PROLOGUE III – THE RANGERS

On the island of Timbershire, an elf of the wood tribe sat in the looming shadow of Oakshroud – a cyllindrical tower of elven make, and the centre of elven society on the Cloudsea. As it so happened for the lone elf, it was also the centre for procuring a seat aboard an air ship in order to ferry across the islands of the Cloudsea.

The young elf – beyond elderly by human standards – sat on the tiled marble walkway of Oakshroud's port to sky, awaiting the next ferry whose seats had not yet been reserved by the entirety of other elvenfolk intending to celebrate Windswept Island's Centennial. He leaned as he sat with his back against a solid ivory fence, which was intricately carved in mural work, depicting all of the important historic and storied events of the Cloudsea. It was not a long fence, given that the Cloudsea was a small, and young realm.

The elf, hooded and cloaked in green, with worn and tattered leather strapped over his otherwise linen garments, unfolded and read over a letter as he sat, waiting when his opportunity to board a ship would come.

The letter, which he had read perhaps a dozen and two times since receiving it the day prior, was an invitation.

"Caeral 'Dreampetal' Xiloru," the elf read aloud the signature at the end of invitation. "First chair of the Nature and Goodness Preservation Society." He folded the letter back up and tilted his head up in order to look at the immense Oakshroud tower before him. "I wonder where in the halls of this affront to nature your society might be found." The young elf whispered as he contemplated whether he ought to even be there – whether he ought to be anywhere in any society for that matter.

He quickly dismissed his thoughts, remembering the foul thing that weighed on him from the depths of his rucksack.

image [https://i.imgur.com/ZSpfKdC.png]

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"Shadowbrook," a silky female voice commanded the young elf out of his state of near trance.

The elf twisted his neck to look at the form of a powerful woman who stood before him, cloaked and garbed in near identical fashion to his own. However, she was otherwise wholly different than he. Where his hair was nearly black and worn loosely to the length of his back, hers was white and barely beyond her shoulders. Though he had brown eyes, hers were gold and without pupil. His skin was pale, with both faint musculature and even less fat, yet she was tanned and built with visible athleticism that nevertheless did not betray her female form. Though, both lived as habitually reclusive rangers, their states of body were in complete opposition.

The elf pried himself off the ground with casual haste, and stood before her.

"Please, call me Norren," the young elf smirked. "Tis what all my friends call me."

"All of one," the tall woman responded with a playful smile. "Aye, all of one," the elf called Norren betrayed his coy smirk with a half held back, crooked smile. "And what news of Adi?"

"She who seeks the darkest corners of the darkest wood in Timbershire?" The woman brought her left hand to her chin, and held the elbow of the same arm with her opposing hand as she contemplated a response. "I suppose she would offer her oldest friend a bottle of plumberry wine, with the price of payment being a friend's long embrace."

"Only friend," Norren corrected. "Adi's longest, only friend."

Adi burst out laughing. "Am I not friends with the sparrows and squirrels of the forest, as are you?"

"Aye, lest I forget." Norren nodded, now rummaging from within the bag under his cloak. "But not friends with the flowers." He produced a sylvan spider lily out from his sack, and the plant's roots twisted around his fingers, suggesting a sentience and will rare of plants in the Cloudsea. Rare in plants that is, but not completely unobserved. Yet still its red petals shimmered and rippled of their own design, whatever that purpose might have been.

"For me?" Adi crossed her arms.

"Never!" Norren jested, returning the flower to the safe spot reserved for sentient flowers in his bag. "He's my second oldest friend."

"And what of the hug?" Adi kept crossing her arms.

"Oh right, those peculiar old gestures!" The two then embraced as long separated friends come together by a chance encounter, which was exactly what they were.

Norren leaned back against the safety of the fence once the embrace had completed its course.

"News of adventurers I hear." Adi slipped a hand into a pocket beneath her leathers, pulling out an opened envelope with a bit of wear on the edges, but nonetheless clearly addressed to one 'Adi, ranger of the Timbershire' on its flat side.

"Ah well then," Norren chuckled. "Seems you're an adventurer too." The two continued to exchange playful words of jest amidst the growing bustle of people arriving on the marble dockyard. Neither of the rangers were quite comfortable with the growing number of persons surrounding them. The crowd grew quickly while the expected time for another ferry arrival came nearer.

