In a luscious forest on the west end of the Sevenwood, where the trees nearly touch the ocean and where the queen's decrees hardly reach its people, there sits a great yew with an epitaph on each side: "Here lies Nature's Arrow, Annagán," on one side and on the other, "Here lies the Beastmaster, Ciardha." The inscriptions pay tribute to the greatest warriors ever yielded from the Sevenwood and the yew tree acts as their tomb, though, no door has ever been found into the supposedly hollowed out wood. Those that claim descendence from these two titans honor it for this reason and refer to it as the Resting Tree, for true warriors never die; they simply rest. The inhabitants of the region hold it in such high regard that they forbid any from even approaching it except under three conditions: to gather healing herbs at the foot of the tree, to present a newborn child to the ancestors, or to ask the ancestors for strength in times of war.
Annagán and Ciardha, two elves who fought with godly valor but in their own way. Annagán struck her enemies from the trees with the aid of a bow said to have required three men just to pull the bowstring back and arrows supposedly crafted from the bones of primordial horrors. Ciardha, on the other hand, roamed the battlefield with a pack of beasts said to have originated far away in the land of Sin. In only one hand, he would carry a greatsword forged from metals said to have been sent by the gods. Hailing from separate tribes, the two fought almost a lifetime in various battles. Not one ever came close to overcoming the other on the field and thus they came to respect one another for it. To finally settle on the question of the superior fighter, they met for a duel as equals rather than true enemies. The story of what happens next depends on who you ask.
Two accounts of the conclusion of the duel exist but they share some similarities. In both versions, the battle lasts for three days, Annagán manages to down Ciardha's mighty beasts, Ciardha finally closes the gap between both of them for a final hour of close-range combat. The two accounts of the story differ in this final hour. In one, Annagán skillfully dodges each of Ciardha's sword strikes until he just barely cuts her cheek. Nonetheless, she quickly succumbs to the wound as Ciardha reveals he poisoned his blade. He feels unfulfilled, however, and comes to see the dishonor in using poison before taking his own life out of shame. The other version of the story similarly presents Annagán as using poison when she stabs Ciardha with the last arrow in her quiver. She too takes her own life after claiming victory. Both were eventually entombed within the largest yew tree in the forest, with their legacy left behind as just another source of conflict for elves in the area.
Centuries after the great battle between Annagán and Ciardha, their descendants gathered into two great clans: the Ó Hannagáins which claim lineage to Annagán and the Ó Ciardhas which claim lineage to her counterpart. The two clans lived in a cycle of uneasy peace and brutal war, with each clan fighting in a style akin to their progenitors. The Ó Hannagáins wielded bows primarily with daggers for backup whereas the Ó Ciardhas stuck with their melee weapons while employing the use of a particularly vicious species of wolves native to the Sevenwood. If not for their fighting style, one could distinguish the two by their physical features. The Ó Hannagáins became known for their beautiful blond hair and tanned skin whereas the Ó Ciardhas became equally known for the heterochromia affecting their eyes as well as their dark hair and pale skin. Despite living in near constant conflict, the clans did not live too far from one another, with each only a mile from the Resting Tree in opposite directions.
Aileen Ó Hannagáin would learn the price of war when she lost her mother to the battlefield. She would never have the time to mourn, though, as her father, Eoghan Ó Hannagáin, also suffered a wound as the war came to a close but he would survive. As his daughter, she set out to gather the great healing herbs beneath the Resting Tree to aid him in his recovery. She reached the tree under the light of early dawn and while filling up her satchel, she came upon a man from the Ó Ciardha clan doing the same for a member of his family. Although the war had ended at this point, she expected hostility from him but instead found courtesy; Perhaps gold made up his heart or perhaps she enchanted him with her beauty, but he offered her the herbs he had found up to that point and once she left, he offered her a genuine farewell.
