The generations of Alvric, who laid down their lives during the Cataclysm, the second great war.

Ilim who begat Hram,

Who begat Gunther,

Fer’yh, and Fer’th.

Fain, brother of Ilim,

Who begat Yorm.

They mounted steeds and rode to battle,

With naught but three hundred men.

Sharthu had come from yonder,

N’tdaea from the depths of the blue deep.

To pillage and to conquer, they came

To a land already wrought with war.

With legions of mounted drakes,

Sharthu gained on Alvric.

The welkin darkened as if a storm approacheth.

Whelming pressure, Alvric felt

But stood their ground

To defend that which their ancestors found.

‘Nay,

Not one foe shall tread this land.

Ti's a land of brave men,

Not cowardly curs.’

Ilim called upon the wind.

Fain, the might of the blade.

Hearts united,

The brothers drew upon ancient power.

Argonaut, the Wind Spirit.

Sharthu was confounded.

The very welkin he boasted upon became his gaol.

With the battle cry of a phoenix,

Fain rend the heavens with the blade,

And Sharthu was no more.

The sea boiled with alien creatures ne'er before seen.

They looked neither man nor beast,

Halflings, they were called.

Landward they raced,

The blue brine their track.

N'tdaea rose from the sea

With the might of a great wave

Atop the back of a sea dragon, he sat

Very much the conqueror, he looked

The surface and its dwellers beneath him.

They pillaged, they killed,

They raped without end

Alvric turned their sights on them,

Bearing God's anger.

A battle ensued.

With fire in their hearts

Alvric felled halfling after halfling.

To turn the tide of the battle,

N'tdaea entered the fray.

Sea dragon underfoot,

He came ashore.

Yorm and his brethren, Hram

United hearts with Gunther,

Fer’yh, and Fer’th.

They called upon the Wind Spirit.

An hungered Argonaut seized the moment.

Both man and dragon,

Wrapped up in a swirling storm,

The sea was split in the advent of their struggle.

The surviving halflings saw this and fled.

Siege abandoned

As their Lord became fodder

For the Mighty Argonaut.

Famed became the seven,

Far spread the names of Alvric’s braves

In the nameless land.

And at the hour that was fated

They departed

Into the embrace

Of the Wind Spirit’s keeping.

This is but an olive seed in the epic battles of yore,

To light afire the hearts of you younglings of Alvric,

‘To thine own self...be true,’

An excerpt from the Annals of Alvric,

Written by Wuda,

First Scribe of the 18th

Generation of Alvric.

~~~

“Clear out!” Hedon roared.

They had come prepared for multiple eventualities. This was not their first time getting rid of trash. Hedon trusted his men to work quickly as time was not on their side. His goons quickly threw everyone off the cliff not bothering to stab the rest of them. It was a pity they couldn’t have their way with the beautiful blonde, but they couldn’t risk getting caught. They worked meticulously, quickly erasing every evidence of their presence.

“Pick him up,” Hedon commanded.

The Sprouts broke all four of Jerome’s limbs and picked him up, holding him in front of their Young Lord. Hedon inspected the kid in front of him before stabbing him through the heart with his blade. Jerome coughed up blood, staining Hedon’s robes, but he neither screamed nor flinched. He only raged on as his body twitched from the pain, growling and snapping at the Alvric heir.

“You’re not worthy of a treasure such as Adama’s gauntlets,” Hedon sneered while twisting the blade to inflict more damage. With the death of its wielder, an artifact will become unbound, and ready for another to bond with it.

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Jerome’s eyes drooped slowly as Hedon pulled out his blade. His heart stopped beating and his vitality waned. His body temperature began to drop, and sudden changes started happening. Hedon and his goons were dumbfounded. Those holding up Jerome quickly tossed him off the cliff as their hands began to grow stiff. They looked at their hands with jaws wide open.

“What the hell was that?!” one of the Sprouts that held up Jerome asked, “I can’t feel my hands!”

“I can’t feel my hands either. May his soul know only torment in the afterlife!” The other cursed Jerome angrily as he tried to flex his fingers but found it impossible.

“Young Lord,” they called out to Hedon expectantly. Only through his authority as the heir of the Alvric clan could they seek help from the experts of the clan.

“Even in death you’re a blight!” Hedon spat, looking down into the canyon. “Let’s go,” he said, addressing his gang. “Our physicians and Alchemists should know how to help you recover.” he hoped so, or else he would never hear the end of it from his father.

“Gratitude, Young Lord,” they bowed.

He quickly took off his robe and tossed it off the cliff and a spare one was immediately handed over to him. Hedon observed the hands of his men as they ran back toward Farryn at full speed. Their hands looked like they were carved out of stone, and they were slightly opened as if they were in the process of making a fist. It was… unnerving. He had never seen anything like that in all his life. This was a new experience for him. The cur must have had some other good fortune during Pilgrims’ Keep. He thought about how he would keep this a secret.

This could be trouble, he thought as he took a glance at their hands again. The Sprouts were unnamed and not as powerful as one would expect a named Sprout to be.

But they are Sprouts nonetheless. Father would not take kindly to crippling two of his Sprouts, he sighed as he thought of ways to evade the wrath of the Alvric Patriarch. His father was a very intense man — and very attentive. He would sniff out the problem before he could take them to see the healers. All the night guards in the Alvric Estate would report in three times before the night was over. Maybe there might be a way to evade his father.

But what sort of fortune did the cur obtain during Pilgrims’ Keep… those gauntlets… he clenched his jaw, holding back from cursing.

“I really wanted those gauntlets,” Hedon muttered to himself, but the Sprouts heard.

“We’re truly sorry about the gauntlets young lord, we’d come back to search for his body as soon as we…” one of the Sprouts said and looked at his hands with a pained expression.

“Hmm,” Hedon nodded. “But it seems the universe has other plans. I don’t know if we’d be able to remove the gauntlets without…” He also trailed off looking at their hands.

They dropped the topic as their egos wouldn’t let them admit that an ordinary Blank crippled them.

“Hurry. Time may not be on our side,” Hedon said and they pushed themselves faster than before.

Hedon knew he must not be seen here by anyone. The Vorthes were known to have eyes everywhere and it would be bad for his family’s reputation if this got out.

But who would have known the cur obtained such a treasure in Pilgrims’ Keep? He was meant to use this Pilgrims’ Keep to shine, to show the world who Hedon Alvric was. But a little nobody took that from him. He wished he didn’t kill Jerome quickly. He wished he could go back in time to do it all over again.

“If it wasn’t for Adama’s gauntlets, I’d have made him suffer until he begged for death,” Hedon muttered. He was an Alvric. Nobody messes with the Alvrics. He clenched his fist as he raced forward.

