The Relic of Speed called to the first and only child to date to become a monster. The 11 year old Sprint Olafson was an outcast among his peers. He was small and wiry, not much to look at, the kind of kid you might suspect would get knocked over by a surprise gust of wind. Sprint never got the hang of making friends, especially difficult since most of his peers were of a more large and brutish nature who taunted Sprint for his stature and awkwardness. His embarrassed father remained convinced that interaction with the other children of their home village Planastad was the key to sorting him out, and so he was forced out of the home often where he was left defenseless against the abuse of his peers.
Sprint learned that his size held certain advantages, he was able to escape the beating of local bullies often by squeezing into small spaces. The constant need for flight also grew into an aptitude for speed. In retaliation for his treatment he began to sneak close to danger and steal things, and many a trinket gone missing became attributed to him, which only pitted him more into local disfavor.
It was when he was once again running from children throwing rocks and chasing him with sticks that he entered the woods and ducked into a hollow tree. When his pursuers came close he found a crevice leading further down into the earth and ducked inside. There he first felt the call, a feeling of belonging he was unaccustomed to. The crevice opened into a maze of narrow underground tunnels reminiscent of a badger's den, but the call led him sure to the other end, an underground hall of stone and marble; the secret basement of a long-ago toppled tower of the White Ones. On a pedestal surrounded by ancient runes lay the relic, shaped like a hummingbird in flight, the wings still but tricking the eye into imagining a blur of movement. He jumped and climbed around and over fallen masonry and bottomless pitfalls until he reached it and took it up in his hands. He instantly felt the essence of the void surge into him, and he turned to run. He was across the hall in the blink of an eye, so fast that he lost his grip on the relic and left it in the air where he had been standing. When it began to fall he hurried back, circumventing obstacles by running on a wall. He caught the relic before it had fallen more than a few inches.
The remaining essence left the relic and it turned dark. The earth above and around the hall shuddered and the tunnels that had led the boy here collapsed. Sprint was trapped. Frantically he began to claw at the earth where a stone wall had collapsed and found that his amazing speed was quickly opening a hole. With no other options he dug on.
It took Sprint 4 days to reach the surface, hungry, tired and scared. It was only then in the light of the sun he discovered he had aged. His size and stature remained, but a nearby pond showed him he no longer had the face of a child. His untainted innocence had been replaced by a hardened and slightly weathered look. His skin had a blueish tint and his ears and lengthened into a points. He had always hated the way he looked, and though his new appearance came at first as a shock, he quickly shrugged it off. Undaunted he began to explore his newfound speed and agility. He ran across the surface of the pond while barely breaking the surface. He rushed up trees and skipped across the branches. Darkened relic under his arm he zipped back to his home within only minutes and sneaked into his room where he laid down to sleep.
By morning he had nearly forgotten the events of last evening, only the relic by his bed confirmed it had not been a dream. When his father, drunk from a night's revelry, found him sitting on the floor studying the black humming bird he cried out in shock. Barely recognizing the son he had come to despise for the ridicule and accusations of theft he brought to his home he struck the relic from Sprint's hands and moved to strike him too as he had done so many times before. The boy was gone before his father's fist hit only air where he had been prone a moment before. The only evidence of Sprint's passing, and the last his father would ever know of him, were the shards of the broken relic, the unhinged and wildly swinging window of his bedroom, and the quickly fading rush of rapid footsteps, sounding more like a hum than individual thumps.
Sprint fled back to the forest, to the grove where he first saw what he had become. He found a hollow high in a nearby tree and claimed it as his own. He lived on stolen foods from Planastad and passing travelers, filled his tree with shiny trinkets from strange pockets and remained unseen until he learned years later to pass his gift on to others. He was the first Quickling.
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