Before long, the two friends were taking stock of the loitering crowd. A smaller number of those coming seemed the adventuring type, with a considerably greater number seeming to be of either mercantile or pedestrian disposition. All such persons arriving, hoping for concourse to the centennial event for their own reasons.

The crowd eventually pushed the two friends shoulder to shoulder. As moments passed, Norren shivered at all of the unexpected contact with strangers, but even then couldn't help but notice a growing number of them pointing at the sky.

"Does the ferry arrive?" The elf whispered to himself, craning his neck upward. If the airship he bared eyes on was a ferry, his time in reclusivity must have worn on him, for a grand airship that exceeded even the immense tower of Oakshroud drifted far overhead, canvassing the entirety of the surroundings in its shadow as it passed under the starlit sky. Norren scanned the markings of the ship and sighed a yawn of both relief and dismay, noting it to be of an engineering design associated with the peaceful goblins to the west.

Norren was also relieved to notice that the elves in the crowd surrounding him were otherwise also seemingly impressed by the grandiosity of the gargantuan ship. Looking around the crowd, he pivoted to his left just in time to meet breast to breast with the sudden thud of another new arrival. Norren flew to the ground at the impact with the yet unseen person, who must have been in full sprint, as both persons had collapsed in a crumpled pile of themselves.

At least, that's how Norren perceived the situation before shaking his head out of the dizzy state. He blinked the dizziness away, only to lay eyes on the blurred form of someone standing before him, offering a hand up with unfaltering chivalry.

Norren's vision coalesced, revealing the person before him to be a female dark elf. The dark elf woman held her hand out before the prone Norren. He inspected her black leather armors to be of fine make, with worked in silver and steel in strategic defensible locations. His eyes wavered to the woman's side, taking note of a sheathed longsword, before strafing his sight to her other hip to see yet another sheathed longsword, and realizing them both to be katana housed in sleek black scabbards.

The embarrassed Norren grabbed at her offered hand. The dark elf pulled him to his feet with ease, despite the fact that she was as fair and slim in appearance as he, though, standing perhaps only an inch taller. Norren inspected her long, white and curled hair, braided into a binder, but still flowing down to the small of her back.

"I sincerely apologize," the darker skinned variant of his own kind offered. "However," she preluded, pulling her hand away from Norren's in order to point upward, "my intent, was to catch travel in the direction of that goblin ship."

As the situation set in, Norren caught a few numerous whispers and murmurs from the surrounding crowd. Of the whispers, Norren took note of an oft repeating name, "Ahlyssaria Ssalyx."

"Ahlyssaria Ssalyx?" He mumbled to himself, realizing it to be a dark elf name. The woman before him snapped a glance back at Norren through serious slanted eyelids. "Yes, I am she."

Norren shook his head, "My apologies miss Ssalyx. I've been away for a very long time, and I've gotten in the habit of speaking my thoughts aloud."

"Tis true," Adi abruptly stepped in, before the dark elf woman could reply. "We're merely here to catch a ferry to Windswept."

"Ah," Ahlyssaria interjected. "You're adventurers." She pulled out a not dissimilar envelope to the ones both Norren and Adi then produced in complementary unison.

"I sense you did not receive a second letter, however?" She then pulled out another, hand scribbled note, which she offered to both Norren and Adi. Once the two rangers had finished reading the note in their own time, they nodded with an opportunistic mind.

Adi was the first to break the silence. "An especially expedited invitation for the most esteemed dark elf sword master." She waved the short note as she spoke the words.

Ahlyssaria nodded. "Tis my intent to invite you as comrades, for the awkwardness of our chance meeting." She then looked at Norren. "It's the least I could do for knocking you prone." Norren was once more taken aback with embarrassment, but ever conscious of the large crowd he was quick to interject with his acceptance of the offer.

"Yes, absolutely, yes." When it came to it, Norren would have been happy to simply be away from the bustle of all those people, not being a particular sociable sort of elf. However, the convenience of getting to where he wanted to go was ever in the back of his mind.

"Glad to be in your company," Adi shot forward, stepping in front of Norren and offering Ahlyssaria a handshake.

"Alright", Ahlyssaria blinked, and spoke abruptly. "Let's be off then, to the front of the crowd." Adi and Norren were somewhat surprised to have the crowd willingly disperse before Ahlyssaria as they followed her to the airship launch, where just then an airship was pulling into port.

"There then," Ahlyssaria turned her head back, her hair flicking around her shoulder against the wind of the airship's magical thrust as she did so. "Our ferry awaits."