Rena always felt at home in the woods. While the rest of her Moon Elf kin were content to drowse away their days in their libraries and their useless meetings, Rena always wanted a bit... more. To explore, to fight, to feel. The ancient elven paths offered her a hint of that adventure; every now and again she could spy a fairy-light, or a jackalope, and once even a real life gnome, pointy hat and all!
Today, the mists hang low in the ferns as she hums her way along the rough trails.
"In your dreams, magical thoughts... All things are real, unless you dream they're not..."
A rustle in the underbrush catches her attention, and she turns to see a tiny sabrecat, no bigger than the palm of her hand. The dappled grey kitten appears hurt, with a thin wire wrapped around its bloody back paw. Perhaps the remnants of a goblin snare, or a malicious pixie.
"You poor thing..." Rena says, taking a step towards the creature. It looks up with a yelp and darts off into the underbrush, dragging its useless leg behind it. Rena blanches as she loses sight of the cat in the dense thicket.
"Come back, kitty!"
Rena's voice cuts through the forest, followed shortly by the running Moon Elf herself. Her braids fly behind her in long contrails, the bright blue a brilliant counterpoint to the greenery of the woods. She huffs and pants as she runs, with heavy boots ungraceful in the underbrush, though her determined look never falters.
She pauses at the top of a log, fallen across a deep ravine. There... deep down... was that a meow?
Without thinking, Rena leaps to the edge of the ravine and begins climbing down, her many hours of climbing trees proving invaluable. She lowers herself gracefully from the latticed roots and vines and winces when the loamy mud overflows her boots and gets her socks wet. Her efforts are rewarded, luckily, when she lifts a broad leaf and finds a frightened but very much alive kitten.
Rena smiles and gathers the sabrecat in her arms, the fall taking some of the fight out of the creature. She carefully unwraps the snare from its leg, before gently placing it back down on the ground.
"There, that wasn't so hard, was it? It'll be sore for a few days, but you'll heal!"
She gives the kitten a soft boop on the nose, then yelps as it takes a bite at her finger and scampers off.
"I guess I deserved that one..." she says, as she gets up and begins looking for a way back up. Climbing down is a LOT easier than climbing up, a fact that she conveniently forgot in the heat of the moment. As she explores, her foot bumps against something... pointy? What's that, buried in the mud?
She bends, sticks her hand into the dirt, and pulls up an ancient and rusty sword. The grime and muck of the ravine falls away from the sword like rainwater, leaving it gleaming and bright in the dappled sunlight. And there, engraved on the hilt, is a single line of Runic Script:
I am bạn.
Rena's eyes widen in recognition. bạn... wasn't that one of the spirits from her stories? One of the spirits who bound themselves to mortal souls in exchange for power?
Before she can ponder further, a figure begins to materialize, smoky and indistinct in front of her. Tendrils of multicolored mist stream from the glowing runes, swirling and combining into a humanoid shape. bạn's shape.
Rena seems more amazed than frightened as she speaks.
"If... if you're really bạn... then you're waiting for a pact. And I... I accept."
