Journal of Alric Frost

I was the only living being within eyesight. Hell i was the only living being on the entire continent. Well maybe the one of the only two living beings on the continent. The other being the queen. And we were both desperately trying to kill each other. The queen in question was the vord queen. This continent once belonged to the proud race of canim. A wolf like creatures that stand as tall as 7 feet. There were millions of them before the vord showed up. Now all that remained was vord. A few of them fled to my continent of alera. That's all that remains of the once proud race. but where are my manners, you don't even know what the vord are.

Well, let me introduce you. Vord are these other worldly creatures that go from one world to another destroying life until all that's left is vord. The tricky thing about the vord is that the queen can produce millions of vord in matter of months. Each specifically designed to outfight the enemy. The vord were bigger than you, stronger than you, faster than you. But all that wasn't even the scariest thing about them. The scariest thing was they were all controlled by the queens. Imagine millions of soldiers but one mind to control their actions. Perfect discipline.

But it was also their greatest weakness. For you did not need to kill millions of vord, but just their brain. The queens. It wasn't easy as they were very fast and they could read your mind if you were near them. So anything that you planned they would know immediately. It took an incredible self control and disciplined mind to outsmart a vord queen. Even then it wasn't sometimes enough. My people barely survived meeting the one queen. If it had not been for our land being as it is, we never would have stood a chance.

You see alera is unique. The elements in alera are quite literally alive. The air, the fire, the earth, the water, the wood and the metal. We call these alive elements the furies and the act of controlling them furycraft. When my people arrived, we know not from where, they were just regular humans. But as new generations were born, we found that some furies responded to our control as if they were a part of us. Some people were able to control just one type of craft like metal. Others all of them. Those that controlled all of them were individual powers to be reckoned with. So naturally they became the lords. My family being the most prominent among them. Due to these lucky circumstances, my father was able to kill 2 queens. He was fast because of air, resilient because of metal, self healing because of water, charismatic because of fire, strong because of earth, and crafty because of wood.

See the problem was the queens could produce another queen every moon. Luckily for us, however, the original queen for some reason removed that ability from the subsequent queens. My father killed the original queen when she attacked alera. And he also killed one on this continent while he was rescuing the remnants of canim race. That left only one for me to kill. Hell, if my father could kill two, i can manage one. after all my father was just an aleran. i, on the other hand, am half aleran and half marat. marat were a separate humanoid race. they were white haired, graceful, strong, and they had unique ability to bond with other beings. any living beings. my mother to her frustration found herself bonded with my father. hence, me. however, i had not bonded with anyone or anything yet. even though i had the traditional white hair and white pupils.

So here i was at the tender age of 15, a crown prince of alera, second in line to the throne, trying to kill the last vord queen. Don't get me wrong. I wasn't trying to win glory or outshine my father. No i was in self imposed exile. You see i was a twin, a younger twin. My brother maximus being the eldest. We had been very competitive from as early an age as i can remember. My brother was quiet while i was loud. I never stopped to consider that our fun competition might have any other implications. While we were studying at the royal academy, we were in every noble of alera's eyesight. All they saw was me. How i was outshining the crown prince. How i could beat him with my blade. At chess. Or even at fury craft. I never paid any mind to the praises they sung of me. I drank it all in. Strong alric. Invincible Alric. King Alric. But reality is harsher than the fancies of a 14 year old prince. Reality came back in the form of my beloved brother being poisoned by those who thought i should be king. I could see their thinking. We barely survived the first queen. So they wanted a strong king for when the time came to face the last one. Nobody blamed me, not even my quiet brother while he was recovering in the palace. But i knew this could happen again, so i bid my brother farewell while he slept. And flew across the ocean to this thrice damned continent.

