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Aven always knew he was going to die. From the age of 7, running away from home with little more than the clothes on his back and an old, thick cloak, Aven registered that he was probably going to die within the week.
Yet that death never came, he thrived, he grew, he made a friend in Embo, and he honed his skills. He fashioned a bow out of an old, gnarled log and taught himself to shoot, he sewed new clothes together from cloths he would relieve from travellers to his forest. *His* forest, he became the king and the other creatures his subjects.
After 11 years of almost complete isolation, Aven decided to head off to a new city. His life had become dull, and he seemed adventure. He studied Infernal and Draconic at the nearest library, and offered his services as a Dragon Slayer. Again, Aven felt the threat of death looming over him, each time he climbed a mountain and convinced a dragon to escape far away, leaving only a single scale or claw.
And it was one such adventure that he was attacked by a griffin, and felt the chill of death's scythe closer than ever before, before finding out that an adventuring party had tamed it, and was also going to kill the dragon. Aven joined them.
Fighting Lylen, that was when death very nearly claimed Aven. Faerryn has transformed into the mighty dragon from the mountain, and attacked with a wave of thunder and lightning, but Aven was too slow, and it knocked him clean off his feet, and temporarily out of the land of the living. Aven could feel himself drifting away, further and further from the prime material plane, until suddenly he was back, he had been healed, and a brutally stinging scar ran diagonally across his chest, only visible as the blast ripped his shirt.
Now, he finds himself once again faced with death. Has it been a few months since that fight? Years? Decades? Unlikely, Aven always believed he would die before age 40 if he was lucky. Only now, Aven's not quite so ready to accept his fate. He will escape this prison, save Faerryn's people, and live through it, because now Aven's not just fighting for survival. He's fighting for freedom, the freedom of others, and he's fighting for his friends.