.od I naht erom neve efil a teg ot deen uoy neht , egassem ym tuo erugif ot emit eht koot uoy fI .elcyC ecnatirehnI eht nwo ton od I

Kuthian

It was night. Black night.

A strange cat scurried through the undergrowth, keeping to the ever-present shadows. He was larger than a normal cat, with tufted ears.

"Where are you going?" asked a mysterious voice. The cat whirled around, startled. An elf stood before him, old beyond measure, though he hardly looked it. He held in his arms an enormous stone, of a purple so deep it was almost black.

The cat hesitated. He slowly reached out with his mind for the elf's. It was wild, alien, with music running through it. It felt more powerful than anything he had ever touched before. He also realized that the stone –whatever it was- had a mind too, linked with the elf's. A Rider! the cat thought excitedly. He had been hoping to meet one before they were all killed.

"I was hiding...." he vaguely responded, awestruck by this new development. "Who are you?"

"I am the first, and one of the last," the Rider said, "I must speak with you, before the end."

"The end of what?"

"My end, the end of the Riders. But perhaps we will rise again. But only if you tell the one to come." He lifted the stone in his arms. "Do you know what this is, friend?" The cat shook his shaggy head. "It is an eldunari, or the heart of hearts as we say. It contains the consciousness of my dragon. Her name is Kuthian. We are the first Riders formed after the spell binding our races was made. The eldunari are extremely powerful, and produce vast amounts of energy seemingly out of nowhere. But Kuthian knows where. She is the only one. She will tell you, if you promise, in the ancient language, that you will never speak of this to anyone. This knowledge could prove disastrous if it fell into the wrong hands -minds?- and we must insure that it does not."

"Agreed." The cat repeated the oaths the Rider told him, and then the eldunari touched his mind.

"Greetings, changing one. I am Kuthian, the most powerful of our race. I know things that are secret to all living things except me, my Rider, and now you. One of these is the true source of an eldunari's power. We gain it from the Vault of Souls, a place half in this world and half in the next, where all things are possible. Some are able to glean information of sorts from this, though it is puzzling, to say the least, for the One who is there does not reveal too much at once. Through it, I have seen what will be- a young one, neither elf nor human, with a sword of fire, and his companion, the last one to all. They will open the Vault, but only by finding their very essence. You will find the young one. He will come to you in curiosity, and you must tell him how he will triumph when all seems lost, and his power is insufficient. He must come to me, and his name will unlock more power than he can possibly imagine. This I have seen. This I know."

"How can he find you?"

"Tell him to go to the rock of Kuthian. He will understand when the time comes. You must flee now, for we will not last much longer. See, our betrayer is at hand."

The cat glanced in the direction Kuthian had indicated, where he saw the traitor of the Riders crashing through the undergrowth towards them, his murderous allies close behind. He turned and fled, only looking back once he was far away. He was just in time to see the Rider fall, slain by the traitors. The cat ran on then, knowing that he must not let the Rider's death and Kuthian's enslavement be in vain, forgotten.