Introduction
Thunder rolls over the mountain tops and lightening tears the sky. Below this turmoil, a duel rages. Two figures vie in hand-to-hand combat. Sparks intervene in the blackness when lightening is not. One figure stands tall and erect and delivers murderous blows upon the smaller yet quicker figure. Dark clouds billow and the wind whistles thru the cracks in the walls of a nearby castle.
Inside, little Princess Colleen, awakened by the storm, approaches her father’s room. Her mother had died only two years before, from a bout of pneumonia, she had been told, so her father was now her comforter. Climbing on his bed, she finds it empty. She waits, thinking that he might have gone to get a midnight snack, wine and cheese, his favourite. After some time, Colleen gets up to search for him.
For a moment, the thunder stills and Colleen hears a new noise outside the window. The sound of steel striking steel. Slowly, she creeps to the window and peers out. To her horror, she sees her father run thru by a giant man, who after striking, retreats into the Western Wood. With maturity beyond her eight years, Colleen keeps herself from losing control, but quickly descends the stairs and rushes out of the castle gates thru the howling winds and drenching rain to her father’s side.