~*~Prologue: Thieves' Valley~*~
High in the stony mountains that bordered the Dark Ocean was a foreboding castle that nestled between two jagged peaks called the Twin Daggers. The peaks were called as such because they pierced into the sky rather than rose gently, and because the men who had discovered them thousands of years in the past had not been very creative. What the men had been were two criminals that had finally fled as far from the King's wrath as they could and figured that the unforgiving valley between the Twin Daggers would make a good place to fight their pursuers and hopefully not die. But when the King's men had finally caught up with the two criminals, they had fired flaming arrows into the valley relentlessly for hours until both men were nothing but charred corpses.
The leader of these vengeful men had been a prudent one, and knew that Thieves' Valley, as it would later be called, could be a strategic point of power to secure his King's conquest of the continent. He had lost many men riding through the Elfish lands to the east in pursuit of the criminals, and having a base from which to gather strength and wage a two-front attack on the Elves was very appealing.
So the leader, who's name was Kane, sent half of his men back to inform the King of his discovery while sending the other half west to find a good port if there was one to be found. When the King sent more men, and Kane knew he would, it would have to be by sea. Marching an army through the Elfish lands would have been suicide.
And so men had come, and a castle was built in Thieves' Valley and then a town around it. When the King of Men launched his campaign against the Elves, he did so from the east and from the west simultaneously, pushing the Elves south until he had them backed against the Summer Ocean. There they had surrendered and swore their fealty to the King.
Uneasy peace lasted for almost a century, until families of men began fighting amongst themselves, as men will do, and the Elves were able to win back their land during the confusion, pushing the humans east and west until they were backed against the Dark Ocean in the west and the Gold Ocean in the east.
Once again the Elves held sway over the middle of the continent, and the men began to unite in their hatred of the immortal race - at least in the east. Western men were too busy fighting Goblins and Dwarves, who had taken their eons-long war above ground and into the mountains the men had thought was theirs. Over the next century, these men retreated further and further into the mountain range to avoid the Dwarvish battles, their towns and holdfasts swallowed up by destruction as they ran.
Now, only the town of Thieves' Valley and the formidable castle in its center remained to the men of the west. The tall walls that had ben built to shelter the valley were forever closed and the people of Thieves' Valley scraped a meager living growing what they could in the hard mountain soil and tending flocks of hardy goats that provided them with meat and dairy. Winters were brutal, and summers brought little relief when the ice began to melt and the mudslides came crashing down from the Twin Daggers onto the town.
The castle that Kane and his men had built centuries ago now stood cold and abandoned in the center of the town. No lord had occupied the crumbling building for over fifty years - the last had been rooted out and hung by the townspeople when he had suggested that they try to fight the Dwarves and Goblins that had plagued them for all those years and try to win back the mountains for mankind.
A small council that met once a month to do little but drink and tell stories ran the town now. There was not much governing to do after all - Thieves' Valley was a poor and peaceful place despite its name and everything seemed to run just right all on its own. Trouble rarely found its way inside the walls. But sometimes it did, and this is where Elaine's story begins.
*****
~*~Chapter One: The Dark Elf~*~
Night had fallen in Thieves' Valley and Elaine slipped silent through the streets of the town. Her destination was the long-abandoned castle in its center. What waited for her there, she did not know, but the weight of her father's dagger against her thigh reassured her that whatever trouble she ran into, she could get out of.
One week prior to her midnight run, Elaine had received a mysterious note that had said simply:
"If you want to leave, meet at the castle in seven days."
The handwriting had been neat, but not lavish and Elaine was almost sure it was a man's. It reminded her a lot of her father's handwriting. Her father had taught her to read and write before he had died, and Elaine was certain that she was one of the last in Thieves' Valley able to do so beside the old men of the Town Council.
Because of this knowledge, the note had immediately roused her attention. Who had known that she wanted to leave Thieves' Landing since she had been old enough to know that there was a whole world outside the tall walls? And who had known where to find her? Elaine had moved from job to job since her father's death and was currently working as a shepherd for an old blind farmer near the north wall. Those who knew that were limited to the blind farmer and his sheep. So how had she been found?
Coming to a stop before the entrance to the castle's overgrown courtyard, Elaine pulled her dark cloak tight around her body and shivered in the cool night air. It was spring at last, and the weather was much fairer than it had been just a few weeks earlier. But Elaine had grown up hearing about the violent ghosts that roamed the halls of the castle and there memory sent a shiver down her spine. Just over twenty years old, Elaine had never seen the building occupied and it was more legend than anything to her generation. No one ever dared enter lest the vengeful spirit of the last lord hung you from his rafters like the townsfolk had done to him so many years before...
Taking a deep breath to dispel the childish fears, Elaine stepped into the courtyard and moved quickly toward the gaping hole in the east wall that had once been the main entrance. It was dark inside, but Elaine's father had taught her a number of useful cantrips right before his death, and her hand glowed with a soft, blue light as she moved through the wide foyer, deeper into the castle.
"What are you doing, girl?" she whispered to herself as she moved slowly toward the crumbling grand staircase in front of her.
What WAS she doing? Meeting a stranger in the middle of the night in a haunted castle with nothing to go off of but a note was incredibly reckless. Was Elaine's desire to escape the dreary town that intense?
Perhaps it was - she had nothing to stay for since her father's passing. Her mother had been some mystery woman her father had met during his travels. He never spoke of her and Elaine had learned not to ask him to. There was deep pain in the memories of her mother, and Elaine loved her father too much to inflict it needlessly.
Elaine was ascending the staircase to the second floor landing when a deep, hushed voice called out.
"Who's there?" it said, seeming to come from all directions. Elaine froze mid step.
"E-Elaine," she stammered weakly. Her voice felt frozen in her throat, and she chastised herself for acting like a frightened child while at the same time she gripped the hilt of her dagger with tight, white knuckles.
"Daughter of George?" the voice spoke again. Elaine wished she could tell where it was coming from, but it could have been anywhere and nowhere.
"Yes," Elaine nodded, forcing her own voice to stay steady, "How did you -?"
She was cut off by the voice, "Come to the top of the steps and I will meet you there."
Something in the air changed and Elaine knew that if she responded to the voice, its owner would not hear. It was a simple spell, and she felt foolish that she had not realized that was what it was to begin with.
