To Break a Hollow Heart
	Our story begins as most stories do: with a child, orphaned and abandoned, but tenacious and bright. A barren life amidst the gutters and filth that are synonymous with the Rhojidani slums; but a life filled with hope, nonetheless. You see, Mila’s parents were as common as they come. Soldier meets serving wench and leaves the mother to raise a newborn alone; duty calls and what importance does a child hold over the King’s will? Penniless and disparaged, Mila’s mother tried her best to keep what meager food she could on the table. Call it what you will, stress, despair, a fading will, but Mila’s mother could only hold out for a few years. When Mila was around the age of five, her mother passed, leaving Mila alone in the cruel world she was born into.
	Fear not, however, for Mila was not only bright, she was cunning, quick, and daring. Stealing a loaf of bread here, some leftovers there, a blanket from a stall on the other side of the city, she got by as best as a street urchin could. When she turned 16, Mila, graced with beauty as well as her sharp wit, gained employ at a tavern in Rhojidan. Though she was beautiful, she was still just a street rat. She worked herself into exhaustion every day only to crawl back to her hovel at night, repeating her routine in a cycle that breaks so many, a cycle that broke her mother.
	Two years of working in the tavern taught Mila two things: one, the world will not give, you must take, and two, something had to change. One day, when the tavern was slower, the innkeeper had Mila run to the market stalls to fetch some fresh vegetables for the stew that would feed patrons that night. Wandering through the maze of spices and fabrics, Mila saw a man that stood out like a sore thumb, or rather, stood out like a gem amongst mud. A scholar of the University of Kalmyr, an elvish man wrapped in the finest silks she had ever seen, surely enchanted with all sorts of arcane secrets. As he meandered aimlessly through the market, stopping to peruse this and that, he idly spun a gout of flame about his fingertips, as easy as it might be to twirl a stick for any normal man. Mila was taken, her eyes alight. That was her answer. That was how she would change her fate, escape the tortuous existence she plodded through. Magic.
	Mila followed the man, working up the courage to approach someone so obviously beyond her station. Tapping him on the shoulder as timidly as could be she asked, “How do you do that?” pointing towards the wisps of flame amidst his unburnt fingers. “Oh, this?” he replied casually, as if it was second nature to manipulate the elements, just as easy as breathing. Mila nodded eagerly and inquired if he might be able to teach someone like her something so awe-inspiring. Pleased to disseminate the magical knowledge of his esteemed guild, the man offered basic tutelage in the school of evocation magic. She took to it quickly, visiting him everyday after her shift at the tavern. Alas, however, the man had to return to Kalmyr after just two short weeks. But the foundations were there, and Mila was nothing if not tenacious. Practicing, day in and day out, whenever she could get a free moment, she learned to control the flames as best as someone without any formal training could. A natural aptitude for magic and a blisteringly quick mind allowed her to become quite good at spinning those gouts of fire about her fingers, manifesting them into small littles orbs, and occasionally singing an alley wall with a thrown burst. But her self-taught skills plateaued, and she knew she had to seek out a real teacher. And so it was that she decided to leave Rhojidan in search of hope and in search of magic.
	Packing her meager belongings and a few weeks’ worth of bread, hardened cheese, and dried meat in a rucksack, Mila set off on the Imperial Road; she learned of a boat to Kalmyr on the docks of Hessa from a gate guard. With vague directions in mind from the guard, she headed south. Days of walking, sleeping in covered alcoves or wherever she could be out of sight, had led her to a fork in the road. She hadn’t the slightest clue of which way to go, so leaving her fate up to chance, she turned left and continued her journey. But a few short hours of walking and a man appeared, seemingly from nowhere, on the road with two bulking companions. The men were dressed all in black and looked rather menacing. Mila focused her mind and began to call the fire, lest things go sour. Before she could summon a gout of flame to scare off these ne’er do wells, another man she hadn’t seen before grabbed her from behind, squeezing her arms uselessly to her sides. Before she was knocked unconscious with a swift blow to the skull, she caught a glimpse of a woman sauntering up the road, not cocky, but sure of herself. She would come to miss those eyes.
	Mila awoke with a start and took stock of her surroundings. Cold, damp, dark, and an earthen smell told her she was underground, and the manacles around her wrists told her she was in a dungeon. She struggled against the chains and attempted to melt them with her fire, but to no avail; either her magic wasn’t strong enough or these chains were not made of normal metal. Whatever the case, it seemed she was stuck there for the time being. She figured she might as well try to rest, she’d need her energy if she was to escape.
	A swift kick to the gut had Mila curled up and wide awake. Her face was next to a bowl of gruel and she gazed up into the sneering face of a sallow man, a guard of the prison.
