Blood of Elven

Chapter One

An unforgiving wind, raw and unrelenting, roared over the mountain peaks, sending shards of ice and snow pelting haphazardly against any and all surfaces that stood bare to greet the howls. Shadows danced along the swirling patterns of fallen snow on the barren rock, creating a beautifully engrossing and deadly dance. Lightning cracked against the midnight sky, illuminating clouds and ghostly figures riding the storm above, portraying scenes of fight and flight at varying intervals.

Khionia pulled her hood down lower over her forehead to protect her eyes from the volley of precipitation but left her cloak open to the wind, savoring the caress of the icy fingers whipping across her body as she strode along the border of her Patrol faction's encampment. She couldn't help but smile as she walked. Winter storms were always a welcome invasion to Khionia, bringing with them a sense of clarity that often eluded her; a sense of calm allowing her to be one with nature and the beautiful ordered chaos of life.

These forays into the wilderness during her monthly required Patrol rotation were her glorious escape from the monotony of her life as sister by biology, daughter by circumstance, Scholar by trade, dutiful servant of the Lordes by grace, and unimposing elf maiden of Zabethia by fate. She relished the time that she got to be out on patrol — a privilege shehad only been able to have for the last eighteen months as elven were notassigned patrol rotations until the age of twenty-one.

Another crack of booming thunder shook the ground beneath her feet in an eerie juxtaposition to the snow and ice that continued to swirl through the air. She smoothed the palm of her calloused hand down the length of her Stone Tree bow. Ridges ran down the side of the cool gray bark, with veins of emerald twisting and webbing from each end of the limbs, tapering off before they met at the grip. The string made of the bine stem from a DropPebble plant was as taut as it had been the first day she received it, never weakening no matter how many times she sprung arrow after arrow upon beast and target alike. Her parents had gifted her the bow when she turned thirteen years old. It was a traditional present for one's Strengthening Day.

The Strengthening marked the exact moment that elflings became elven in the eyes of the Lordes. Once elflings reached thirteen years of age, they were allowed to begin to train with weapons of any form. Most were given bow and arrow as their beginning weapons. In fact, it was quite rare to find a civilian elven who trained in any other form of weaponry — there just didn't seem to be much of a need. With threats minimal and that which could be handled from afar atop the mountain peaks which held the patrol encampments, hand-to-hand combat was essentially superfluous. Only the members of the Kingdom Guard of each territory were trained in such.

Khionia was not like most elven.

Though she thoroughly adored her bow and treasured it, blades had become her close personal friends over the last decade, serving her well in her somewhat, unique, predilections.

And it was not just her affinity toward weaponry that marked Khionia as different than her peers. Both she and her twin brother, Calefacious, had always been slightly different — slightly odd — when compared to other elflings, and even other fully-grown elven, who lived in Morganthia.

Khionia was always taller than the other females her age, but as she grew into adolescence, she found that her body began to change sooner as well, developing the soft curves and lean muscles of a young elf maiden at a rapid pace.

And her hair — a striking silver than hung down to her waist with a vibrant coppery auburn strand framing the left side of her face — marked her as incongruous to the general population. Ever since she could remember her parents had dyed it a more mundane light brown, using a careful mixture of henna and indigo, to more closely resemble what which was considered normal. As an anxious elfling with no interest in seeking unwanted social attention, she had always appreciated her fathers' efforts to help her mold into the crowd. It was rare to find an elf with any color that strayed away from a shade of brown or aging gray. She had heard that elven from the western Flame Kingdoms could occasionally have shades of auburn or a deep onyx, but she had never seen one, excluding her brother of course.