I was an average farmer. On an average day. With average friends and an average life. We lived in an average village, on the average edge of the known kingdom, beside an average and quiet wooded landscape. The forests were quiet, the kingdoms pressures a distant problem. Politics need not apply.

But there was something wrong with today. Not the day itself, but a gut feeling that something just wasnt quite right. In hindsight, the group of slavers waiting for my friends and I might have had something to do with that feeling.

Slavers, you ask? Well, as hard as it is for me to believe, those slavers werent out for common farming folk like me. They were after the descendants of the dryads, long thought destroyed and lost to the pages of history. And nestled amongst the forest, in the middle of an unnatural lake, lies the last member of that grove.

Samsara, the hamadryad at the center of this school, didnt call for me to find her. She called to my friends. To learn who they are, to grow and to live free of oppression from those who sought to use them.

I wasnt supposed to be here. Samsara knew not of my existence. And yet, she cannot deny that I have some purpose in this place, learning beside my friends to harness the same power they control.

So I must navigate this new world. Of magic, danger and strangely attractive women.

And maybe, for the first time in my life. Ill find where I belong.