"Why don't you ever tell me about my father? Who was he?" Eryn paced around, his hands behind his back. Lorelei rested back in her seat heavily, sighing. She brushed a red lock from her eyes, and gazed at her son with slightly narrowed eyes.

"Why don't I tell you who he wasn't. That makes it much more simple than to explain who he is or was." She offered, raising a hand to her temple, touching her fingers there. Eryn stopped his pacing, crossing his arms over his chest, his dark eyes watching her. His face didn't express much emotion, but a sigh resigned him to a seat before her. Lorelei surveyed her young son. He had grown so fast, faster than any other child she knew of. He was a fine boy, a strong child. Always very strong, bulk massed upon him day after day and now in his adult years, he showed to be a very powerful warrior. His head was crowned in ample red waves, flowing down his back. His eyes however, that was what shown him other than human. Not half-elven as she, but something higher than humanoid. Dark and smoky, they seemed like molten flame captured just at dawn. Sort of a reddish color, back-dropped in deep gray, she had always termed it. Not a human pair of eyes for certain. .He shifted in his seat under her gaze, and she shook herself from the reverie. If nothing else, her son was a heart-breaker, deadly handsome and more than prepared for marriage.

"As you know, I've had many a lover in my time, boy." She sat forward, leaning her elbows on her knees. Eryn nodded at his aging mother. He thought she looked just fine, the age barely showed on her face. It only showed in her hair, silvery-gray streaks at the temples and small fine lines around her wide green eyes.

"Dragonheart, dear Wyrd, Autumn, your foster father, Brogan, Valdar, and finally who we need to speak of, Hawkeye." She sighed, even at this late date his name still felt like acid on her tongue. She grasp her hands together, leaning forward again in the chair almost rocking slightly.

"Hawkeye, as you know, I loved in two lifetimes. Before on the Realms and now in Aurealis. And both times, my life was destroyed for it." He nodded to her again.

"I know all of this."

"Framing boy, be quiet and listen to your elders." She said impatiently.

"Yes, mother." He sighed, leaning back in his chair.

"Now, Hawkeye before wrapped me in his web, telling me either he would have me and his wife, or none at all. Destroying his clan, his marriage and the love we shared. Not to mention any future or love I had with Valdar." She took a swig of her ale from a large tankard, and set the cup back down.

"Now that was partially my own fault. I had no way to see past my own pain and being torn to see what I should have done."

He nodded silently.

"But ultimately his sins murdered me at the hands of the former WraithLord Emayn."

"In this life, it seemed innocent enough, but after some time, his old ways started to show. Mysterious voices began to speak through his body, and in between my times in training, he was seeing other women. One named Sophia was the starting point, Jara another. It digressed from there. Jara, thinking she was performing some great service, turned him into an undead. One long forgotten in our realm, but something known as a vampire."

" Now in my life I've had attacks of all sorts at vampiric hands. As have many of those I cared for. I even, in my previous life was turned into that darkness, for the guilt and self-loathing of Indi the vampire queen."

"Valdar and four of his vampiric friends, Veloquin's brother, Gwar, my trusted friend, and another two I don't even remember once attacked Brogan and I in the Central Square of Mesraht out of Indi's malice for Hawkeye."

"These things have gone on so long that my mind barely sorts them out anymore. Now you know Valdar lost his vampiric nature when he was taken as the son of the evil Cauchemar. But his heart still wrenched pain from others, and he and Cauchemar took delight in torturing me to torture Hawkeye. I hate gods." She spat, grumbling.

"Not Modi, of course, but he's the only one that seems sane anymore." She grinned like a cat, tipping her tankard almost in salute.

"I've been here long enough to see gods die and be murdered, I think I know a good one or two when I see them. I've even seen new gods born. And that brings us to who your father isn't." "Hawkeye and I were nearly blessed with a child once, and due to Cauchemar, the vampires and fights with Hawkeye, I left. I went off with a midwife alone and was captured by drow. She was killed, and I was a novelty for my enlarged pregnant state. I lived nearly a month as an exotic toy for the rather ruthless drow, and finally killed them all and escaped. On the journey back, I found myself in a great deal of pain and my body being wounded was unable to sustain the child any longer. I lost the baby in a small cottage in Mesraht."

" I remember this as well, Zuni was there as was your friend Silver, and Orrandor, were they not?" Lorelei nodded, sighing, her breath catching slightly.

"So distraught was I in the death of our child I wanted to immediately fix all the problems with Hawkeye and try for another. And he promised me that. He promised me I would have another child if it were within his power. I went to the Yarrowshire nursery and worked there for a long time, learning to care for the babies and children as if they were my own in preparation."

"Then enter the vampires once more. Enter Cauchemar. I went to Cauchemar's nightmare realm, as a prisoner, and was thankfully summoned out, but the time I spent there was unreasonable. You can't imagine what it's like in a god's realm, or at least that one. You don't feel connected to anything, even your own body. And that's where I learned my knowledge of my previous life on the Realms. It came to me, taunting me as so many nightmares did in that place. As horrible as it was, it was hard to tell what was the nightmare and what was not. The only thing that made me see it as real was the very real love that I felt." His eyes widened, and he leaned forward in almost the same pose as his mother, listening intently.

"I haven't told you all of this, like I said, framing." She shrugged, sitting back slightly.

"I was told I spent nearly minutes in that realm, but I can tell you son, it felt like years. For all I know, it may have been years. Time runs differently for the gods."