Aileen would return several more times to gather herbs for her father at similar times and each time, she would come upon the same elf from the Ó Ciardha clan. She would come to know the man as Felim and with time, she would become as infatuated with him as he did with her. Call it young love but they never really learned much about the other and yet it did nothing to dull their passions. On her last visit to the Ending Tree she had become smitten enough with him that she agreed to lie with him for an hour of carnal pleasures. When it came to an end, they reluctantly departed knowing full well they might not see each other for a long time or even at all. The Ó Hannagáin clan forbade any kind of relationship with the Ó Ciardhas and even more sternly forbade any of them being brought into the village. Unbeknownst to Aileen, however, she would be bringing the seed of one with her.
Aileen became anxiety incarnate as it donned upon her that she carried the child of an Ó Ciardha. Her father was a conservative man with a fierce hatred for the Ó Ciardhas after having lost his wife to them. Although it was unavoidable that he would learn of her pregnancy, Aileen hoped she would at least be able to hide the identity of the culprit from her father. That too, however, would come to the light. On a starry night, when she finally gave birth to her child, her father had already come to terms with the fact that he would grandfather a bastard child but nothing could prepare him for what he saw in it. The child was a boy with the signature blond hair and skin tone of the Ó Hannagáins but his eyes held the heterochromia of their sworn enemy. Eoghan stormed out almost immediately and would not be seen for nearly a week after the incident. Within that time, Aileen decided to name her son after the herbs that led her to her lover: Flann.
Once she had recovered from the birthing and after her father returned to the village, Aileen took Flann to the Resting Tree to offer him up to the ancestors; that is, a ritual in which the mother would place her newborn at the foot of the yew tree and ask for a blessing from Annagán. Typically the father and the mother would both go but that could not happen for obvious reasons. At least, Aileen did not believe so. When she arrived, it surprised her to find Felim waiting for her and their son. He had apparently heard rumors of an Ó Hannagáin born with heterochromia and had since waited at the tree every day. He had not come only to greet her or assist with the ritual, though. Felim brought a litter of three pups with him, born from the wolf he fought alongside. It was a punishable action in the Ó Ciardha clan for an individual to give away wolf pups to the enemy but Felim hoped the pups would grow up to protect his lover and son.
To Aileen's surprise, her father did not have any objections to her bringing home the wolf pups even if it was a clear sign she had met with the enemy. It had been the first recorded instance of anyone in the Ó Hannagáin clan obtaining domesticated Sevenwood wolves. Eoghan hoped he could learn more about the wolves and their exploitable weaknesses as they got older and thus he gave his blessing for his daughter to keep them. One could say he held the same attitude toward his grandson, Flann, whom he hoped he could train to become a great warrior capable of terrorizing the Ó Ciardhas as he once had done. After all, he never had the opportunity with Aileen who totally lacked any aptitude for holding a bow. He made his intention known as well and although Aileen offered some minor protest, she could not dare deny her father his wishes.
Flann grew up with his mother constantly doting on him and so it is no surprise that he clung to her apron from a young age. In fact, he cried into her skirt on his first day of school for fear of having to leave her side and he did so in front of the other children no less. Of course, this cry-baby behavior was not required to give a bad first impression to the children his age; his eyes sufficed for this. The boys from the schoolhouse especially ridiculed him for his heterochromia and used many of the slurs used against the Ó Ciardha on him. His only respite at school seemed to be the teacher who always walked him outside to a private spot whenever he began crying before giving him little pieces of candy. The candy always tasted nice and sweet but most of all, he just enjoyed holding her hand for comfort.
Sevenwood wolves grow at a much slower pace than other species of wolves, ensuring they have ample time to grow alongside their master. Thus, every day that Flann came home, he would open the door to three puppies tackling him. He would often spend the rest of the day playing with his pets but this changed from the age of six when his grandfather began training him in the use of a bow. Eoghan, unfortunately, learned his grandson, like daughter, lacked much competence with such a weapon. Unlike with his daughter, though, he refused to give up on the training. He pressed Flann into at least one practice session lasting a couple of hours every single day and each of those days only made him felt worse. His minor improvements came ever so slowly that he could not help but feel inadequate, especially when he compared himself to boys of a similar age going through their own training.
