#seren fray

Seren Fray, Centaur Fighter (Ranger subclass)

Let The Storm Come, pt I

The Tribe of Flagstaff has a history stretching back centuries – it is one of the older centaur tribes on the continent. Its transitory migrations across the land can take generations as the group ranges across plains, mountains, shrublands, and forests, following the seasons as they have done from time immemorial. The clan is several hundred strong, and in their travels the group will spread over kilometres to accommodate their sheer size. Within the larger group, smaller subtribes form, with anywhere up to a half-dozen family groups travelling in close quarters. These groups come together through a process part social and part functional – centaurs are communal creatures, living in the tribe from birth to death, with close emotional ties to their companions, but as well as this, living in smaller groups allows each individual to benefit from the protection, skills, and experience of others. Each subtribe will typically have some core members – healers, hunters, shepherds, foragers, cultivators, warriors or sentinels, and often storytellers and artisans – in order to function best as a cohesive and symbiotic unit.

It is into this foraging and transient society that Seren is born. The bay dun foal of a cultivator and a hunter, she grows up tightly knit into the fabric of centaur society, and into the fabric of a subtribe made up of her own immediate family and two other nuclear families. The nomadic nature of the tribe means that they rarely over-hunt or strain the land that carries them, and apart from the times when they do not quite outrun the hot drought of summer or the deep cold of winter, it is a mostly bountiful and easy childhood. She grows learning the skills of woodscraft, tracking and hunting food that moves and identifying and cultivating in portable gardens food that doesn’t. Things grow darker as she and the other foals of the group come into adulthood, finding that their old route through the land has been settled by territorial Orcs in the centuries since the centaurs last passed through, and for safety, her subtribe joins forces with another that has been on their periphery for the last leg of their journey, and it is here on the doorstep of adulthood that, among others, Seren meets Carys.

The two subtribes have met in the shelter of a dense copse of trees, and while the adult centaurs are conferring and discussing tactics and practical needs and the mechanics of operating within a larger group, the younger ones are re-enacting the time-old tradition of circling each other cautiously, trying to assess one another – they are not quite ready to give up the us-vs-them train of thought, though this will pass within hours. This is the first time that Seren gets a proper look at any of the not-quite-foals of the other subtribe, who have only ever been glimpsed from the corner of the eye before as the two groups occasionally overtook each other; however, her attention is quickly caught by one of the other group’s middle children. She is perhaps initially unimpressive, but on closer inspection the palomino pinto girl has a quick scowl and a quicker smile, clever hands and steady legs, and eyes full of mischief. She shakes her ash blonde hair from her face and gives an impish grin, her broad shoulders sloped gently and her weight settling into her hooves to bring an end to the silent circling. The sunlight dapples through the trees and catches the pale amber colour in the girl’s coat, and Seren feels – something, the great potential for something, fill her chest and swell up into her throat. The moment breaks as a cremello boy jostles between them to escape a spontaneous game of tag that has erupted among the younger foals, but as the pinto girl (Carys, Seren learns) turns to leap out of the way of the bay child who is currently ‘it’, fleet on her feet and laughing like music, that feeling continues to blossom and makes a home in Seren’s heart. The sensation is unbudging and resilient, and even as all the foals turn their attention to far more serious things in the following days, it stays quiet and dormant through the upheaval, waiting patiently for the attention it will eventually merit.

But for now, it is a tumultuous time, and as the no-longer-children are pushed the last few steps into maturity, other lessons and more frivolous things like emotions fall to the wayside. All members of the new subtribe are feverishly given rudimentary skills in battle by the two warriors and lone sentinel of the group, and travel through the area becomes slower and more dangerous. By the time they have come out the other side, the subtribe has solidified into a unified entity, Seren has decided to train further under the warriors, and her and Carys are all but joined at the hip. This follows into warrior training, where Carys shines like a bloody and vengeful star, with Seren silent and implacable at her back, the perfect complement. Carys is the better fighter of the two, and indeed of the three other centaurs training to be warriors in their subtribe.

Life settles as the centaur tribe’s journey across the great plains of the North is unimpeded, in fact flourishing as they trade with the Elven settlements that they pass on the way. Seren picks up hunting and foraging duties and Carys takes up her mother’s artisanal trade while their skills as warriors go unneeded. For years, existence is quiet and mostly plentiful, and the two centaurs take the time of peace to solidify and formalise their bond. At one point, some members of the subtribe – including Carys – fall sick with a disease picked up from a human settlement that they pass, but after a few days of sore throats, coughing, and mild fevers, all signs of illness are gone, and when a week later no one has had any serious reactions, some of the tenseness that had gripped the group since the sickness leaks away. Seren pointedly does not worry when Carys quietly admits that sometimes her eyes get hot and sore, and her vision blurs before eventually returning to normal. Seren covers for her when sometimes her eyes go distant and her hands fumble with her artisan’s tools, or her steps falter during their regular warrior training. Months pass this way. It’s fine. It’s definitely fine.

