-------------- Tales of the Raptors – The Seeker

She pulled up short. Her horse slid to a stop. She flew out of the saddle and somersaulted across the small clearing, drawing her swords and landing two deadly blows against the ogre in a single, fluid motion. The massive brute grunted his last breath and collapsed. The four other ogres snapped their heads around, as fast as ogres can, and roared at the insolence. She stood slowly, ogre blood dripping from both blades.

“Now that I have your attention, you filthy sons of beached whales, tell me where to find the maggoty Mountain Giant that runs this band of useless scum,… and I might leave you the use of your legs.”

The biggest ogre stood, his sneer either a birth defect or an expression of disbelief.

“Kill the elf scum! Smash her bones!”

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Adrianna Leurensyr came from the steppes of Equideyea. She was raised as much with the horsemen of the plains as with her own family. Her father was a mercenary serving one of the Equideyean warlords in the time before the world became “enlightened”, before science and technology joined with magic. He had fought against the barbarian hordes during the War of Tryskellias, on battlefields that no historian would care to name, in a front of the war that none now remember. She grew up on horseback. Her cradle was a saddle. And when time came that she was ready to fight herself, there were no more wars. But her family had gained wealth, if not fame and position, so she was sent off to school.

In the south, on the islands of Atheae, she learned the art of war as no other. But her wild blood, her centuries of childhood and puberty on the plains, left her unsuited to become a soldier. That was fine. The massing armies of Raidon needed Rangers as well. Her heart and soul belonged to Athena, patron of her family for generations, tracing her lineage all the way back to Kandevari Bennestervan. So she became one of the specially trained WarPriestesses of the new military might, the might urged into being by the Queen’s advisor, Prince Pentellikon. In the first shots of the Crystal War, she was sent north, a flanking maneuver around the Symballan Empire, into Equideyea. She was part of the units that were to scout the border and help secure the City of Thieves for the Atheaen Air Forces. But after a few months of battle, and the exposure of Prince Pentellikon as the High WarPriest of Ares, she disavowed her service to Atheae and returned to the plains.

Years later, she would return to the high mountains, and the very city that scarred her heart so, Xanthius. It was only fitting that she would end up friends and allies of one whom she had faced across the battlefield not so long ago, the newly reinstated Colonel of the Feyhd’ahki at the Temple of Isis, Jarah al’Durran. Now, the question was, would she fight beside her old enemy as one of the Cliff Raptors, or pack up and ride away?

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