~~~

Yun Vorthe arrived at the canyon to witness Jerome and Hedon fighting. He observed his illegitimate but ‘necessary offspring’ for a very long time. Jerome had lost all sense of self and fought like an animal. But he still wielded visha stirh’aun with intelligence — like a predator. He was fast. Far faster than a Blank had any right to be. And strong too. But his adversary was prepared for him. This altercation had been planned long before now.

Yun looked to the side where the rest of the people from the Orphanage were being stabbed and thrown into the Canyon. Nolan Vorthe would answer to the Royal Family for that. He was raising a psychopath and he needed to be reminded of who was in charge of society at large.

He peered into the river of fate, checking to see if any changes were made to the fate of the world as a result of this — and what alterations he could make himself. This event could create a sociopath in Jerome. But not if he could do something to alter it.

Fate was a fickle thing. Its ebbs and flow, a mystery even to the most skilled of scryers. One could glimpse an event that would happen but such an event might have an infinite amount of events leading up to it, or not know what seeds such an event would sow into the river of fate. One had to wait till the time of the event before new channels were birthed in the flow of fate.

He watched as the Alvric younglings tossed Jerome’s friends into the depths of Blade’s Edge Canyon. And when they got to the little girl whose origins were a mystery, he revealed a bit of his presence — but not enough for the three Sprouts to notice his position.

After they scampered off, he walked unhurriedly to the edge of the canyon with his hands folded behind him, to continue observing Jerome.

~~~

Jerome crossed the threshold between life and death, but laws that were powerful beyond this plane brought him back among the living. His heart knitted itself as he fell and his vitality rose — barely. He opened his eyes and used Suzie to cling to the canyon wall.

His rage refused to ebb as he fought for control. It fought back like a ferocious animal refusing to give in. It promised vengeance and strength; the blood of his enemies staining the land of Vorthe with their heads on pikes outside Farryn’s gate.

Strangely he wanted to let go; to feed his rage until every single one of them was dead.

No! He communicated his Will through every fiber of his being. His struggles lasted a long time before he was finally able to leash the beast. Then he discovered Ash, passed out, and covered in her own blood on a small outcropping in the canyon wall, a few feet to his left. The beast reared its head again as his emotions were stirred.

“Ash,” he tried to shout, but his voice came out a whisper. His throat felt sore and hurt badly. His mouth was bleeding.

The sound of the wind, as it poured into the canyon, was deafening. The aura stung his eyes and skin but he ignored it. He tried using Suzie to reach Ash to wake her up but couldn’t.

Fatigue was beginning to set in. His eyes began to droop as his blood continued to flow out of him. He wasn’t healing, at least not fast enough. He tried to cycle but it was like walking through mud.

The Alvrics….must…have done…something…to my core, he thought. Even his thoughts were sluggish. His control over Suzie began to slip as he weakened hanging there, thousands of feet above a dark nothingness, or so he thought. He tried moving his body but his arms were shattered, and they hurt really bad.

Something else was happening though. The shattered mind-calming stone had been moving like an ocean of sand covering his body as though it had a life of its own. He didn’t notice this, however, for darkness took him over. And silence surrounded him as he fell, smashing into the river below.

~~~

Impossible! the Sovereign of Vorthe nearly screamed out.

In all my years, this has never happened before, the Sovereign thought in wonder. His heart was beating so fast beneath his chest, he was unable to keep still. He knew very well what this meant. If this child could rein in the beast with just his strength of will, a lot of things would change.

It would mean...

He didn’t dare finish the thought. He quickly picked up the girl Jerome called Ash. With a flick of a finger, she was hovering in front of him. Still passed out, but breathing. She was all bones and drenched in her own blood.

Yun sighed. At least saving this one could put the child in his debt. He contemplated wiping her memory but decided against it. This experience would make them both stronger to face life. He rose into the sky and looked down. His golden eyes were like bright suns penetrating the depths of the river as he probed his connection with the darkness inside Jerome.

“Six thousand years ago, I created this canyon to destroy one such as you — a beast that terrorized my people for decades,” he murmured, thinking back to how Blade’s Edge Canyon came to be.

“Yet in this same place, another offspring gives me hope,” Yun Vorthe muttered as he gazed hopefully at the heavens.

He took a step into the void as a soft golden light surrounded him with Ash in tow.