No one expected the war to have lasted this long, not for over four years. A bloody brutal campaign of deceit, lies and brothers turned against one another by a simple innocent game. The caw of carrion birds, with their black soul-less beady eyes a-glinting in the high noon sun, staked their claims upon the newest of the battlegrounds, a once-peaceful wildflower meadow in the eastern cliffs of a land called Grai-Lehing. It was said that only a single being, known only as The Lioness, could have succeeded in creating such carnage and mass hysteria. No one knew her face, her form nor history: only the wave of red that came when her army, The Pride, came storming into places with the intention of mass murder.


And yet, so many stood in her bloody reign but even more fell to her power. Not only did this woman, or man for all the public knew, control an army the size of the greatest of the seven western countries, vast elemental control sat in her hands and readily at her disposal. To challenge The Lioness was a death sentence.


One lone being though, as dumb and idiotic as she seemed in her plan, stood in the queen predator's way. She was not a person that one would assume could bring down the primal carnivore: a mere nineteen year old with locks of the brightest red, as red as strawberries and flame-kissed coals. In her hand was carried the head of a Pride warrior, gnarled and de-formed from the curses and vexes The Lioness used to torture her army and anyone in her way into submission.


A silver point dagger pierced one eye socket, purple blood running down its already hideous face: this is how she learned to kill the ones who had stolen everything from her. Family, who had already outcasted her, the love of her life who had joined the dragon-back aerial army known as the Storm Wing Patrol.


She sighed, pulling out the dagger with her other available hand with a scrunched up face. "Nice to see you, too." She said to herself and to the head, throwing it down a near-by hill which it rolled down and into a fast-paced stream, never to be seen again.


The blood stained its once-pristine surface, but she failed to care on this matter, as her steps began across the field with bodies of men and Pride soldiers alike strewn across it. The stench here was over-powering as well: the bodies were already rotting in the summer heat.


Views of deep emerald and moss green came into sight: the Ellyon Woods, her destination. "Quill, you'd better be there or I'll slice those ears clean off you." The red-head warrior said, in thinking of the one who, the prophecies of the ancient land she lived upon, said would rid The Lioness of her Pride and glory days of massacres.


Her hand clasped the jade and moonstone pendant around her neck. In the darkness of the forests lies a mystery. In the mystery lies the solution.