Prologue
Prologue
I had lost everything I had considered important: my home, my Elementals, and my mother. I was a girl on the cusp of her sixteenth birthday and I had lost it all. My home had been burned by the people from my home village of Paxtonvale for a reason I did not understand. My Elementals, animals twisted by the Dark Ones and their minions to bend earth, air, water, or fire against the original creation, I had released into the wild for fear they would be murdered by the angry villagers. And my mother. My mother was murdered herself by hideous creatures known as Aswangs, servants of the Dark Ones who rule Humankind.
Though I had lost all I had considered important, my travels had given me new things to consider important. Friends in the form of an Elf named Elthinor, a Centaur named Gabrithon, and a Human named Nolan. A belief in an all powerful creator called God and His Son Jesiah, whose role I was not sure of, but I was certain it was important. And finally, a mission. A mission to collect the scrolls which tell the story of a forgotten history where the now-separated races actually knew each other and belief in God was common. At least, that is what we assume the scrolls say. The first two scrolls explained the creation and fall of the races. We can only hope the others explain more.
These beliefs are what have kept me going through the long weeks of attack after attack by the Aswangs or their blood-sucking superiors called Vampires. The last attack we suffered from was the one where my mother died. As my mother died, she revealed something I had never known: my father was an Elf and that was the reason the dark creatures called me Strangeling. I did kill Tikujar, the Aswang that murdered her, and no creatures have been stupid enough to come near our little group in a while. That’s not to say we do not have our difficulties.
Being so wary of attack has left us all tired and irritable, and with the autumn chill permeating the air, we have been fighting with each other. Gabrithon and Elthinor are the worst. Nolan is too hesitant to fight and I just stay silent most of the time. Because of my mother’s death, my relationship with God and Jesiah is awkward. I am angry with them, and am ashamed of it, so I am not talking to them, nor have I had any more dreams come to me. I know in my heart it was not right, but I could not help it.
We were all confused on the specifics of what we were to be doing. We did not know when they next attack would come. We did not know whether we would be captured by the servants of the Dark Ones. We did not know where our travels would lead us. There were two things we did know: our journey had only just begun, and that the scrolls were our primary mission, no matter what we had to do to get them. That mission was burned on my heart, and I knew that where I would go, my friends would follow. Or at least, that’s what I hoped.
