I: Remembrance

A gargantuan shadow fell across the land; sixteen of Du Weldenvarden's outmost trees were set ablaze by an invisible force. The sound of cracking pine-fires filled the skies, but the light produced by the inferno was not strong enough to push the immense sheet of darkness away. All of Ellesméra's alarms sounded that day, but it was far too late. Dark, cloaked figures descended from above, jumping off the backs of dragons and what looked like dark, twisted, enormous bats with six-foot beaks. They looted and pillaged, destroying halls, felling trees, cutting down elves in their hundreds and pillaging.

An infant child was lying on the soft forest floor. In front of him stood his mother, a proud warrior and a skilled swordsman, but she seemed different from the other elves. Her skin was curiously grey, her canines were long and her ears bore strange, lynx-like tufts. She was taking on two of the dark men on her own, but even though she gave them both scars that they would not forget, after several minutes the infant saw a dark, but still somehow glowing, knife-blade sprouting out of her heart. Before the babies very eyes, his mother was then cut in two, before falling sideways to reveal one of the figures, producing strange clicking and hissing sounds. But before she had died, the mother had placed wards around her son so they would not see him. The dark figure sniffed the air, then decided it had something better to do and jumped twenty feet onto the roof of a small tree hut.

Werlyn Planeswalker woke with a start, breathing heavily.

"Whoa there, Wer. Relax. It was just a dream." he told himself. He realized that further attempts to sleep would be futile, so be lit a campfire and sat in front of it, letting it warm his bones and drive away his fear. He was relatively young, by elf standards, and an orphan since the age of three months. After the attack, he had crawled about aimlessly, until an elderly lady, who raised him, found him. She had told him of his strange heritage, he was half werecat. He shuddered at the thought of her, for she was bad mannered and had little time for him because she spent all of her days hitting steel with a hammer. When he was old enough, he took all of his belongings (his clothes, a water bottle, some food and a wooden sword called Edoc'sil, of which he was rather proud) and fled, taking refuge in the plains outside of du Weldenvarden, which he had now called home for most of his ninety eight year long life. After hunting and cooking a medium sized rabbit, he continued on his way.