Ridahne sighed, trying to gather herself a little. "That's just the beginning. My people tell stories of it so we remember. It's not just killing each other on a battlefield, its families ripped apart, civilians starving and scraping to get by so the soldiers can be fed, its people's homes being destroyed in fires, sabotage of crops and water sources--yes, in the past people have poisoned water supplies. It's conquering a city and then raiding it. Looting. Murder. Rape." she shivered at that last word. She had caught someone trying to force himself on a young woman once, and as far as she knew the little village still told stories of the way an Azurian Ghost of the Sands had come and butchered him. There was no mercy or help for anyone who did such a heinous crime if Ridahne caught wind of it.  "The horror of war stretches far beyond the battlefield, beyond soldiers. And I saw flashes of it in my vision. There is nothing I would not do to see this mission through. Nothing." 

And she meant it. If her own brother stood in the way of this quest, she would cut him down if she had to, so long as it meant saving the land she loved. Of course, Hadian never would. He was Ridahne's opposite--if she was fire, he was a cool breeze. If she was stone, he was the ocean. Calm, cool, reserved, and he desired nothing more than peace. 

Ridahne's hands started to shake from the repeated tiny stabs of pain from the needle and she began to clean her materials, clean her fresh ink and smear it with the fragrant balm she used for wounds, and packed her supplies neatly away with respect and reverence as if they did not belong to her and she wanted to keep them nice. There wasn't much new ink to be seen, only a small patch that had been filled in. A tattoo could be shaded in faster if the individual dots of ink left by each needle strike were left further apart, but that was not the Azurei way. 

The elf thought back to her childhood, memories of lying in the still-warm sand of the beach and listening to stories from her mother as waves crashed nearby. "Hm...we have many stories. I have heard the one about the tree being planted to prevent war. There is also a story of three slaves in ancient times, people kept in fetters and chains and made to work without pay or without reaping the benefits of what they do. At the time, an evil elf king had conquered most of the land and made slaves of those who resisted him. And one day three slaves, a human man, an elf woman, and a siren woman escaped their masters and ran for freedom, seeking new lands where the evil king could not dominate them. They traveled south for many leagues but they met resistance, and one day the siren woman was shot with an arrow. They carried her away and tried to heal her, but they could not, and she died. The man and the woman decided to bury her, but they had no tools to dig with. They used their hands, which bled from the effort, and buried her deep beneath the ground. They wept over her grave, their tears soaking into the dirt. Together they traveled on, gaining strength and support as they traveled, until they led a resistance against the evil king and threw him down.

Now, about this time, a sprout had begun to grow over the siren woman's grave. Born of blood and of sorrow and the hope for better days full of peace and freedom, a plant had begun to grow. And though it grew over the body of a siren, the blood of humans and elves were also in the soil with their tears, and with the blood of the Three this plant grew from no seed and formed a tree. As the evil king fell, the spirit of peace that birthed the tree took hold over the land and as it grew, its influence spread and became the Great Tree we know now. I have heard that the Gardener was the human man who had helped in its creation, but I have also heard that he was the son of the siren buried beneath it, or that it was an elvish man who had lost everything in the wars and wanted to make sure it never happened again. I'm not sure what the truth is, or if there's any truth at all in the whole story. You met him...what was he like? Who was he?"