It’s not fine. Their quiet research and subtle inquiries turn up nothing, and they take to straying further from the subtribe and into what meagre settlements they pass on their travels in search of answers. Occasionally they make fits and starts of progress, but ultimately it all comes to naught. One such time is one of their worse days, when Seren has to lead Carys by the hand to the small enclave of Fae that they’ve discovered, as she can no longer see the ground beneath her hooves. The Fae are initially wary and then compassionate, but even so, when the wisest of their healers finishes looking over Carys they shake their head in confusion and helplessness. There is nothing that they can find that could explain her ailment. The two centaurs go to leave the haven with heavy hearts, holding hands for comfort rather than any particular need as Carys’ sight blurs back into focus just as inexplicably as it went out. As they go, one of the Fae tinkers pulls them aside and gives them a strange object – a lantern of revealing that the Fae, with their darkvision, have little need for, but has enough magic in it that the light it sheds may be enough to break through the blindness. They thank her profusely and continue on their way, but when Cary’s sight darkens again barely a week later and they hesitantly light the lantern, the pinto centaur is still quite sightless. They hold each other as they shake that night, but despite her helpless bitterness, Seren can never bring herself to dump the lantern. After all, it is still useful, and – well. One never knows. Best to have it, just in case.

But the lull could never last for long; it has been longer than usual between bouts of tension between the centaurs and the inhabitants of the land they pass through. They hear from a neighbouring subtribe that the land ahead has been newly settled by a Dragonborn horde, uneasy in their newness to the area and unfamiliar with the transitory ways of the centaurs. The subtribes passing ahead of them have made the Dragonborn more and more tense, and it is only a matter of time before the situation escalates. Seren looks at Carys from the corner of her eye and tightens her hold on her hand-axe until the leather binding creaks. Carys is lucid for the moment, but her eyes are bloodshot and faraway more and more often. With luck, there will be no need for either of them to fight.

But there is no room for luck in a world ruled by nature, the pitiless and unforgiving mistress that she is, and it is as Seren’s subtribe approaches the heart of the Dragonborn territory that violence erupts. All in all, it could be worse – there are no longer any foals in the group to require protection and supervision, their fighter to non-fighter ratio is higher than most subtribes, and most of all Carys’ eyes are clear and shine with the battle-light as they are hurled into the fray. For a while, it is the most alive Seren has ever felt, a hand-axe in one hand and a sword in the other, her lance abandoned as the fighting enters close quarters, and Carys at her back, matching her step for step as they cover each other’s weak spots and hew their foes limb from limb. The fight is going their way, especially as another subtribe enters the fight and the ranks of Dragonborn begin to thin out. But all things end, and one moment Carys is a whirling tempest of hooves and steel, and the next she wavers and goes still, eyes darting frantically as they glaze over and what was once a crystal-clear vision of the enemy warrior before her goes soft and grey. It is a moment before Seren notices, and it is a moment too late.

Seren’s heart stops as Carys’ forelegs are cut out from under her, and in the time it takes for her to take the steps that will bring her in striking distance of the Dragonborn he is preparing another attack, and before she can bring her hand-axe down against his skull with a howl of fury, another wound has been carved across Carys’ chest. The Dragonborn drops like a stone, but Carys falls only a moment later. Something inside Seren breaks, and when she comes back to herself the enemies around her are bloody messes on the ground, and Carys is breathing fast and shallow where she has crumpled.

The mechanics of weakness and illness and death are not unknown to either of them – the subtribe has left behind four of its members since the two groups became one, the old and infirm quietly and unobtrusively leaving, heading off only-they-knew-where when it became clear they could no longer keep up with the endless migration. That is one thing. Holding Carys while she is blind and shell-shocked and bleeding, and seeing the rest of the subtribe gather their weapons and dropped belongings and only spare them a pitying look before moving away – that is quite another. The senior healer of the subtribe bends to get a closer look at Carys’ forelegs, then shakes his head. As he moves away, he offers a hand to Seren to help her up from where she has sat on the ground to better cradle the fallen centaur. She looks at him with accusing eyes and settles further into the dirt, pointedly turning away as she tries to make rudimentary bandages to wind around Carys’ torso. When she looks up from her task, there is no one left but the fallen bodies of their foes.

It takes eight excruciating days for Carys to die from a combination of shock and blood loss and a terrifying black growth in her wounds that spreads across her skin. For those eight days, Carys is more often sightless than not, and Seren makes her as comfortable as she can with what they have and what limited supplies are left to them by sympathetic members of other subtribes as they pass through the once-battleground.  When Carys stops breathing, the thing that had broken inside Seren when she saw her fall shatters entirely. Seren makes a cairn and sends prayers to Skerrit, because this seems to be the right thing to do, but while her body is present everything else is far away, and she suddenly understands why the centaurs who can no longer keep up leave on their own, though she had never questioned it before. The fugue of grief hangs over her for more than a month, and she wanders far from the path her genetic memory tries to guide her on.

