Jenulka was the wife of Feddil the Cruel, the Tyrant of Almadin, in ages long past. And Feddil was a beast of a man, big and fat, old and gross in his habits. Yet he was strong, stronger than any, and wickeder, and more cunning. His chief delight was in making war, his greatest pleasure in tormenting his people; and especially Jenulka, the youngest, smallest and most beautiful of his three wives.

Once there were three worlds, Aachan, Tallallame, and Santhenar, each with its own human species: Aachim, Faellem and us, old human. Then, fleeing out of the void between the worlds came a new fourth people, the Charon. They were just a handful, desperate, on the precipice of extinction. They found a weakness in the Aachim, took their world from them and forever changed the balance between the worlds.

My tale, is not a tale of Santhenar. It is a tale of the distant past, when I was young and we were newly come Aachan. Once we had a world but we lost it, treacherously cast into the void. The void is a nightmare of savagery! A million kind of creatures dwell there, each preying on the other’s, each changing constantly in a desperate attempt to survive. Intelligent creatures as well as mindless beasts. You know how great and powerful we Charon are, chronicler, but we were not good enough to survive the void. We died there, a million of us, dwindled to nothing. We were almost extinct! So we determined to conquer, to possess, to strike down the enemy first. Never to yield! Never to trust!