Volume 4: Nuisance of Fate
Side Story: The Silver Outcast(elinore Greenwod( The Party of Misfits)
The Purity of the First Root
A Monologue on the Aethelgard Tradition
"Look at the ancient oaks of this forest. Do you see them grafting with the common weeds? No. They stand tall, unyielding, for a thousand years. That is the Elven way. We are the First Born, the weavers of mana, the higher beings whose blood is a river of starlight. For ten centuries, the law was absolute: the blood of the Elf must remain untainted. To lay with a human was a crime; to birth a hybrid was a sin that demanded exile.
We cast them out—the 'half-breeds,' the diluted ones. We threw them into the mud of the human world where they belonged, for they were nothing but a smudge on the masterpiece of our lineage.
When the Princess was born, the Great Hall went silent.
The nobles stood in their silk and silver, their eyes cold as winter ice. They looked at the child, Elinore, and they didn't see a daughter. They saw a 'hybrid.' They saw a 'nuisance.' One by one, the High Lords stepped forward, their voices like sharpened glass. 'Abandon her, Your Majesty,' they whispered. 'She is a crack in the foundation. Leave her in the woods for the wolves. Cast her into the slums. Break her heart now so we do not have to break her neck later. Make another. A pure one. A true heir.'
For a thousand years, every King before him would have nodded. Every King before him would have chosen the 'Lineage' over the 'Life.'
But my father... he didn't listen to the ghosts of a thousand years.
He didn't look at the High Lords. He looked at me. He picked me up—this small, fragile thing with the 'wrong' ears and 'human' warmth—and he broke the tradition with a single sentence. He told them: 'If my blood is in her veins, then she is the Crown. And if you cannot bow to her, then you are not bowing to me.'
He kept me. He broke the world to keep me. And that is why the nobles never forgave us. That is why they waited in the shadows for the day they could finally cut the 'stain' out of the family tree."
But neing a half-elf in Aethelgard was like being a ghost in a hall of mirrors. You were seen, but never acknowledged—unless it was with a sneer. At fourteen, the girl known as Princess Elinore Greenwood became Tessa Lockwood, a name she took from the heavy wooden gates she passed as she fled the kingdom's borders.
The coup was silent and bloody. Her parents, the King and Queen, stayed behind to stabilize the throne, sending her away with their most trusted butler, Kaelen.
"Do not stop until you reach the human settlements, Little Lockwood," Kaelen had grunted, shoving her into the undergrowth.
He died that night, a pin-cushion of black-fletched arrows, holding off the Pureblood assassins so she could disappear into the mud of the human slums. Tessa didn't just survive the slums; she mastered them. She traded her silver-spun robes for scavenged leather and learned that a knife in the dark was more reliable than any royal decree.
At sixteen, Tessa was tired of being the prey. She walked into a low-rent tavern in the Borderlands and sat across from a massive, scarred man who looked like he'd fought a mountain and won.
Brag: The Tank. A man of few words and a shield that could stop a charging bull. He didn't care that Tessa had pointed ears; he cared that she could lead.
Solis: The Middle-Aged Wizard. Bitter, brilliant, and kicked out of every prestigious academy for "dangerous" mana-looping theories.
Ren: The Scout. A silent, sharp-eyed archer who could track a shadow through a thunderstorm. He was the one who saw the things others missed.
Pete: The Mage. A young man who was terrified of his own shadow and could barely cast a fireball without shaking, but his utility magic was indispensable for keeping the party alive.
"We're the Asher Hawks," Tessa declared, slamming her serrated shortswords onto the table. "We take the jobs no one else wants. We survive the places no one else goes."
After 5 years their team of misfits became famous around the continent because of their unusual missions they take missions that normal party didn't even bat an eye.
Years later, the Hawks were deep in the Iron-Leaf Forest during a Joint Hunt. They were pinned. A Tier-4 Earth-Drake had shredded their formation. Brag's shield was buckled, Ren was out of arrows, and Pete was hyperventilating behind a tree.
"Form up!" Tessa Lockwood barked, her silver hair matted with blood. "If we die, we die fighting!"
The Drake opened its maw, a glowing pool of acid bubbling in its throat.
Clack-shhhh.
A sound like a heavy steam engine echoed through the trees. A blur of black leather and iron slammed into the Drake's side from the canopy above. There was no mana flare—only the mechanical roar of shifting gears.
A young man, barely in his teens, stood over the beast. His left arm was encased in a bulky, venting iron gauntlet. With a sound like a cannon blast, he punched the Drake's skull into the dirt.
BOOM.
The shockwave blew the leaves off the trees. The boy—Rowan—didn't even look at the monster he'd just killed. He reached into his [Item Box], pulled out a fresh iron piston, and snapped it into his arm with a metallic click.
"The Drake's hide is worth 400 gold," the boy muttered, his voice cold and flat. "I'm taking the core. You can have the rest for the trouble."
Tessa watched him, her breath hitching. She had seen kings, assassins, and high mages—but she had never seen a boy who moved like a ghost and hit like a god without a single drop of magic.
"Brag," Tessa whispered, a smirk finally crossing her face as she wiped the blood from her cheek. "I don't care what the records say about 'Magicless' kids. We're recruiting that one."
And so, the Black Wraith found a home. Not as a hero, but as a Hawk.
[TO BE CONTINUED]