Description

Personality

Safir is intelligent, sensitive and reserved, with courtly manners, elegant bearing and a strong sense of honour. None of this prevents him from being a vicious and ruthless tyrant in the execution of the Witch’s orders. Most of the time he carries out his duties with discipline and sobriety, but there are times when his youthful spirits manifest themselves as recklessness, and he occasionally treats life like a game or an exciting adventure.

There is a cruel streak in Safir, making him only too keen to inflict punishment and suffering on those towns and villages that harbour rebellion against the witch. He believes that might is right, and as the most powerful magicians in the world, the Witch and her followers are not bound by the laws of lesser mortals.

Whatever good qualities that remain in him are directed solely at the Witch: his loyalty to her is unquestionable. He regards himself as her slave, worships her as life, reveres her as a mentor and serves her faithfully as his Queen.

Equipment

He always carries his staff, which acts as a focus and conduit for magical power, as well as a number of charms, amulets and potions to protect himself from physical, mental and magical attacks.

He also bears two ornamental daggers, which can be useful in close range duels, but in melee combat he stands no chance against a trained warrior. His true strength lies in magic alone.

History

Safir was born into a woodcutter’s family in one of the many impoverished villages of the tainted countryside, where life had been hard even before the Witch’s experiments blighted the land. The villagefolk were tough, superstitous and unforgiving, ill-prepared to welcome the child that would come into their midst.

From the moment of his birth Safir was unwelcome and unwanted. A small, sickly boy, his parents were convinced that he would not survive the harsh winter. Survive he did, but the villagefolk were not pleased, for there was something not right about the boy. He turned the milk sour and spoke to the crows. He called songbirds down into his hand and wandered about on full moon nights, listening to the howling of the wolves. Dogs fled before him and cats spat whenever he passed. An aura of ill luck seemed to follow him, carts breaking and bread going stale if he so much as glanced in their direction. It was whispered that the boy was a changeling, an unwanted child left by the Fair Folk who stole human children in exchange for their own vile offspring. Perhaps this gossip was aided by the fact that Safir didn’t look much like either of his parents. As he was dark in colour, it was speculated that his mother had dallied with a dusky-skinned gypsy, if not a faerie.

If his parents had put stock in these rumours, life would have been harder still for Safir. The countryfolk hated changelings and believed that the best way to make one leave was to torment and bully it until it ran away or died. In some of the crueller or more ignorant villages there were countless stories of changelings being led out into woods and abandoned, drowned in ponds or burnt with fire. More likely, these children were unwanted because of mental or physical defects. In this harsh countryside with its scarce resources, parents could only afford to feed useful children.

It was the other villagers who made life a particular torment for Safir. The men glowered and turned their backs, the women muttered darkly and avoided his gaze, the girls sneered and jeered when he walked by, but the other boys were the worst of all. They hunted him down and beat him, calling him freak, changeling, elf and devil.

During his sixteenth winter, events came to a head. He had gone out to fetch a pail of water from the frozen well and encountered, to his dismay, a group of his tormentors returning from a drinking session at the alehouse. Deciding to have some fun with the ‘changeling’, they encircled him and began their taunts. The leader of the boys, Trystan, took a wooden staff and began to lay into Safir, who felt the usual fear, anger and shame, along with a new sensation: power. As Trystan raised the staff to strike again, it suddenly turned in his hand and rebounded upon him, striking a terrible blow to his head. Safir felt sixteen years of pain and rage churning inside him; he opened his mouth and spat out words he had never spoken before. The words flew through the air and became cutting blades, tearing through Trystan’s body and shredding him in a frenzy of blood.

There was a moment of stunned, horrified silence. Then the other boys ran, screaming and shouting in terror. Safir ran too, in the opposite direction, into the dark winter wood, away from the village that had been his life, with a sob in his chest. He had no idea how he had done the deed, but he was now a murderer and a sorcerer. He would be hunted down and executed by the villagers for his crime.

He ran for hours through the moonlit wood with tears frozen on his cheeks, further from the village than he had ever been. He was lost now, and would never be able to find his way back, so perhaps that meant they would not find him either. At last he stumbled into a clearing and sank to the ground to catch his breath. It was then that She appeared.

