**Toman sits on the edge of Lake Rillon, the soft scritching of a quill drawn across the pages of a small, leather bound book are the only sounds disturbing the night. The campfire next to him burns low, the coals and embers giving off a soft red glow and heat enough to drive back the chill of the night. Light, enough to see and read by, shadows, flickering. Dancing and playing upon the tree's and the soft ripples of the lake, the gentle breezes rustling the leaves in the tree's overhead, making them sigh. The moons reflecting off the calm waters, he writes.**
Many days have I walked these lands since arriving, and many more I hope to walk. The sights I have seen, the denizens I have fought, and the people I have met are more than a life time of memory to me. *he looks up, pausing in thought, sighing heavily, remembering...remebering what he can...and continues writing, the shadows flickering across the page as the quill continues scraping softly in the night.* My life has been short lived here on this world, this world I was pulled away to in a drunken haze. But it is a chance, a second chance to do what I can, rather than waste it as I was back home. A common blade for hire, a lockpick.*He shakes his head*
I have grown, used my second chance, to do what I can, what I must. I will never forget the words of that dragon, it's coal fired eyes, golden scales and gaping maw. Those words will burn in my mind forever...Bloods army comes...
I had at first dismissed it, looking at people walking about, milling in their own business, exchanging words and goods, hoping to simply blend in. And in time I did. I joined the throngs in Hlint, meeting people, making friends, drinking, womanizing. Yet my heart longs for something else, something greater. As if there was something else I should be doing. Yet I can't place it.
That night in Berhagen, that night when the dead arose from the ground, their glowing forarms and lips uttering magic. The night lightning filled the sky and singed our skin, and a man. A man, so cold, so emotionless, in robes stood calmly upon the battlement, watching. Waiting. Mocking us silently as we tried to speak to him. His words chilled me to the core. "You are no threat to me. Hero's" *The quill stops and he closes his eyes, sighing deeply*
I remember the first time I thought I had truely died. In Rilara, near the Belegar hills, an encampment of Raksha we had hoped to ambush. One of them brought forth a demon, and the demon brought forth a succubus. A vile creature. Magic struck me, again and again, blinding me, deafening me to the world around. Wounding my body. I ran, dazed and stricken, I had to get away, anywhere, just away. But that temptress followed.
A bolt of lightning is all I remembered as blackness engulfed me, and I felt part of my soul ripped from my body, never to return again should I be brought back to life. The kiss of the succubus, deadly, yet tempting. I arose, eventually, our cleric muttering words frantically in praise to his goddess, begging her to restore life to my empty body. Breath filling my lungs as my conciousness was forced back within me.
We left that foul area, travelling towards Wolfswood, determined to put that place behind us. Meeting more friends and heading into the forest. Slaying giant and hound. It was there we met an even more powerful giant, one nearly beyond the combined might of our group. One we needed to tell the druids about, but when we entered their abode, they were gone. As if they had never been. It was there that my change occured, that I truely became one with the shadows.
My hand disappeared at first, then came back, and then my arm, flickering dizzyingly, the coldness of the shadows crawling over my skin, goosebumps sending shivers down my spine, and then... I disappeared. The darkness around me, on the edges of my vision, yet my two companions looking about in shock as I vanished before their eyes. I could see them clearly, yet, strangely. As if they were ghosts of themselves, standing there.
I reached out, hoping to grab one, and appeared, the shadows releasing me. Worried looks upon their faces, questions forming on their lips, but before I could speak, the shadows took me again and I was gone, vanished. Their silhouettes returned. I paniced at first, and then relaxed, trying to clear my mind, focus on the image I had remembered before, them whole, and opened my eyes. I was back, yet nestled away in my mind was a sphere of darkness, as if taunting me, awaiting me to return to it's embrace.
I reached out, hesetantly at first, and it quickly consumed me, the shadows comming to life around me, concealing me within their embrace, cloaking me from sight. Concentrating again, I pushed the darkness away in my mind and appeared. I was learning to control it, if slowly. We headed back to Point Harbor.
It took many weeks to fully control it, and finally I was able to do it quickly, dancing in and out of this shadowed world at ease, with grace and skill. At first I wow'd people, then I put it to use, to a final test. The succubus. I would repay her the kiss she once gave me, alone.
I lured her off, a fanged grin on her face as she followed, thinking to taste me again, wanting to be alone with me, not wishing to share. My lips twitched in a smile. She may have been a temptress, but she did not have the brains of one. A look of shock crossed her face as I embraced her to kiss her, only to reach out to the shadow in my mind, in a blink I was concealed, and my blade ran her through her black heart.
She dropped lifeless, the look of shock still on her face as I blew her a kiss. The green blood staining my blade, her corpse gashed open. A single, clean blow. My revenge was complete and my mastery of the shadows was growing.
I returned to Hlint and caught word of this orc basher shop. It was there I spent what little coin I had to further improve my skills, to better allow the shadows to conceal me. I had found a few creatures that could still spot me, as if I was a ghost, allowing them to strike, but these new items, new armor and a belt and cloak, very little could spot me now. **He pauses, placing more wood on the fire before continuing**
Then the drow came. Spilling forth from the crypts, slaying everything in sight. I fell, knocked out, only to rise again, the healer peering down at me. A pretty face, one I would steal had I the chance, but the threat was still immediate and Garent was near dead from his fighting. A brave man, if stotic.
A lone drow was hauled from the bank and spoke only one piece of useful information, "The Dark has United, The Dark Comes" he died, after some fool insulted him and he rose hell within Hlints walls.
We gathered those around and delved into the crypts, tossing aside undead and reaching the bottom, meeting many drow and a man they called Navaree, the gleaming portal still spewing out the muds. We fought, hard and long, until we could fight no more and so we left, with his help to seal the portal.
It was not the end, the next day they appeared again, through another portal by the courthouse, an entire fist. Hoping to kill more, it was then we learned of the poison. The tattoo's and demands. *The page is nearly ripped as the quill is pressed hard in anger*
We threw them back, and Navaree appeared again, many words spoken. In time we learned the truth, what they planned. In time I was marked. It was then I swore my vengance upon them. I was a shadowdancer, I would make them pay when this was done.
A belt I would make, a belt of their snow white hair. I would kill every drow who crossed my path and take but a single strand of their hair for this belt. Let it be a lesson to them to cross me again, let them see what challenging me would bring, has brought to their brethern. Some called me foolish, some cheered me on. I don't do it for glory, I do it for vengance. For thinking they can control me. But vengance clouds my mind in this, and I wander, killing anything that crosses my path in challenge. Giants, undead, drow, hounds, ogres, everything.
I wander...alone...a shadow in this world, watching...waiting...I will leave my mark on this world and let it's denizens judge if it is for good or for worse...
**He looks up as a drop of rain hits the page, nearly smearing the fresh written ink, hunching his body over it as the fire hisses in anger at the drops he blows on it softly to dry before tucking it in his pack securely. He rises to kick dirt on the fire, dousing it, and reaches out to the darkness in his mind, letting the shadows conceal him once more and walks into the night.**
