You may be disheartened to know that my story does not begin with me. It starts with my mother and my oh so hateable father. As most of the population on the land I was born a halfling, but not one born from a beautiful relationship full of flowers and what-not. Instead, my story begins with a fight. A raid on a village, where my mother lived, but that no longer exists.

You may know something about the Rakshnur, a fierce looking humanoid species that does not live anywhere but everywhere. Wandering tribes that fight against anyone except themselves and reproduce mostly via the “kind help” of women such as my mother, as the birthrate of female Rakshnurians is pretty low and they fight for territory commonly, killing each other in the process.

It all happened a bit before new year’s, the date is not exact as there was not anyone there to record it and even if there were, they would probably have been a man and as such killed and eaten for not having any other use to the Rakshnurians.

These beings, being quite large, reaching heights such as 2 and a half meters are known for their strength, ferocity, red skin, horns, and typical ears, stretching all the way from where they usually are for most humanoids all the way to their necks, being “glued” to the skin all the way through. Quite monstrous if I do say so myself, luckily,

I did not end with such looks although maybe it could have prevented some of my experiences, but who knows, I might have died much before – to the delight of many – if I had looked that way.

But if there is something that I have learned through my life it is that there is no point in focusing in just one thing, it is always better to have more options or variation at your disposal, and so I shall start telling what I have been told that happened that fateful day when I was conceived.

Five hours before the raid, inside a house of the village.

Inside a kitchen, a brown-haired woman is cooking some slices of meat and cooking some salad, mixing it into a big bowl.

- Hey Marcus, do you know when Maria left to search for a few berries to finish the desert for dinner? We’re going to start in three hours, but you know how much she likes decorating the food before it gets cooked…

A black-haired teen comes into the room bringing some cut logs, wearing cozy clothes with some wood splinters being stuck to his pants.

- I dunno, she left while I was cutting wood, but she didn’t say goodbye to me or nothing of that sort. She probably stayed behind looking at some pretty animals or something dumb like that.

The boy smirks at his own joke, while leaving the wood besides a brick fireplace in the edge of the room. Her mother, with a serious face, answers

- Marcus! What have I said about calling your sister and her activities dumb?

- That I’m right

- Yes… - Marcus looks at her with a satisfied look - No! That it’s a taste thing! Do you now want to eat some of this de-li-cious roasted beef? Oh, wait you won’t like it with that attitude! IF you want to eat this, then stop that, at least for today, and go look for your sister, my parents are coming today, and I want her to be in her dress to look pretty for them.

- You know how much she hates wearing that dress, but ok, sure I’ll go search for her. Did she tell you where she’d go? – Marcus quietly asks, hoping that his mother wouldn’t listen so that he’d later have an excuse for not looking for her sister.

As he was about to leave the house, his mother shouted that she heard the question and that she knew he was doing this to have an excuse, as there was only a single forest with berries near the village – the one on the other side of the river.

Besides, his sister never treads too far away from the commonly used path through said woodland. On this side there were only pine trees, with just a bit of moss and a leaf here or there on the ground.

Marcus, kind of mad that his plan was found out, made the last few steps out of the house especially loud and then decided that to prevent trouble he would go to search for his sister – He was also a tad worried, although he trusted that she could support herself.

A few minutes after Marcus had started to look for his sister, already on the other side of the bridge, he was walking through the forest testing his stealth and speed skills. Although there was no system that gave him special powers, he had been practicing ever since he was five because of a magician that went through town to town had used a trick that could be replicated by being quick and stealthy.

Marcus had tried studying to get into a magic academy, but his family’s standing and his own intellect fought against him, so he had decided to become a stealth master instead. What job he would do would be something that his future adult self would have to solve. Although he was already pretty close of becoming one.

As he was testing his rolling skill from one hiding spot to another, he started smelling ashes, cut trees and blood. That was very uncommon, as no one in the village was planning to build anything here, bandits wouldn’t cut or burn wood to keep their position hidden and there hadn’t been a storm recently, so this couldn’t have come from a lightning bolt... Marcus was curious, so the teen started slowing down and followed the direction his senses directed him to.

Getting closer and closer to the origin of those smells Marcus also realized that he hadn’t found any wild animals, even when he strayed further away from the path to be stealthier. That wasn’t common, as this forest usually had thousands of smaller and larger animals walking around, living their own lives and, although they usually run away from noise and humanoids, Marcus could usually get close enough to see details on their bodies, such as if they were missing eyes, parts of their ears or things like that. Thinking about this, Marcus heard a deafening laugh not too far away, which startled him and made him trip on an overgrown root.

After rolling a bit on the ground he got back up and slowly approached the origin of the sound and saw monsters! Or at least that’s what they looked like to Marcus, who was used to seeing humans and had only seen a group of elves when he was six years old. So, this group of humanoids, all taller than 2 meters, with red skin, horns and ugly faces took him by surprise.

The laugh came from a female Rakshnurian, which could be identified with the crown and the taller body, measuring a towering 3.2 meters, in this case. But Marcus didn’t identify her because of that, but rather that her body and clothes were different in shape compared to the other members of the wandering tribe.

- We need to find where she came from, the last raid of the middle-mans left us with little fighting power and you know how much time and energy it takes me to breed one of us. Based on her clothes and her attitude it shouldn’t pose too much resistance.

Said the tall monster, pointing towards a cage where Marcus saw some clothes thrown on the floor…. No, wait it was a person! And those clothes… looked exactly like his sisters’! But he didn’t have a way to confirm, as the cage was far from any piece of land covered in shadows. This is also where the smells came from, these monsters had burnt and cut trees to make an opening inside the forest, probably to keep them comfortable, as their heads probably hit the branches of some trees if the were standing inside the forest. Looking at these details, Marcus suddenly felt he was being watched and decided to run away, back to the village, to tell everyone what he saw. He hadn’t been seen but being in such a situation made his senses overexcited and as such made him feel something that wasn’t there.