A tall slender man wearing a long flowing robe, that dragged behind him by at least a full step of his stride, was beginning to walk into the Forgotten Woodlands. The lands that have been deemed forbidden to enter by those of lower birth.
The Forgotten Woodlands was a dark and eerie place, teeming with dangers near every corner. The trees towered over the man by several meters more than him. The canopy of even the shortest tree he could make out was at least 20 meters high.
These trees were called Krosis Pine Trees. The trees had large trucks that were a very deep shade of brown. The grooves of their bark glowed dimly with a faint blue light when they were young saplings.
This would usually be the proper time to cut the trees down. Because if they are past this point, no regular blade can leave a dent in the trunks of these trees. The brighter and denser the light glowing from the bark was an indicator of its development.
The trees lining the Forgotten Woodlands edges were all still saplings as they had a faint blue light seen in their grooves. The faint light represented the shallow roots that had only been able to absorb the water affinity mana around them.
As one would move deeper into the Forgotten Woodlands the light glowing in the grooves of the Krosis Pines glowed brighter and brighter shades of blue, until they started showing purple hues in them.
These trees with purple hues had begun to absorb the fire affinity mana through its roots. This indicated the roots had progressed closer and closer to the core of Alterra.
The difference between these trees, apart from the glow of mana, would be only noticeable from the sheer size of the trunks and the height of their canopies. The age of these trees would be comparable to a newborn child and an adolescent teenager, then further into the age of a full-grown adult.
The Krosis Pines that glowed purple were some 70 meters in height, if not more, and had easily a diameter of 15 to 20 meters in width. One could conceivably hollow one of these trees out and have an entire home built within them. If only they weren't so difficult to cut down.
These trees had been innately gifted with the durability of the hardened stone. These trees were seen as the creations of the Lord of All as gifts to her child the God Duranas. The trees were imbued with the earthen mana to strengthen them so they could never be removed from Alterra.
However, humans had found a way to use these near indestructible trees. These trees were often used as materials for the construction of buildings in the surrounding villages and kingdoms. However, those were only the young saplings that were used.
This was because the adolescent trees were rarely used in other products, they were simply too hard to cut down. The adolescent Krosis Pines branches that fell from them were used mainly as weapons, like wands and staffs used by mages. This was the purpose of the tall slender man to venture into the Forgotten Woodlands.
The tall man went by the name of Eladreas Menders. He was a priest of the Holy order of Kothrishard. A faction that followed and used the powers of Kothrishard, the Goddess of Light. The power of light mana was adept in the magic arts of healing and applying a form of light holy magic to fight against the unholy demons and monsters.
The monsters found their home within the depths of the woodlands, in the deep caverns spreading through Alterra's surface and in the depths of its oceans.
Eladreas main duties revolved around managing a small orphanage outside of the city walls of the Holy City of Light in the Crownsman Kingdom. He had recently received a rather burdensome task from the Archbishop of his order to retrieve Krosis Branches to replenish the reserves of their order of wands and staffs.
The wands and staff were to be made of recently fallen branches from Krosis trees that had at least a violet hue radiating from them. The violet hue indicated that they have absorbed a rather balanced amount of mana of the earth, water, and fire affinities. These branches come from trees that have at least reached the ages of 200 to 350 years old, these were still in the adolescent ages of the trees' development.
The branches from Elder Krosis trees were rarely found for various reasons, let alone retrieved. The most significant reason being Elder Krosis Pine trees were far too dangerous to approach. The Elder Krosis trees radiated nearly lethal amounts of mana to those that surrounded it. Only people capable of controlling mana to a certain extent could go near them.
The other main reason being that extremely dangerous monsters made their homes near the elder trees. As monsters weren't restricted by the dangers of excessive mana exposure like humans were. In fact, they sought out dense mana pockets within the Forgotten Woodlands.
The task was burdensome because of a recent tornado that had ripped through parts of the Forgotten Woodlands. The tornado had left the monsters within the woodlands very restless, making the venture into the forest significantly more dangerous.
Even though the area surrounding Eladreas' village was rather peaceful, rarely having incidents with the monsters, sometimes monsters would leave from the woodlands and attack nearby villages. Those incidents, however, would only happen when some form of natural disaster would happen within the Forgotten Woodlands' borders; and unfortunately, a tornado had happened to pass through the night before.
When Eladreas entered the Forgotten Woodlands, he notices something strange happening near an adolescent Krosis tree. The tree's roots were actually being swiped at by a pack of five Black-Tailed Shadow Foxes. The foxes seemed almost incessant on getting through the gnarled roots around the base of the trunk of the Krosis Pine.
These foxes were around 3 meters in length from the front of their snouts to the tip of their tails. The black-tailed shadow foxes got their names not only because of the color of their tails but also because of their ability to use darkness mana, the mana of the shadows. The mana stems from the power of Dranishikoth, the Goddess of Darkness.
The mana was often used by nocturnal monsters who were adept in using assassination techniques. The specialty of darkness mana was to completely conceal one's presence within the shadows of their surroundings, allowing them to move within them. Though the caveat to this ability was that they would suffer much more when they would be subjected to the attacks of light mana.
However, monsters who used the mana of darkness rarely grouped together like what Eladreas was witnessing. He was able to quickly decern that these foxes must have been yearlings that have yet to part ways from each other. Even still, what piqued Eladreas' curiosity the most was the fact that one of the foxes managed to push to the side a few twisted roots to the side, only to come back out with a bloodied rag.
When the fox pulled the bloodied rag out of the hollow it was sticking its face in, he was able to catch a glimpse into the hole that was previously preoccupied with its face. There was a woman lying on the ground, she had seemed to be unconscious from his view.
He immediately took action, charging at the foxes that were fighting over the bloodied rag. Eladreas, raising a frail-looking wand he had brought with him into the forest, yelled a short phrase, "I offer this prayer to the Goddess, Kothrishard, take the form of my will and shine your light so that I may banish these foul creatures!"
When Eladreas was gathering mana from his soul, you could see a white aura surrounding his body, a pure white aura that when he yelled out, flowed towards the hand he was holding out the wand with and gathered within it. The mana then took shape of a short sword, not even a meter long, that used the wand as its handle.
Eladreas dashed forward and with a quick motion, that only took the blink of an eye, he severed the head of a fox coming from the ground towards the sky. The light blade that Eladreas created then came back down onto the head of another fox that had been trying to jump towards him as he first dashed into the fray.
There were now two dead foxes lying on the ground in front of the other three foxes. That sight had then scared the three foxes enough for them to envelope themselves in their dark mana and flee from the random man standing near their now dead siblings. They snarled at the man, only regretting their decision to try and break into the hollow they were attempting to enter.
After killing the two foxes, Eladreas quickly looked into the hollow to only see a dead woman, clutching her newborn child. She seemed to have died due to complications with her birth of the baby boy she was holding. The boy didn't cry, he didn't move, he was as still as the dead bodies right outside the hollow.
Eladreas almost mistook the child to be dead just as his mother beside him was, only to see a faint trace of mana circulating around his body. Only living beings can be interacted with by mana. Eladreas stepped into the hollow to grab the child, that's when he saw it.
"Runaan. Is that your name?" looking near the woman's hand, there was the name Runaan etched into the ground. She had to have scratched her child's name into the ground with the last bit of strength she had. "Oh you poor forgotten child of these woodlands, come with me. I will care for you."