Diaman's DnD Diary

Prelude: Everyone Is Dead or Gone

As the younger sibling, I admired my 8-years-older brother Hadarai, a bright and cheerful young man, always full of energy, kind and sympathetic and a good older brother to me, a shy child who'd always hide behind his mother's dress whenever a stranger went by.

I was spoilt by both my mother and my brother. I thought, it will always stay so. Our home, deep in the tens of acres of forests, belonging to my father, felt like a save place, and both me and my brother were at home in the forest just the same as in father's castle. From a very young age I visited the forest with my mother and later on with my best friend Arind.

I was 8-years-old when everything changed...

Arind was a son of one of the rangers, overseeing the forests. He was the same age as myself, born on the same month. We grew up together, always playing in the forest. Arind's father taught us how to read animal slots, how to find edible mushrooms while looking at the trees, which berries are to eat and which should never be touched, how to navigate ourselves in the deep forest and how to track down each animal.

My mother favoured Arind and his family because of me and my father was good friends with Arind's father, so Arind often received my hand-me-downs and our dinner table was always full of the best food from around our castle.

My father's land has not many things of value, except for the forests and family's castle but we do come from a long line of human lords with old but famous history. My uncle was even able to marry a princess, though they were both murdered in a political plot soon afterwards.

The lordhood, however, grants my father a rather high position at the royal court and him, being a warrior of many credits, makes him a really influential person. It is of no surprise then that he sometimes attracts unwanted attention and the consequences then... turned out to be dire.

I'm not sure what was the motive behind such a cruel act and in the end, it doesn't matter. Someone paid assassins to take revenge on my father and all of his family. When the assassins arrived, my parents were in the castle and as always, they were a pair made in Heavens, so no one stood a chance against a brave warrior and a magnificent sorcereress.

At the same time, however, assassins attacked my brother and me who were outside the castle. My brother was enjoying a hunt with a small group of rangers and was shot by a single arrow to his heart.

I was to be met with the same fate.

Arind and I were walking on a forest road, hand-in-hand, heading towards Arind's home because his father promised us to go see someting interesting. It was the middle of winter and all of nature had been quieted by a thick pile of snow blanket. Our feet kept sinking in deep but we didn't mind the cold and laughed at the redness of each other's noses.

Then in the middle of the quiteness I heard a dull sound of something hitting something and my best friend fell down to the ground, pulling me along with him, an arrow flew above my head and I found myself staring for a split of a second into dead eyes of Arind, sorrounded by snow that started to turn red.

I don't know how but suddenly I was back on my feet, running away, as fast as my 8-year-old feet could but after a few steps I lost my footing and fell down a steep hill. Battered and bruised I heard shouts up above the hill and only barely concious I made myself run again...

I'm not sure what happened later. I woke up in my mother's arms as she carried me back to the castle.
I was told she found me in the middle of a forest glade, unconscious, while several animals rested around me, keeping me warm in the snow. There were only animal slots around me.

Before we reached the castle, she stopped and set me down, a sad smile on her face when she started to unleash Nature's forces around us. I closed my eyes but I felt the blizzard hurting my face and I heard her elven prayers and incantations...

In the aftermath of her grief, 1/3 of our forests got destroyed. Later my father's soldiers found 2 bodies of the assassins sent to kill me and my brother. The witnesses, hower, reported at least 4 of them. How could they survive, nobody knows. I myself couldn't even describe any of them because I never looked back while running.

My mother vanished the next day, back into the Fey Wild. The last memory I have of her is her holding me in my room before I fell asleep exhausted from crying.

......................................................

After Hadarai's death and mother's disappearence, me and my father were left alone as the last of the House of Palendryl.

Hadarai's funeral was a quiet one. I remember standing there, holding my father's hand, wondering why mother isn't with us and why are my father's features more stern than usual.

With no older brother to spoil me rotten, no mother to hide behind and no best friend to play with, I became a lonely child. At first, my father tried to make it all up to me, he bought me all the toys, tried to take me out with him, make me do fencing and horse riding, just like he used to with Hadarai... but I wasn't like my brother and slowly, my father gave up and left me to my books and solitary walks in the woods.

I find it strange but even though, I remember so vividly what had happened on that day, my best friend's body lying in the rosy snow, I've never felt afraid or bad, watching the snow, I've never felt scared, walking in the forest alone. Instead of bad memories, when I see the snow, I remember Arind and his cheerfull smile and I remember my brother and I feel save.

Over the years I came up with a strange theory that the forest's forces and spirits along with Arind and my brother were the ones who protected me at the time. And they are both still with me.

And it wasn't just that one time. You see, to my 8th birthday I got this strange stone from Arind. It looks like a regular stone with smaller shiny green stones in it, it fits the palm of my hand perfectly and I've always worn it with me as a sort of a protective charm.

This happened when I was studying in the Academia.

After my 12th birthday, when my father took me hunting and I started vomiting when the first rabbit was shot, everybody understood, I'm not cut out for "manly" disciplines and I was sent to an all-boys Wizzard Academy, to study magic, just like my mother had. It was somewhat better than fighting and becoming a great warrior but from all the fields, I've only ever been interested in pure nature's magic and old tales of druids and shamans, living in harmony with the nature surrounding them, protecting it and communicating with its spirits.

So I never really fit in with my classmates.

BUT after this one student competition of "which guy is the prettiest in a girl's dress" that I was forced to participate in, I was ambushed on one of my walks in the woods by my newly acquired fans.

They were my upperclassmen and I knew I didn't stand a chance with my half-baked wizzard abilities. At the time, I clutched Arind's stone in my hand, closing my eyes and suddenly, I heard a terrible roar and screams of my classmates. When I looked at what was happening, there was a huge white bear in front of me, chasing away the attackers. It took me a second to realize, I just managed to call to my aid my guardian spirit for the first time.