Hunted

Beginnings

The boy with red-gold hair lay unconscious in the middle of a lustrous wood. No movement nor sound disturbed the scene around him, so he dreamed. He dreamed of a large, majestic bird with a long powerful beak, its large, beautiful wings were orange and gold tinged with fire. It looked as if the sun lit the scene illuminating the massive figure. On his right was a wolf, his fur was slate gray but a stripe of color, a blue bolt showed on his side stretching from his right eye to the base of his tail. To the left of the dominating bird were two rabbits both around half the size of the wolf. One was white as freshly fallen snow with pale blue eyes which seemed to pierce the soul, the other was black as pitch with eyes the color of blood that seemed to stare at something just behind you. They all looked at the boy in unison and then everything went dark.

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Alys wanted to be free, she often stared out her window and at the expansive forest which dominated the North of this town. She was an orphan left in the cold one harsh winter and picked up by the town lord, Kieran, as an act of "Generosity" he had decided to raise the poor girl with his wife Bianca. She was rarely let out of this mansion she had been forced to call home and she was treated like a servant except for the rare occasions the lord and lady entertained company. Then, she was dressed and made up like a doll and told to perform for the important guests before she was told to go entertain the person's bratty daughter or arrogant son. Her only consolation was the fact she was not yet being paraded around like a prized lamb in order to secure some advantageous alliance by way of marriage, but she knew it wasn't far off.

Despite her being extremely scrawny and underfed her beauty was undeniable, she had long white hair that reached to her waist and striking blue eyes that gave everyone who saw them pause. This large window in her lavishly decorated room was her only portal into the world outside. She wanted to run through the grass and through the forest. She wanted to meet people and animals she wanted to do so much and yet she remained stuck in this room. Today she would be entertaining a noble's son from Lenron a large city located somewhere to the south of her village. His name was Lance and she always looked forward to his visits. He treated her kindly and was the only person that she could think of as a friend.

He was like an older brother to her and always gave her such good advice. He was also a kind person despite his stark appearance, a tall bulky man with olive skin, his hair was black, and his eyes were crimson, a scar ran down his left cheek. Kieran was brokering a trade deal with his father, he wanted to turn this backwater into a proper city. She assumed the deal was going well because of the increase in visits lately but she did not really care. She just could not wait to see Lance.

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Lance hated this forest, it was always so dark and felt as if something was always watch and waiting to pounce, but he had to traverse it with his father to get to the town in a clearing near its southern border. They came to see a self-important town lord who treated his subjects like trash. He was wealthy though due to the high number of monsters his soldiers exterminated each year and the rare resources which could only be found deeper in the forest. His father, Duke Cleoth don Mortre, only cared about wealth and power and he was determined to acquire both on this trip, in this deal.

The only thing Lance was sure about was that he needed to help that poor girl, he could see in her too thin face and too pale skin that she was mistreated. Despite that she always greeted him with a smile as if he were a long-lost family member and it always made the trip into these Xon forsaken woods worth it. His father sat across from him in the lavish carriage drawn by slaves. His father wore an immaculate white suit which clashed with his coal black eyes, a prominent hawk-like nose dominated his face as he stared out the window at the passing foliage. He wanted possession of Alys for a purpose he had not revealed to Lance, and he planned to add her as part of the nearly finished contract tonight after they finished dinner. Lance wasn't about to let that happen.