Why? Why did all of this happen? What caused the Veil Sundering?

That question kept pounding through Allisarah’s head. It was all she could think about.

That little girl’s name was Olivia. Olivia was a sweet girl who had an even sweeter mother, but the creatures tracking them had a sweet tooth. Every other day another creature would make an attempt on Olivia's life, but Allisarah would never allow anything to harm Olivia. The survivors she was traveling with seemed to steer clear of Allisarah more recognizing something wrong with her, but the only thing wrong with her was the overzealousness with which she safeguarded Olivia and her mother.

And maybe the fact that she hadn't slept for days.

As they came upon a cities walls the group wouldn't allow hope to fill them. It was only when they saw silhouettes on the ramparts wave to them that they felt hope fill their hearts.

It wasn't until they reached the gates that the group had given into hope. Finally, they were saved!

And I can finally get some much needed rest, Allisarah thought.

It wasn't until they were checking people at the gate that Olivia and the mother, as well as a few others Allisarah barely knew, were denied entry for having a dark affinity that the hope swelling in her heart turned to despair.

Allisarah had nearly collapsed from the anger she felt. She tried reasoning, begging, shouting at the guards to let them through. The guards said that it was how those creatures hunted over long distances and how they had kept the city safe so far.

Allisarah had shouted at them that it wasn’t fair. How she had protected them all this way for the guards to simply say that they weren’t allowed to come inside the city. That they should be left out to die while others sit idly back in the safety that their deaths provided.

Ultimately Allisarah stayed with the little girl and her mother for as long as she could, but deep down she knew it was a losing battle. She would stay up as long as possible to fend off the creatures, but she still needed sleep.

Before the week was out she appeared back at the gates covered in gore. The guards couldn't tell if Allisarah was injured or hurt and called for a medic.

"It's..." Allisarah mumbled with tears forming in her eyes. The guard held her, asking her to speak up so that he could hear her.

"It's not- not mine." Allisarah bubbled out, breaking into wracking sobs.

The guards had stiffened and the man holding her backed away, thinking that she had done it.

That she had covered herself in the gore of a child and mother. The guards’ eyes looked up to scan the surroundings, before looking back to the disheveled woman in front of him.

That only multiplied the lonely feeling Allisarah was wracked with. The physical recoil she felt from the guard - as if she was some sort of monster - had tipped Allisarah over the edge.

Remembering her vow, Allisarah lunged for the guards' knife, attempting to get ahold of it so she could fulfil her promise. The guard caught her however and restrained her against a post.

They were looking to deny her entry and turn her away when Xavier had come to her aid. He had heard from his group of survivors that Allisarah had come back a week prior but had been turned away at the gates. He knew that she didn’t have any dark Magic and guessed that she had been protecting some people who did.

What a stubborn girl Xavier had thought at the time.

As Xavier was a body/physical affinity mage he was given priority with accommodations and was given a small house near the lords’ mansion. He had paid a boy to stay at the gate she had originally been seen at to look out for her or the girl and mother she was seen with. When he got the word that she had been sited, he immediately stopped what he was doing and went to go help her.

Xavier walked up close to Allisarah, asking if she was alright.

"No..." Allisarah whispered. Xavier asked if the blood that was on her was put there by her, if she was the one who caused it to be there.

Slowly telling Xavier the story through racking sobs, Allisarah got to the part of how she came to be covered in gore.

"I couldn't- I couldn't sa-" Allisarah choked out between wails of grief. It was as if all the trauma and feelings bubbling in her had boiled into those horid screams.

"Those fucking things sl- slaughtered them before I co- before I could save them!" She cried out.

"They were- They were right there!" She reached out past Xavier, grasping the air.

"And then I- I don't remember!" she scream-whispered. "I only remember coming to with- with tens of those monsters strewn about around me. Then I-" she looked down at her body then back up at Xavier, her eyes going blank and facial features going slack. "I walked here. And was stopped by the guards."

Looking back towards the guards, Xavier gave them a look of disappointment. The guards looked anywhere but towards Allisarah and Xavier, haunted by the wails of her grief.

nodding his head, Xavier unbound Allisarah from the post she was tied around. After speaking with the guards Xavier took full responsibility for Allisarah and if she tried anything in the city. Xavier took Allisarah to his house near the center of the city.

Allisarah shut herself in a room and barely came out over the next couple weeks. Whenever she did, she looked more and more malnourished.

...

Allisarah had stayed in a catatonic state for weeks repeating the what if's in her head. She would hardly eat for days – sometimes for whole weeks – at a time. She was using a mana technique to stave herself off the effects of starvation.

After a while she had started to exhaust her magic, healing herself from the effects of starvation. This technique wouldn't work long-term, as when you did so your body started to consume mana at an increased rate and would burn itself up faster than you could regenerate mana.

