"This won't last forever; remember that." That was the last thing Athena ever heard her mother say. That was just before she shut the trap door in the floor and the soldiers came into the house and took her mom out of the very same door they had just come through.
"This won't last forever," she thought. "The Chosen One will come."
It was only a few minutes earlier that she first heard the prophecy from her dad as she and a few of the other village children sat around the campfire in the middle of town.
"One day," her father had said, "someone will end Kayne's rule. They will be born of lightning and of the earth, and they will be as wise as they are skillful and strong." He wasn't able to go any further before her mother approached the campfire.
"Okay, that's enough stories for one night," she said with a slight grin as she scooped up her daughter and began the walk home.
That was right before the attack started. Most of the people in the village were already asleep, aside from the few people at the fire.
Kayne's army, or "the Scales" as they liked to call themselves, appeared to emerge simultaneously from nowhere and from everywhere. They flooded the village from all sides, chasing down and killing those who did not have their swords with them and eventually outnumbering and overpowering those of them who did.
That was the first time she saw Kayne, if only in a brief glance over her mother's shoulder, but she was sure she would never forget him. Even in the light of the campfire he stood by, his obsidian black dragon scale armor made him appear as an otherworldly silhouette. The only part of him that stood apart of the ensemble was a tanned face chiseled into a stone frown and a silver right hand that appeared to have sharpened talons, much like the claw of a dragon.
"Remember what we taught you, Athena," her mother whispered as she tucked her beneath her robes and ran through the burning streets of the village toward their home. "The mortals can never know you are a Time Walker, but you must remember who you are. This won't last forever; remember that." and with that she closed the trap door behind Athena and was taken away in silence by two Scales who busted through the door seconds after them.