http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=655636<br/><br/>During the waning few years of the Last War, Reala went to war alongside her shield sisters from the Eldeen Reaches. They were engaging against a scout team from Sharn, when they were outmaneuvered and pressed into a gravely disadvantageous position. Knowing when to fight and when to cut and run, Reala and her sisters decided to run, but Reala tended to wear heavier armor and was much slower and a lot less stealthy than the other girls. She was lagging behind, but encouraging her sisters to leave her if they had to, if thats what it took for them to get away. And when the other girls looked back, Reala had vanished.<br/><br/>Seemingly out of nowhere, a man had dropped on top of her and shoved her through a thick growth of bushes, into a small clearing where they faced off. She shifted.. and so did he! They tussled for a moment in their bestial forms, and she was able to hold him off, but when they both shifted back at the same time, he had an even greater strength advantage and was able to overpower her. He was able to tie her up and left the field with Reala as his battle trophy.<br/><br/>She had assumed, based of reports from other released prisoners, that it would be a matter of stewing in a cage for a few days and then being ransomed off back to her own people. But instead, she found herself stripped naked, strung up by her wrists in front of what she had assumed was the captain's tent. He produced a lash and started to ask questions, to which she just stubbornly shook her head.<br/><br/>It only took the first stroke for the young shifter to start screaming. Her first screams came out all bestial sounding, since she had shifted in an attempt to summon the strength to break free of her bindings. She squirmed as he struck her again, and again, her legs flailing, her cries of pain echoing through the camp.<br/><br/>The other soldiers just watched, seeming to be amused by the spectacle. It saddened her that the war had turned what she could only assume were basically good men into bloodthirsty animals. But she didn't have a whole lot of attention for such concerns, in fact as the lash struck her pale flesh over and over, she started to wonder if she was even meant to survive this. By the time she spotted the man who had initially captured her, she was covered in blood and welts, barely able to keep her head up to gaze hopefully at him. Maybe it was just wishful thinking, but she had felt something when they had fought, sensed that he, too, might have been a decent, even honorable man, maybe even the kind who had the decency to deplore such treatment of prisoners... that hope was all she had left...<br/><br/>But even then she was not prepared for what he would say next. He would claim her as his war bride?!?<br/><br/>Her eyes widened, and in her half delirious state all she could do was chuckle, as if it was some kind of joke. "War bride, that's a good one..." she muttered... "at least I will die laughing..." and then finally the pain and blood loss became too much and she passed out.