Iliphine had watched as his fellow elves had been ambushed. He'd been out for a nightly walk, gathering the berries that only showed themselves when the sun set when the smell of smoke had caught his attention. With basket in hand, he pulled his cloak tighter around himself and began walking back towards his village. He had hoped that nothing had gone too terribly wrong and that is was perhaps just a small fire accidentally spread from some of the village children.

He'd been foolish to wish such a thing. Iliphine stopped in the treeline, his basket tumbling from his hands just as a gasp tore its way out of his throat. His entire village, his home, his people. It was all in flames, the fires tearing their way through the beautiful wooden houses. Screams from his neighbors and his friends and people he knew sounded from within the frenzy, a terrible noise fracturing the peace of the night. He was frozen. He didn't know what to do, his feet stuck to the ground.

After a long moment of simply staring in cold terror, he took off into the disaster, desperately trying to pull elves out of their collapsing homes. The edges of his beloved cloak singed, his long hair absorbing the stench of the smoke and his fingers blackening with soot as he grabbed people. It was in a moment of cowardice that he fled. A soldier, a human, barged into a home he'd run into, snatching up the women and children Iliphine had just moved out of the danger of the flames.

And Iliphine fled. He fled with reckless abandon, tearing off into the woods and running until he reached the other side of the woods, and then further still. He ran past tall grasses, the sun rising over the horizon the last thing he saw before he fainted.

When he woke again, he was rocking. Or at least, it felt that way. Everything was fuzzy at first, but he was warm and rocking. That was when he realized he was being held, by a human, carried as they walked. Immediately he started to struggle, wrestling to get away from him. "Let me go! Let me go!"

He was brought into a farm where they gently laid him into a soft bed, trying to get him to calm down. Iliphine glared, fingers knotting into his cloak. "What are you going?" He hissed.