When her mother died Euphralajania was left alone, to live in the forest her family had left her. They had lived in this forest for almost twenty generations, there used to be other Forest-Stalkers but almost three generations ago there was a war. During that time the Forressat-Spirions were seen as a threat to the Blood-Warrior armies because of their talents and skills, and so they were purged. Very few had survived and without enough contact with others of their kind their numbers had dwindled radically.

For the past two years the only two Stalkers left in the forest had been Jana and her mother, Euphralasamillion. Jana had a brother, older than her, but he had left to find a different way of life that could offer him more. So now that Jana was the lone bi-ped inhabitant of the Euphrala forest, she found it in her interest to preserve what had been left to her.

It seemed not long after she was orphaned that she became a raging, violent and malicious torrent of anger. Partly at her mother for leaving her and not fighting to stay with her. Though mainly at the intruder that Euphralasamillion was battling with, something she suspected to be a Shadow-Stalker. This drove her to ensure her solitary life, by exacting her vengeances on any and all intruders to her forest. For the only reason that they were intruding and so was the Shadow-Stalker that destroyed her mother.

Everyday, Jana would train herself, honing her skills to a fine art, pushing herself, making herself stronger, building her will with such relentless drive. She had to be better, advance further than any other of her kind; if they could beat her mother then she must become tougher, smarter and faster. Today was no different, she had to train. She had a route through the forest that she had trained on for almost a week now, much longer than this and she would know it too well and that defeated the object of her training.

Jana stood, looking down toward her feet, at the leaf litter shed by the great tree she stood under, its trunk to her left. She craned her neck to look directly above her, almost 12 feet up from her head a singular bough protruded, she took two tiny steps forward and one left, closer to the tree. She lowered her head back down, and crouched down on the balls of her feet, in an instant her legs sprung straight and her body hurtled into the air. She remembered not being able to make this jump when she was younger, but no matter how many times her mother told her she was not ready, she still tried. As she reached the bough, she cupped her hands onto it, feeling the familiar bark, she swung forward to gain momentum and on the peak of her backward swing she pulled her arms sharply. She had propelled herself high enough to pull her body over the branch, and land back down upon it with feline accuracy.

Roughly half way through her circuit for that morning she froze, loitering in entangled tree limbs above a figure, wandering, no doubt knowingly, through her forest. She could tell he knew for two key reasons, the figure was twitchy, edgy, looking around, all around, up in the trees, over the shoulder, off into the distance – looking for her. The second reason was far more obvious, the direction from which this figure had come laid a village, and in that village she knew the villagers talked, gossiped and spread warnings of curses and haunting of the Euphrala woodland. On whole this deprived Jana of a bit of sport but at least it kept her in peace and solitude.

Immediately Jana dropped her body down from the bough, keeping her hands on the tree, swung full circle around the limb and slingshot herself diagonally toward her target.

At the abnormal and sudden sound the figure spun round snapping his head upward, revealing a male face, toward the tops of the trees. As he spun back around to hasten his pace off, he heard a thud, turning back he saw her, Jana, approaching him, face sullen and eyes glaring.

As she reached him she sprung into the air, spun and kicked him across the face, knocking him straight to the ground. She stood over him, and as he rolled over to look up at her, he saw a malicious flame roaring in her eyes, and through sheer fear he shut his eyes tight, curled up, arms over his head, like a small, lost, lonely child.