“Welcome to Hollowheart, pretty,” the man said through cracking lips, licking them all the while with a lascivious look on his face. Mila said nothing, hoping her silence would make him leave. Blessedly, she was correct; he turned and exited the cell, leaving her with only the low light of a nearly burned out torch. The next few days passed like this: a rude awakening, a snide comment, and a bowl of filthy gruel. Mila began to hope less and less as the days went on in the same agonizing way, beginning to rob her of the hope she held for a better life. Perhaps this dungeon was her life now, perhaps she should have stayed in Rhojidan and accepted the hand she was dealt.
	A week later, Mila was awoken not this time with a prod or a kick, but by a knock on her cell door, a thick wooden thing banded with iron and possessing a window covered in slim metal bars. Two men, different from The Sallow Man who so often tormented her in the mornings and nights, entered her cell. The looks on their faces spell a kind of trouble Mila had seen all too often living in the slums. One of the men grinned and remarked,
“My my, well aren’t you just as pretty as the boys have been saying,” elbowing his fellow guard in the side all the while.
“She sure is, Crick,” the other guard replied, a twinkle of malice in his gaze as he stared at Mila’s chest. She began to scream, flinging as much fire as she could muster at them, easily dodged by the guards as she has barely eaten in a week beyond the morning gruel. They began to remove her rags when the door to the cell opened once more, slowly this time, deliberately. Mila heard nothing before she saw a sword protruding from one of the guard’s chests, his eyes bulging comically as he registered the sharp object impaling him. The other guard turned and struck blindly at the assailant, but she pirouetted flawlessly and drug her blade across the remaining guards throat, coating the stone floor with crimson. Mila recognized this woman. The one who sauntered up the road before she was taken a little over a week ago. This was Draena Hollowheart, de facto bandit queen and incredibly lethal.
"You alright?" Draena asked with a glint in her eye, gaze flickering to the scorch marks on the walls. "You're a feisty one," she remarks before Mila has a chance to answer Draena's question.
"Why did you just slaughter your own men?" Mila asked, stunned and bewildered at the bandit's behavior.
"Toads like that are a dime a dozen. Besides, I saw some potential in you when our paths first crossed; potential is rare amongst sellswords and cutt-throats," Draena said casually, as if killing two men under her was typical.
"Well...thank you..." Mila paused, unsure of who she was speaking to.
"Draena. Pleasure's mine, Mila," she replied, filling in the silence. Draena unlocked the manacles binding Mila to the wall and waltz over the bodies out of the cell, tossing a, "You coming?" back at Mila.
Without a word, Mila stood and followed Draena out of the cell, up the stairs at the end of the long hallway, and into Hollowheart Fortress proper. As Draena asked questions of what Mila was doing alone along the Imperial Road so close to Hollowheart Fortress, she was filled in on Mila's motivations for such a journey. Dreams of granduer, hopes of magical mastery, a way out of the muck covered life she was bound to in Rhojidan. Draena saw in Mila the lust for adventure, the need for more that so plagued her as a child. The want to make something better for herself. Instantly, Draena decided this young girl from Rhojidan would have what she desired.
A few weeks later, after Mila had been set up with small quarters of her own that even included a large wash basin, Draena and a mysterious man knocked at Mila's door. Opening it, Mila saw an elvish man standing next to Draena, bedecked in robes that were not unfamiliar to her. Draena elbowed the man.
"Spellslinger Alexandrius, at your service," the man said with a flourish. "I've come to tutor you in your magical studies."
All questions fled Mila's mind as the eagerness to learn more magical techniques overtook all else. The sparkles in Mila's eye was enough for Draena. With a smirk, she headed off. Mila would never know that earlier that day, Draena had ambushed the scholar and his few guards; slaying the soldiers easily, she offered the man a choice. Come and teach a friend of hers magic, or join the guards in death. The choice was easy for the man and so it was that Mila had a University trained tutor all to herself.
Months passed and Mila grew ever so skilled in the art of evocation. Fire was a second skin for her. Twirling it about, manipulating it effortlessly, it came so naturally. Ice and air, lighting and earth, the elements were at her disposal, waiting to be called by her skilled hand and shaped to her will. All the while, Mila and Draena spent an increasing amount of time together. Day in and day out, Draena would return from raids and immediately rush to Mila, eager to see the woman who had grown into a confident, powerful mage.
During a casual stroll through the gloomy dusk of the woods surrounding Hollowheart Fortress, Draena silently reached for Mila's hand, genuinely surprised to discover that not only did Mila not recoil, but she grasped Draena's hand ever so tightly, as if Draena was an anchor for Mila, holding her steady and keeping her in safe harbors.
