Prologue

The moment she stepped through the wizard’s portal, the world around her went completely dark before a light exploded somewhere behind her eyes.  A voice seemed to speak from a distance, in hushed, hurried tones.  “I cannot break through the barrier, old man.  She has a most powerful magic guarding her.  None I have yet seen this side of the Ancients. Well — ever — dealt with so far as much.” His speech slowed before coming to a complete stop.  Then his voice grew suddenly cold as death, but not in anger — it was in fear on his next discovery.  “This one is watched over by the gods themselves!  Blood and bloody ashes!  If you are smart my friend, you would put this woman back where you plucked her from in the timeline or else risk angering the gods as well as the woman herself once she regains her full memory or else ‘twill not be pleasant  for you I vow.  Nor anyone else for that matter.” The mage lightly touched her eyes as he murmured some unintelligible word then  rolled Rivyn’s semi-unconscious form over into a sleeping position. She sighed wordlessly and succumbed to the darkness once more. With luck the little cantrip he performed will hide what magic he performed so that his part in this little horror story would be well hidden and never known. At least for now.

When Rivyn did manage to  open her eyes, it was to find herself lying face down in the grass.   Stretching  cautiously, Rivyn stood and dusted off her clothes, looking around while she attempted  to gather her wits about her.  Where the hell was she?   And what’s more — just ‘How’ did she get here?  Nothing seemed the least bit familiar to her.  Stretching cautiously, Rivyn stood and began brushing the grass and leaves from her clothing as she began to look around.

Surely once she started to walk around something  would  spark a tiny bit of memory somewhere in her brain and then everything wouldn’t seem so fuzzy to her.  A few hours later, the only thing that had changed was that her legs were tired, and her throat was parched.  She needed to find water somewhere.  Taking shelter at the base of a wide spread elythren tree, Rivyn sat down and gazed up at the sky.  She  vowed that she would rip the cocos from the person responsible for her being here and without an explanation for the where, whats, whys, and how she got there. For a moment there before looking down at the toe of her boots she felt as if she was being watched, but glancing all around her, she saw nothing and shrugged tiredly, then closed her eyes, only meaning to do so for a moment.   She had to find someone that would help her with the pockets of fog in her memory.

     A vision of someone appeared cloaked in shadows hovered above her then in the blink of an eye disappeared.  Just as quickly another vision appeared, a handsome man with expansive white wings splayed out behind him as he walked.  She did not see the wings in the beginning.  At first the man appeared normal, then a ghostly yet  feathery pair of white wings flared out behind him as he gently picked her up, sheltering her within those very wings saying, “I shall always watch over you.” Then with that, he placed a gentle kiss upon her lips and placed her upon a bed of soft moss that was covering an old rotten hollowed out stump. 

She knew him.  Rivyn struggled to speak.  She did not know how to explain it, but somehow she knew this magnificent  creature of fantasy standing before her and she knew his face even though she had never actually met him until this very moment.