Flann's self-esteem would reach an irreversible low at the age of eight. He took his three pups on a walk through the village one day as he had often done on non-school days. This day, however, he ran into a group of school bullies who especially enjoyed tormenting him and now they possessed the opportunity to outright scar him. The boys managed to grab ahold of Flann as well as one of his pups while the other two managed to run off. In clear view of Flann, one of the boys tightened their grip on the puppy as it began to yip and whine. The noise from it gradually rose to a climax before stopping altogether for good. Flann begged them to stop through a storm of tears but it did not cease until the puppy breathed its last. The boys would have surely picked on Flann himself had his grandfather not arrived on the scene to put an end to it but it was still too late: a seed had been planted in Flann's mind, one that suggested he would never be good enough to protect others.
The two pups Flann had left hit a growth spurt at the age of ten and although he could not protect himself, his wolves began to reach the size in which they could easily protect him. He became so fond of both their company and protection that he began letting them walk him to and from school. As one would expect, this would eventually result in an injury. One of Flann's bullies failed to notice the wolves accompanying him one day and so began messing with him before one of the wolves gripped the boy's arm with an extremely powerful bite force. It caused the boy to run off but it would indeed have repercussions. As the village sat within the treetops, its elders decided the wolves must live down at the bottom of the forest and must never again enter the village. The days of Flann coming home to his pets jumping on him was over but at least he could still climb down the trees to play with them.
Shortly after the incident, Flann decided to begin exploring the forest floor. Typically children only left the village with the aid of an adult due to the dangers of wild beasts and the enemy clan, but he believed his wolves were large enough to ward off danger. It, therefore, turned into a habit of his to wander off into the thick forest, a seemingly courageous act for a normally timid boy. It became so habitual, in fact, that rumors of a boy with heterochromia from the Ó Hannagáin clan began emerging once again within the Ó Ciardha clan. Felim paid special attention to these rumors and so began scouting the forest to find his son once more. This inevitable meeting occurred on one misty morning in which Felim approached his son and his wolves without a weapon as a means of showing he was no threat and beginning by suggesting they were father and son. Flann was skeptical at first but Felim eventually convinced him by revealing what he knew about Aileen.
One of the things that donned upon Felim as he caught up with his son is that Flann had trouble using a bow. It was unthinkable that his son would not grow into a fine warrior and so after hearing that Flann had trouble with his archery training, Felim offered to show the boy a new means of combat: beast leg magic. Felim helped show his son how to place a magical rune utilized by the Ó Ciardha clan onto the two wolves, giving him the ability to channel his magic power through them. It was the easy step in learning beast leg magic as the next would require Flann to frequently meet his father in the forest for training. Over a period of a few years, Felim instructed Flann on learning to channel magic through both his own legs and through the legs of his wolves. Although the Ó Ciardha clan also employed the use of melee weapons with the intent of using beast leg to close gaps within the treetops, Flann showed that he lacked much affinity for not only bows but weaponry in general. Therefore, they stuck to honing his magic.
By the time Flann had reached the age of fourteen, the Ó Hannagáins and Ó Ciardhas had experienced the longest lasting peace in living memory but time did little to ease tensions. Regardless, the time had come for Flann's coming-of-age hunt in which his grandfather would take him hunting in the forest for one of a myriad of monsters. The opportunity represented a chance for Eoghan to see the two wolves at work from a friendly point of view as well as a chance to see the true progress Flann had made with his bow. The two set out with Flann's wolves one foggy morning and expected to be out for several days as they traveled southeast into the mountains. The traveling proved smooth as Eoghan's experience and Flann's learning from school allowed them to survive off the land like any true pair of elves from the Sevenwood. It took roughly a day and a half of traveling and once they reached the mountains, they established their camp in a banal cave.
