Eight years ago, in the heart of the Grovelands...

Holding her hands out toward her father, “I made this for you, Dad.”

“What is it, my dear child?” Tallinn took the wooden pendant from Ira’s delicate hands, her younger sister standing beside her.

With a brief pout, she explained, “You don’t know? It’s a good luck charm! Mora and I made it together.”

“Ah! Now I am sure that I will always have luck on my side!” Tallinn dropped to one knee and tenderly embraced his two daughters. “Thank you, my dear children.”

Erelia came out of the estate and looked onward at the gentle display of familial affection, the butler Morris followed closely behind. “Tallinn, Ira, Mora, it’s time for lunch.”

Tallinn rose from his knee and the children ran inside. He went to exchange a kiss with his wife, but was abruptly halted by the sound that resounded throughout the city.

It was the bell from the watchtower.

The ringing of this bell in particular was in accordance with the military’s protocol; it signified an invasion from hostile forces and was the warning call for the Shadow Wardens’ army to prepare and muster.

The streets of the Shadow Wardens’ Grove were alive as their army marched through. The sound of steel sabatons clanking against the cobblestone roads filled the city with anxiety. Every step was heavy with the worries of the people who took them. Will I be coming home tonight? Why do we have to fight? I can’t allow my children to grow up without a father.

“Dad, why are there so many people here?”

Placing his violet helmet atop his head, Tallinn’s eyes met his daughter’s. “There are people trying to take our freedom, my sweet Ira. We’re going to make sure they do no such thing.”

Tears brimmed up in her eyes, as she felt like today might be the last day she saw her father. “Don’t go, Father! I’m scared.”

“Everything will be alright.” He patted her head and gave her a little nudge on the back to return back to her mother. “Make sure to keep smiling for me!”

As the tears streamed down her face, Ira gave a big nod of her head, before running back through the rank and file of soldiers. Once nearing the end of the sea of armor and weapons, her eyes were drawn to a wooden supply cart. Disregarding her father’s command out of her own worries, she jumped into the back of the wagon and hid herself beneath the cloth canvas that covered the various goods inside.

Onward they marched until the barrier surrounding the city was far behind them. They continued further and even further than that, until the command to halt was given from the blow of a bugle.

Another command was given and the Shadow Wardens’ forces began to shift from a marching file into a large-scale combat formation. The soldiers were lined up on the border between the Grovelands and Sataurus.

The army manning the borderline was split into five regiments, each regiment consisting of about 1,000 soldiers. The commanders for each regiment stood in front of their formations as Ira’s father stood ahead of those five men.

Coming back from inspecting the troops, his second-in-command returned by his side. “That was a lie, wasn’t it, Tallinn?”

Tallinn turned to meet his aide, his eyes revealing that he had indeed lied for the sake of his daughter, Ira. “We are outnumbered here three-to-one. It would take nothing short of a miracle for us to even survive this battle.” Tallinn lowered his head, looking at the pendant he received from his daughters, “I just pray they forgive me...”

And so the drums of war sounded.

Unable to restrain her curiosity, Ira frequently lifted the canvas top of the wagon to watch the battle before hiding once more. This cycle lasted for about two unrelenting hours and the gruesome scenes would be forever burnt into Ira’s adolescent retinas.

When the clanging of steel and throes of death came to an end, one single man came fumbling back from the front lines -- Tallinn.

Ira’s eyes lit up at the sight of her father. She jumped out of the wagon and sprinted over to his side; however, Tallinn was petrified at the discovery that his beloved daughter had been there all along.

Hunched over and applying pressure to the more grievous of his various wounds, Tallinn fell to his knees as his daughter drew closer to him.

As she arrived, the young girl’s expression of relief from seeing her father changed to one of worry and panic at the sight of his bloody, near-death state. “Father,” she cried. “Get up!”

From his knees, the dying man only continued to fall, collapsing onto the earth and ultimately to his side. Blood spurted from his lips as he coughed.

Caring about neither the mud nor the filth that covered Tallinn’s body, Ira embraced him with tears falling down her face.

“Ira, my sweet child,” a faint voice whispered in her ear. “I’m... sorry.”

Though she was happy to hear his voice, his words only continued to break her heart.

Struggling to form fluid sentences through the pain, “Tell... your mother... and Mora... that I love them... very--”

“No! You tell them yourself, Father!” Her voice began to crack, “You will come home and stay with us! You’ll stay with us, right? Right, Father?!”

Tallinn’s complexion had already begun to grow pale. His eyes, which were losing their glimmer, had tears pooling in them at his daughter’s words. “I’m... sorry... Ira...” Reaching toward a pouch at his hip, he pulled the string and two items fell out onto the ground: a letter and the good-luck charm his daughters had made him. With the last of his strength, the father placed his hand on Ira’s head in a tender display. “I... love you... more... than you will... ever know...”

The rain drops gently kissed Ira’s body as she stood over her father. His arrow-pierced body lay face-down in the cold, wet soil of their people’s land.

The only thing to keep her warm was the smell of charred flesh and the ash that resided within her lungs. The whispers of the wind resonated in her ears as the crackling cinders of a fire played a somber melody in the background.

