The Shannara Chronicles: The Unknown Elessedil

Chapter 1

Pyria looked down at her daughter, now a grown woman, with sadness in her eyes. Had it not been for her gifts she could have been raised the same as other children and could have been married with a child of her own by now. Pyria sighed. She hated leaving Allanyra in while she lay in her unconscious state but they desperately needed supplies and Pyria had waited three days already. 

    She leaned down and kissed her sleeping daughter on the forehead and gently whispered in her ear, "I shall return soon my dear child."

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    Her eyes shot open at the familiar screeching sound she had heard so many times before. Though she had already known what was to happen, she seemed to have no control over herself as the same fear coursed through her veins as she shot up out of the bed she had been lying in.

    Allanyra's hand reached out to where her bow and quiver lay propped against her bed and quickly took them in hand, slinging her quiver across her back before darting off in the direction of the screech.

    The scene changed before her eyes and Allanyra found herself running along the beach near where she and her mother lived raising her bow with an arrow knocked and the bowstring drawn back to her cheek ready to fire. An agonizing cry of grief and anger ripped from the bottom of her lungs and out her mouth as she fired the arrow at a grotesque demonic creature that was tearing through her mother as though she were a mere piece of paper. The arrow flew through the air on a direct course for the creature's skull, though it moved at the lat moment and the arrow ripped through it wing instead. Allanyra fell to her knees with tears streaming down her face. The creature gave a pained shriek only sparing Allanyra a glance before it flew in the opposite direction and landing on the beach.

    Allanyra, with blurry eyes looked to where the creature now stood, closing in on two figures that were clouded from her vision just as they had always been. They stood crouched, ready to run for their very lives at any moment. One of them, the one with a larger build whom Allanyra had presumed to be male, stood protectively in front of the other, a figure of a smaller and more delicate build that Allanyra guessed to be a female.

    Despite the emotional pain that seemed to be nearly crippling her, Allanyra quickly snatched another arrow from her quiver, knocking it while pulling the bowstring back to rest against her cheek and aimed once again for the creatures head. She knew what would happen next. Just as her arrow would strike, another shadowed figure would come with a well crafted sword in his hand and slice at the creature's arm and then decapitate it in one fluid motion.

    Something was different this time around though. Twenty years of seeing the exact same thing only for it to change now.

    The figure that decapitated the demonic like creature was no longer shrouded from her vision. She could see him as clearly as she could see the creature that killed her mother. As he completed his strike against the creature, it lashed out at him in a last attempt to defend itself from the killing blow knocking the man to the ground on his back as the creature's head rolled slightly before stopping due to the arrow sticking out of it. All Allanyra saw however was the man. Everything seemed to fade away slowly as she took in his rough appearance.

    His skin was tanned and his robes were a grey color with a reddish tint and crimson trimming. His belt held a metal sheath for his sword. The blow he had received from the creature had caused his robes to fall open revealing a pair of leather breaches as well as a heavy leather chest plate. As he stood, he seemed to not even notice her as he turned to speak to the two figures that Allanyra could still not make out. As she continued to examine him, her eyes were drawn to the strange markings that reached out from beneath the collar of his robes and up above his ears that appeared to have been craved into his skin. His black brown hair had been shaved away from all but the top of his head where it remained quite full.