Originally, Eoghan planned to hunt one of the mighty rams that dotted the mountains but that quickly changed when he began tracking very familiar signs in the area. The patterns he observed suggested one of the Sevenwood wolves from the Ó Ciardha clan had wandered into the region shortly before he, his grandson, and Flann's own wolves had arrived. Eoghan, of course, had to change the course of the hunt for he believed his grandson would find far more honor to bringing the head of such a beast home, even as Flann objected. He believed felling a creature belonging to the Ó Ciardhas would cause unneeded tension, not to mention it might mean an actual elf from the opposing clan likely roamed the area for whatever reason. Nonetheless, he possessed a will weaker than his mother when it came to defying his grandfather and so he reluctantly joined Eoghan in the tracking process.
Eoghan and Flann found both the wolf and its partnered Ó Ciardha next to a stream running into the mountain and did so without alerting the pair. While Eoghan planned to allow his grandson to hunt the wolf, he himself planned on dealing with the Ó Ciardha with the determination born only from a blood feud. Even as Flann begged him not to do so, Eoghan raised his bow and pierced the elf's skull from afar with an arrow. That marked the first time Flann witnessed someone die and so, of course, he nearly fainted but his grandfather insisted he deal with the wolf which reacted rather abnormally to its master just dying. In fact, it seemed to just lie their next to the body rather than act aggressively as Eoghan had predicted. The pair (along with their own wolves) approached the wolf and examined it to find that it suffered from some strange form of food poisoning, which surprised Eoghan as he had come to believe Sevenwood wolves possessed a digestive system capable of handling anything.
Flann's grandfather implored him to kill the wolf as it would be improper for him to go through the whole hunt without killing a single thing by himself. Even Eoghan might not have convinced him to do so under normal circumstances but Flann could not stand to see the creature suffering in pain. He took one of his daggers and painlessly slid it into the vulnerable spot of the beast's neck. The single little whine that erupted from it before the abrupt silence haunted Flann and he could not help but fear that his own wolves might one day suffer the same fate. From that day onward, he resolved to treat his own two wolves as true companions and break the tradition of not naming war pets. He would later impart the name "Ulster" upon the female wolf and "Connacht" upon the male, names which they seemed to aptly appreciate.
Unlike most hunts, the fact that Eoghan and Flann brought home the bodies of an Ó Ciardha and his wolf caused an uproar of praise. While Flann enjoyed this as opposed to the ridicule he had become accustomed to, he couldn't help but feel they had done something morally reprehensible. Meanwhile, Eoghan found himself interested in learning more of what might be capable of poisoning Sevenwood wolves. Only days after the fact, he set off for the mountains again by himself in search of the cause. Flann would not see him for several months but in the meantime, he stayed in communication with his father to inform him of what transpired. News of the event had apparently reached the Ó Ciardha clan, however, and Felim warned him that vengeance was on the mind of his clan members. This revenge would inevitably arrive in the form of several storehouses belonging the Ó Hannagáins being raided in the middle of the night.
As the two clans began acting more aggressively toward one another, Eoghan made progress in studying the mountains to the southeast. He eventually concluded that the mushrooms in the region seemed most capable of producing food poisoning in Sevenwood wolves. He convinced the elders of the village upon hearing this that it would be in the clan's best interest to begin harvesting the mushrooms and thus the Ó Hannagáins began sending large teams to gather what they could over several months. The tensions in the meantime ramped up with the sudden disappearance of several Ó Hannagáins who were promptly believed to be captured by the Ó Ciardhas. As a sign of the urgency, Felim informed his son that their training would have to come to a close soon and that they might just possibly become enemies on the battlefield soon. Flann was of the age that he would be expected to fight after all, even if he was a self-proclaimed coward.
Although he knew it was in his best interest to continue training even without his father, Flann could not help but coup himself up within his house for fear that the warhorn might be blown. It was during this time, just a few months after Flann's fifteenth birthday, that Eoghan decided to demonstrate to several warriors from the clan what the mushrooms they had been harvesting could do. Without asking or informing Flann, he fed the mushrooms to Ulster and Connacht and as predicted, they became lethargic and nauseous to the point of vomiting. Although it did not kill them, it became clear that the mushrooms could incapacitate the wolves. In light of this, the warriors of the clan began preparing for war with full confidence that they could win without the wolves in the way. As the village elders made their way to the Resting Tree to ask for strength in the coming times, Eoghan began contaminating the nearby rivers with the toxins from the mushrooms. He had no fear that he might poison his own people for it had become clear over several months of study that the toxins were fairly harmless to elves.
