Narien’s mother, Saefi Leevr, was the daughter and only child of Nina and Briehn Leevr. Briehn was (well, is) a monk and direct descendant of Obren Mys’rah, first of the Arcane tamers. Nina was a wonderful woman who died while giving birth to Saefi, who came earlier than expected. Saefi was not the strongest of children, often getting ill very easily, but she was a cheerful one. She was a happy, bright, innocent child, who grew up very sheltered from the world, having never stepped outside the Temple of the Moon in Calidar. Her father loved her very much, but took his responsibilities as one of the People of Dragons and especially as a direct descendant, very seriously. He taught Saefi deeply about the Order, the bonds, places of danger and magic, and, especially about the dragons and their ancestral ties to them. He taught her that knowledge and understanding, of the elements and the world around you, were the most important core of magic/mana use. He drilled all of this information into her from a young age, and in some sense she grew up living and breathing it, until it became a part of her.
When she was nineteen, he decided to test to see if she was ready to become a full, proper member of the People, and sent her out of the Temple for the first time to retrieve a message from one of the confidantes of the People in Arinar (it says this bit in his CS), which was where she met Mason Ki’ila. Their relationship started in a bit of an explosive manner. He was chasing down a thief/vagabond who’d grabbed some lady’s bags and said vagabond had run smack into her. Being a gallant gentleman, he helped her up, and ended up showing her around. This being the first time she’d ever been outside of the Temple, she was a little star-struck, and innocently accepted his goodwill. By the end of the day, the two had become friends, if not somewhat admirers. Again, all this be in his CS, but I’m just rephrasing it so this line is comprehensive. Saefi, began sneaking out to meet Mason in Arinar. When they met up, they ate together, he showed her books and music he liked, and taught her how to dance formally. He made her laugh and was both kind and noble, and the more time they spent together, the more she came to realize that she loved him. At the same time, however, Saefi was torn. She knew that Mason would not quite fully believe or understand how she’d grown up, and her heritage as a member of an ancient bloodline, so she never got up the nerve to fully explain it all to him. And at the same time, she loved her father and her life at the Temple, with all the familiar people and places she’d grown up with, and she didn’t want to forsake them. Feeling almost as if she was abandoning them, she did not tell her father about Mason until he finally one day caught her as she was leaving and asked her where she was going. Breaking down, she told him everything, and to her surprise, Briehn was understanding. Although it was not the fate he would have wanted for his daughter, Briehn did not want to rob Saefi, his only precious daughter, of the chance to live away from the life he had chosen. So he told her that she could go and pursue her love, and although she would no longer be able to return to the Temple of the Moon, he would always love her, all the same. One last thing before she left, however, he told her to always treasure her heritage and what she had grown up learning, and gave her a precious earring, with the pattern of the white oak of Sylvis on it, so that she would always have a reminder with her.
Saefi married Mason shortly after leaving the Temple.
Mason Ki’ila had had a very different kind of upbringing. He was born to Gilder and Suzanna Ki’ila, who were both strict, proud people. Although he was not the only child, he was older than his two sisters by eleven years, and the only son. Gilder, a wealthy ambassador of Freya whose father had been the same, wanted his son to follow in his footsteps, and so made sure that Mason was highly educated, well-trained in fighting with a sword, and a man of both charisma and eloquence. Suzanna, the daughter of a military advisor, had just as many hopes for Mason, and overall, neither of them were exactly the loving kind of parents. Everything good that Mason learned and believed about the world, as a matter of fact, came from his nursemaid. She looked after him, as his parents would not, for the first fourteen years of his life. She taught him to be diligent, to love knowledge, to use his strength for good, to be kind without asking or wishing for anything in return, to respect everyone no matter who they were, and to revere love, because there is nothing greater. By the time she was dismissed, the “damage” had been done, and Mason was not only his parents’ child – proud and strong and charismatic and smart and ambitious – but also in some sense hers – just and kind and filled with a wonder of the world and a hope in the good that he could do.
