Prologue

"My wrath is great."

-Jae Lightfoot

"Dav! Come on, Dav!"

Dav Kinserth sighed and rolled over in the grass. His "best friend", Lin, ran over with a long wooden stick in hand, and proceeded to whack him repeatedly.

"Get up!" Lin ordered. As she dropped her weapon, a pouting look came over her six-year old face. "How are you going to be a great warrior if we don't practice?"

"Aww, man." Dav rolled over again, then slowly got to his feet. At age six, he stood almost three and a half feet tall. His short brown hair was covered in grass from his impromptu resting place.

Lin bent over to pick up a red flower and promptly tucked it behind her ear. She put her hands on her hips and stared at Dav in exasperation. "All the others are already at the arena! Let's GO! We have a fight today!"

Groaning, Dav picked up the long stick and lifted it into a half-hearted defensive position. "Alright, alright."

"Yay!"

Life in the country of Ascalon was slow, laid back. Behind that massive stone barricade known as the Great Northern Wall, humans lived a relatively peaceful life. The cool feeling of spring, like the piney scent of a towering evergreen forest, lingered in the air as Dav and Lin raced through Lakeside Country. Laughing, Lin pranced ahead of her slower counterpart, twirling gracefully.

"C'mon, slowpoke!" she cried, her brilliant blue eyes sparkling. "Time for the battle of the century!"

Dav grimaced, but recited anyway "To the glory of King Adelbern, and the proud men and women of Ascalon!"

The morning sparkled with laughter as the two burst into the clearing beside the Great Northern Wall. Known affectionately to the children as "The Arena", it was the place where kids became war heroes and great battles were fought. Already waiting at the Arena were two of the older kids, Cal and Thor. Cal was a slender, light-complexioned girl of nine, while Thor had a rough look about him that seemed to be far too old for his eight years. Thor was already aspiring to be a ranger, and while Cal was the only one of their crowd to actually know real spells, the kind-spirited Thor had shown a real knack for animals. As his pet Grawl Shaman would attest.

"Look who decided to show up," Cal called. She and Thor had gathered a large pile of seeds, with two curved sticks atop them. Dav winced. Even thrown by an eight-year old, seeds hurt. And despite how fragile Cal looked, Dav knew by experience how stubborn she could become. He hefted his own weapon and assumed a heroic pose.

"Four… Three… Two… One… Charge!" called Thor. Raising his stick high, Dav charged across the field, with Lin right beside him.

Seed after seed flew down upon them. Dav batted one, then two, then three seeds aside with ease. Sleep-dulled reflexes came to life, and the would-be warrior grinned. Hey, I am getting better at this!

As quickly as he had that thought, however, the delicate Cal had swept by him in a flash and taken his legs out from under him. He hit the ground with a breath-taking thump, and was promptly nailed by an unnatural seed. Squirming to his feet, three more seeds hit him in succession as he tried vainly to recover his weapon. He turned just in time to see Cal rush towards Lin, battering her defenses with short, arcing blows. No!

All of a sudden he was running towards them, his recovered stick just behind his ear, whistling forward to deliver a punishing blow. Somehow, some way, Cal sensed it coming, and sidestepped so quickly that Dav's stick sliced into the ground and stuck there. In just that instant, Lin leapt forward and tackled Cal around the legs, and the two went down.

Dav got to his feet once more and was hit in the head by a seed, the shell cracking upon his skull. Eyes watering, he turned towards Thor just as the boy sent another seed flying his way. Dav easily dodged the projectile and took off, running the ninety feet between them as fast as his legs would allow. With incredible agility for a six-year old boy, he ducked yet another seed and scooped up a seed of his own. He saw Thor's hand reaching back, saw the gleam in the older boy's eyes, and knew that the next shot would hit. So, at thirty feet from his foe, Dav threw himself in the air—soaring high and to the left—as he cocked his own arm to throw.

His wild leap apparently threw Thor off, for the missile meant to take him down soared to the left of Dav. As he floated through the air, his mind calculated the velocity of his flight with the beginning of Thor's sidestep… and he sighted down the line and threw with all his might. The seed whistled through the air—and flew harmlessly past Thor's twisting body, to bounce off the tree.