All able-bodied elves capable of fighting were ordered to prepare themselves within the week. This call-to-arms horrified Flann and his mother, Aileen, could see it in his eyes. She unabashedly suggested that her son flee for his life but he could not imagine a life outside of the village. Thus, he descended into the forest to ready his wolves but came to learn they had been subjected to the poisonous mushrooms in yet another moment that proved Flann seemed helpless to protect those he loved. It fueled an angry resentment in him for once in life but he did not possess the courage to act on it. Instead, he gathered his bow and a quiver full of arrows along with a set of simple daggers and faithfully waited with unease. The call to war would come any day and the only reason he would leave his house was to feed his wolves below as it became apparent they no longer possessed the strength to feed themselves.
On a still and calm night, a ceremonial horn sounded off the beginning to another war between the descendants of Annagán and Ciardha. Eoghan and Flann joined their kin and the difference in enthusiasm could not have been greater. Eoghan possessed a huge grin as they all hopped from tree-to-tree while Flann shook sporadically from nervousness. As they descended upon the village belonging to the Ó Ciardha clan, it became apparent that this war would be far more one-sided than previous ones. Almost every single wolf in the village had apparently succumbed to the mushroom poisoning and with that, the helpless clan had lost one of their best weapons. The Ó Ciardhas had like Ó Hannagáins without arrows and no other expression could describe the slaughter. Blood dripped from trees and the sky filled with the wailing of the desperate. The short war had devolved into no more than a complete genocide.
No one might no it but Flann may have been present at the battlefield but he could not bring himself to hurt anyone. In fact, he went out of the way to try and help members of the enemy clan escape but they all reacted with hostility. Even the women and children tried to strike at him when he tried to help them flee. Amidst the chaos, though, Flann would indeed come upon his father. Felim seemed prepared for an honorable battle but when he saw his young son shaking and nearly in tears, he expressed a look of disappointment and shame. Rather than fight his disgraceful son, Felim passed him by to join his comrades in the fight. Like in a true war, Flann would never find out what happened to his father during or after the massacre. He likes to believe his father escaped but a part of him believes he would be happier dying after seeing such weak cowardice in his son.
Once the Ó Hannagáins claimed victory of their seemingly eternal foe, they turned the wolves into pelts and desecrated the bodies of the enemy. For the discovery of the mushrooms that led to victory, Eoghan and Flann (to an extent) were hailed as heroes, though, the latter had hoped his name would never be associated with the tragedy that occurred. Despite going from pariah to celebrated, he decided to spent the next few days on the forest floor, caring for his wolves which, for all he knew, were the only living and domesticated Sevenwood wolves left. For once, he did not return up to the village in the treetops. He stayed with his wolves and used the survival skills he had been taught to sustain himself. For once, he did not feel so nervous about what might happen. He actually quite enjoyed the quietness of the woods despite how dark and scary it might seem.
The Queen of Seven had always had difficulty in bringing law to the fringes of the Sevenwood and for several generations, the conflicts between the Ó Hannagáins and the Ó Ciardhas had been tolerated. However, the news of the genocide committed by the Ó Hannagáins finally forced the queen's hand. No one at the Ó Hannagáin village could know it but hundreds of miles away, the queen gathered up a retinue of men to bring forth justice for the slain. It was the noble Earl Fitzgerald who offered up most of the men for the operation and he, therefore, earned the right to lead the large band of knights. As the Ó Hannagáins celebrated with drunken intensity, a company of armor-clad men marched through the wood of the Sevenwood, with their fate presumedly left within the hands of the earl. The queen felt certain, after all, the earl would dispense proper justice and so she concerned herself with the matter no longer.
