Interlude:

Long ago there were two kingdoms. These kingdoms, the Dragon and the
Unicorn, had been fighting for many years; for so long that
no one even remembered what the war was about. It happened that one day
a king, Kale of the Dragon, had a son. His counterpart,
Solen of the Unicorn, already had a daughter. The two agreed to marry
their children to end the fighting.

When the son was sixteen, he met his bride; she was eighteen. They hated
each other on site. For days they fought and yelling was
the only sound heard in Kale’s palace. Then one day the prince
disappeared. The door to his room was locked from the inside, his
guards were dead from terrible wounds, and no one had heard anything.
His father was desperate. Sorcery was the obvious reason
and this caused all his brave warriors to find other places to be.
Abandoned and alone, the king turned to his fellow ruler. Solen in turn
sent out his warriors; none of which returned.

Despair claimed the kingdom and the neighboring king decided to leave.
On the day Solen was to leave, however, he discovered his
daughter was missing. All appeared to be normal in her room except that
she wasn’t there. The whole palace was searched with no
results. Now both kings had lost their children. All was not as it
seemed though.

The daughter, Alia, had chosen to take matters into her own hands. Her
future husband, Werlas, may not have been perfect, but he
was nice. The fights had mostly been to irate their parents. After all,
what gave them the right to decide whom the pair could or could
not love and marry? Alia, a very determined young lady, had taken a
horse and was traveling towards a nearby mountain even as her
disappearance was noted. No one, sorcery or not, was going to mess up
her love life.

For several weeks, Alia searched the mountain that her heart knew hid
Werlas. Time and again, she faced monsters, bandits, and even
magical traps, only to find nothing at the end of a path. After months,
Alia began to give up hope. Werlas was probably already dead,
the supplies were almost gone, and she had never been so tired. One
night, after a cold supper, the princess fell into a fitful sleep.

A dream filled her sleep. In it, Werlas was alive but in terrible pain.
An evil sorcerer had kidnapped him because of his beauty. Every
night the wizard tortured and raped the young prince. Every day he
healed the young man. All the time she had been searching for her
love, the wizard had been trying to break him. Alia called out to Werlas
in the dream and promised to find him no matter what.

In the morning, Alia saw a path that had not been there the night
before. The wizard was inviting her. The path turned out to be
dangerous and trap filled, but nothing stopped the young woman. Finally,
after a year of searching, she had reached the wizard’s
palace. It was huge. At least as large as the mountain, yet it wasn’t
visible from anywhere but the path. This meant the wizard had to
be strong. Alia, head held high, sword drawn and ready, entered the
palace gate to reclaim her lost love.

No one knows what happened in the palace. A group of hunters found the
young princess and her prince lying near the forest at the
foot of the mountain. They both had terrible wounds and it was obvious
the two had been in a horrific battle. The prince told them of
the war they had fought. How love had become their greatest weapon and
saved them at last. But the wizard’s final revenge had been
to destroy his palace around them. Now both would die of their wounds.
There was nothing the hunters could do.

"I love you forever," Werlas whispered to his princess and took her
hand.

"Longer," Alia answered.

So they died in each other’s arms and even share the same grave. The
legend has been lost in time. Now it will be reborn.