...Varnius had been up all night. Shuffling his feet about, muttering to hisself, and occasionally kicking his
dead apprentice... That was about the tenth one he'd been through that month. They would do something
stupid, and he would kill them... And then he would be up all night trying to decide what to do.


"Stupid mortal human, arg!" muttered Varnius under his breath. "If I only had a decent one, not too
stupid, not too ugly, and one that gave me all due respect!" He sighed, "but there is no mortal under this
sky that would fit that... the only a creature of my design could fit all that."
He cackled. "Wait! That's it!" he cried out in what joy he was capable of. Varnius began to look smug.
He went into his laboratory, and neither Zagrat nor Adventurer saw him for quite a long time.....


* * *

Late winter, three years later, Varnius emerged. After test upon test, he had it! (You do not want to know
what horrible acts, nor horrible mistakes he made along the way to perfection, the suffering that took
place. Nor do you wish to have revealed to you what awful methods he used in creating...)
‘Perhaps you are not male, but, you are FAR better," Varnius told his newborn creation as he held it up in
the light of the glowing orbs. You see, he had tried again and again to get a male for his finished project,
but each he created, came low in intelligence, and incredibly ugly...but the first female he used came out
perfect, as he saw.
Varnius raised the child like his own daughter, and assisted her in learning from his magical teachings,
which no mortal had ever done, and lived. And so, she loved him, and truly was the perfect servant, and
the only thing Varnius had ever cared for....


One day, when she was ten, Varnius said, "Morgana, it is time you learned the full extent of what you are
capable of. You are special, in physique, you are not only graceful, womanly, cunning, for that is only
you as Dark Elf , as you are now.... You also have the ability to change into a Fox...not just any fox, but
a FoXx, a special race that once lived deep within Dandyloes Despair...long long ago, before anything
did." Varnius sighed, the FoXxes meant something to him. They had found him, and Takara, the birth
mother of Morgana's Dark Elf side, deep within the Dark Portal, where Zagrat had intended to keep them
both locked away forever. If it were not for this race teaching them the ways of the caverns, the ways of
staying alive, they would surely have perished. Soon after Varnius escaped, Zagrat had killed off the last
of the FoXx kind, and shortly after, Varnius' memory blanked. Perhaps you wonder where he got the
specimen for creating Morgana...but Varnius' story is for another day, and I have already told more than
he would wish you to know...oh, but that's enough of that...

"What?" Morgana asked impatiently, she wanted to get back to tinkering with things in his lab...

Varnius smiled, "I'm not sure how it works, but you are a sort of were creature, you should have the
ability, try..."

Morgana laughed at her father, "You can't be serious!" The look on her face gave her the answer. She
frowned with uncertainty. "You...are, serious.." He nodded. She ran her fingers through her hair. "Well,
how does it work? What am I supposed to do?" Varnius shrugged at her, and walked out the door.


Morgana tried all possible things she could think of, which wasn't really much, since she had no idea what
she was supposed to be doing...she mentally thought FoXx, she imagined turning into a FoXx, step by
step....but nothing worked. One day she decided her father was mad, that he was getting to old. But the
despair of this thought saddened her to an extent that for one second she wished with all her might he was
quite sane, that she was what he said... and then her legs and arms begin to shrink, and grow a beautiful
uncertain rust red, silver, black colour fur. Her nails grew out into sharp black claws, her teeth elongated,
and whiskers sprouted from the sides of her nose....and seconds later, she was a FoXx.


"Daddy?" she called out in an odd tone.


"What?" he muttered from the next room, walking away from his studies to meet the demands of his
daughter, he turned very pale. "Morgana!" he ran over and hugged her neck, beaming with all his might at
her.

"What, what do I look like?" Varnius led her into another room, and brought out a large silver mirror.

She peered in, and a FoXx, the size of a pony, with multi-hued eyes, with a reddish, silverish, blackish
coat, and a big bushy tail peered back. Her mouth dropped open, revealing long sharp fangs. She thought
the FoXx beautiful....but it wasn't her..she was just a pale skinned, black haired, silver eyed, plain Dark
Elf!
...not this...

She looked up at Varnius, and he said, "This is as much of you, as your other form. You will become
accustomed to it, I promise." He hugged her, and for some reason, she felt better.

"But what if I need to be in my other form...I cannot handle potions and bottles like this!"

"Do the same as you did to change, it should be easy now." Morgana nodded, she sat for a moment, and
changed back into a Dark Elf, feeling like she had always been able to do it.

Varnius grinned at her. "Ach, back to work."


*
The years grew many in number, and on her eighteenth year, the adventurers came.

At first they stood no chance, and died many times, Varnius and Morgana would sit back and laugh at
them. But one day a small band grew intelligent, and defeated Varnius. When Morgana heard his howl,
she ran to escape, but stumbled into a great fighter, whose name she never knew, and he knocked her
out, put an empty grain sack over her head, and took her back to Tranos with him.


*
When she woke up, she found herself deposited in the Town Square, alone.

Quickly, she dashed off into the first building she saw, which happened to be the Adventurer's Guild.
Once inside she saw people going back and forth, totally preoccupied with their missions. Not knowing
the way back home, she quickly picked up, that to join this guild, she simply needed the yellow flower
she had seen down the street. Thinking this would help her blend in, she joined the guild. When asked her
name, she would say Morgana Shadowfax, fearing some word of her may have gotten around, and she
would be sought out and slain.


She saw others going down into a pit, and fighting monsters, so she did the same. She wasn't doing too
well, so she called for help, and soon, she found a young man, Royce Elendil, (who didn't really know
what he was doing either) that would keep her company, and travel through the lands with her.


One day, they ventured to the Dark Cellar, and met an older, and a little wiser (yet still quite young) man
named Larian. He took them to Devardec, and she became a citizen, on request of Elendil (for so she
took to calling Royce), and she felt she loved him dearly by then. There, Elendil joined the Rouge's Guild,
and, quite by accident, Morgana did too. It took awhile, but a friendly goddess revoked her guildship for
her, and she joined the Wizard's Guild.


She grew, and Elendil, whom she felt so dearly for, fell in love with Julliet, and Morgana grew bitter and
cold. In hopes of gaining some sort of vengence, she foolishly betrothed herself to Ishtar, a cruel man out
only for self gain. Inside, she began to hate herself for affianceing this man she did not care for, nor
hardly knew, and turned herself out to hate him as well. All through their engagement, however, she
always treated him kindly... until one day, he disappeared. Feeling herself rid of him, she happily started a
relationship with Alistir... only to find Ishtar had not left for good. Ishtar came and romanced her, and she
found that during her time with him, she had truly come to care for him, and it broke her heart to tell her
she had left him for Alistir.


Shortly after Ishtar's return, she joined the Temple of Change, finding it her calling in life, the
never-ending force that gives everything a little shove to keep going. She first spoke to Davar, Hero of
Change, who sent her out in the world to bring him a token of her dedication to the Works of the Lady
Khan, this token being a Shimmering Emerald. After months of searching, she finally came across one
deep in the bowls of a dungeon, covered in dust. Wiping it clean, she brought it to Davar, who initiated
her into the Order of Change, where her life truly began..


After years of engagement, Morgana finally married Alistir, a commitment that she was sure would last, if
not anything else. But, of course, she was wrong, things Change. They grew estranged, divorced, and
once again she was cold...


So ends Morgana's Ballad, yet the story writes on...