Daron sat in his room after an extremely hot, humid, and exhausting day in the forest. He lived with his brother and his mother in a tiny house right outside of their village, Thaylen. He wasn’t exceptionally smart. No, in fact, he was a year or two behind the other kids his age.

His mother had always told him to do what made him happy. So he did just that. Daron was the top hunter in the village. He’d sell and catch whatever the townsfolk wanted and he knew just how to kill the animals so they’d feel no pain and so the meat wasn’t damaged. Daron had noticed there weren’t too many animals out in the forest that day and it was eerily quiet. There was no chattering between the squirrels, no crunching from deer’s hooves in the leaves, there wasn’t even the buzzing of a bumblebee’s wings as it caressed the blooming flowers in the forest’s moss beds.

He’d gone back to the little cabin he lived in. He’d sat, inside, down in his room, after the unusually unsuccessful day. Daron sensed a disturbance, nothing he had ever felt before. He’d gone to the village before returning home and while there he spoke to the storytellers. They were worried; they sensed that something was amiss within the country. But not even one person in the town could quite tell what exactly the problem was.

He’d walked up the cellar steps, not knowing why he felt so inclined to run from his home. “Mom, Durik, where are you?”

“We’re here! Why, what’s the matter? You’re worried, why?” His mother could sense the slightest change in Daron’s attitude within an instant.

“We have to go. We have to leave. Now.”

“Dar, go downstairs. Sleep. The sun must’ve gotten to him today Ma. I’ll bring him some snip juice. That’ll calm him down.” Durik was always undermining his younger brother. Daron, though not intelligent and often ridiculed for being seemingly more immature than everyone, possessed a power that he could sense any change within the atmosphere. Nobody, not even the person who had birthed him, could understand why.

“No, Durik. Something’s not right. I dunno what it is, but we have to go. Something’s coming that we don’t want to stick around for,” Daron tried reasoning. Whatever Daron was sensing, nobody believed him.

It’d been happening again. The dreams. Yet this time they were of a girl. She was terribly hurt. But it was in the future; Daron had never dreamed anything in the future before. He couldn’t tell how far in the future it was. Never before had his dreams been so vivid, nor were they as clear as this. The future, told to him by the Elders, was never solid, nor was it inherently clear, which was why he feared staying in the town.

“Ma, you don’t have to believe me, but if you stay here, something bad will happen. I can feel it. I’m going out to talk with the Elders. I dreamt a very bad dream last night. You must believe me that something is wrong. All of the animals were hidden in the forest today and the storytellers were all worried.”


“Daron, what brings you here?” Elder Leyn asked, surrounded by the other seven Elder men. Elder Leyn was the head of the council, the most prestigious person in the village Thaylen. She was the strongest, bravest, and most courageous woman Daron had ever met. She could tell stories for days and days for the sole purpose of entertaining the townsfolk. Over the years she had acquired a knowledge of Thaylen, and of the entire country, that nobody could even hope to begin to learn or understand. It was rumored that she knew the arts of fire, air, earth, and water. Daron had always wondered if these arts were true. He’d always thought of Leyn as his grandmother, her nature was sweet and caring, unlike the rest of the council.

“Elders, I’ve dreamt something terrible and I feel a dark presence enveloping our village; one I’m afraid will destroy our very existence.”

Elder Bryant laughed, “Daron, we’ve been down this road several times and nothing’s happened to us. Your dreams have never come true, no matter the clarity within them.” The other men laughed at the end of his statement. They clearly thought that Daron was a nuisance and a waste of time, yet Council Master Leyn had insisted each time he came in, that they meet. “Elder Leyn, this is nearly the fifth time that we have convened for this boy and you have insisted upon us that we incite referendums to the people, when nothing has ever happened. The townsfolk will think us a mockery if there is yet another one.”

“Silence, Bryant. I sense a great disturbance over our town, as do the storytellers, and as does this young man,” she commanded, eager yet clearly apprehensive of the boy’s story. With an uneasy calmness, she said, “Go ahead Daron. Finish your story.”

Daron closed his eyes, speaking more formally than he’d ever before, he recalled the dream: “Elders, I dreamt of a girl, but she wasn’t human. No, she was Elven. She had skin that was pearly, almost translucent, but it wasn’t of pink undertones. She had golden and emerald colored undertones in her skin. Her eyes showed great pain, but her body showed no injury, no maiming, nothing. They were golden, but red flashed through them nearly every half-second. She was in a dungeon, stripped of her clothing, and made to wear a dress that haunted her pale and majestic body. She called to me, Elders,” and Daron quieted, as if disturbed by the thoughts that came next. “She whispered my name. A door opened and she screamed. She screamed insults and curses in a different language from our own. When I woke after that I was uneasy. I went to the forest to hunt for some deer for the village, but none were out. Elders, I neither heard nor saw any kind of life, not even a dainty butterfly flew by me. I went home several hours later and sat in my room. I found that I was inclined to run. To run and hide from a terrible force with eyes so frighteningly red and black that they seemed to paralyze you till death.”