His sisters, on the other hand, had been kept away from that “softening influence” and the older they got, the more calculating and unpleasant they became. So, when he met Saefi for the first time when he was 23, he was drawn not only to her beauty, but to her innocence, in some ways so absent from his twelve and eleven-year-old sisters. If it had just been that, the relationship might have ended there, but he quickly learned that Saefi was an intelligent woman, an attentive listener, a surprisingly mischievous little waif, and one who had a heart full of love for the world. Enamored with her, he finally decided to tie the knot when he learned that she had left her home and her old life behind to be with him.
His family, on the other hand, were quite displeased with this delicate, unambitious, no-name, out of town girl, and cut ties with him. All in all, their wedding was attended only by Mason’s close friends from school, not a single family member present on either side.
Saefi not being the strongest of individuals, Mason was concerned when she got pregnant barely a year after they’d gotten married. As he expected, the childbirth was difficult for her, but to his relief and joy both she, and the child she had been carrying, survived the ordeal marvelously. Not only that, but a boy with his eyes. He loved Narien instantly. As he, by this time, was starting out as an ambassador himself, having secured the position while he still had his father’s favor, he was beginning to become busier, but he never failed to make time for his family. Believing strongly in the merits of his work, he encouraged Narien to try becoming an ambassador, too. He had him well-educated, and though the child perhaps was a bit more like his mother in stature than would have been ideal, Mason believed in his son’s strength and intelligence.
Often preoccupied with his work, Mason never found out that Narien was being bullied for being a small kid with a weak mother, which had started almost as soon as he had started school. Narien, for his part, was desperate not to disappoint his strong father, and so took the insults, and occasionally the beatings, with a great deal of fortitude. He also tried to keep it from his mother, whom he loved dearly and did not want to worry. Although he hid it well, Saefi guessed that Narien was not well-received in school. He talked about what he’d learned, and bits about the teachers and other students, but never about friends. She worried, but there was little she could do about it. So instead of letting her worry show and fussing about him, she spent lots of time with him, and began teaching him all that she had learned as a child. She told him stories about her life at the Temple, and about his heritage. She told him about the Tetras and the dragons and many other things, though she wasn’t completely sure he didn’t just treat them like fiction. He listened and believed and loved, and even if he didn’t truly understand, she had time to teach him further.
Saefi quickly realized she had nowhere near the time she had wanted. She got sick when Narien was eight, and after a few months of the illness, understood that she would not have much more time left. She began hurriedly teaching him more and more of her knowledge. Mason having pulled him out of school once it was apparent she was not getting better any time soon, she had more time to spend with him. Mason himself began slowing down with work, not being negligent, but taking a little more time to stay with Saefi and Narien in these difficult times.
When Saefi finally died, it took a heavy toll on Mason. Although he had thought that maybe she would not survive, he had always had hope that she would get better, and to have that hope utterly crushed killed some part of him in a way he had not expected. He stayed up all night after making the initial arrangements for her funeral, just listening to Narien crying in the other room, and could not bring himself to comfort that boy. When he went into his son’s room to wake him up in the morning, as was his custom when he was home, he saw the boy sleeping soundly, eyes red and puffy, somehow so fragile. Just seeing his awkward, growing frame, too old to call a child, too young to call an adult, curled up in a self-comforting position, he felt a sense of deep shame and guilt to go with his grief. He’d failed his wife, and he’d failed his son, and he was not sure he could ever face them again because of it.