For a while see seemed unreachable, lost in the void of yesterday like a memory of a better time. Sometimes when Xavier was in the room he would see a smile flash across her face or a whisper of a sorry to Amy.

After her... Sabbatical, Allisarah had become introverted and shy, flinching away from touch. She would stay distant from everyone in her life, not allowing anyone to get close. She became more forgetful, clumsy. She cut her hair short and started covering her chest in wraps. Not that she really needed it to pull off being a boy, but it gave her a sense of security with the wraps around her chest.

like a hug from a loved one.

She felt a need for change and the disguise that she made of herself had let her feel that change.

Two years later she was standing in front of a Claimant court in the Grand Duchy of Alondor. The nation they had stumbled into was originally a small duchy before the Veil Sundering, but had seized on the opportunity and spread it's political influence far and wide, using it's political capital to gobble up lesser prepared nations.

Now the Grand Duchy of Alondor was the only nation left after the Veil Sundering in the region. The event had led to the collapse of the rest.

Of course, most of the courts of these smaller kingdoms and City-States had survived, leaving with a glut of coin in their wagons. Some went west but most had traveled east to seek refuge among a more politically hospitable country than the Kingdom of Serendell. The court of the Duke Regent of the Grand Duchy of Alondor had become a nest for Claimant courts and lost kingdoms with varied cultures and their own myriad ways of political scheming. When one steps out into the spotlight in Alondor City, one rarely makes it back to the shadows unscathed.

It was learned recently that multiple portals and rifts in space had seemed to open all over the area that the city-state of Kasethond used to inhabit. Every country in the region had collapsed and turned the entire zone into a no-man’s land. The latest refugee reports – as scarce as they are nowadays – were that semi-permanent portals have opened pouring out intelligent beings. Orcs, it seems they call themselves, are large green elvenoids that appear to have a tribalistic form of government. Round ears, green skin, sometimes having tusks or horns. Physical beyond belief. It seems that the large area that was once dominated by individual states is now dominated by individual orc tribes. There were also those that called themselves Goblins, Trolls, Gnolls, and all manner of green beasts.

Fucking Greeners Allisarah thought.

So now she was standing in front of one of the many Claimant courts – the flatfoots – in Alondor, the capital of the Grand Duchy of Alondor.

And of course she just had to go and trip in front of the cocksuckers. She hadn't even wanted to meet with them, but she needed to to get an audience with the Grand Duke to petition to retake the city of Kasethond.

"Please forgive me for my uninten-" Allisarah tried to spit out, quickly being silenced by the Master of Ceremony.

"Silence!" The self-important elfin man said. "You, sir, have disgraced their majesties. To make amends you must kiss their feet! Supplicate yourself before them so they may grant you mercy!"

Not wanting to figure out where this was going, Allisarah quickly beat a hasty retreat. Throwing out a fancy use of light magic, Allisarah pointed at the window behind the Claimant elf king and queen, yelling "Look out!" As they all turned to look she turned around and flash-bombed the assembly.

Not, however, before a guard could throw one of his hands out and rip a piece of her dress off.

...

Allisarah had been running away from the Grand Duchy of- oh who gives a rats behind.

A group of headhunters from those bag of slimy, greased up, dung eating flatfoots had been sent after her for simply tripping. They decided to take a little eye pain so seriously that they hired what she thinks is a group of three to five mercenaries to hunt her down.

For tripping!

And now, three months later, she had to navigate her way across hundreds of miles of Greener and monster infested lands. She knew her way back to Kasethond somewhat, but beyond that she would have to consult a map.

And there weren't that many around anymore. It had cost her a small fortune of coin to grab one from an old maps shop back in Alondor, and that map would be near some three years out of date. She had also hastily bought a horse from a stable and sent the payment due to Xavier's house. While she felt sorry for it, she felt that he would learn of and understand the circumstances she was in that justified such an expense. She had also bought a spear and mace to help her in her travels should she ever find herself running on empty in the mana department. 

Who knows what perils are on the roads now.

Before the Veil Sundering Allisarah had been quite the bookworm and trainer. Now though, she was a hardened survivor who had led hundreds of her fellows to safety. After battling the beasts and creatures of the forest, Allisarah had come out on the other side tempered.

She wouldn't deny there were some cracks in her forging showing up, but she was working on it.

After narrowly avoiding a couple nomadic tribes of orcs for the past week, Allisarah finally had some time to rest and recover at an abandoned cabin in the woods.

After she had woken up she had booby trapped it, hoping that the group following her would be inclined to discontinue said action due to said trapped boobies.

...

