The magister looked up from the parchment she held in her slender hands as the stranger approached. The newcomer held a long brown wood staff and had a black pouch on her belt. She wore flowing black robes which were tattered and worn. “Welcome stranger. How may I be of assistance?” The magister kept her voice kind and gentle and was surprised at the tone of the strangers reply.

“I wish become stronger, you have anything I do increase my strength?” The stranger spoke in a gruff voice and stumbled over the simplest of terms. It was almost as if Thalassian was not this elf’s first language.
“Well there is a hunting party going out for lynxes. What is your name and profession?” the magister was very interested in this strange elf.

“Haani, I am apprentice priest.” That was clearly all she was willing to reveal.

“Very well Haani, I will contact the hunting party and tell them to collect you before they set out.” The strange elf bowed and walked out of the room.

A few minutes later, four elves came to Haani with armor and weapons strapped carefully to their bodies, they all wore matching leather armor and carried short bows on their backs.

“You’re Haani?” the leader of the hunt asked, Haani nodded and they set off towards the gently slopping hills. Soon enough they saw the first lynx. All four of the elves fired their bows at it and Haani hung back. The lynx fell and the hunters ran up and skinned and bagged the poor creature. Then they found a mother lynx and her cub. The mother attacked with ferocity, deeply gouging the arm of one of the hunters. He dropped back next to Haani and she quickly cast a healing spell, making the skin as good as new. The hunt continued long into the late hours of the day until the hunters decided they had enough meat and they returned to the small town. As they entered, Haani looked up to the cave in which she had lived with the grumpy old priest. She resisted the urge to return and followed the hunters into the town, once again going to the magister. Haani asked her if she could have a place to stay and the magister offered her a room in her house.

That night while Haani slept in the biggest room she had ever seen, something crashed to the ground outside in the corridor, waking Haani and arousing her interest instantly. She climbed out of the bed and picked up her staff from where it had been resting against the wall. She slid the door open a crack and saw horribly deformed elves with huge, glowing blue growths on their backs approaching the magister’s room. The first entered the magister’s room and the following shriek flung Haani into action. She brought her hands together and chanted a short spell, throwing her hands out wide, then bringing them back together with a loud crack. She sung a peircing note, a bolt of shadow energy flew through the air and passed straight through one of the deformed elves’ skull and incinerated its brain. The lifeless husk crumpled to the floor. Haani cast a screaming skull of dark energy at the next deformed elf. He ran around in circles screaming, then fell to the floor. The last deformed one was halfway to the magister as she huddled against the back wall. The magister saw the deformed elf towering over her, grinning maliciously. She tensed, ready for the killing blow. It never came. Instead the deformed elf found himself with a ragged hole in the center of his stomach and through the hole, she could see the newcomer, staff out and already firing another beam of dark energy at the head of the thing. The magister looked up as the creatures head was blasted from its shoulders. Overcome by the terror of the situation, the magister lost consciousness.

Haani stood, basking in the light of the sun in the entrance of the cave, in which she had trained for the last three years under the tutelage of the wrinkled human. For three years! It was now time to move on from the stuffy old man. Although he was grumpy and irritable at the best of times, Haani had to admit that the crooked old man, Bevier Fallendun was the best priest trainer in all of Quel’Thalas and the only one willing to teach her the forbidden shadow magic. “Haani! Get back in here! we must go over the runes I am to give you.” The creaking voice of the trainer stabbed out of the cave, destroying the tranquil aura. She had spent three years with no-one but this rude human for companionship, she had become nearly as bad as him. Haani grunted and trudged back inside.

“Right, these stones each represent a new skill. They can be used only when the user is strong enough. If you are not strong enough they can harm you and in some cases, kill.” The trainer grunted while shifting through a bag of different colored stones. “Under no circumstances are you to use this one,” he holds up a dark purple stone, almost back, “until you have managed to absorb this,” the trainer lifts a stone of a slightly lighter hue of purple to Haani’s face. “the lighter one won’t kill you, but it will burn you quite severely. Now, have you all of your travelling gear and some gold?” the old man wheezed. Haani nodded. “Very well, I have nothing else to teach you, go and find your own way in the world. Come back only when you have absorbed the darkest stone. Now begone!” Haani sighed and walked slowly out of the cave and down towards the buildings which lay at the bottom of the hill.