There had been no moon on the night Nu had been born, and in the following hours came one of the worst storms that had hit the tundra in many years. It lasted weeks, killing many of the village livestock and destroying homes and structures. When the storm had passed, a raid by a desperate neighbouring village followed, and several of their people perished.

The people of her home village were superstitious. She seemed nothing more than a normal, human baby with dark brown eyes and wisps of brown hair and no deformities. A red birthmark that resembled a tendril like burn ran from her right cheek to her wrist was her only visible imperfection. The child had always ran an extraordinarily high temperature, though the healers could not cure it, nor did she seem bothered by it and showed no other symptoms.

She was named Nukpana. A bad omen. An ‘evil spirit’. And it was prophesied that the child would burn cities and forests until nothing remained. A child of fire did not belong in the tundra - she had to die.

Torn from her wailing mother’s arms, her father bundled the crying child in furs and headed out into the blizzard, his hopeless heart sunken by the impossible task he must face. She stared up at him as he sat laid her down in the roots of a tree, snow quickly settling over the pelt he’d wrapped her up in. Several times, the man tried to walk away, and several more times he failed and grabbed the child up again and held her to him.. It’d been almost an hour and still the child’s temperature raged.

Her father walked for half a day to find the nearest town, and drank in a tavern with the babe settled on his knee, listening to those who came and went for hours before he heard a man mention that he’d be travelling home to Alliria in the morning. Her father desperately offered what coin he had left to offer, and the man agreed to take the child with him and find a suitable home for her, for he had no interest in raising a child, let alone one said to be an evil spirit. Her father thrust a coin purse and a letter into the man’s hand, and left the tavern swiftly, before he could change his mind.

The letter read simply ~
‘Thank you for caring for Nukpana.’

The man did as he had promised, and the child and her letter were taken in by a childless couple in Alliria. A year passed and the couple decided they’d rather remain childless than deal with another day of such a terrible child. She cried, screamed, fought and threw things. Those things were difficult enough, but they found that the touch of the child would burn them. She was left with on the doorstep of another couple with several young children, and they tried to do right by taking her in. They tried for a further two years to try and care for the child, to calm her, but it was to the detriment of their family and they couldn’t manage her either. Her new siblings hated her and feared her just as much. She was taken to several healers and witch doctors but there was nothing any of them could do to stop the the child’s apparent torment.

At three and-a-half, Nu burned her new family’s house to the ground after one of the children pushed her into the fire. Her clothes and hair had been singed, but otherwise, Nu had remained unhurt. The fire seemed to stick to her hands however, and the panicked child had the whole place in flames within minutes as she tried to put out the flames on whatever she could find. She was dragged, letter in hand, to the city orphanage, and things didn’t go much better there.

Five years later, Nu and her letter had been handed over to three families, two orphanages, the authorities, an Ogre and a school. She’d badly burned pretty much all of those who’d tried to discipline her, burned down two homes, a guard house and half of the school. She’d built up enough of a reputation in Alliria that nobody would have her, no matter how much coin they were offered. The reckless child appeared to be beyond teaching, and she was too much of a risk to the other children, and so the school turned her over to a sell sword, tasking him with taking the child far from Alliria and finding someone who could help the child, he was also given an extra payment to resist throttling or drowning her.

The sell sword opened the letter; “‘Thank you for caring for Nukpana’..Gods fucking help em’..” he smirked, pulling the eight year old by the scruff of her neck up onto his horse, and setting off out of Alliria.