For a couple weeks Allisarah would think that she arrived in the Kingdom of Serendell only to find that it was a free village that had or hadn't been raided by the Orcs yet. After some time she found her way to Brighton's Keep, the border fort for the Kingdom of Serendell. 

After arriving in the town of Brighton's Keep in the kingdom of Serendell, Allisarah's first order of business was to get clean. While the occasional river, spring, and lake would crop up on her travels, they were much too few and far between to ever feel truly clean. So, in keeping with her desires, she found the nearest bathing house and cleaned herself up. While other smaller villages had her pay for using a bucket with some coarse soap, Allisarah could fully scrub herself down and relax in a bath in this small city.

After scrubbing from herself the grime that she had been so accustomed to over the past few months, Allisarah felt like a new woman. Clean and feeling new sensations across her body where grime had been caked too long, Allisarah's next order of business was to find the nearest noble and parlay with him. Asking around for directions to where the nearest noble's house was, Allisarah was directed to a large keep that was connected to the inner defenses of the city of Brighton.

As she was waiting in the lobby of the keep, Allisarah wondered if the name of the noble would be Brighton.

"Excuse me, miss?" a woman in a maid's uniform said, distracting Allisarah from her thoughts.

"The lord will now see you. If you'll follow me, please." The maid promptly turned around as soon as she received confirmation from Allisarah that she understood and begun walking at a brisk pace down the hall and stopped in front of a set of ornate doors. After walking inside the maid departed, and she was introduced to a charming man who was said to be the lord of Brighton's Keep.

Allisarah had a long and drawn-out talk with the man, with him detailing and explaining all the ins and outs of the laws that were on the books that Allisarah needed to know as it pertained to her own case.

It was the single most informing conversation she had ever had on the intricacies of how a nobleman should act and the single most frustrating conversation she had ever had. 

Not only did he distinctly outline some very pertinent laws regarding the inability for nobles to act in the Kingdom of Serendell as it relates to foreign nationals of interest, but also the inability for a noble to grant said foreign national any sort of amnesty. Basically, in under fifteen minutes flat, he had outlined exactly the reason why she needed to travel to the country’s capital, how no other noble could help her legally, and how he by law also couldn't help her. The only problem with getting to the country’s capital was that Allisarah would have to travel across the Serendell strait. 

The Kingdom of Serendell was arrayed in an odd manner. Imagine an upside-down right-angle triangle with the two flat portions of the right angle of the triangle being the north and west borders of the kingdom. The southern and most of the east borders of the kingdom are coastline - with some smaller land ownings to the south west - and the middle of the hypotenuse has a 40 to 50 mile gap between the main body of the kingdom and a large peninsula. Allisarah was currently at the entrance to that large peninsula, hence the name of the town she was at is Brighton's keep, a mainly defensive holding to keep any army occupied while a force is assembled on the main land.

Looking over at a wall that displayed a map of the peninsula, she could see the next town down the road to the nearest port city was called Linkton.

How on the nose.

It seems she would have to travel another hundred and fifty miles by the looks of it to get to the next port city on the map.

She thanked the man, and before she left she heard him say that he could delay them for a couple of days here if they truly intended her harm.

She thanked the nobleman and left the house to begin her preparations to set off again, this time to the capital. 

...

 Allisarah had thought that she could take it easy with that nobleman buying her some time. It looked like that wasn’t going to be the case.

After spending a day letting herself rest and heal on a full stomach of warm food while in Linkton, Allisarah had begun to peruse the shops along the main road of this small caravansary town. While in no way was it a bustling city, it was no village either. Along the main road were shops set up with some of the largest panes of glass she had seen this side of Kasethond.

While she was looking into the stores, she heard a group of people with horses ride into town. Looking over she recognized one of her pursuers. Immediately turning around Allisarah booked it back to the inn she was staying at.

She talked to the bartender and told the man that she was being pursued by some mercenaries. She slid him some of the last of her coin and told him to tell them she was heading towards Dragon’s Port.

Down the road from Linkton some miles inland was a fork in the road. The road to the left led to another fork in the road that would lead them to either a port city or a couple cities named Mosshell and Clouge, with Clouge being farther inland and along the coast. The road to the right was a road that led to a small fishing town called Banver’s Causeway and past that led to the town of Clouge following the coastline farther around the peninsula.

Grabbing her Horse from the inn, Allisarah took the path to the right towards Banver’s Causeway. Hopefully they would have a ship there that would be able to cross the strait to travel to the capital.

…

Allisarah felt downtrodden as she approached the harbor, or what was more of a fishing pier. Along the way to the end of the pier were several boats tied up with supplies tied down inside the small fishing vessels. Talking with the old, withered away, sun-bleached elf, Allisarah had learned that the last large vessel that came through here was a week ago and that they probably won’t see another for some time.

