Prologue: Estranged Relatives

It is well known what became of most of the esteemed, and shunned, Warriors of the Vale. Isaac and Garet watch the sunken Mount Aleph, guarding the halls of Sol Sanctum, lost, though they may be, beneath the ground, from any outsiders. Piers of Lemuria became a famed sea captain, Mia returned to Imil, becoming a renowned healer, and Ivan studied the arts of the scholar with the help of Alchemist Kraden. Jenna, after leaving their son Matthew with Isaac on the Goma Plateau, left for the town of Kalay to help Vale's refugees. But what of the lost Heroes? What of Felix, so-called Vale's Betrayer, and Sheba, the child who fell from the sky?

Thirty years ago, shunned by the elders of the Vale, who saw only the man who betrayed their ancient duty to guard the world against the reemergence of Alchemy, Felix fled Vale, leaving his sister and parents behind once more. He returned to the frozen wastes of the Proxian north, and found a home there among the Northern Fire Clan, where he was joined a few years later by fellow Warrior Sheba.

Hidden away from the rest of the world, the two lost Vale Warriors live a secluded life, training their son and two daughters in their respective Psynergies.

But the Eclipse reached even that far north, and the awakening of this ancient, forbidden Alchemy awakened in the Warriors' children a curiosity about the state of the outside world.

And with the sudden appearance of their estranged aunt, Jenna, the spirit of adventure works its way in the minds of the three young Adepts...

Jason stood atop his newly built snow fort, glaring across no-man's-land at his the offending Earth Adept. There she stood, smug as nobody's business, having just broken the cardinal rule of the snowball fight.

A voice sounded from across the field, "Hey! No Psynergy allowed, Tela!"

Jason turned to see a shock of flame red flash past his face. He sputtered, spitting strands of his other sister's hair out of his mouth, then turned to watch the twins going at each other.

"But Hela, Jason started it, I saw him cooling his snowballs down with his wind Psynergy!"

The Fire Adept turned to the youngest sibling curiously, "did you?"

The look in his eye challenged her, "yeah, but it's not like I built a whole fort out of a slab of rock, now did I?"

Tela glowered at him, "still means you started it."

"Does not."

"Does too!"

"Does no-"

His response was cut off by a quick look from the older twin, "when did you guys age down into three-year-olds?" She asked, her irritation evident in her voice.

That shut the two up for a moment.

Jason was just about to break the silence when he noticed a figure coming up the road from the south.

"Hey, who's that, you think?" He wondered aloud to the others, who turned to look where he was pointing.

Hela shrugged, "beats me, I thought everyone was inside the walls, preparing for the equinox feast."

They watched in silence as the figure neared, revealing over time a young woman, not much older than them, with deep red hair and a staff strapped across her back. She kept her face down turned as she approached the gates, which the three of them had unconsciously gravitated towards upon noticing her. Once she was about ten feet from them, Hela called out to her,

"Halt! State your business here, traveller. What brings you so far north, and so close to winter?"

Jason thought she was perhaps trying a bit too hard to sound official, but he didn't say anything, waiting curiously to hear the stranger's answer.

She had stopped as soon as the oldest twin had spoken, but seemed to be taking her time with her answer. When she did open her mouth to speak, she raised her face to look at each of them in turn, and whatever she had planned on saying left her. Jason blinked, seeing the stranger's face, and turned to look at his sister; Hela looked confused, touching her face as though to ensure that she was indeed still herself. The stranger was a spitting image of the older girl, in fact they might have been twins, or triplets, Jason supposed, had it not been for the other's darker hair and the look of age that only lived inside her eyes.

That look was quite a bit like what he had seen in their parents' eyes from time to time...

Suddenly, it hit him like the load of rocks Tela had dropped on him last week. He stepped forward,

"You're our aunt, aren't you? Jenna, wasn't it? Father talks about you, sometimes, though less so than mother." He was almost certain he was right. There was no way someone completely unrelated to them could look that much like Hela.

The woman nodded, "yes, I suppose. That is, assuming your father is Felix. I'm not certain about your mother, though."

Tela poked her head out from between the two of them; it was funny how, even though she was the middle sibling, she acted more like she was the youngest. She looked Jenna in the eye and tilted her head to the side, "but she talked about you all the time, or whenever the 'Warriors of the Vale' stories came up."

Jenna shrugged, "well, we'll see," she said. She nodded towards the gate, "may I come in?" She asked.

Hela looked up, as though startled, "oh, yes, certainly, let's go in."

With that, the three siblings turned towards home, leading their estranged aunt into Prox.