It was a night not to behold or a night of great wonder. It was a rainy night, and no stars would shine that night. A dreary echo shouted throughout a dark forest where a hooded figure ran as fast as she could. Flashes of lightning rattled the sky with loud thunderous bangs. The sounds were loud enough to make a human wake in fright or make a young person go deaf.

A loud growl of a hungry monster crept through the woods known as the Greenwood Forest. It is a dreadful place where Gorgons turned people into stone, or lion-shaped Manticores stalked, and even it rained venom instead of crystal-clear ocean water. It is a grave marked for any human traveler who dares to enter and travel through its unknown, murky, dark, damp forest.

However, one can and may travel through the forbidden and forsaken forest if one knows what to wear through the forest. A lone figure in a hooded cloak dashed through the woods of dreaded looking black-bark trees lined with purple, red-blazing leaves hanging onto dead branches blowing in a howling wind.

The lone figure carried an object in a bag made of lizard scales and animal skin, and the figure's cloak also made of leather and a layer of animal skin with black fur. It protected the figure from the dangers of the poisonous rain. The figure ran through the forest and pushed through thin bushes with large thorns to cut through a bear's fur.

Without a single halt, the figure just kept running if the figure was in a great rush to get away from something or someone. With loud, thundering noises splattering across the night sky and dark, tall, murky trees with long branches covering the sky, the figure had no way of knowing what was lurking above the treetops or what dangers lay in wait for the traveler to make a fatal mistake.

Then another loud roar was heard, but it wasn't a scary roar. It was more of a cry, a baby cry. The figure stopped to look at the bag and looked at the bag with a hidden expression. More likely, the figure concealed a newly born infant in the bag, but it was not known as to why or what the figure was going to do with the infant.

"It's alright, child," said the figure's voice. It was a soft female voice, and a woman hid herself from the rain and the bag she carried to protect the child from the rain. She wrapped the bag tighter around a baby she carried in her arms.

In the woods, there was nowhere for a person to run, but she was at the border of the forest. She was almost out and headed straight to a destination. However, she knew she was being followed by someone, and this someone she didn't want getting her hands on the child.

Just as she was about to take another step, the ground shattered like an earthquake and a large clearing like a hole was made in the treetops above the hooded woman. A soft growl echoed behind her, and she turned to see what was prowling behind her as she drew up a silver staff with dull emerald attached at the top.

Three tree trunks fell from the roots digging deep into the soil of which they drank deep water, and each tree impounded the earth with a shuddering feeling of a crack wanting to open wide with a deep crevice.

Two black cloaked figures with black hoods that showed no faces floated in the air like terrifying ghosts. Their voices screeched with scratching, irrigating echoes. They held out white arms of bones, and the cloaks turned to a red-ruby color when they drifted down to the woman holding a baby in her bag. Their voices spoke a language and words that slivered with hissing like a snake. These weren't ghosts or spirits of the dead meant to haunt, but to taunt with words a person would never want to hear. Their voices are meant to depress all who hear it, and fill them with the horrors of their past, trying to demoralize them.

These were banshees!

Their voices screeched to the hood of the woman's, but her face wasn't shown to the banshees' voices. However, she only stood with no screaming of horror. Her staff's emerald sparked a glowing ray of light, firing in two different directions at once.

The banshees lit like a forest fire and their cloaks evaporated smoke, and the figure continued to dash through the trees. She made a great distance before she came into a large clearing of an open spot in the woods like a small valley.

In front of her she held up a staff to point at an object that wasn't a tree or a rock. Shiny scales drifted over a curved shape of a long L-shaped object. Claws sank in the forest's soil from the object covered in darkness with only little light shown from a large clearing from the treetops. Then it moved toward the opening and the light and ponded the ground with a large thud.

The woman motioned her staff away when she stared at a large four-legged beast with a large body mass, a small curved neck with a large, ugly snout, and wings and a tail to go with a spike of spikes trailing on a curvy backside.

It was a dragon!

It's fierce glowing eyes blinked a fear motion of bloodlust. Yellow eyes stared at the lone hooded woman carrying the small bag holding a special bundle. However, the dragon didn't attack the woman on sight, but the dragon displayed its huge size behind the woman.

The hooded woman stared and stood still as the dragon moved its massive body to show itself to the woman.

Then howling wolves loudened the silent stare between the dragon and the woman. The nearby bushes rustled with leaves of strange moments of running footsteps. The sounds of paws cluttering over fallen leaves wouldn't be the whisper of a kiss blow. 