My first instinct had been to simply start killing any vord i found. I lost that battle. There were too many of the fuckers. I barely survived when the queen directed millions of the fuckers to come at me. But i luckily found refuge in a volcano and was able to use its fire and heat to burn any that came near me. And there i was under siege. however, i could hide in the volcano but i couldn't eat the volcano. Things were getting desperate. So i decided to eat the vord, the ones that came close enough to the volcano that is. Then i remembered my brother and me hunting small leftover vord from the first war. We used to lay a trap by destroying their food supply which was this green croach that covered this entire continent. When they came to repair the croach, we would unleash the fire furies. Burning the bastards alive. Not that they were ever alive. Only the queens were. So, i decided to follow the same plan here. Only i would need one hell of a fire to kill the queen. She wasn't some broken soldier vord that lost the war. I needed something bigger than small fire furies i personally was able to call upon. Enter the volcano. Back home, the volcanoes were alive. They were referred to as the great furies. But not so commonly known fact is that if you know just how. You can make the volcano erupt anytime you want. That's what my father did. Every city in alera was built upon a volcano. Idea was that if we fall, you will die with us.

Only problem for me was that these volcanoes were not alive like back home. So i was feeding all the anger i had through my fire furies into the volcano and churning it like a witch's cauldron. Just any moment now, all my tiny furies would meld into one giant fury, a great fury. But i had to be careful. If i didn't control the said fury by subjugating it to my control right away, it's going to cook me a lot faster than say the vord queen. I was fairly certain i would be able to do that. It was not the first volcano that i was turning into a great fury. In Fact it was the last. After this, i would be ready to take on the queen. Slowly, the volcano gained consciousness. I could feel it through my water crafting. And as soon as its emotions went to the human equivalent of "huh, what is this?" i reached with my water crafting and locked its mind with mine in a struggle for dominance. First volcano had been scary. The rage and how alien its mind felt. It was after all the 47th volcano i was binding to my will. An entire continent.

With each victory i also grew strong. For the birth of a great fury allowed other elementals to gain consciousness too. Soon i had a lot more of water, air, wood, metal, earth and naturally fire furies bound to me. But even more of them were running wild on this wasteland of a continent creating havoc and destroying any vord that got in their way. But as i bound it to my will, something strange happened. I heard a voice behind me, a female voice say, "you really are a stubborn one, aren't you?" i nearly jumped out of my skin and reached for my sword as i turned around and froze. I found myself face to face with a woman, a beautiful woman floating right in the middle of the volcano. She clearly wasn't the queen. She had metallic skin, almost smoke like hair. But her eyes were the strangest, they were constantly changing from one metallic color to another.

"Who are you?", i asked.

She smiled and replied,"I don't have a name, perhaps you should name me since you are the one that gave me form."

I frowned, not understanding, "i gave you form?"

"Yes you did. While you were binding all these great furies to yourself, you were also binding the land together. And in doing so you gave consciousness to the land, and i am simply the form of the said consciousness."

"Are you bound to me as well?" i asked.

She smiled and replied, "no, but i like you far more than these creatures. The canim lived peacefully here for thousands of years. All forms of life prospered and then the vord came. They care for nothing else. they are destroying the land. So i will help you destroy them. That is what you want. Is it not?"

A wolfish smile crept on my face as i said "hell yes"

She arched a metallic eyebrow at me as if asking how are we going to do this.

"um... new plan...new plan...give me a moment...okay i'll think of something"

"well my original plan was to lure her near one or more of the volcanoes and the boom. but i still hadn't worked out how to find the nest"

she gave me a blank look so i explained. "the nest is where she makes more of the vord. its where she most likely will be."

"oh...i can find that for you if you like." she said.

"you can do that?" i asked her dumbfounded.

She laughed and to my company deprived ears, it was the most beautiful sound i had ever heard.

"i am the land" she said.

"Rightly so. I beg your pardon. So, where is she?" i asked.

She quickly made the earth in front of me shift to represent the continent and the model of the queen was sitting dead center. close to a range of volcanoes.

oh this will work perfectly fine..i thought to myself.

"Great, we know where she is, we have our weapons ready. All we need is a way to lure her out of her fort."

"And how will we do that?"

"Well, traditionally speaking, we would use a bait. something she wants to kill and then boom"

"There is only one thing on this continent she would want to kill"

we looked at each other in dead silence while the volcano beneath us sent a tremor beneath our feet. as if it was laughing at me.

"well, fuck me", i said as i realized she was right.