[Prolog]

“You have your mother’s eyes … my child.”

And with a soft touch the old elf brushes a small disheveled piece of hair back into place. The young elf maiden smiled impetuously as the old elf stared intently into her face.

They stood transfixed for several moments in the quiet silence of the forest gazing into each others eyes. Then as the sun began its dive into the western horizon they turn and continue their walk.

With the sun nearly gone they enter a small glad in the heart of the forest itself, and with a small motion from his time worn hand at an old campsite the young maid quickly moves to prepare a fire as the old elf sits down and gazes at her and her work. Quick and efficient with an economy of movement that speaks of her skills in wilderness survival the maid prepares and lights the fire with materials carefully stored for that very purpose, and in but a few moments it is dancing in a small set of stones and begins to banish the now thickening darkness of the fleeting twilight of dusk.

The maid then reaches into her pack and pulls out a small portion of well prepared food that she has careful stored for travel. She hands the old elf a portion and begins to gaze toward the clear spring fed pond when out of the darkness another young voice breaks the still calm of the glad.

“Ahhh I see you forgot the cups my … sister.” She seems to struggle with the word “sister” as one who had rarely uttered it before and even now found the word and its implication hard to believe.

Into the firelight steps another elven maid of near identical build as the first, bearing 3 small cups of fresh water.

“No … I have my collapsible ones here with me now, and in but a moment I would have produced them for our meal.”

The old elf smiled at both of his prodigy and motioned for the girls … now nearly grown to womanhood to sit.

“I see that you two are pampering an old foo …” he stops in mid word and corrects himself “elf who deserves not your service … but appreciates it none the less.”

“But that is not why we are here tonight. I thought that now as we are newly reunited as kin and family would be a good time to tell tales of our common ancestor. To speak of the ages and those who came before to make us who and what we are today. To find that common bond and celebrate it. For we are the Lok-ri and from him did we come into the twilight. He and others paved our past to make us what we are and will become. We will remember them in story and song and through our remembrance honor them.”

“Come now my children and let me share the tales of the past with you as they where shared with me by my father and mother, your grandsires. Let us tell the tales of the Lok-ri and embrace our past.”
In the Begining

“It was said that she gave birth to the world … worlds … and that she went insane over the love and loss of her creations. She no longer spoke nor cared … but she could often be found by the sea.”

“It was also said that he too was father to the world … worlds … but having never conceived life he cared little for it, or her.”

“One day their arose a storm, and from the froth of the storm surge he arouse, and took her. It was no lovers sweet embrace and from that moment as the seas crashed on them she felt a new being come into existence.”

“She swam often and thought of this new creation … Intermixed with her pain and loss a spark of life grew within her. Interwoven with her thoughts of death, destruction and suffering a new mind was learning … absorbing all that was her knowledge through the countless eons.”

“Then as is often the case in this windswept land came another storm to the seacoast on the seas of fate. And in the eye of that raging furry she cried out with the anguish of the ages … and into the sea was born he … fully formed … fully sentient … fully aware of who he was and what he might be in this young world of twilight and storm. Tall he was and well built, athletic and spry he took to the waters as a fish, and to the land as a lion. His light green skin glistened in the sea and was the color of the sea foam itself. His eyes young to this world, but old in spirit and knowledge of the ways of it … and other worlds gazed out into the blue blackness of the turbulent ocean as his hair blown with the motion of the sea itself. He glanced but once back at his mother … but she had already retreated into her minds eye of pain and suffering, oblivious now of his existence as the angry seas crashed onto her and washed away any sign of his coming.”

“He then turned back to his true mother … the sea itself … the sea that would embraced him and take care of him as no other ever would ... The one place he would find solace ... He would model his life after her ... As the Sea.”

“And that little ones is the story of how he came to be … the first of his kind … our forefather … Lok-ri”

and with that the old elf lay his head in his arms and seemed to fall asleep. The young elven maids smiled at the story and the story teller and after setting the fire for the night also rested their eyes and thought about their long ago past and he who was Lok-ri.

As the Sea
The Sea Mother's Child (A battle on the beach)
The Quest
An Empire Sundered
And She Came
What the Seas Take Away
The House of Vorgen Lok-ri

“Trixi!”

“Yub! … Trixi and lies!”

The grobald king's heavy lidded eyes where wide and his lips peeled back from his exposed teeth as his rage with the elven lord became more and more apparent in his person.

“You promised us power … to be like YOU! … LIES it was!”

With a cool look of disdain and the tiniest curl of his lip Lord Vorgen Lok-ri, ruler of the House Lok-ri and leader of the elven conclave gazed upon the seething visage of the groblad king. Another pawn in his on-going game of power and conquest … wheels within wheels.

“You will calm yourself NOW my small king or we will have nothing left to speak of.”

With smallest gesture of Vorgen’s off hand the elf known as RyuShihan shimmered out of his stealth at the side of the grobald king. Vorgen’s gaze fixed upon the groblad king as he raised an eyebrow.

“And no one left to speak of it with...”

The tension in the air was palpable as the grobald king suddenly became aware of where he was … and who he was speaking too.

Then as if a child had stuck a bubble in his evening bath the air and airs when out of the groblad king as he began to feel the fear. He was as close to the edge of life and death as any who walked to the brink of the abyss and gazed into its emptiness, and now he wished for nothing but to back, no run, away as fast as his webbed feet could carry him.

To be continued
hoth@stormbringer.net
Updated Feb 2006
Copy write Scott Lindquist