Feathers Adrift

Prologue

~Lain~

Lain woke to the distant sound of screaming and cries for help. His siblings dragged him in a panic to the town square. There, there were worried faces and some were his family. No, this couldn't be happening. There couldn't be any dark mages. Tears were rolling down his eyes already.

"Dear citizens of Crescent Lake, you must have heard the news of dark mages and humans coming our way from the scouts. This is indeed true. However, as only remains of the original kind of ancient Moonshadow elf, we cannot possibly let our kind die. We will fight these monstrosities to justice!" said the town leader.

"All qualified mages step forward to fight!"

Lain was about to step forward but then his mother pushed him back.

"Leave with the children. I don't want to lose anyone."

And then, before he knew it all the children were separated into groups to escape. His mother handed him their will and he, along with Katar, Tiadrin with his baby sister in her arms scampered down the hills.

After roughly 7 hours of panting and running, Lain collapsed.

"I can't run anymore." he panted.

Katar and Tiadrin stopped running too. They were almost at the Moonstone Path, which was where they could cross to the human kingdoms. However, they had to get through Sol Regem, the archdragon of Sun first. He had been poisoned and blinded by dark magic casted by the first dark mage and was now a symbol of fury and rage.

"Why are we even heading towards the filthy human kingdoms?" muttered Katar.

"My grandmother lives in the Moon Nexus. My parents said in their will she was to take care of me. " Tiadrin replied before Lain could.

He heard Katar snort behind him. Even though Lain was only a mere child and Katar was only two years older than him, it always seemed like Lain was more mature.

Sometimes Katar would suddenly make stupid decisions and then get himself into trouble.

"Then we should hurry. There is no time to waste and I doubt the humans didn't order a party to search for all of the missing children. So, we should sneak past Sol Regem now!"Katar reasoned.

"We are all much too tired to do this. Even if Lain did an illusion spell to prevent the sounds of our footsteps, without his full energy the spell wouldn't last long enough." Tiadrin refuted.

Tiadrin was wiser than any of them, and Lain gladly agreed.

"Tiadrin is right. We'll never make it past him. We'll have to sleep through the day and wait until noon, so that we can sneak past him and then cross the Moonstone Path." Lain said.

They laid down their items and Tiadrin was already asleep. His baby sister, however looked pale. Maybe it was because of all the nausea she got from being bobbed up and down? Something still wasn't right, and this time, Lain had to face it. She was ill. It had only been a bare week before she was born, and she had fallen ill. He felt guilty.

But his body couldn't take it anymore. From the distance, he could hear a bloodcurdling scream as he performed an illusion spell to keep them safe from the eye. He slowly dropped down to the mossy grass and closed his own.