“They rarely pass through here,” The old sailor had said, “if you’re running from something I would tell you to turn back and head to Dragon’s Port. The road going to Cloudge has gotten perilous with time and mismanagement. And don’t be thinking you can hike out there either,” the man pointed back towards where she came, across the road towards the center of the peninsula. “Damn place is more likely to get you lost and killed more than anything else.”

With that Allisarah headed back towards Dragon’s Port to try to get to the capital under the cover of night. Looking up, Allisarah could see the sun setting as she settled in for a long night of riding in her saddle. She cast a spell on her eyes to be able to see better in the dark, almost on autopilot from her months spent in constant danger helping those people get to a safe place, and again being chased for weeks through no-mans land.

Three hours later Allisarah saw the most peculiar site take up her vision.

It looked like a large ball of fire was plummeting to the ground. She guessed it to be some sort of meteor that was going to crash some ways away down the road, possibly ruining it. After the Meteor disappeared over the tree line, Allisarah stopped to see if she could hear a boom from it.

A boom was never heard.

Before she could even think about the possibilities, Allisarah heard a crackling noise, as if a monster made of gravel had come to life and was closing in on her location with incredible speed.

Before she even had time to draw her spear or mace Allisarah saw a red glow coming from the treetops towards where she saw the meteor come from. For a split second she could see a large ball of metal falling through the sky.

The only problem was that the thing wasn’t falling down, it was falling to the side.

As quickly as it had appeared it disappeared just as quickly, back towards the inside of the peninsula. Back to where the old man had said she would get lost and killed. Taking a mental note of the place around her Allisarah thought of making some sort of marker to indicate the direction she had seen it pass and where she saw it going. Before she could begin to hop down and look for rocks however, she saw a group of people coming towards her about a mile down the road from her.

Allisarah saw five people on horses, gunning it down the road. As one of them noticed her it seemed like they slowed down to all look at her.

They then started speeding up, one drawing a small crossbow.

Immediately Allisarah cursed her luck. She thought that the money she paid the tavern owner would be at least enough time for a double-back, but it seems that someone had seen her leaving and tipped the men off.

Thinking of possible solutions as her assassins bared down on her, she thought of what she could do. All of her solutions led to her death or capture. She could try to get around them, Death. She could try to run, Capture. She could try to bargain with some fishermen to hide in one of their barrels, but that felt like a sure way to die of some rotten fish illness.

No, thank you.

Scratching her brain, she thought of one method that might work.

Kicking her heels into the horse, Allisarah bid him to go off into the forest, towards where that meteor had crashed.

At least, whatever it was that wanted people to think it was a meteor.

...

While Allisarah loved the outdoors as much as the next elf, she was about ready to collapse.

Over the past three hours Allisarah had been trekking through the woods in some of the most uneven terrain she had ever experienced in her life. Not even the terraced hills outside Hilrian had been this difficult to traverse.

Multiple times she had thought she would be caught doubling back to try to find a better path. On one occasion she had just doubled back to climb up a small ridgeline when one of the mercenaries had almost spotted her. Thankfully he hadn’t looked up and instead was following her footsteps back into the ravine.

She had to abandon her horse earlier, and because of that was now traveling through the treacherous wilderness on foot. Thankfully that meant that the mercenaries pursuing her also had to dismount, but that was only a small answered prayer in a sea of silence. She guessed that they also didn’t have a mage in their retinue, as most were taught the ability to see in the dark at a young age. Either by augmenting your senses with being able to see objects in a field around themselves or enhancing their eyes to see more light than was available, mages generally had the advantage in night time environments over those without magical abilities.

Hence Allisarah’s close call earlier.

Coming upon a cliff, Allisarah could see the sun cresting the horizon and touching the sky. Not long after now the area would light up and those pursuing her would be more alert. She was dead tired and dehydrated but Allisarah had to press on.

She could see a thicket of trees up ahead that looked like they had been torn asunder. Looking through the trees to the right she could just make out a smoldering crater of… something. It looked shiny to her, but she might just be seeing lights due to her state of exhaustion.

Slowly lumbering out into the open, Allisarah looked around.

To her left for quite a way was a large group of trees that were either broken or outright turned over that led to her right. A little ways away Allisarah saw signs of a small fire that had broken out.

Looking to her right she saw an elf – or rather a massive pale orc – standing on top of the largest clump of metal she had ever seen. The orc was assembling some sort of… Well she didn’t know what the orc was doing.

About to call out to the orc, Allisarah was shot in the back of her left thigh below her hip. It seemed that the bolt had hit some sort of tendon, as she almost immediately buckled from the jarring impact. A moment after she unceremoniously folded to the floor, pain bloomed from her pierced leg.

Allisarah started screaming in pain.