Dangerous Visitors

by the Crisses

Meanwhile, traveling through the human lands outside of Kerri there was an elf named Dreal, who was not born to Kerri, a stranger to this world. Her companion, Xaron, was also not a native. They had known each other for a very long time, but she was tired of her companion for many reasons, primarily his lack of sanity. Xaron had spent many years helping Dreal hone her magical abilities, for he was nearly omnipotent. His great downfall lay in his lack of knowledge and insight into others, failings she used against him to escape him.

Xaron did not know what she did to escape, but he knew the direction she fled in. Dreal fled to Kerri, shapeshifting constantly to evade his notice. He was far behind her, but still on her trail, so she made one last shapeshift, desperate to be lost in the landscape, a change intended to be permanent. She became a wolf, as she passed into Kerri on the heels of a native wolf pack. This time her change was thorough, changing the very patterns of her mind so that he could not trace her, and she attempted to meld into the pack. They still knew she was odd amongst wolves; they chased her away, rejected. So she did as a lone wolf would do and fled into the wilds of Kerri alone, with no memory of her former elvishness.

Xaron only knew the trail went cold when he tracked Dreal to Kerri. He was stubborn, and very powerful. The Sidhe magics which guarded Kerri interfered with his ability to hunt Dreal down, the very overlap of Between meant that there were many shadowy creatures with too much magic traveling over the lands, half-here, half-there. At the pathways to Kerri, he was confounded by the overlaps and misdirections laid out on the trails intended to keep human interlopers from claiming and taming wild elvish soil.

Nightwind

Dreal