The Tale of Two Knights

The sky was a pure ochre glaze the night of the fire. Anyone witnessing the tragedy from a distance would have been hard pressed to realize what they saw. There should have been no question as to why no one seemed to come to the Drinsolar family's aid, but Ryissa and Veldren did question. Years later they would come to forgive the horrible event that a group of raiders perpetrated upon their quiet home, but not before they would vow to become the heroes that were so needed that night.

Smoke, like some kind of living entity, rolled towards the Elven children's beds. Through the growing heat and sound of the blaze they slumbered unknowing of the danger so close. Just outside of their door their mother lay unconscious and dying, she had fought to get to her children but the unforgiving smoke accosted her just as she had reached their door. She had been raped and left to die by a troupe of human raiders when they realized that she had no possessions worth stealing. If only their father hadn't died when they were young the story of Ryissa and Veldren Drinsolar could have been different.

Black and intangible, the demon crawled over the young twins. The soot-filled substance worked its way into every orifice, choking and nearly killing the twins before one of them finally awoke. By pure happenstance, it was the young Ryissa.

Panic in the form of a cold sweat washed over the young elf's body making her go into a shiver that shook her small frame uncontrollably. She sat for a moment in a motionless torment not knowing what was going on. She saw her twin brother, the person who had always protected her, with his life slipping away with every breath and felt her own fragile existence ebb. Then like a tiny babe she found a voice. "Atara!", she screamed in her high pitched voice but her mother had already been taken by the ebony killer.

Veldren, hearing his sister's cry awoke. His face was covered with the smoke's darkness but Ryissa could see her brother's keen green eyes and she knew that he would know what to do. Veldren, however , was as panicked as his sister as he watched the bright fire beneath their door rise and fall with anger ready to devour the rest of their tiny forest cottage. His narrow knuckles whitened as his grip tightened on his thick goose down blanket.

Ryissa's face drooped with the sudden realization that Veldren was frightened and confused. His normally jovial visage was a pained mirror of desperation and sorrow. Finally a single wet tear fell from her emerald eyes and she resigned herself to her fate. Her thoughts were then turned to her father and why he was taken from her so long ago. Maybe, she thought, this night would be the night that they would be reunited.

The fierce song of the fire pulsed through the elf's pointed ears. She could hear the malicious hate with which it consumed her home and she could feel the enormous power of it as it pushed towards her. Suddenly and without warning the walls fell and searing burning embers flew towards the stunned twins, motivating them to flee the lost cottage. Veldren scooped up his twin sister and pulled her to safety.

That night, under the ocher glaze of the sky and the black billowing clouds, the two young Drinsolar twins had needed a hero. They were alive, but just barely. Their mother had been lost and their home was now a pile of ashes. Veldren held his sister close to him until the morning came when Ryissa's tears no longer fell from her face and the fire no longer burned, save for the fire that now took hold in their hearts. The fire that egged them on to become the much needed heroes of Darkstone.

When finally the sun did rise over the Drinsolar twins, destiny had played its hand for better or for worse. It would be their fate. They were to become heroes to serve and protect the weak, to someday save those two children that did not survive that night....the same two Elven children that they had been that night....who had died that morning... and who were born again as Elven man and woman from those children's ashes with the light of a new day.

The warm morning sun washed over the valley like the all encompassing tide of the ocean's blue waters. A sweet melancholy breeze swept over everything and with it a million white fluffs of cottonwood swam in and out of the tree's dew ladened leaves. It seemed so peaceful that if it had not been for the fire the night before the Drinsolar twins would have had no care in the world. Unfortunately this day was not a solace to the young elves, everything was not as peaceful as it seemed.

Nearby a patch of fetid water held an ominous threat, one that would test the mettle of the two young elves. Sythssys, a lizard man warrior, stalked the foul smelling swamp in search of his next meal. He knew well what had gone on in the night and was hungry to see what the human raiders had left him to snack on, his mouth watered with the thought of blackened elf flesh. With one eye hollow and whitened from an encounter will Ariad Drinsolar many years before he searched the rubble that was left after the fire with thick anticipation.

From behind the mass of brush that surrounded their burnt out home, Ryissa and Veldren watched the evil lizard as he rummaged through their lost belongings. As Sythssys toppled the one lone wall that still stood they could see his pointed snout gush with the drool of a starving animal. Veldren nearly rushed to attack the vile monster but Ryissa stopped him with a quick word. "Ro will kill vys!", Ryissa whispered in a harsh tone, "Amin needs vys!".

Veldren's blood raced though his veins. He could feel his pulse behind his eyes pushing him on to battle but knew well that his sister would never make it in the wild alone. Slowly his body stopped shaking with rage and his ragged breathing steadied. He wasn't, however, going to let this horrid plundering continue. "Vys stay sinome...", he said quietly, "Amin will na right back." And so Veldren stalked off into the deep woods leaving his smaller sister to keep an eye on the brutish Sythssys.

Now that Ryissa was alone she began to become nervous about being so close to the very same monster that had murdered her father all those years ago. Before, when Veldren was there she could focus her energy on not allowing him to do something foolish and in effect talk herself out of doing the same, but as things were there was no one to talk to and her words sounded less convincing in her own head. Anger rose from her nervousness like nothing she had ever felt before as the lizard man continued his perusal of the burnt out Drinsolar home.

A sudden flash of light like an assaulting ray of the sun focused in your eyes raced into the lizard man's field of view and then seemed to hit him square on the jaw. Ryissa pulled a second piece of shattered glass from the ground and winged it towards the monster and this too connected with his head. Sythssys let out a massive roar as he felt the stinging pain of the sharp glass shards pressing themselves into his flesh. Another piece came and another, each accompanied by a resounding roar. Ryissa was unaware of the wicked grin that grew on her youthful face as she witnessed the blood spill over Sythssys body.

Veldren 's heart skipped a beat. "Mani naa happening back a' i' house?", he spoke aloud to himself as he strained his eyes to see through the thick trees back to his home. Thoughts of horrid things swam in his head and fear began to grip his heart. He refused to let his sister die so soon after she had escaped it. Faster than a skittering dear the young elf ran to his sister nearly dropping the very thing he had left her to retrieve.

Horrible crushing pain attacked her as the evil lizard gripped Ryissa's small body with incredible strength. She could see the ugly whitened eye and thought again of her father and how maybe she would see him again after this was all through and she felt no fear of death. Ryissa slammed her tiny fist into his face crushing the glass further into his flesh. "Die! Die! Fyln thing!", she cried at the top of her lungs, not knowing that she was much closer to death than Sythssys.

Feathers, wood, and a sharp edge would call Sythssys's soul to the beyond. Veldren had pulled his father's hunting bow from the hollowed out tree he had hid it in and with a single well-placed arrow had fell the evil beast that was Sythssys. Ryissa fell to the ground and was surrounded by the ashes of her home. Never had she been so happy and so sad at the same time. She was alive, but now that she was sitting in the rubble she knew for a fact that her mother was no longer.

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