After a year spent in the fortress and constantly at Draena's side, Mila felt she was ready to contribute to whatever it was Draena was constantly leaving her for. She figured it was time to experience the world, and why shouldn't she want to spend more time with Draena. A few hours of pleading and a sad face had Draena reluctantly agreeing. It just so happened a scout had come to the bandit queen in the early morning with news of a wealthy looking caravan of merchants traveling from Rhojidan towards Hessa with a small collection of guards, not near enough to stand against a contingent of merciless bandits. A few days of planning saw Draena setting out with Mila in tow, a group of some of her most savage fighters at their backs; Draena would be damned if some slouch of a warrior didn't pull his weight and Mila paid the price for it. They reached the caravan within a few hours, it was remarkably closed to the fortress already. Draena found that slightly odd, but thought nothing of it as she saw the excitement in Mila's face. They would wait for nightfall, then make their move.
The moon was high and the sky was clear, providing enough light for the Hollowheart retinue to see, but not enough to easily be seen. Draena counted 12 guards to her band of 30 something. This would be one of the easiest fights she'd had in a while. Draena led the charge herself, as her crossbowmen took out the few archers the guards had. As a stray fireball whizzed past, catching on of the last of the guardsmen in the chest, Draena saw something in the surrounding shadows. A glint of metal, polished and perfected in a castle forge. She knew this was too easy.
Nearly an entire centurion of Rhojidani soldiers charged from the shadows. They were outnumbered and likely outmatched. But Mila was here, and Draena would fight like a monster to make sure they returned to the fortress together. Parrying, thrusting, pivoting, and slicing, Draena carved a massacre from the ranks of the soldiers. She was a woman possessed with a savagery that was wholly unnatural. A crimson mist followed in her wake as she cut down man after man, letting her body flow to the rhythm of battle. She heard a cry. Turning her head after decaptitating another soldier, she saw Mila had been struck down. Distracted by incinerating arrows before they reached her, she had not noticed the soldier behind her, who now had his sword through her stomach. Draena let out a bloodcurdling roar and launched towards Mila, intent on ripping the soldier limb from limb. Before she could reach them Mila had singed his face clean off, and he lay twitching in his death throes.
Draena ordered her men to take out the stragglers, she had slain nearly 20 Rhojidani soldiers on her own, the fight had been won by her bloodlust. But as she laid Mila's head on her lap, she knew it did not matter. Mila's skin was sickly pale, a cold sheen of sweat on her brow, and a rattle in her lungs from the blood welling up in her breath. The light began to fade from Mila's eyes as tears fell freely from Draena's.
"Found something, boss," one of Draena's men shouted, prying open a box of intricate scrolls wrapped neatly with silken ribbons.
Eyeing the scrolls, Draena recognized them as scribed spells, likely purchased by the merchants from scholars; brethren of the mage held in the Hollowheart dungeons no doubt.
"Bring me those scrolls," demanded Draena in a tone that brokered no argument, a sense of urgency obvious in her voice. The bandit brought her as many scrolls as he could carry in his arms, depositing them at her feet. Praying to Yan and Kef and any other primeval being she could think of that wielded the tides of fate, Draena read a scroll as Mila took her last breath.
Instantly suffused with the knowledge imparted by the scribed spell she reminded herself to thank the gods later, for she had been gifted knowledge of divinity, of healing, of the ability to save the woman she loves. Invoking powerful healing magic, Draena placed her hands upon the leaking wound in Mila's stomach. Draena's hands began to glow with a warm golden light, enveloping Mila, knitting her flesh together. After a few agonizing moments that seemed to be years to Draena, Mila started and awoke with a gasp, coughing and inhaling as much air as her lungs could hold. But something was amiss. Draena pushed the odd feeling to the side for now; Mila was not dead, their story had not ended. Not yet.
Over the next few days, Mila was confined to her bed and Draena would here nothing else about it. Rest was needed in droves, but rest wasn't going to fix what broke inside Mila that night. A person doesn't greet Rho and leave unchanged. The underworld leaves a mark no amount of divinity can cleanse.
Mila became withdrawn, sullen, temperamental. Where before she would gladly walk the woods with Draena hand in hand, now all she wanted to do was read books that the University scholar recommended, to meditate, and on occasion, as Mila put it, commune with "him", whoever "him" was. And so they drifted. Ever so slowly the bond between Draena and Mila crumbled. Not for lack of effort on Draena's part. She still held hope in her heart for Mila, that the bright, lively girl she fell for would return.
One day, Draena picked a beautiful bouquet of roses for Mila, hoping to bring the light back to her eyes with a touch of romance.When she knocked upon the door, it swung open, not closed fully. All she saw on Mila's bed was a letter. As her heart sank, Draena removed the wax seal from the paper and read the message:
Dearest Draena,
Belial calls and love holds nothing for me any longer.
I will not forget you.
‑ Meela
To this day, Draena hears tales of a bewitchingly beautiful woman roaming the Shadowlands, communing with the darkness and whispering to the creatures that inhabit it. Some say she steals your soul, some say she condemns you to the darkest corners of Rho's domain, but Draena knows the only thing that wretched witch could ever steal from her was her heart.