The week following Saefi’s death, he was away most days, busy with final funeral preparations, and his work as an ambassador. He let himself be too swamped to think about what he’d left behind. At the funeral, though, the first time he’d properly seen his son that week, he found himself frighteningly unable to face the son he had so utterly failed. He tried, at first, to be around more now that Narien’s mother had gone, but he could barely bring himself to speak to Narien, with the traces of Saefi still lingering in his features. On the occasions they did speak, no more words were exchanged than banal pleasantries, or the words that came out of his mouth were harsh and stern, telling Narien to buck up and move on, instead of comforting him. The house, Narien, the servants with their eyes of pity, all were constant reminders of the woman he had lost. He began traveling away from home for longer days, selling off things Saefi had bought, dismissing servants who were becoming increasingly meaningless to him, throwing himself into work with a vigor, and becoming much more hardened than he had ever expected himself to become. He occasionally came home, but saw Narien rarely.
The last time the two of them had a true, meaningful conversation was on Narien’s eleventh birthday. It was just the two of them, and Mason came home and they ate dinner and Mason handed him a box. It contained his mother’s earring. Mason knew that Saefi had grown up in the Temple of the Moon, but although she told him about some of the people and customs there, she never told him about her ancestry or her knowledge of the Order. The earring, too, was a peculiar thing of hers, as earrings were expensive and rare items. He had, in the past, occasionally asked her about it, but her response had mostly been to put her index finger to her lips, smile enigmatically, and say, “In time, dear. I’ll tell you when in time. On Narien’s 19th birthday. I promise I’ll tell you everything.” But she hadn’t lived to see Narien’s 19th birthday, so all he was left knowing was that the earring had been important to her somehow, and would doubtless be important to Narien. When he gave the boy the earring, they spoke briefly, Narien asking when he would be returning again, as he was set to leave again, soon. Mason told him that he wasn’t sure, and it would be some time this trip, and to his surprise, Narien asked, “Will you only be back when mother comes back?” And he heard the sad, lonely, borderline accusation in the child’s voice, and met those sharp blue eyes, little miniatures of his own, and could not answer with more than an, “I will try to cut my trip short this time.” And he turned and left, unable to look into that open accusation anymore.
Mason did not successfully manage to cut his trip short, and he spent even more time away from home, forgetting his son’s twelfth birthday altogether. He never forgot Narien, but he could not find the courage to speak to him again. Narien spent this time in solitude. His father had tried to send him back to school not long after Saefi’s death, but he’d resisted vehemently, and now regretted it. Wandering the empty house alone, he was constantly starving for company, and often felt as if he was going slightly crazy without it. He tried going out, but found little pleasure there. Mostly, he played his viol, which his mother had wanted him to learn, wrote poetry, and read whatever happened to be in the Ki’ila library at the time. He took to wearing the earring even when he went to sleep, as he rarely actually fell asleep, and learned how to keep it secure, as he never wanted to risk losing it. He grew to spite his father, who was by this point, almost always away, but more out of an angry loneliness than true hate.
Finally, he was kidnapped by a pair of mercenaries from Solona, a part of the Blood of the Covenant. They had initially been hired to demand Mason step down from being an ambassador, as with his ferocity was also growing his enemies, but instead, they thought they’d profit more off of directly ransoming him off. They left a note in his office giving him one month to gather up his money and pay them, but he had been gone on longer and longer trips, lately, and although his assignment finished early this time around, he went home slowly, and did not see the ransom note until after the deadline had passed. Narien, who had felt that his father had abandoned and forgotten him, was now certain of it. The slave traders, being part of the Blood of the Covenant, were expected to come back with some profit, but since Mason had not panned out in any sense of the word, they were forced to go with a backup plan. Returning to Solona, they sold Narien as quickly as possible to the highest bidder – who just happened to be the Wellon family. The Wellon’s were wealthy, supposedly law-abiding citizens, who nonetheless were very hush-hush about their work. They had one daughter, a year and a half older than Narien, for whom they had bought him in the first place. They’d bought him because he’d seemed obedient, none too strong, and somewhat poised. Mauri, a spoiled, selfish girl, had just dismissed her last servant, in a long list of them, for not being sufficiently entertaining. For some reason, however, she took an instant liking to him.