He nodded, running a hand roughly through his silken hair. "Now… I'd lost a child and just regained my memories of who I was. I went to talk to Hawkeye, and found he and that slut Jara had lain together and she had taken my husband into her dark fold. He was now a vampire, and he had the gaul to claim it was for me!" She frowned darkly at the past, as if daring it even still to fight her hand to hand. "So… at that moment my marriage ended, and I took off. My dreams shattered, my heart shattered. I was a very broken woman. And for some time I took that out on everything I could find." She shrugged again, shaking her head.

"Maybe I still do."

"But that's what Hawkeye's promise was, and I lived a very dark time, my skills as a warrior used for things others wouldn't dare when thinking themselves holy." She snorted and rolled her eyes, smirking.

"I never claimed to be holy though, good thing eh, boy?"

He nodded again silently, those dark eyes boring through her.

"Where none of the other men there, mother? To help you?" he offered gingerly.

She shook her head, wincing inwardly.

"No son, Dragonheart is dead and has been for a very long time at vampiric hands. Brogan was on a long journey to help his family, and since I've found he was captured and put imprisoned. Wyrd went with Gratia into the folds of DarkSun's madness, I don't mean that so called underground activity… I mean that madness of taking on another member's soul into their own. Most people don't know of that secret part of that place, but I do. Autumn was away, and he like all of the others, didn't know of his past on the Realms. He was a brand new man that knew nothing of me. Valdar was still under the sway of Indi and Cauchemar, so even if he had cared for me, he wouldn't have helped me. So I was left ultimately alone."

He nodded grimly, as if marking a list in his mind. She knew what that face meant, but she knew also that there was no way to talk it out of him so she moved on.

"After a bit, Valdar came to me here in the clanhall. The very last time I saw him in fact. Just after the death of Indi, he warned me to answer any questions carefully. I didn't listen to him naturally, he'd tried to murder me many times before, and I believed this was just another attempt to make my life a living hell."

Eryn's hand clenched and his dark eyes lit up literally with flames. Lorelei lifted her head, startled, but shook it off. Her son had strange powers, she had always known that.

"Well finally… I was spoken to by someone named Hyde. A Djinn I found out later. He had made a deal with Hawkeye and the question that was ask was, 'Lorelei, do you still want a child?' "

He nodded slowly, seeing the direction.

"I said yes of course, what else was I to say. I've never lied, I see no use in the filth. Maybe left out things, but lying is dishonorable and most crow-suckers wouldn't know the difference if it hit them in the skull."

"And suddenly I was struck, struck down from the Heavens. It was like lightning hit me, I doubled over screaming and in pain. And then Valdar's words rang in my ears again. Answer any questions carefully. It was then I knew it was a warning."

"The Djinn laughed and said so be it. And I was pregnant from that point on." She sighed, leaning back watching her son intently.

"Hawkeye should have been your father, but he wasn't. I was impregnated in some inhuman impossible way. So there is no way to know who your father is, Eryn."

The flames in his eyes ceased, and Eryn put his hand to his temple, leaning back as if shocked. She knew he had never expected what she told him, and she had no words of comfort to say. She had thought for the full 16 years of his life how to explain it, but nothing ever came.

"I think, it was some kind of veiled curse to me, but that doesn't change the fact I love you, Eryn. Nothing changes that. Not even death." She touched his forearm gently.

He moved forward, kneeling before her, laying his head in her lap as he had when he was a child. She stroked his hair to calm him as she had always done.

"That's why you seem 25 when you're only 16, you've always grown fast my son. I had you in three months when pregnancy is usually 9. I had you here, in this room, this lounge here in Renshai's keep. A bard to nurse me, and Modi was touching me briefly as he could. Acushla did what he could, but the pain was fairly great and a god, another one made me nearly mad in anguish as you were being born. I can only describe him as Chaos. Ultimate carnage raged from him and hit me in waves of hatred and anger. I don't know who he was, but he told me that you would be demon like. I thought it later to be another stab, because my son, you are more than handsome."

"Your powers, those strange things that happen to you, that is from this Djinn, or the other nameless god. I don't know which. But I can tell you, it was definitely at Hawkeye's will this was cast upon me. Forever he has my hatred."

Eryn looked up, his dark eyes rimmed in that odd gold that his tears came as.

"Do you love me mother, no matter what I am, whomever I will be?"

"My son, you will always be MY child. My love, my heart and my life. Nothing, not death, not even gods can change that. Nothing will change my love for you."

She touched his face softly, and he laid his head in her lap to cry.

"Hawkeye gave me what I always wanted, and I paid his price. But my son, you are not to blame for that. Hawkeye is. He always was. And someday, I'll see his heart hanging bloody from the gates of this Keep." Lorelei stroked her son's soft red hair gently as his weeping slowed.

"As I said, I never told you who he was or is, because I do not know. It was always easier to say who he was not. And now you know. Don't let my life destroy yours, for I don't know how long it will be. I think perhaps I may have to bury you my son. And I don't wish that."

"I'll find him mother, and see that he pays." Eryn whispered through half breaths.

Lorelei shook her head calmly.

"Who?"

"My father, and the man my father should have been. We'll have two hearts to hang from the gates." He growled, clutching his hands and standing.

He looked down upon her fiercely. Lorelei looked up to him, stopping short of any words she might have said and nodded. She stood, embracing him tightly.

"I love you Eryn. Never think otherwise." She breathed into his chest, as he stood a full two foot taller than she.

"I love you too, Mother." He hugged her, so tight it nearly crushed her ribs. With that, he sheathed his mighty axe, and left the Renshai clanhall for the world.

And so begins the tale of Eryn Stormforger-Thorsson, the grandson of Modi Thorsson, son of Lorelei Stormforger-Thorsson.