The night was long, the clear skies quickly took on a sinister shroud of impenetrable clouds, the only lights were the wild lighting bolts dancing through the skies, mocking everything below. The legends foretold a great storm in which a mighty hero will be born and his Ethereal companion, neither human nor beast. Together they shall rid the land of all evil and peace will be brought upon the kingdoms. I dreamt this legend being told by my mother just before going to sleep.

I awoke to the smell of petrichor invading every square inch of the forest. The forest remained untouched by the storm and flurry of lightnings, except one place, my courtyard. None of the trees or wildlife got damaged, my stone path cracked, my pond still electrified. Gray’s stable eerily silent. As I walked towards the stable, a sense of kinship and safety overcame me, the only way I could describe this feeling would be a Berserker potions effect mixed with poppy milk all at once. An unstoppable force thrusting you forward accompanied by a wave of calm.

I reached the stable.

"Gray? Are you alive?" I called out, whilst trying to be hopeful of his survival.

"Fariel, don’t scream when you see me, okay? It will be shocking to you…" an unfamiliar voice resounded in the stables.

I passed through the empty stalls into the last one where Gray was supposed to be. As my eyes fixated on the bloody massacre littering the whole, a lean but muscular figure came into my sight. A human. His body tattooed from his toes to his neck and those are no ordinary tattoos. They’re magical bindings, which grant the suppressed beings powers to the host.

"Fariel, it’s me Gray. Last night the spectres words came to pass. Apparently I never was a horse, I’m an incarnation of Sleipnir. That old wraith was your grandfather's apparition foretelling tonight's events to us. You haven’t even looked at your body, have you?"

"What, how is this even possible ?! But why is there so much blood, guts and bones laying around ? And what about my body?,- I yelled out my questions."

I then noticed the strange marking on the left side of my chest. It was a spear, a bow and a skull. The spear was my favourite weapon, the bow had to be Gray’s, but who’s was the skull ? Gray withdrew a morbid looking bow out of the red massacre which used to be my favourite horse. The bow looked like nothing I had ever seen before, the whole of it made of bone, instead of a string a lengthy sinew held both of the bows horns in place. And then I noticed that Gray was as naked as the day he was born, but the same sigil had been imprinted on his chest, but it was hard to notice because of his power bindings.

"Alright, let’s get you something to wear first and go talk to the elders afterwards.- I said still unable to think clearly from the shocking discoveries of this night. As Gray dressed himself in my spare clothes, I smoked my pipe whilst trying to make sense of this whole situation. Gray an Ethereal being ?! What next….. But what is that sigil on our chests and who is skull ? So many questions and not enough answers."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

"Gray you ready to go to Haman and Morsaine?"

"Let's go, maybe they will have some answers."

Haman and Morsaine were cooped up in their treehouse, making a new training regime for me and a few other promising druids.

"Elders, were sorry to intrude, but something unexpected happened and we need your knowledge." - I said with a sigh.

"You want to know about Gray and the sigil that you bear on your chests, don’t you?" - Morsaine said with more glee in her voice than I knew she could muster.

"Wait, how do you know that? We haven’t even said anything yet!" Gray and I exclaimed in unison.

"We always knew it would happen Fariel, we didn’t expect that the third elder would be so impatient for almost 150 year old wraith…" calmly explained Haman.

Gray is an Ethereal being but you already know that, apparently his abilities hadn’t manifested, due to his young age. He is the reincarnation of Sleipnir the mightiest war horse to have ever walked this earth, he ascended godhood with his master. This is his first rebirth since the age of the Dying Dawn. The bindings that cover his body are there to protect him from his power, if they weren’t there he would be torn to shreds, but before that he would destroy everything around him, friend or foe. But there is something unusual, the bow. The bow was wielded by an another legendary figure, but it was not Sleipnirs master. You are the spear, so you are Gray’s master, the bow might just be close to Gray’s heart. But it will be unraveled at a later time. Morsaine, could you explain the sigil?

"With pleasure! See the sigil is even more important than Gray’s real identity. Men and women who bear this sigil have the fate of the world in their hands. Every era had different sigilled heroes. The age of the Dying Dawn had the sword, dagger and axe. The age before had heroes with a scroll, hammer, shield and a fist. There isn’t ever a specified amount of heroes. The more heroes the bigger the threat that looms in the darkest pits of the world. And there is another point, the sigil can change, more heroes arise or some even fall. The previous records are of the heroes that survived, not of the ones that battled Nizhalgal and his forces. The skull is a new addition never seen before in the sigils of heroes and the spear is rare aswell. The skull is the sign of necromancers or dark sorcerers alike. So a dark arts user will join you in your quest."

"But I have never used a spear in my life, just a quarterstaff, though the spear always intrigued me and I always trained spear techniques. And who was the spear user?" My head throbbing from the immensity of the situation.

"The spear user’s name was never recovered from the annals of time. He was the one to sacrifice his body and soul to weaken Nizhalgal for more than a century. His companion’s lost their sanity and became hermits never to be seen again. Only stories of them are still told in taverns to young and old alike."

"But why me? Why Gray? And how are we supposed to find the necromancer or him to find us?"

"There is no explanation to this, never was for any of the generations of heroes before you. And all will fall into place in its own time and terms, the heroes all unite when the time is right.- Morsaine wasted no breath on calming us any further than that."

"Let’s go Gray, lets not worry about this right now, seeming as we can’t change anything either way."

We stayed for an hour longer talking to Haman and Morsaine whilst sipping mead made from the wild bee’s honey. I stumbled to my room while Gray waltzed gracefully through the halls to his room.