Parents unknown. Birthplace unknown. Name unknown. A child was left wrapped in a frayed blanket in a shoddy wicker basket on the door steps of one of the many Vel Anir orphanages. The director took the child in. Another mouth to feed. Another soul to sell when the time came.
Babe to child. Life was difficult. Never enough food. Never enough clothes. Never enough. The boy had nothing. Not even a name. If he wanted something he had to get it himself. Begging worked. Stealing worked better. If he was caught he was beat by his mark. If he wasn't he was beat by the orphanage director for stealing. Both were preferred to going hungry and cold.
At that age of apprenticeship and growth it was time for him to be sold. If he was fortunate then he would become an apprentice to an artisan. If he was unfortunate then he would become a laborer. If he was cursed he would become a soldier. The nameless child was truly cursed as he was the first the military came for. Off to the army he went to serve Vel Anir is the most honorable way. Or so the nobles always liked to say.
The army owned the boy now and to him they gave gifts. The first was a name: Silver Crow. He made his superior think of a little silver eyed crow. A name befitting a feral orphan fresh off the streets. A proper name would be wasted. Mocking his birth. But he had something now that was truly his own for the first time. A day the boy would forever remember.
The next gift Silver Crow was given was becoming part of an experiment. Rumors spoke of a secret program in Vel Anir that trained children gifted in magic to become weapons. The army decided to do the same with those completely lacking in all magic. Silver Crow was granted this curse. He was meant to serve Vel Anir. In order to fulfill that duty he would need to become stronger than steel in both body and mind. A will as unbreakable as her walls. So he was left to the mercy of the soldiers and asked to serve them in every way possible. Cooking. Cleaning. Running errands both important and mundane. Entertainment. The dummy in weapon practice. So long as he wasn't killed nor maimed then any complaint from him would be met with severe punishment. A lesson he learned far too slowly.
The program fell into shambles as most of the kids broke, deserted, or died. Silver Crow remained. One of the rare few. The third gift being the reason why. Beaten and humiliated daily, he was sent on an errand across the city. Along the way he ran into thugs. Thugs that hated soldiers and now before them was a little one. Spilling his blood would let the army know they didn't own everything and weren't welcome in their part of the city. He did his best to escape and fight, but could do nothing against a group of grown adults.... Then the same soldiers who always did such horrible things to him stepped in. They made it clear no one could touch one of their own. A fight broke out and ended with thugs dead in the street. Blood had been spilled to save him.
Silver Crow had learned that day the purpose of it all. He wasn't being beaten for sport. He was being beaten to make him stronger. Better. He was an unfinished blade being shaped upon the anvil so that he might serve Vel Anir. This revelation tempered him. No longer did he resent his brothers for what they did. It was all a test of endurance so that he might live to serve another day.
When he came of age his duties shifted from serving to being a proper soldier. Training had already begun before, but now he was fully invested. Weapons. Armor. Marching. Formation. Tactics. He absorbed it all as quickly as he could because all too soon he was sent off to war.
How many
battles in what all places he fought is unknown to him. He never cared to count and soon enough it was too many to try. He watched his brothers' blood spill. He watched innocents' blood spill. He did the spilling and caused the spilling. Through it all he pushed through and survived. Vel Anir expanded her borders and with it his sens of purpose.
But Silver Crow eventually made a grave mistake. His service got him recognized. Proof that the old program was a success. He received a promotion and a new mission. He was to infiltrate a frontier settlement near an Anirian fort and investigate possible
elven activity within it. Off he went and became a logger as his cover. Things progressed slowly. Plenty of rumors of
elves. Some signs of them watching the settlement and loggers, but that was to be expected. It was why the fort existed. He grew close to many there, including a somewhat overly friendly woman, but the lack of evidence would see his return to Vel Anir soon.
Before the order was written, Silver Crow stumbled across a message in the woods while logging. An elven agent had slipped up and left an unincrypted letter behind. He had his proof. Soldiers were sent and they found the agent. It was the woman he had grown close with. This fact hit him hard. They had gotten physically intimate with each other yet he had never questioned how she always had something covering her ears. It was not so much a case of her having deceived him so much as he hadn't even paid attention. And now here she was before him with her ears exposed while chained up.
She pleaded with him to free her and for the first time since becoming a soldier he ignored his orders. One last parting moment was shared ending in a kiss before she slipped out into the darkness of the night. No one knew what he had done only that she had escaped. He felt some small guilt for disobeying his orders, but no real regret. No one was hurt by his simple act....
Then the assault came. The settlement was razed to the ground and her settlers slaughtered by an elven army. Silver Crow had returned to the fort before it began and it was already too late to do anything by the time they learned of the attack. All they had time to do was muster their forces by the time the elven army was at the fort's gate. A siege followed that nearly saw the fort destroyed. But they managed to repel the elves. After they learned why the attack had been so effective and nearly fatal. Their weaknesses had been discovered by a certain elven spy. One who had taken part in the vanguard of the elven assault and died fighting. A certain elven spy who if not had been set free couldn't have revealed this to her kind and directly lead to the death of so many lives.
After watching her corpse be tossed onto the pile with the rest and set ablaze, Silver Crow returned home. Back in Vel Anir he revealed to his superior what he had done. He was ready to face punishment for his sins. He needed to face them knowing what he had done. His superior was outraged, but didn't punish him. Not in the way he had expected. Instead of his betrayal being made public and his head becoming a fixture upon Vel Anir's walls, he was given a new assignment. For forsaking his service to Vel Anir once, he would now serve her people to remind him of his duties. Any noble, guard, or even one of those mysterious
dreadlords (including initiates) could order him as they pleased. Refusal was not an option. If they told him drop to his hands and knees to act as a stepping stool before kissing their feet he would. If they told him to take his own life then his blood would spill until the warmth of life left his veins.
And so the last gift he received was the gift of servitude to others. Silver Crow the soldier was no more. Silver Crow the servant was born. Perched upon the rooves and walls of Vel Anir waiting for her to whisper her summons.
