Deliverance from Darkness

Deliverance from Darkness is a short children's story first written down from oral storytellers by Mother Giesellum.

Transcript
 Our lordly Saint, the mighty Hagar, has many stories attributed to his name. None of these are more famous than the destruction of his greatest foe, the Revenant Vow. The tale has been passed from one listener to the next for the better part of two centuries, and the details have become somewhat muddled. Therefore, I shall make an attempt to write the truth of it to paper in such a form that it remains honest and can still be read by the good children who so desire to learn his tale while they learn their letters. And so begins our tale.

It is with good reason that the Revenant Vow are considered the mightiest enemy Saint Hagar faced. Named for a terrible being of retribution, even from beyond the grave, the Revenant Vow were once an order of dragonborn and their most loyal janissaries, the wicked people who served the dragonborn instead of the Shaper. For years after the dragons had fled Andara, the Revenant Vow continued to strike at us, the free folk of the land, from the shadows. They slew our generals and heroes, stole our crops, and burnt our homes. Supported by their fanatical (though horribly mislead) andar janissaries, the dragonborn officers continued to operate from deep within forests and under the mountains, where the darker things of the world dwell.

For nearly a decade the Revenant Vow had fought throughout Andara and been slowly pushed back into the shadows. Good people would rise to drive them off on occasion, but would never pursue the Revenant Vow once they’d grown weary of battle. Tired of warfare, few Andar would pursue the Revenant Vow beyond their own shallow borders, content to allow this showy organization to regain its strength and fight again elsewhere. These Andar were ignorant folk, not like you or I, who had little love for their neighbors.

That is where the hero of our story, the mighty Saint Hagar himself, enters the tale. Saint Hagar was only Hagar then, and a boy of only sixteen at that. Born a slave, Hagar had known bloodshed and warfare, though had never been of an age to take to the battlefield himself. Despite his youth, he displayed a fierce desire to protect his friends, family, and land that was unrivaled among his peers. When the Revenant Vow sacked Hagar’s village and burned his neighbor’s crops, he was the first and only to take up the axe and give chase. He’d heard what the Revenant Vow had done in other villages in other lands, had seen it happen to his own, and resolved not to let it happen to anyone else.

Weakened from the assault and unwilling to pursue the dragonborn and their janissaries into the next holdfast, Hagar’s neighbors did not follow him to battle, so Hagar set off alone. Thrice he came upon hamlets the Revenant Vow had burned, thrice he sought other brave warriors who would follow his cause, and thrice he was rejected, save only for one. In the third hamlet, Hagar met an old woman, a halfling named Quora.

Respecting Quora’s wisdom and skill with the bow, Hagar graciously accepted her aid, despite her advanced age. It was Quora who first noted that Hagar’s axe was no simple woodsman’s instrument, but instead a powerful weapon forged in the fires of the Wars of Liberation. Grinning, Hagar continued on with his quest, eager to bring such a brilliant blade to battle. Many hero’s weapons are made of magic by the dragonborn, but this does not make our heros evil. Unlike their cruel dragonborn makers, Hagar used his blade only to spill the blood of the wicked.

So Quora and Hagar traveled together, tracking the Revenant Vow and harrying their flight across the lands. They would stalk their prey, claiming one or two dragonborn and a handful of janissaries with each engagement before their querry would flee, stopping only to raid supplies from another hamlet while attempting to escape deeper into the wilderness. Finally, only the once-fearsome band’s leader, Elthedrir, and a handful of his janissaries, remained.

For three days and nights the two hunters pursued their prey, until upon a Silvernight, the two foes fought under the full moon. For hours they exchanged blows, Hagar felling foe after foe with his great axe, sometimes fighting in silvery moonlight, and sometimes in dark shadows cast upon him by Elthedrir’s sinister magics. Everywhere Hagar looked, Quora’s arrows could be seen in his enemies’ shields and armor, keeping them always at bay.

Finally, as Hagar raised his axe for the killing blow, Elthedrir swore a vow of vengeance upon him, splitting open the ground beneath their feet and swallowing them into the bowls of the earth. Elthedrir perished, but Hagar remained, climbing forth from the split in the ground with his bloody axe held high in triumph. “Cataclysm” he named that axe before returning home a hero.

Remember, young ones, this story of our most beloved Saint Hagar, and remember when your neighbors are in need. Even if they do not know what causes them such trouble, or will do nothing about it, and especially when they try to claim that it’s “someone else’s problem,” you must remind them of the selfless Saint Hagar, and aid them as best you can. For only when we help each other can we truly defeat our foes.