First he heard a beautiful sound, the sound of thousands of little bells jingling. The wood blazed with a sudden golden light and he saw, to his amazement, that a carriage was approaching, drawn by two fine horses, purest black and white. The horses’ hooves were shod with silver and seemed to fly over snow, stone, and wood alike, leaving no mark. The harness and trappings of the carriage were set with precious stones and appointed with gold and silver ornaments. The wheels of the carriage, like the horses’ hooves, somehow flew over the terrain with uncanny deftness. The carriage drew to a halt and She emerged, the most beautiful lady Safir had ever seen.

In those days the Witch’s powers, mental and magical, were already at their peak, but she had not yet suffered from the corruption and the physical and mental degeneration that plagued her in later years. She was the picture of beauty and strength. Her body was clad in raiment of finest emerald silk and yellow samite, while her hair was bound with golden flowers. Her exotic features hinted at otherworldy ancestry, with her delicate heart-shaped face, large green eyes and mouth like a rosebud. An aura of heat and light poured from her person, as though she was a living fire or a star fallen to earth.

To Safir, who had grown up surrounded by rude and simple villagefolk, she was the most perfect being he had ever seen. He bowed his head, overwhelmed by her presence. It was then that She spoke.

“What art thou, lad, and wherefore dost thou come to be here? For I perceive that thou art no ordinary child, but thou hast within thee the power of gramarye, which men call magic.”

Her voice was like nightingale’s song cured in honey and adorned with silver bells. Even her speech was alien to him; the high-class language of the court, which he had never learnt and could barely understand. How could such an exalted person speak to an insect like him! Trembling with awe and fear, he remained silent.

She laughed, and for an instant the whole wood seemed to burst into spring blossom. “Be not afraid, boy. My power, which does dismay thee so, is akin to thine own. We are of the same nature, thou and I. I am of a mind to bring thee with me. Would that please thee? We would ride in the silent forest of Tam, hunting the white harts with bows of gold and silver. We would feast on the banks of the River Nix with the wood-fairies, whose autumn wine is pressed from fruit of the gardens of paradise. We would gather wildflowers with Persephone, dance with the witches of Clan Breuwyn, hear the poetry of the Jinn in the shimmering desert, chase the phoenix to its lair in the highest mountain in the world, follow the dragons in their silent journeys across the starlit skies and more, so much more. Would that please thee?”

“And if thou wilt swear to love me and serve me, I will teach thee to use the charms thou hast, but knowest not. I will teach thee to speak the tongues of the beasts and the birds. I will teach thee to summon and bind the spirits of wood and sky, to call the storm and scatter the sunlight. I will teach thee to conjure fire, bind frost and command lightning. I will teach thee to weave enchantments, compel others to thy will, take the shape of fish, dragon or snake, prophesy the future, bewitch the senses, brew potions, curse thine enemies, bless thy friends, and more. Much, much more. I will teach thee the one thousand and one secret arts of the High Magic. Wilt thou come with me?”

Safir barely managed to nod his head.

The Witch was true to her word. She spirited him away to her magic tower and looked after him like her own child. She fed him the rarest delicacies (including fairy cupcakes), showered him with gifts and educated him as a high lord. She groomed him to be her successor and perhaps her future consort. Under the Witch’s guidance, Safir grew to be one of the most powerful magicians in the land.

But for all the Witch taught Safir, she never taught him to be kind or compassionate, to defend the weak, to respect the balance of power that maintains the world, or to use his gifts for the benefit of others. Only the strong had the right to rule, and as he and the witch were the strongest magicians in the world, they should have the right to be Queen and King of all creation.

The name of Safir Azgard is now feared throughout the Kingdom of Light. Wherever he appears to lead an army of the Witch’s foul creatures, disaster is sure to follow. He turns his formidable magic to the task of destroying all who oppose the Queen of Dragons. Town after town of rebels has been slaughtered and laid waste by his foul sorcery, the land cursed and blighted so that it will never bear fruit again.

All those who oppose the Witch shall be destroyed by her Prince of Dragons: Safir Azgard!