a royal family member.

Before we get down to the unfortunate business of kidnappings, however, we should get acquainted with, for lack of a better term, our victim first.

Princess Jasmine never had a single ounce of care for anything regarding her Kingdom. She did not care to engage in asinine and dull family gatherings, nor did she care for the one thing she knew she was born for, marriage.

Perhaps that’s not quite fair. Marriage was never the problem. It was who she would marry. She knew that one day her father, her sweet beloved father who doted so heavily on her and showered words of kindness daily, would one day give her away to a kingdom for some political alliance she also would not care about.

There were rumors that if she had been born just a decade earlier, she would have been married into the Westimars, as a bargaining chip to end The Eternal War.

The problem, according to her, was this: she never liked anyone. Any boy who looked at her (and there were plenty of those), she never felt anything in return for him.

All the poets she ever read always wrote about love and first glances but she never felt them. For anyone.

To her, there were only 3 things she truly cared for: her horse, Ranbert, swords (she had a whole room full of swords she would collect), and her books (for which she also had a whole room).

Nothing else mattered to her aside from reading about the great battles or the budding romances of the knights.

Or riding in the fields at early dawn with Ranbert and forgetting everything that exists outside the green fields.

So that was Princess Jasmine. But how and why was she even kidnapped? Well, the why was hotly debated, and in the end, it was determined by both Kingdoms that she was abducted by the other one for one battle or another they fought centuries ago.

Many scholars agreed that it was clear and plain to see that it was the Westimars who took her because they clearly cannot let go of the Battle of the Hundredth Day.

Meanwhile,on the other side, many also agreed that it was clearly the work of the Pruitts, who were still sour about the Battle of the Hundredth Day.

It all came about when the princess went riding late the day before, and while she was in the fields, she spotted a dark hooded figure in the trees.

Curiosity getting the better of her, and one of her trusted swords beside her, she galloped hard in the direction of the figure.

After an hour or so of chasing shadows, she got tired and decided to rest in the wilderness.

She hitched Ranbert, fed him some apples (he loved apples), and rested a while near some trees.

When she awoke, she realized she had slept long into the night. She got up quickly to see that Ranbert was nowhere to be found, and for the first time in her life, her heart was beating out of her chest faster than it had ever been.

“Ranbert!” her voice echoed through the trees back to her.

She felt a cold hand grab her from behind that very instance. and before she could scream for help, she was already knocked out and carried to a boat near the shore of the Red River.

On that boat, two more figures stood waiting.

“What took you so long?” asked one of them.

“I was waiting for her to fall asleep. She saw me nearby so I had to hide away.

When she did, I lost my way. Took me all night to find her spot again.” answered the man back.

“What about the horse?”

“I shooed it away. In the direction of the castle. As instructed.”

“Good.” answered one back.

At midnight, Ranbert finally came to the castle, stamping and agitated.

When the doors of the castle opened, Jasmine’s father, Arthur Pruitt, came running in.

“Where have yo-” he stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the horse. “Where’s my daughter?”

It took all night to find the princess. The king looked into each house in the Kingdom. Offered rewards. Nothing.

When the morrow came, the king had decided. It was finally time for war...

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Authors note:

this is somewhat of an experiment. an adventure in creative writing, if you will. it came to me while i was reading The Princess Bride by William Goldman. that book has such a keen sense of adventure and just makes you smile! the only problem is, however, that nowadays nothing feels quite sincere. everything feels like its trying to subvert things or be meta or self aware about it. so I thought, “huh. what if i wrote a story that is pure pastiche. no self aware meta commentary or trying to be clever. just pure fun!” and thus, James Callahan was born (you’ll meet him soon in a coming chapter!). I couldn’t resist though. there are instances of irony here and there. but it shouldn’t distract from the main story, i hope. adventure is the word here.

my goal with this story is to just write it as i see fit, with as minimal planning as possible. so i am just writing along as it comes to me here.

i want to write something fun and engaging and just for the heck of it. my goal here is not to reinvent the wheel or to take fantasy to a new height. i just want to write something for fun.

i have somewhat of an idea of where the story might take us but truth be told, even i don’t know for sure yet. so, if you want to tune in with me and witness this fun and wonderful adventure, then i implore you all to stay with me and engage as much as you can. give me feedback, shape the story along with me.

maybe one day, a more refined version of this tale may see the light of day. until then. let’s just have some fun, shall we?

also, i plan on writing one chapter each week (or two week, depending on my schedule) and i will try my very best to stay on it. if i falter, i hope i can get back to it again! if i have enough support, i am sure that would be a big motivator for me to keep going!

Oh, and one last thing, I have tried to find some public domain work to put as artwork for this but i could not find anything that fits what i have in mind. If anybody wants to volunteer and do me a favor, let me know!