Malendithas

I was born on Fa'Len, or so my mother told me when I came of age to ask of my lineage. That is all my mother would tell me. We lived secluded on Kigstow, outside a small town several days from the capital.

I did wonder why my mother didn't have a companion to rely on in our lives. My father is not in my memories, and while I see others with their paternal figures, I have never felt that loss. The chief village hunter, Drekanyll took an interest in my development early in my youth, just after I had learned the language of our elders. My mother encouraged it, as though the way of the woods and bow was the true way to live our lives, the way of the future.

Eventually I did acquire the skills to come and go as I pleased without upsetting her, venturing out to the forest to track whatever animals might be near. Several times I found myself being tracked by other larger predators, and Drekanyll came to my rescue just in time. I would receive my scolding and hurry home.

One time, the only time that mattered, I found my mother sitting at the fire muttering. As I peered in the window, I felt a strange chill and pull toward the fire. Suddenly the fire flickered a strange purpleish blue, and I was inside, my mother no longer in the room. The fire was dying, embers glowing a soft red with a faint and occasional crackle. In front of the fire was a trail of ash in some shape, now smeared and unable to decipher. The morning after, the ash was cleared. In it's place was an exquisite quiver, empty but a note attached: "Take Care."

When my mother examined the note, a startled expression came over her face - first of panic, then excitement. She hurriedly gathered all the things Drekanyll explained were necessary for a true hunter to track his prey and laid them out on the floor next to the quiver. With a flip of her wrist, the shutters all went closed, blackening the room save a white glimmer in the palm of her hand, which she threw to the cold embers in the fireplace. The shimmer danced slowly (it seemed), and as it touched the remains of the fire from the night before, a great fire erupted. She muttered a few words, and the purple flames returned, slowly creeping over the quiver. In an instant, the quiver was out of sight, and then it wasn't. She smiled happily, turned to me and said "It's time you know of your father.

"He was never just not here, he was taken. Your father taught and I practiced at the school on Fa'Len. When you were born, I resigned myself from the studies until you were of age to join me. Your father had been deep in study, some such magics that many believed to be foolish, lost to the past. He was very excited, and couldn't wait until his work came to fruition, that the whole of Fa'Len would benefit from it.

"The night it happened, a small sack with enough gold to travel through the portal appeared, much as did this quiver. With note attached in your father's hand, it read "Save the boy." By the specific amount of gold, and time the sack appeared, I knew he meant off Fa'Len, not just out of the city. You cried as I ran to the portal, shoving through the merchant carts and bouncing off the bodyguards. Just before the portal took us, I attempted to look in at him one more time through a spell he gave me when we wed: I saw hands casting, a portal to some magical realm stretch into being, and a single magical beast strode through. Your father tried to shield himself, but the beast paid no mind. It grabbed his leg, and strode out the way it came. Then the planetary portal took us and broke my connection.

"This," she motioned to the note, "is he: your father."