Orenda Nochdifache was an orphan. This is an unfortunate situation for anyone, but particularly for someone like her, looking as she did, having a mind like she did, and growing up where she did. Orenda had the misfortune of living all her life in a colony of the Urlian Empire, an empire governed by a empress that she, like most people, had never seen in person, but was well acquainted with because of the numerous pamphlets, posters, and coins that bore her likeness.

Orenda had been told her entire life that Empress Xandra Uril was the most beautiful woman on Xren, but Orenda did not believe these accounts, unless the person painting and sculpting her portraits was ridiculously bad at their job. Orenda tended to believe her own eyes more than the things that people told her, and by her observations the empress was a willowy, emaciated woman who barely looked as if she could hold herself up under her many layers of dress, with a sunken face and lifeless hair that probably blew out of shape at the slightest breeze- not that it would matter, because the same slight breeze would likely knock her off her feet. Orenda was unable to feel the intimidation that everyone kept telling her should dominate her life. The empress held absolute power, and ruled by divine right, having been chosen by the great god Thesis to unite all elvenkind under her reign. The empress was destined to rule the world, and had accomplished that goal.

Orenda was skeptical of those claims. When she looked around her, she did not see the will of any god being acted out upon the world. The people of her colony were divided neatly into social strata, for the most part, unless they were those like Orenda herself. Orenda was beautiful precisely because she was not. If the queen was the portrait of beauty, then Orenda should have been the portrait of ugliness with her stout frame, wide hips, and strong profile. But Orenda was a fire elf. This put her in a unique position.

There were conflicting reports on the subject of her people’s scarcity, which she had often questioned. The official report was that they were a weak people, who bred slowly, succumbed to disease easily, and had so few numbers and such a difficult time surviving that they rejoiced when their savior, Xandra, had sent her champions to drag them from savagery to civilization. She had built the great structures that dominated the city where Orenda grew up, but though she could civilize the fire elves, she could not change their temperament, which was, like a flame, disagreeable and dangerous. Fire elves were known for their tempers, which could be set off at the slightest provocation, and would have devastating results. This was the reason that they could not maintain relationships, even with each other, not even long enough to bear a child.

Orenda knew that she did feel emotions very strongly, but she often tried to subdue them to avoid this connotation. However, it was her sheer rarity that made her beautiful- not as a person, but as a collector’s item. Most of the men she knew were earth elves, like the great empress, and when they spoke to her, it was obvious that the fascimily of love they presented was more akin to a dragon’s love of gold than a romantic’s love for their partner. So she had, so far, spurned them all. She was not a collector’s piece.

She was many things. She was a young woman, an intelligent mage, a devoutly religious child of Thesis, and a mystery, even to herself. Xandra claimed to be these things as well, but Orenda, having experienced them all herself, did not believe her. She certainly was not young by any stretch of the imagination, as the colony had been established centuries ago. Even by elven standards, Xandra was lying through her teeth about that. Orenda often wondered just how many liberties her royal artists took. When she imagined what the queen must truly look like, she saw in her mind a shriveled old hag who hid behind magical glamours and make-up, wigs and customary.

Orenda was a real mage. She had to be. Life was not kind to orphans, particularly to orphans of fallen races. Magic came naturally to Orenda, even as a child in an overcrowded workhouse. She had spent her youth on an assembly line, piecing parts from a mine she had only ever heard tell of, run by dwarves who sometimes came with heavy wagons to drop off wares. Orenda like them well enough, she supposed, but at the time she had liked anything that broke the monotony of her existence.

Orenda did not know enough about the manufacturing process, or the politics of her time and place, to know that these dwarves were forced to provide these materials. She did not know that her colony was an elven one led by Xandra, and that these people were bartering for their lives, trying to prevent war via mercantile acumen. She did not know that the raw ore they got was the most inferior product the dwarves could find without violating their contract.

She did know that there was something special about one of the blocks she received. She had taken her hammer and chisel, as she always did, to knock away the dirt and stone from the steel- when she found something.

It was something she had never seen before- but it was beautiful. It was bright red, amidst the sea of grey that was her life, and looked more fragile than she suspected it was. She looked around at the other children, and softly tinked the jewel from where it had been embedded in the ore. It fell into her hand, and she stared down at it, because it did not feel like a cold, dead thing. It felt…

Orenda had never felt anything like it before. The crystal was only about as big as the unkempt nail of her pinky finger- but it felt so much bigger. Orenda closed her hand around it, and she suddenly felt everything.

She felt the blood pumping through her veins so intensely that it could have been a coursing river- forced along by a pump so strong that it could have torn her to shreds. She felt something in the world around her, something she had always noticed, she supposed- yet never noticed. These two things were incompatible, and the nature of that incompatibility pressed against her sweat-soaked skin, and her blood pressed back, and the thin layer between the two rubbed, and rubbed, and rubbed- until it broke.

Orenda felt the fires from the forges in another room. She felt the body heat given off by every other being in the building. She felt the magma that she did not know existed, so far below her that it gave no indication of its presence. She felt the core of the sun, radiating outward, toward Xren, breathing life into everything that grew or moved. She felt the heat radiating outward from her own heart, one with all these things, with the lifeforce that moved from the sacred fires that fueled every living thing on the planet-

And she heard the screaming.

Orenda had been on fire. As soon as she realized this, she stuffed the crystal into her pocket- and wondered why she still had a pocket. Clothes were flammable- she had seen more than one accident that attested to that fact. But she was not scarred, not injured, not naked. She was completely unharmed.

But she had been found out. Her supervisor, two years older and seeming very adult at twelve, was marching toward her, grabbed her by the shoulder, and Orenda knocked her away. She glared at the girl she had never liked, and could not see her eyes begin to glow as she smiled- but this time she felt the flames engulf her.

The screams drew adults.