When the soldiers arrived, the village (Flann included) offered no resistance. They knew they could not dare defy the queen but they did at least try to explain their reasoning for the massacre, though, they of course started by not referring to it as a "massacre." Earl Fitzgerald would not listen though and immediately began arresting many of the able-bodied men within the village, including Flann and Eoghan. Although Flann did not realize it at the time, the earl's daughter Catriona Fitzgerald had traveled with her father and became smitten with Flann's wolves during the arrests. The mushroom poisoning made them rather docile after all and thus the earl allowed her to take them as pets. Meanwhile, Flann and others who found themselves within mobile cell-carts were transported across the Sevenwood in a week-long journey before arriving at the castle belonging to the Fitzgerald family, a relatively grand building near the border with Fiore that did not sit in the trees like so many structures belonging to the Queendom of Seven.
Earl Fitzgerald soon revealed that his justice would not come swiftly. Instead, he threw the men he had arrested into the dungeons, with the supposed masterminds given the worst floors of the dungeons to inhabit. Eoghan and Flann were among this unlucky group and both were given their own cell with only a sliver of light in each and the bare minimum of food and water needed to simply not die. Time seemed to pass much differently and so each day felt like several days. Each month felt like several months. Flann would eventually spend over half a year in his dungeon cell but it felt like years to him. His body had become painfully emaciated by the end of it as if he lived on the edge bordering life and death. His mind was in tatters as well, not only from the prolonged isolation but from not knowing what happened to the rest of kinsmen as well as his wolves.
Eventually, Ulster and Connacht recovered from their mushroom poisoning over a period of months and as they did, they became gradually more aggressive with Catriona and the servants who looked after them. This reached a climax when Ulster bit one of the maids and tore her finger off. Unswayed by her servants' pleas to finally get rid of the wolves, Catriona instead sought a way to control them better. She convinced her father to search the dungeons for one of those elves he had arrested and extract whichever one might be most familiar with Sevenwood wolves. The guards of the castle questioned the prisoners on the higher levels of the dungeons and came to the conclusion that the one named Flann at the bottom level matched the description of who they were seeking. Thus, not long after Flann had turned sixteen, he was pulled out of his dark and depressing cell after months of confinement. Too weak to walk, the guards pulled him by his arms up to the surface.
Flann was given only a week to recover from the horrid conditions of the dungeons before Catriona Fitzgerald visited him and ask that he calm her wolves which had become so seemingly rabid that they were kept in cages by this point. The task proved simpler than implied since Ulster and Connacht both lit up with enthusiasm at seeing their true master once again. He released them from their own prison and they became like playful pups once more. Catriona felt so impressed by their sudden change in attitude that she requested from her father that Flann not return to the dungeons. The earl would accept this proposal but would later inform Flann of the terms of his release from his confinement: he would serve his daughter as both a servant and a bodyguard and in any failure in duty would result in execution. As it turns out, the earl assumed Flann was a great warrior given his supposed role in the genocide but the young man nonetheless agreed to the terms.
In spite of or perhaps because of Catriona's sheltered upbringing, she came off as very likable to Flann. She did not boss him around and often allowed him to partake in fun activities with her, such as horse riding in the nearby meadows. On top of that, she was roughly Flann's age with an angelic appearance and thus Flann became smitten with her. He followed her around like a puppy, even more so than Ulster and Connacht did with him. She came to enjoy his company as well and although he could have likely asked for any favor, he only asked to know what became of his grandfather, Eoghan. As it would turn out, however, the old man had perished in the dungeons and although Flann had much to despise about the man, he couldn't help but feel sorry for Eoghan. He neglected to ask that the rest of his kinsmen be released, though, for he believed they truly did deserve their punishment.
As Catriona often resided in the castle, Flann hardly ever received the chance to leave either. Occasionally, though, the earl's daughter would travel for social events and despite his shyness, Flann enjoyed seeing more of the Sevenwood. The most memorable place they traveled to would be the capital of Seven itself, a sprawling metropolis in the treetops that exceeded every expectation from the boy. They visited shops together, explored the various wooden bridges going into every direction, and attended a regal ball. Flann did not dance, of course, but he enjoyed watching Catriona enjoy herself. She especially enjoyed dancing with the son of a baron that Flann would later come to know as Peadar. Had he possessed that kind of personality, Flann might have been jealous. Flann and Catriona began their journey back to the castle after three days in the capital but she and Peadar would keep frequent correspondence after that.