Eventually, Seren is jolted back into her body when she stumbles upon a group of bandits in the midst of a full-scale raid on a poorly-protected half-elf settlement hidden in a dale, far to the East of the migration route. Normally, keen centaur senses would have alerted her to the fighting with plenty of time to change her course and skirt around it, but living in the fog as she is, it isn’t until a throwing knife sails past her nose that she realises that she has been able to hear screams and the clash of metal-on-metal and the more sickening noise of metal-on-flesh for some time now. Now that she looks around, it isn’t hard to distinguish the half-elves in their earth-toned clothing from their Drow attackers, and without a thought she enters the fray. The feel of her hand-axes pressed to her palms is almost a relief and as she wades into the melee, she would swear that she could see a flash of ash blonde hair from the corner of her eye, and hear the echo of victorious laughter. As it is, once the fight is over and Seren is still and silent but for her heaving breaths amidst the fallen Drow, the flicker of Carys’ presence is gone, leaving Seren alone but for the remainder of the half-elves who clutch their improvised weapons unsurely, not quite sure what to make of the strange centaur.

Seren quickly stows her own weapons and makes a hasty exit, but with the fugue of loss now only hovering ominously, she takes a moment to examine her surroundings once she’s out of sight of the encampment. Her surroundings are unfamiliar, and the stars faintly present in the early-morning sky tell her that she is further East than she’s ever been before. Despite this, she still recognises most of the trees and undergrowth, and the animal tracks in the loamy soil are mostly the same as those she has known to the West. With the conviction of someone who has nothing else to do or to lose, she resolves to keep wandering, but now with some semblance of purpose; to  help those who need help, and in so doing fight the indifference of the fog that had settled over her and kept her dull and soft-edged. With the loss so fresh, Seren is still full of guilt and doubt and grief and loneliness, but something inside her refuses to let this or indeed any other thing be the ultimate end. And later, as she begins her travels once more, the numbing fog returns again, but it never totally obscures her awareness as it had before. It lifts briefly as she seeks distractions in the settlements she passes – guiding travellers through the thick of the unfamiliar forest, teaching basic woodscraft or warrior skills depending on what was needed more, driving off the seemingly never-ending bandits – but it never dissipates completely.

On one memorable occasion, Seren is just falling deeper into the fog when she hears a heavy tromping from close by, and upon shaking off its deadening tendrils and investigating the sound comes across what appears to be a human in full plate armour. She has seen full plate armour before, but those wearing it rarely travel alone, often belonging to military groups, so this sight is something of an anomaly. On top of that, the person is moving a little awkwardly, as if they aren’t used to their own body - which turns out to be something resembling the truth when Seren cautiously introduces herself and finds herself face to face with a Pixie, animating the suit of armour in an impressive display of magic. It comes out that the Pixie, named Prydwen, is actually searching for a way out of the forest, and Seren gladly offers her services. On their way, the two beings share a pleasant conversation, and Prydwen’s armour’s gait gets smoother and more confident, and while it is clear that she is thrilled to be on the move and starting what she brightly calls an adventure, there is also a sadness that lingers around the corners of her mouth and weighs on her thin shoulders. They reach the edge of the forest and the beginning of farmlands as the sun is slipping below the horizon, and as the Pixie waves goodbye and sets off to the nearest farmhouse, Seren thinks in passing that it’s a shame that their paths couldn’t have intersected a little longer.

Though the settlements remain sparse and remote, Seren begins to hear about a city that seems to be right in the middle of her meandering path. The idea of being around so many people itches under her skin, but it’s not like she has somewhere else to be, and the small trickle of travellers she is half-heartedly caught up in is sweeping her in its direction anyway. And besides, the rumours all say that the city, Haven, is incredibly isolated for its size, and it’s still maybe a month or two later that she passes through the closest town to Haven, whose inhabitants report that it’s still a day or two of travel away.

And there you go! A cultural note: before Seren was Fray, she was Seren Feet-In-The-Shallows Flagstaff-Lariat. (and because if you give me the chance to linguistics something I will: Sylvan, her first language, is a polysynthetic language. There is a suffix on ‘shallows’ that implies movement rather than still water, a holdover from the reference to rain in Seren’s subtribe’s original name, explained below.)(oh, and Lariat is the opposite of Fray - the former being someone who is bound to a Tribe, and the latter being someone who isn’t. who let me worldbuild?? srsly don’t let me start talking about this, i have so much more)

After Carys' and Seren's subtribes merged when they were children, the name was changed to Feet-In-The-Shallows. Before that, Seren's subtribe was called Lives-Under-The-Rain and Carys' was Heels-On-The-Earth. Subtribe names emphasise different parts of their history and heritage, and the name change following successful merges ought to reflect both subtribes and forge an unified identity for the new one.

The title, ‘Let The Storm Come’, is a reference to the song ‘I Will Never Die’ by Delta Rae, which along with ‘Like A Mountain’ by Timber Timbre, I listened to constantly as I wrote parts of this.