Mauri’s manservant was the first “other” Narien. He was a silent, obedient, yet at times, oddly cheeky man who became one of Mauri’s closest confidantes for the next three years, but perhaps the most remarkable thing about him was that he was made up completely on a whim and yet lasted for three whole years. It happened for nothing more interesting than a hallway. He stepped foot across the threshold of the Wellon household and was struck by the sight of… furniture. More than just some bare, but ornate essential furniture like a dining table and some sofas and chairs, there were fancy rugs on the floor, and vases arranged on tables, and paintings hung on the wall. It all reminded him of another life. And in that other, surreal memory of a life, his mother and he had been forced to host and attend dinner parties and the like as part of being the family of an ambassador. One thing Narien shared with his mother, besides her looks, was his distaste for fancy events like this, and though Saefi always tried to be a dutiful wife, she knew her son had not yet fully learned that he was not allowed to say that. So instead of scolding him for his disgruntled behavior, she decided to turn it into a game. Her face was hurting as she greeted yet another late couple at the door with a smile she did not wish to have on her face, and as she finished talking to them, she leaned down towards Narien and said, “Let’s play a little game. Every time someone new walks in and greets you, greet them in a different way. See if you can confuse them and get them to each see you as a completely different person!” Narien took to the game easily. He found he liked to use slightly different accents and postures to confuddle people, and as time went on that expanded to speech styles and quick action. He continued doing this with the adults he came across in his father’s parties, until he almost began to see the two things as synonymous.
So when he stepped out of his current reality of the past two years and back into that sparkling, lost memory, and a girl with glimmering green eyes and an unearned, unlimited supply of self-confidence told him that he belonged to her, he looked her briefly in the eyes, gave her an obedient bow and said, with a refined, but not high-born accent, “As you say, madam.”
Narien’s years in the Wellon household were a waking nightmare for him. Although he’d hated being alone, he’d gotten used to the autonomy, but now he not only woke much earlier than he ever had before, he spent the time before Mauri awoke making sure her breakfast and clothing were prepared for her exactly as she liked it. He also did a great deal of manual labor before she awoke, helping with the laundry, cleaning parts of the house, tending to the lawn and some of Mauri’s pets, and drawing large buckets of water from the well for her to drink and bathe in. That, however, in some ways he preferred to what happened once the girl awoke, because the minute she woke up and was dressed and bathed by her maids, she demanded Narien accompany her for a large portion of the day. She would prattle on about the latest gossip, half-heartedly play with whichever pet she happened to have in her favor at the time, and do whatever struck her fancy – climbing trees, or buying expensive things, or simply staying abed until her governesses and teachers came past noon. When he was not with her, it was worse, though, because he would help set the table, and do odd jobs to help the Master and Mistress of the Wellon household. The Wellons’ names were Helen and Marco, and they seemed to decide on sight that they both hated Narien. Since Mauri liked him a great deal, however, they smiled and played nice while she was around, never even threatening to get rid of him, but while Mauri was not around, they would order him around and be cruel and complain and even occasionally use him as a destressing punching bag, which as far as Narien was concerned had been the usual state of affairs back when he’d been in school.
He never let anyone see how much they got to him. The other servants all saw him as a bit of a pompous ass, but relatively harmless and to be both pitied and avoided because of how much the master and mistress of the house hated him. Mauri saw him as nothing more than a useful and interesting pet. It seemed that one unhappy reality was only ever content exchanging itself for another. Things got worse after about a year in, when Mauri’s mother began harassing him. Blaming him for other servants’ mistakes, she started finding reasons to call him into her chambers, and after dealing with his clever dodges for several months, eventually ordered him directly to sleep with her.