Peadar would come to visit Catriona over the course of several months and although Flann lacked the understanding of the subtle meaning behind his visits, it would eventually come to light that the pair had become betrothed to one another. Flann obviously felt somewhat saddened that Catriona had given her heart to another but he had never truly expected her to feel toward him in the same way he did her. He thought highly of Peadar anyway even if he did not think the same of Flann whose fictional reputation as a genocidal maniac preceded him. He seemed to enjoy the pair of wolves even less, though, and they often seemed to reciprocate that attitude toward him with warning growls. Regardless, the marriage was eventually planned to take place the following summer after the announcement of the betrothal. Earl Fitzgerald was so pleased with the news that he even promised Flann his freedom after the marriage.
Flann was nineteen at the time that his life was sent onto the trajectory is resides on now. One night, just a few months before the marriage was to take place, Catriona allowed Flann to take the night off early. He left the main structure of the castle for the servant quarters on the castle grounds. On his way, however, he found himself utterly surrounded by an ambush of castle guards. They pointed swords and spears at him and order him to follow them. He was thrown into a dungeon once again without any reason given to him until three hours passed and he was once again manhandled out of the cell. The guards brought him to a wooden pillar outside, with firewood resting at its base. The earl presented himself with an angry tone and expression before announcing that his daughter had been murdered in her room and that all evidence suggested Flann was the perpetrator.
Flann had every reason to be shocked but before he could fully defend himself or ask questions, the guards hoisted him up and bound him to the wooden pillar. The wood at his feet was lit on fire and his punishment became clear; he was going to burn on the stake. He begged for mercy and even began crying, not only for himself but for the loss of Catriona as well. He began to lose hope as the fire started to singe his shoes until a distinct growl erupted from the darkness of that night. His wolves jumped through the crowd of guards, with Connacht warning the men to stay away while Ulster's huge body rammed through the fire and tried to bring the wooden pillar down. Ulster burnt herself badly but faithfully freed her master. With little time to think about it, Flann followed up by using his beast leg magic to jump from the crowd along with his wolves who all fled into the forest.
Had it just been left at that, Flann might have become a simple fugitive but fate put him into a very certain direction as he fled from the castle. As Flann red side-by-side with his wolves, he noticed several tracks along the way with a few drops of blood. Ulster and Connacht especially noticed the blood and so Flann put two and two together to believe it was related to what transpired that night. Flann had his wolves begin following the trail once they got far ahead of the guards chasing them. As it appeared a rather sizable group had gone into the forest before him, Flann did not believe they could have gotten far and he did indeed catch up to them just past the border, in northeast Fiore. It was a group of men in masks who apparently stopped for a few minutes of rest and from what Flann gathered as he listened in, they were mercenaries who had been hired by some noble in Sevenwood.
When it became clear he would not hear anything else interesting, Flann finally displayed a true act of courage for once in his life. He, along with his wolves, launched a surprise attack on the group amidst the night. They might not have been so intimidated had it not been so dark or so sudden, but the men all scattered and Flann ultimately managed to capture one of the men. Totally unlike himself, Flann started to beat the man until he began spouting what he wanted to know which turned out to be very little. Perhaps Ulster had torn him up too bad or Flann hit him too hard but the man only mentioned nonsense about a silver wolf before spitting up a torrent of blood. When the man finally succumbed to his injuries, Flann returned to his proper senses and felt some sense of shame by what he had done followed by a sense of determination he had never experienced before.
The young man gathered up the only clue he could find on the man: a checkered bandana with a strange symbol on it with the ambiguous phrase involving a silver wolf. He did not know what kind of land Fiore was but he set off in search of clues to find the men responsible for Catriona's death.
RP Sample: N/A
Face Claim: Mare Bello Fiore; Overlord