From the dark pushes came a pack of wild black dogs. Red eyes mounted on head heads with sharp, cruel fangs in drooling mouths. Demonic glares surrounded the woman and the dragon, and the black dogs growled fiercely with a pride of lions cornering their prey.

The dragon's dreaded eyes turned his attention from the hooded figure standing in front of it and focused on the attention of the black dogs walking toward the hooded figure. It opened its snout and a large glow of pulsing energy was inhaled. A charging ball of a purple haze grew from a large inhale of the poisonous rain pouring from the night sky with no stars to shine.

Then the dragon ignited a shocking ray of lightning bolts from its mouth and a spew of flaming, hot fire. The intense heat of a pathway of flames and the ignition of lightning bolts shot through the forest's soil. The great power spread out like lightning bolts shooting through rain clouds. The power alone harmed only the dogs being burned in blue flames or electrocuted by purple cracks in the grounds.

The black dogs were incinerated into clouds of black smoke in seconds, and the dragon ceased his power-blowing from his mouth to look at the hooded woman again.

"There you are," said the dragon. "You're still alive, but what about the child?"

"My child... has been compromised," said the woman's voice. "None other than the vile Titan has found out about his power. The power of a great god."

"If he has been found out and the abilities he wields, then we must do the most dire thing we must do to him."

"No, we can't. This child is my son, and I won't leave him out in this forest. I'm heading to my friend's village where he will be safe."

"Your friend? The head of the Pangaean Knights? To be raised by humans? He'll be an outcast. A freak. Our enemy is close behind us, and you want to leave him in a village where humans dwell. He'll be found by the Titan King in the nearby village. If you were to leave him behind, leave him far away from this forest."

"No, there is no one I trust other than the defenders of Shimabellia. They have defended this land since the breaking of the Old Continent of Pangaea. They can protect the child... until he is ready for his power to be unleashed against the evil we blindly followed."

"If you wish, Belverda, but hurry, he draws near," said the dragon. "I'll hold him off for as long as I can. You bring our son to your friend's home."

"But you'll die, Ralenskrit," said Belverda.

"Then I will have paid for the deeds I have done in my life. So many wicked, evil deeds I've done for the greater good of dragons, humans and creatures alike. However, my deeds only helped the Titan King come to power and the current human king less in power. Only our son has the power to battle against the Titan King. Now go!"

Belverda hurried and dashed past Ralenskrit. Belverda still had her hood covering her face due to the danger of the poisonous rain.

He dashed by the mile in a second of a speedy enhancement of her magical staff. Her magic staff empowered her endurance after being told to rush through the forest while the dragon stayed behind to cover her tracks.

When she was about near the forest's edge and the rain of watery poison, there was a loud shriek of a painful roar. A noise not of a barking dog or a hungry bear. The roar was the sound of an agonizing mortal creature if a nail was smashed through the flesh of a mortal's hand.

Belverda knew not to hold back tears as she heard Ralenskrit's voice roaring to her that his time of the world they lived in was at an or coming to an end.

After much needed time, Belverda made it out of the forest and into the clear of the poison rain, but she still had not removed her hood to show her face. Her face was sealed in darkness if she wanted no one to see her face. In the clearing of the forest, it rained with crystal clear water. She came across a village with peasant houses.

She moved through the houses made of poor straw and bricked houses. She headed for the biggest house in view: a large towering manner.

The manor was built in the style of a castle with a few towers in the style of watchtowers. Its stone walls rose high above the ground and widened across a large landmass.

With her staff glowing like a torch light, Belverda dashed to the main doorway where two large winged, beastly statues stood in place holding swords and shields. She was tempted to knock and wait for an answer, but her deep conscience propelled her to do so otherwise.

She only laid down the bundle of the crying baby at a single doorstep beneath the doorway. Then she placed a small, folded piece of paper on the bag laid across the floor.

She began to stand away. But beforehand, she moved away from the clearing to see a small, fragile face of the newborn baby. The baby was crying endlessly in the cold rain, and the crying was loud enough to wake the people of the manor or the nearby village.

A human head with small lashes of red hair on the scalp, a pair of red horns stood in place of human ears, and skin looking sunburnt red.

The odd face of a human was molded with parts not ordinary to an ordinary human hair color or skin color; this was more of a human born of a human and a giant beast.

Belverda leaned down and kissed the infant's forehead. "Go forward and bear no hatred... Vaeludar. My son. My hybrid. The son of me, Belverda a witch, and of the dragon, Ralenskrit."

Then the crying calmed down and the baby was asleep in seconds. Belverda's left hand loudly knocked and the door. After which, she dashed away and left her son at the doorstep of the people who lived in the manner.

She went out of sight and was nowhere to be seen again.