That was not a shock to Narien. While he’d grown up in a fairly sheltered home, he was not stupid, and he’d stopped being sheltered after being neglected and kidnapped. Although he attempted to refuse, it was difficult to do so as he was technically her bought slave, not even a paid servant, and had no avenue of escape unless he wanted to be imprisoned or killed. The first time it happened, he attempted to wheedle his way out of it, but a direct order cannot be ignored for that long. The unfortunate affair went on for several more months until, half to his relief half to his dismay, Mauri began forcing him to spend more and more time with her, cutting down the hours he spent working on other things – the time available for the mistress of the house to call for him. He was more and more becoming her plaything, and no one else’s. His respite was short-lived, though. Within only a few short months, Mauri began a physical relationship with him, and this time Narien knew, from the start, that he did not have the right to refuse.
This continued on, with Mauri’s parents becoming more and more unpleasant every day, for almost a year, when it all culminated one day. As Narien was bringing a snack up to Mauri from the kitchens, he bumped into Helen Wellon (nice rhyme, ain’t it?). It had been an accident, but just a little bit of the juice in the cup he’d been carrying splashed onto her shoes. The next thing he knew, the tray was falling to the ground, because she flung it from his fingers and was hitting him repeatedly. He said nothing. He didn’t cry. He just let the regular, old, boring blows hit him without resisting. He let the food fall over him and didn’t flinch as something hot landed on one of his legs, burning him slightly. Unbeknownst to him, though, Mauri had come out to see what was taking so long, and caught sight of her mother screaming at him and kicking him. Neither Helen nor Narien saw her, but the girl returned silently to her chambers, took out a small vial of sleeping drug she had for illness, and waited for a bruised Narien to return with a fresh tray of food, as if nothing had happened. Exactly as she expected, he walked in significantly later with more food and some lame excuse about having tripped on the stairs for why he was so late. She told him to set it down on the table and stay where he was while she attended to some business, and slipped out to drug the guards that guarded the back entrance. As if it was the most natural thing in the world, Mauri set Narien free. It was the last time he ever saw her.
Finding himself on the streets of Solona was not ideal for Narien. He had no skills to sell, and no place to go back to, so he wandered the city, simply one of many vagrants sleeping about the streets. Being destitute was truthfully not something Narien was used to. Even as a slave, he’d been constantly provided for, given food and lodging, if nothing else. On the streets, he had nothing at all. This was when he learned to steal. He was not very good at it at first, but necessity forced him to improve, and picking pockets became his most effective method of getting money very quickly. Within a year he’d stolen his first weapon – the knife he’s kept with him ever since. He learned to use it on the fly to both threaten and injure people who tried to mug him. It was also then that he created his next three long-standing “shields.” The first was the dangerous assassin Narien, a silent man with sharp, dangerous eyes, who never made an unnecessary move, and killed without hesitation. He used this when dealing with blundering, blustering fools, who were not nearly as dangerous as they thought they were, but were still threats by merit of their strong fists and arrogant attitudes. His second “other” personality he used with merchants and the people who seemed the most harmless, especially people he was picking the pockets of. It was a sycophantic, nasally, shy Narien who never could look other people in the face, and groveled and kowtowed spectacularly. And the third was a little bit more normal – a caring, capable man, strong, but kind, though wary and unforgiving in the face of injustice or betrayal. Narien himself did not recognize that it was modeled after his own father. The rest were all variations of this, besides a couple of disabled or insane “other”s used to get people to either avoid or sympathize with him. Within that time, he also learned a very valuable skill, quite on odd accident. While fishing in the sewage one day for something he could maybe sell, he quite literally fished out a very drunk man, who was drunkenly asleep and half-drowned. Unable to walk away with a clear conscience from a man who had done him no harm and would probably die or get hurt if he was left alone, Narien took the man to a fairly deserted alley he knew well, sat him upright, and stayed there till the man woke up. He took all the coins the man had on him, which wasn’t much but still, and did not bother to share his blankets, but he did stay with him until the man awoke the next morning, guard up all night.
