Elarya Whitescale sat in her room as the sun went down. The day was done and soon supper would be ready. There would be talk of what happened today and what needed to be done tomorrow, but right now, she didn't talk. She just sat and stared at the engraved crest on a sword, her uncle's sword.
She remembered playing in the snowy courtyard of the keep that had been her clan's home since time immemorial. She remembered her first outing into the deep forest of towering pines south of her home. She remembered hearing stories of great heroes that stood against the odds. She remembered her father teaching her to fish and hunt and her grandfather teaching her to forge and mend armor and weapons. She remembered Whitescale, the glorious shield whose name the clan bore. She remembered the oath she swore over a year ago.
She remembered how she broke it not long after.
Her uncle had asked her if she wanted to go see the world beyond the keep and the forest. She agreed and the next day they meet with a caravan heading south. All was well and she was happy. A week after leaving things seemed off. Game was scarce and the land grew quiet. They found the carcass of a horse, broken and half-eaten, a few days later. After two weeks of travel, the caravan found the remains of a camp, long deserted. They moved a little ways down the road and set up for the night.
It wasn't long after that. It wasn't long at all. They struck without warning and slew the two men on guard before they could let out much more than a yell of surprise. Before the rest could grab a weapon, they were upon the camp. Men screamed in death and terror, and the metallic tang of blood filled the air. Elarya was barely of age. Her fifteenth birthday, the day she swore to uphold all that the Whitescale clan stood for, was barely two-weeks past. She was scared, no, she was terrified.
So she hid, and in doing so broke her oath, the most important oath she had or would ever make. She cowered in the brush until dawn was turning the eastern sky gray. Once she was sure she that the raiders had left, she crept from her hiding place, and found death. All of the people she had met, all of the guards, and her uncle lay dead and mutilated. Most of them were stripped of anything that wasn't worthless, but in the dirt turned mud by the blood of others, she found her uncle's sword, still in the scabbard. She ran with the sword clutched to her chest all the way to Solace, where she collapsed at the gate.
She had broken her oath and the tears began to come unbidden. She sat there silently weeping as the shield and dragon became a dark blur in her vision. She quietly slide the scabbard back down to fully cover the blade and used the sword to prop her head up as her body shuddered from sobs unheard.
Just outside the cracked door, stand the blacksmith and his wife. The two had taken her in after she had said she had some skill with a hammer and tongs. She had almost become a second daughter to them, and it pained them to see that a year's passage had not lessened the grief she had felt. Their children waited quietly in their room. The two boys and the little girl didn't understand, but they knew that something was not right with the young girl that had become a big sister to them. The sun continued to set, and the tears continued to fall.