“Father... get up...” she spoke to him, but there would be no reply.

Further encroaching was the army of the north.

The territory directly north of the Grovelands was that of Sataurus; they were a tribal people who made their dwellings in both the plains and bluffs that formed their lands. The Sataurians were both a druidic and warrior race; convening with the spirits of nature, they were capable of using earth magic in addition to their highly polished skills with both spear and bow.

The sound of hooves drew near, but there were no horses in sight. The hooves belonged to the uncouth soldiers that were now standing near Ira and the corpse of her late father.

It was in that moment that Ira’s tender emotions had hardened, as did her resolve.

“My father shouldn’t have died... If Nocterra was united, this would never have happened,” she spoke to herself as the Sataurian soldiers began to surround her. Her face rose, still mumbling under her breath, and looked upon the men that surrounded her.

There were about ten of them in total, likely a small squad sent from the commander to loot the bodies of the battlefield. Unlike most bipedal creatures, they stood on hooved feet and their legs bent backward; a thick coat of hair ran upward to their thighs before hiding beneath the long loincloth that draped down to their calves -- from that point upward, they had an unremarkable human appearance, outside of their long, pointed ears.

“She’s just a child,” spoke one to the others.

“That doesn’t change the fact that she is our enemy.”

“She is clinging to the leader’s body as well,” another remarked. “She may be of value to us if we take her alive.”

Ira didn’t hear the words they were saying. It wasn’t as though they were in a foreign language either; she could comprehend them, she just was not capable of hearing them. By the time she had seen the Sataurian soldiers, her words had changed from those of denial at her father’s passing, to those of a deep hatred at the men who now stood before her.

Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die...

The repetitions flicked off her tongue like a broken record.

With eyebrows furrowing at Ira’s semantics, one of the men tilted the butt-end of their spear at her and gave her a pitying nudge in hopes of snapping her out of her manic state.

The moment the wooden end met her flesh, the men were blinded by an explosion of purple light. The sight that came afterward would have made the soldiers happy that their retinas had been seared.

While lying over the top of her father’s corpse, dozens of chain tendrils shot out of Ira’s back, completely tearing through her clothes. Her screams pierced the men’s eardrums, and her hatred had consumed her as she had become an amalgamation of magic, iron, and flesh.

Ira’s appendages had begun to violently flail about hither and thither, then continued on to pierce through the dazed and confused bodies around her like the unforgiving barb of a gargantuan scorpion’s tail.

The earth became stained with the blood of those who partook in the killing of her father and craters were formed in a circle around her, leaving her in solitude on what seemed to be the loneliest island in Ira’s world.

After much time had passed holding her deceased father, she walked the forlorn path back to the city. Her body was wet from the rain and blood, and her expression was one that no one her age should have had to wear. Clenched in her small fist was the pendant she had made for her father -- the edges were jagged due to Mora and her inexperience in craftsmanship, and they bit into her hand, breaking the skin, from the pressure she applied to it.

The rear guard from the city had gone to look for survivors, but no matter how many times they had scanned the field, there was no life to be found. All they could do in response was to make numerous trips from that location back to the city’s graveyard to bury their dead.

Grieving widows and children lined the streets, mourning their husbands and fathers that they would never see again. All noises seemed to be superfluous outside of the wailing cries and curses directed at the gods above.

Those same widows and children watched on as Ira wandered down the cobblestone streets, for she was the epitome of the sorrow they had all felt.

Erelia approached her, stopping Ira with an unrequited embrace; Mora, on the other hand, saw the pendant in her elder sister’s hand, and feelings of betrayal and anger began to well up inside her heart.

Where her mother’s hands had reached around, she felt bare flesh on Ira’s back. Curious, Erelia peeked at the sensation. Ira’s clothing was shredded, exposing a black mark that she had never seen before; the nexus of this curious mark peaked at the nape of her neck and spanned from shoulder blade to shoulder blade like an elaborate network.

Erelia had come to know that this omen marked the ending of who her daughter once was.

                                       ●

Morning dew had coated the grass and plants, and the trees swayed gently with the breeze. Placed in the center of the graveyard at the edge of the city was a mausoleum, reserved as a funerary rite for the dearly departed Grovekeepers.

Beyond the mausoleum gate, at the back of the dimly lit room, was a solitary sarcophagus, and a young woman kneeling before it. “So That We May Remain Free” was inscribed on the placard, right below the name Tallinn.

I’m sorry, Father. I can never forgive myself for my powerlessness.

The tears fell uncontrollably down Ira’s heartbroken face. She clenched the wooden pendant in her hand one last time before laying it on top of her father’s stone coffin.

Footsteps came from behind her at the entrance to the mausoleum. She wiped at her face to hide the fact that she wept, though it was easily recognizable due to her flushed face and bloodshot eyes. She swung around to see who was entering, but the people she would have preferred to see were not those who had come to greet her.

A Shadow Warden in full battle regalia signaled the soldiers behind him to seize her. “Ira, by order of the Grovekeeper Erelia, we ask that you do not resi--”

The watchtower’s bell began to ring.