Somewhat to his surprise, the man did not bolt once he awoke and figured out that Narien had saved him. Instead, he offered him a gift: the gift of knowledge. He gave Narien a little rope and taught him how to make many common knots sailors used, having been a sailor before… well, before whatever he was doing now. Narien never actually found out what it was the ex-sailor was doing besides drinking himself silly. Learning the knots was an invaluable skill, and once the sailor was sure Narien had gotten most of them down, he went back on his way to doing whatever it was he did. Narien began using the knots to make traps to catch and trip people, making it easier to rob them or slow them down. He also discovered, however, that rope was a valuable tool in many ways. For a long time, any little spare money he did not have to spend on food or cloth, he spent buying rope, and that rope he used to defend a small abandoned house he’d found in the slums. Traps could be used to warn him of invaders into his little territory, or to hurt them, scare them, ward them away, though he always preferred to simply scare them, if possible. The ropes made it possible to get away quickly, or hide on roofs, or trip chasers, and many other such things. One very important thing Narien also learned about ropes was that they were a useful and less messy method of killing people who tried to hurt him. He became very comfortable with ropes, though he only pulled it out to fight when his purpose was to kill.
He bought blankets and extra clothes as often as he could, as well, and soon that little abandoned house in the slums became his base of operations, his perfect home. Still, much of Narien’s time was spent away from this obsessively protected haven. He spent most of his time stealing from the people in the markets, and using that money to buy food and small supplies, but also went to get news, information about what was going on in the world. Who to watch out for, and who to anticipate. His mother had taught him one thing very well: keep aware of everything that is around you. Understanding is the key of everything. The pieces of information he paid the most attention to, however, were that concerning the Blood of the Covenant. Although he kept abreast of prices, politics, and wealthy people, the actions of the Blood of the Covenant were the most relevant things he had to worry about. As much as he enjoyed his small kingdom, the abandoned house was terribly close to the Blood’s hub, and he was careful to avoid them, stay out of their way, and cause as little trouble as possible for everyone around.
The first, and only time he ever clashed with the Blood was a narrow escape… and a terrible tragedy. He was seventeen at the time, and he came home to discover a small, 6-year-old boy, with dark brown hair just a shade lighter than his, and stormy blue eyes, very unlike his own exceedingly pale ones. The boy had gotten mired in one of Narien’s (badly-made) rope traps, and had been crying, stuck. Heart going out to the dirty, frightened little creature, Narien released him and fed him, taking him under his wing. He taught him a couple knots, though never enough to use against himself, and watched over him, giving him a place to stay. The kid never spoke, though Narien suspected he was not mute, and held an innocence very odd for this place, even for children. Narien became very attached to him, which made what happened a few months later one of the worst moments of his life.
The kid Narien only knew as “you” had come with him to one of his jaunts at the market. One minute he was there, the next, he was gone. Narien found him in an alley close by, kicking and screaming as a lackey of the Blood tried to kidnap him, compatriots nearby, laughing. Flying into a protective rage, Narien fought, with everything he had, attacking the members of the Blood present, though there were five in total. He was not on his turf, he was not prepared, he was angry, and he was trying to retrieve something very small. All in all it made for a very bad combination. While he was an adept fighter, and could easily defend himself against five untrained men with a level head and a careful step, he was not trying to defend himself or get away. These five were also not untrained men, and most importantly, he was not fighting with a level head. The slave traders beat him within an inch of his life and left him there to die, taking the boy with them – to become just yet another important person Narien would never see again.
When he woke up, Narien was bleeding, bruised, dazed, hungry, and in the process of being stolen from. He groaned, scaring the timid scavenger away just in time to retain his knife, and returned home wearily, bandaging himself up. He rested for a couple days, then went about his usual business as if he had never met the boy. But he had, and something had changed within him because of it, just as something had changed within him the day his mother had died, the day he’d been kidnapped, the day he’d been set free. Every time he lost something- no, someone- precious to him in some way, as he began to think was his inevitable fate, his heart shattered and reconstructed itself around one very important desire: never again. And this time, it felt final. For five years, as Narien saved some people, killed others, and hoarded his money and his home, his heart was untouchable. Though he retained some sense of justice and compassion that made him keep trying to save people (especially dark-haired children with stormy blue eyes), he refused to become attached to any of them. So when people he had saved turned and stabbed him in the back, he did not hesitate to return the blow. For five years he lasted this way.
