In the village Aldua'denac, deep within the Skittering Wood, there is a certain rite of passage undertaken by all young elves approaching adulthood - before the eve of the adolescent child's 70th birthday, they are called to create the very best bow they can - using only tools in their personal possession, and from materials gathered alone. Thus prepared, they will undergo a final, secret trial - the Ylthuun-aut'torr.


When it came time for Rennuid Tathviel to make his bow, he was nervous. He was the youngest child of four, and his older siblings' creations had set a high bar he doubted he could live up to. If he couldn't make something impressive on skill alone, then.. perhaps, Rennuid reasoned, he could still impress by crafting the bow out of something unique and unusual?


What better place to look for something that hadn't been seen before than a place where no one goes? Mind made already, Rennuid just so happened to overhear a discussion between two villagers; one woman swearing to another that a copse of strange trees rested in the shadow of an abandoned ruin in the far, far reaches of the Wood.



How fortuitous, wasn't it? Perhaps even fateful.



The forbidden wood wasn't even all that foreboding. In fact, he found it peaceful - quiet, calming.. more beautiful in many ways than the more well-trod parts of the forest. He met with no danger on his journey to the ruin.

There, in the shadow of a small, overgrown temple resting atop a hill, were the strange, twisted trees. He had found Gorfuin'taenac. But as he gathered what he would need to make his bow, a voice rang out over the peaceful murmurs of the wood.


“To cut a body's veins. To rend a body's skin. To drain a body's essence. Is this the form, now, where language lives? No longer, now, to poison the air. Oh, to poison the air... Do you hear me, presumptuous one? Do you speak?”


This was how Rennuid and his future god first met.

Of course, he was frightened.
Of course, he was curious.
One won out over another, and he approached the voice’s...