Every story must begin somewhere.
The beast was.
Had it been a human, it might have been treated with compassion, but in the eyes of human society a malthrope was a monster, a mix of fox and man believed to be a murderer and thief by its very nature.
It was there that a pair of trackers, eager to retrieve a lost slave, instead found an orphaned malthrope.
For the warrior who would come to be known as the fearsome Red Shadow, the story began in a forgotten glade deep in the land of Tressor.
Every story must begin somewhere