The Children of Anvil

## by Veikko

As you may know, I wear upon my head the skull of Hauka. This is a natural part of my attire these days, as natural as the boots on my feet, and I often forget how unusual it is to some cultures to see me bedecked in feathers with monstrous skull for a helmet. This is why, when I walked past three Anvil Academy Students sparring with wooden weapons somewhere in the League camp one summer, it first didn’t strike me as odd when I heard them yell ‘get the Skull Man!’

I took a few steps forwards before I thought, ‘that’s a coincidence, and I wear a skull.’

Another step forwards before I thought, ‘and no-one else around here is wearing a skull but I.’

And I took one final step before I noticed the sound of young footsteps thundering behind me and the thought occurred to me that ‘surely, if you think about this objectively… I could well be the Skull Man?’

So I turned, to find three of the Empire’s future warriors charging at me, wooden weapons held high in the air! But they slowed in their steps as I turned, as suddenly the armed and bone-bedecked ‘Skull Man’, feathers furling in the wind, reeled to look at them from beneath the confines of his macabre headwear.

What was I to do? Chastise them for running after me? There was nothing Virtuous in that. Should I have tried to scare them myself? That would yield nothing valuable by way of life experience. No, better that I reward their Courage than preserve my own Pride, and so I did the only really Wise thing that could be done.

I turned and ran! And they ran after! I was lucky to escape them, and I grinned from ear to ear for the rest of that evening thinking about their bravery against the unknown.

Following that, the Students had come to identify me as a Stormcrow, a priest of Wintermark who held the ear of the nation (supposedly, reputedly). And this was at a time that they were struggling to find the eggs of something called a Boggart. One of the ones that had chased me came to me frequently over the following days, and asked if we had found any Boggart eggs. He spun a fanciful tale, that they grew to twelve feet in height, that they ate magic, that they spat fire and flew and turned invisible! But I am a Wise Stormcrow, and I know to take heed of the words of the Academy Students, and so I brought it to the other Stormcrows.

When I mentioned it to them, they laughed and scoffed. thinking it was some sort of childish prank that was being played on me, and that day, as far as I know no-one looked for the boggart eggs.

I was visited by the student the second time that evening, before he went to bed. He told me that there were still many out there and that they were destined to hatch, and so once more I brought it to the Crows, who shrugged and waved the notion away, thinking it the exaggeration of a juvenile mind.

Now, a few of my Hall have a tendency to take on work with the Iron Raptors, and the night after I had tried and failed to get the other Crows to look for Boggart eggs, they went to the Sentinel Gate with every intent on hunting some fully grown boggarts. Ah, so they are real! But surely no match for the Iron Raptors!

I challenge you to come to my hall and say the word ‘Boggart’ around any who went on that mission. They will flinch and curse the name. They will tell you about the Bogarts that they faced , gnashing teeth and slicing claws, come hooting and howling out of the night at terrible speeds so much so that they might as well have been taking flight on wings, and disappearing into the darkness so suddenly they might as well have been going invisible! I was there when they returned, battered and exhausted, with tales of how they almost perished to these wicked and devious creatures! They nearly felled the best of the Iron Raptors, and could well have been stopped in their tracks had the other crows listened to the Skull Man!

So take heed: the true saviours of Anvil are the Children. If it were not for them, our home away from home would be riddled with monsters every Equinox, rife with plague every Solstice! The streets would run red with Imperial blood were it not for the Academy Students, who many dismiss as the heroes of tomorrow, and yet they are the heroes of today!

A toast to the Academy Students of Anvil. With the lessons of life you are learning today, we Full Citizens can rest assured that our future will undoubtedly be secure.