To be enthralled and to be enslaved are the same thing, and they are both experiences that Zuriel Ramara Vitally has met before. Enthrallment takes your breath away, and enslavement harbors it. Enthrallment keeps you guessing, and enslavement chooses not to answer. Enthrallment is admiration, and enslavement is love. Zuriel has had to deal with situations of enthrallment, situations of enslavement, and situations of both. Every creature in the world of Amarian has to deal with those scenarios, from the high mountains of the north, to the glistening Elpharae sea to the south. Fate allows no one to be the exception to these feelings. Fate is not a game of chance, it is a game of rules. It is up to you how you will interpret and respond to these rules. 

Fate has landed the Vitally to exist, to thrive, and to fall. Once a prominent family of merchants in the high streets of Callahan, Zuriel was born in the right place, but at the wrong time. Within the Vitally family, each male, oldest of their generation, is named Zuriel. Until they are the oldest living Zuriel, they must go by their middle name. The Zuriel we follow in this story would have been referred to as ‘Ramara’ for the majority of his life until he succeeded his father, if it had not been for the Great Siege of Callahan. In the dusk of a crisp night, Valitian forces attacked and set fire to the duchy of Callahan, eliminating the majority of its inhabitants. Elouise, the eldest child of the Vitally’s, was instructed to take her baby brother and run as far as she could until she found somewhere safe. That was the last the children had heard from their parents. 

Elouise and Zuriel found cover in the nearby village of Rondheim, a secluded town housing a mixture of inhabitants, mostly orcs and dwarves. As many more children found solace within the walls of Rondheim, they were housed in a makeshift orphanage. Every day of Saint’s Eve, the children were marched out onto the street, sold and profited to the public like slabs of meat. As Zuriel grew, each friend he would make would soon get plucked away, turned over for a golden Roso. With each year, the number of children dwindled down, taking the small Tarfolk, the elves, and Elouise. Before Elouise was taken by a family reigning from Fermoltan, she passed down the stories and tales of the Vitally family to Zuriel, allowing him to remember what came before him, and what he would leave behind.

The days in the ‘orphanage’ were difficult. No children were left to accompany Zuriel, food was scarce, and each night had to be spent on a cold stone floor. By the age of 5, Zuriel had grown accustomed to these conditions, assuming that this was life, and this is what fate had assigned him. One frozen afternoon, Zuriel felt the chilling wind from the north mountains blow into the orphanage from the front doors. As he turned his head, diverting his attention from the sticks he had neatly placed on the floor, two tall elves stood in the doorway. One, a woman with curly blonde hair, warm dark skin, and noble clothes, stood with an expressionless exterior. The other, on the contrary, was another woman with smooth white hair reaching down to her hips, tan skin but paler than the other’s, and stood at a much taller height than her companion. She openly and willingly beamed smiles in Zuriel’s direction, unlike the other. 

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

That day, the two ladies, by the name’s of Solana and Phi’hara Wysalynn, would take Zuriel home. The Wysalynn’s would trek from Rondheim within the north mountains, down the southern tip of the Heitris peninsula, until they reached their home within the walls of Tor Zumna, all the while with a quiet Zuriel sitting in the carriage with them. Tor Zumna, an elven kingdom with tall white and lapis towers, clean streets, and views overlooking the sea from the cliffs of Vikranna, was a foreign city to any Tarfolk like Zuriel. The masses walked around with their considerable height, pale hair, and pointed ears. Even as Zuriel grew from a boy into a young man, he would never manage to blend in with the crowds of Tor Zumna. 

The Wysalynn’s would care for and raise Zuriel as if he were blood. Phi’hara would work as a scribe for the king, often keeping silent but allowing Zuriel to follow along on many of her projects. With interests such as diplomacy, astronomy, and literacy, Zuriel followed suit with his mother and allowed these interests to be shed down to himself. With his other mother, Solana, Zuriel had gained experience from her work as one of Tor Zumna’s finest medics. When a wound was opened or examined, Zuriel would not run away in disgust like the other children, he would observe it with fascination. The real interest that would find itself to Zuriel would be the plants and herbs used during operations within the clinic. As a child, he would often hold the flora to his mother and question it’s use, to which she always had an answer. But once he questioned the origins of the plants, she no longer had answers. 

With his parents constantly busy with work and other practices, Zuriel often found himself running around the kingdom. While he was never one to get into trouble, his friend’s often pursued him to step outside of what he found local. Like when his friend whom he met while assisting Phi’hara with scribing, Elyon, convinced Zuriel to be led outside of the kingdom, into the sea, and attempted to teach Zuriel how to swim within the rough and violent currents as they crashed against the cliffside. For hours, Zuriel tumbled throughout waves and hit every rock possible. Once he returned, he assigned the blame of the incident onto himself and not onto Elyon, choosing not to speak his excuses with his bloodied and blue lips. 

As Zuriel grew further, he would join Solana in the clinic, quickly learning how to manipulate and use the herbs to the advantage of both the patients and the willingness of the medics. He had a finite schedule, usually never observing the sunlight of any day whilst he was in the clinic. He grew many of the herbs used for practice in the basement of the clinic, often spending days and nights taking note of their growth, their life, and what made them decay overtime. Fate has allowed Zuriel to escape the wrath of what would have taken him. Fate allowed Zuriel to run into the arms of those who would nourish him. Fate allowed Zuriel to pursue the life given to him. But fate is a fickle friend, often throwing daggers into the heart’s of those least expecting it, or gifting the dagger to allow the job to be done by another.