Background

When the companions were not forced to rest in hostile territory, they spent evenings around their campfire. Sometimes they were so exhausted from fighting or traveling that they fell asleep on the ground where they’d dropped, too tired to even put up their tents.

After Daphne first met her grandmother, the middle-aged woman insisted she stay with the family in their home. The house was very large and fairly lavish, but also held the whispers of memories of a time it had not been nearly so empty. Now, it only held Daph's grandmother, a few servants, a friend of her grandmother's and her Aunt Berarna, who was only around ten years older than Daphne herself and remained unmarried.  

Stuck inside a cell with nothing but a door on the other side and no windows makes it difficult to know how long you were truly there. It felt like at least a winter but the days soon turned into a blur. Being fed just enough to survive started to weaken my resolve, that and a few of my escape attempts. I could take on a few of the guards but there always seemed to be more in the shadows, waiting to put me back in my place. It would seem that fate wanted me to stay in this cell, but why?

The night was dreary and miserable, the rain sweeping in off the ocean appeared to be unending and unrelenting, despite the harsh desert that the port city was nestled in. A young beggar boy, an escaped slave, sat curled up with his back pressed against the wall of a building. He sat in the muddy streets, filled with grime and filth from animals and humans. 

Chapter Two: A mad-dwarf, a mute and an axe.

When the mad-dwarf met the mute.
To explain Tórunr's muted mouth, by the act of a missing tongue.

Vol. 1, Prologue