Challenge #04148-K130: One Link in the Chain...

A village lost to time, strange and beautiful to behold./ Only one to escape the place before the cataclysm did unfold./ Harmed by those claiming the light the child is forced, fearful, to roam./ The village, the cataclysm did not destroy, but obscured the young way's home./ Evil there to bar the way, fools the light to their crime.../ Until one not of darkness, not of light, guards safe the child./ And the evil pays the price, upon vengeance will the child dine.

-- Anon Guest

[AN: Props to OP for the poetry. Sorry I had to wreck the formatting for space reasons. It will be restored in the final archives]

In the beginning, so the stories say, there were only Dragons. The two that made Alfarell plucked stars out of another reality and some fell to become Elves. The D'varuv tunneled their way into sunlight shortly after that. As soon as one species met another, they started flinging magic at each other as well as various other weapons.

That was just the start of the Xenophobia Wars.

In all that mess, there were inevitably portions of the world that bore the scars of past conflicts. Wildlands. Floating firmament. Portals into other planes... and portions of the world that could only be found under specific circumstances. The Elvish word for such has passed to common parlance - bryg'haduun.

Some are timeless between appearances. Some continued in their own pocket plane. All have a uniqueness to them that are rarely seen.

That was where Berrie came from.

It would have been easy to call them a monster. Many people would have done that. Not Wraithvine. Not Gikka. Certainly not any of the Unwelcome People that the dominant society already classed as monsterkind.

One such was a devilborn with a burly build and the softest heart known to intelligent life. Who took one look at Berrie and adopted them. Berrie was content to suffer having their person being cleaned so long as they had something to eat.

"My goodness, you have more tangles than hair, lovey. How long were you left alone, hm?"

"Dunno," said Berrie around their pie. "Long time."

"You won't be lonely again, lovey," promised Amity. "You've somebody to care for you, now. Whatever you happen to choose next... I will be there for your needs."

Context clues and a little archive delving resulted in the knowledge that Berrie's home bryg'haduun was the direct result of an evil mage... who was still operating somewhere in the nearby mountains. Whatever their reasons, there was a prophecy involving a child of exile destroying their power.

The thing about prophecies is their reliance on confirmation bias.

And if there was one thing Wraithvine knew... it was how to bias some confirmation.

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