Finally, the call came. It started with just the oddest urge to step outside the city. He was constantly restless, searching for somewhere else to go. He couldn’t explain it. It was mysterious and infuriating and distracting. After almost a month of resisting this feeling, he finally gave in and took a careful look at this odd, uncomfortable instinct. Unbidden, memories of his mother’s stories rose in his mind, speaking of dragons and magic and a different life in mysterious temples. While he hadn’t thought about these old stories in a long time, they were the only thing he could think of to give him some idea of what was going on. Taking a chance, he packed up all of his things, abandoned his home of seven years, and set out on a journey to the Temple of the Moon that he had not expected to ever take. More than that, he did not expect that he would never be coming back.
The Temple of the Moon, where his mother had grown up, was a place of serenity and purity unlike anything Narien had come into contact with for many a long year. The road there was not very perilous. There were actually fewer capable robbers on the road than there were in his little “hometown,” and it did not take him long for him to make his way there. When he got there, he did not know what to say, or yet who to become, so he simply asked politely to be let in for he was searching for guidance in the face of a deep restlessness he could not comprehend. What he said next, though, was what got him in the door. He told them that he was the son of a Saefi, and that was why he had come. They immediately opened the door to him, and Briehn rushed to meet his grandson. Although initially still slightly suspicious, Briehn could not deny that Narien shared some resemblance with Saefi and that he was the right age. Narien, realizing that it would not help him to lie in this instance, told the monk that his father was Mason Ki’ila and his mother had died some years ago. He said nothing about his time in Solona, but fully described the odd restlessness that had brought him to the Temple in the first place.
Briehn understood, almost instantly, that it was Narien’s bloodline calling out to him, for whatever reason. Insisting that the 22-year-old stay for a couple more weeks, he, and the other monks, told Narien about his mother’s ancestry, that the dragons truly had existed, and that there were many more answers he would not be able to find unless he made the journey to the Lunate Monastery, many miles from there. In those two weeks, they attempted to refresh as much of his memory on his mother’s teachings as they could, and they were largely successful. None of them warned him, however, that he could become one of the new generation of dragon tamers.
Narien traveled alone from the Temple of the Moon, guided by nothing more than a map and his own, excellent sense of direction. He traveled for many weeks, and cultivated his newest “other” Narien, a shy, awkward peasant man who was kind and honest and obedient and hard-working, and this shield served him well. People on the road like himself took to this personality, but did not get attached to it. It got him a couple free meals and some tents to stay under, but did not constrain him to any one camp. He also realized that it was versatile. He did not know what he was going to find at the Lunate Monastery, but whatever it was, he doubted any of the “other”s he had used in Solona would be the least bit effective. He did not know how long he would be staying, so he wouldn’t be able to try out as many different kinds of reactions and speech patterns once he got there. He needed a persona that did not attract greed, envy, pity, or suspicion. He needed one that would allow him not to talk too much, but also prevent kind, normal, polite people from thinking he was dangerous. This was it.
Arriving, he was most surprised by the outcome of this journey. He was welcomed in, and without too much of an explanation, was brought into a chamber where he came face to face to a gigantic beast of legend, he had never ever ever expected to come across in his entire life. And half to his fear, she touched his heart so very simply, and he thought once more: never again. If he had to give up everything and everyone else, he was not losing this, the last being who was precious to him. He would most definitely, this time, not lose it.
He knew about the Tetras, and feels some respect when he meets them, though not true, deep trust, or solidarity or anything like that.
(Original date written unknown as it is saved from a blog post now deleted.)