Dav hit the ground with a jarring thud, his arm twisting painfully under him. Instinctively, he gritted his teeth and rolled with the impact. Even as he did it, though, he knew it was useless. Thor will be on me in two seconds, and me and Lit will have lost… again.

When he stopped his momentum opened his eyes, however, he knew something was wrong. Thor wasn't hitting him, wasn't even looking at him. Instead he was pointing to the Wall and shouting. Dav concentrated hard, past the ringing in his ears, and—

"—Charr! Charr!"

Huge furred creatures were climbing down the Great Northern Wall, thick black ropes in hand. Two rangers and a monk, who had been by the gate, charged towards the breach. Already one Charr was squirming on the ground, his black blood staining the grass. But Dav wasn't concerned about that.

A single Charr, outfitted in shaman robes, lumbered up to where Cal and Lin stood, staring in fright. The creature peered down at the two girls with one beady eye, them snorted and raised an arm. With a swift backhand, he sent Cal tumbling end over end into a heap by Thor, who was again shouting. Lin screamed, and turned to run.

The Charr reached out with one furred arm, and swept her in. It turned and ran back towards the wall, motioning another Charr to assist him. The two began clambering up the ropes.

As Dav ran over to where Cal was getting herself up, the two Charr reached the top of the wall. Turning, the shaman barked orders to the eight remaining Charr warriors, who howled back. And as they watched with a horrific sense of unrealism, a Charr blade swept down and beheaded the Ascalonian monk. Blood spattered as the white robed corpse collapsed on the ground. A ranger cried out, nocked twin arrows to his bow, and shot them straight through the Charr killer. The rest of the creatures turned about and fled, climbing the ropes straight up the Wall.

Tears ran down Dav's face. Only half an hour ago he had been laughing with Lin as they ran through the countryside. Lin… his best friend Lin. The one he was going to count on to heal him in every great battle. The one who was always by his side, and who never seemed to lose her smile. She was gone, gone, gone….

So what; you're just going to leave her to the Charr? Would you leave your party in the middle of a mission? Leave them to die? Leave Lin to die?

No; he told himself. No. And he ran over to the wall, and grabbed one of the ropes. The Charr were nearly a hundred feet up the Wall, and showed no signs of stopping. Nine of them, against one Dav.

He gritted his teeth and set himself, tears still streaming down his face. Firmly, he grasped the rope, and jumped off the ground.

I'm coming, Lin!

Cal's eyes were filled with fury, and her fists clenched with barely suppressed rage. She stalked over to the hill, leaving the weeping Thor behind, and raised her eyes to the Wall. The Charr Shaman was already atop the battlements, and the rest weren't so far behind.

"Anger is a powerful thing," her mother had told her, so very long ago. "It can control you… make you do things. Bad things. Evil things. But to those with the discipline to use it… anger is no more than a tool. An extension of yourself, a focus of your energy. You can be controlled by the power… or you can control it."

Cal controlled the power. And she knew just the thing to take care of all her anger.

Dav had nearly reached the top of the battlements. His hands were blistered a strawberry red, and his arms shook with every inch higher he went. But still he went on, with the malevolent Charr and the top of the wall a mere forty feet above him. With a dogged determination, he pulled his trembling body ever higher. "Lin! I'm coming…. Lin!"

The countryside echoed as a hollow boom went off, followed by a sizzling crackle. The back of Dav's neck tingled, and with all his strength, he twisted himself around… just in time to see the raging fireball arc above him and explode into the wall. A blast of heat seared his face, then the vacuum left by the explosion popped both his ears and sucked him upwards. Almost instantly, it dissipated, and wind rushed past his ruptured eardrums. Belatedly, he realized that the explosion must have severed the Charr ropes, and he was falling towards the ground at a lethal speed. Looking up, the wall rushed by him and seemed to tilt as well. Dav opened his mouth to scream, but no words came out.

Liiiiiiiiin!

And then he hit, and darkness enveloped him.

Cal watched, panting, as an entire section of the wall collapsed. Darkness tugged at the corners of her eyes. Use the anger… don't let it use you. Fiery swirls filled her mind, and the young girl was overcome with an intense desire to sleep. Her last thoughts were of a simpler sort, far different from the power that her intense emotion had driven her to.

Maybe it's all a dream… it must be a dream….