The Walker
Prologue
My name is Veltim Ayasharu. I am the disenfranchized, half-breed, bastard son of the noble Ayasharu family of Fascinituru. This is the story of my past, my history. It reveals facts about me, and about the world, that some people may wish they have never learned. Read this at your own risk.
Ah, Fascinituru... the land of the Mystics, and the land where I was born. It is a dark land, a land sees the light of the sun only a few months out of the year. It is a cold land, where very few species can survive for long. The terrain consists mainly of mountains, large black mountains, in the Akshan mountain range. Some are more of monoliths than mountains, large black spires that pierce the sky like knives. The cold land is inhospitible to most forms of plantlife, as the ground is frozen tundra, the packed dirt the same color as the mountains that surround the landscape. The few plants that do grow here are the black roses known as tylfur and the vegetable gardens in Fascinituru, the capital city of its namesake land.
In fact, there was only one city in Fascinituru, which shares the name of its surrounding land. The city is just as dark as the mountains that surround it like a ring; in fact, many of the buildings, including the royal palace, are actually built into the Akshans in artificial caverns dug into the side of the mountains. The Akshan Spire, the tallest mountain in the Akshans, is the home of the Fascinituru Palace, where the Fleurs, the ruling family of Fascinituru, reside. It stands in the center of the Noble's Quarter of Fascinituru, where the noble families (that rule the city even moreso than the royal family could ever hope to) live out their days in the lap of luxury.
Those who live in Fascinituru are known as the Mystics. Mystics are a very strange race, often mistaken for elves at first glance. They are slender and slightly shorter than humans, with long, pointed ears and very pale skin. Their hair and eyes are always matching, and always some color of the rainbow, or black, never a simple blond, brown, or the rusty red color humans sometimes manage. They are physically much weaker than humans; that is, without assistance. Mystics are masterful mages and fighters. Mystic fighters use an ancient art of absorbing the souls of their fallen enemies and releasing them in combat to adopt that animal's (or person's) attributes, in a similar manner to the way human fighters in the Nexus use what they call "furies". Mystics call these soul powers animae. Mystics are masterful swordsmen and archers, as well.
Mystic mages can be even more dangerous. The magic of the Mystics revolves around illusion, trickery, conjuring, and mental domination. Their conjuring and domination spells are their main weapons, ranging from summoning phantasmal beings to slay their foes to controlling their foes' minds and causing them to simply kill themselves. It is because of this that the Mystics are goverened by a magocracy: only mages can be rulers and noble family primogens. Fighters are somewhat frowned upon as less sophisticated as magic-users, as simple-minded, yet very necessary, head-smashers.
This land, and these people, are the origins of my tale, the story that I finally share with the world so that they may know the truth about lands outside of the Nexus. Fascinituru was my home for a full thirteen years, an experience that defined the rest of my life.
This is my story.
This is the truth.
-Veltim Ayasharu