Cora had been a slave for most her life, ending up in a slave camp at a very young age with no memory at all from before she was found by slavers. Her only clue to her past was a coral decorated hairpin, but it was taken from her when she arrived at the camp where she would spend many years working the fields and the mines. During the years she would make several escape attempts, managing to travel farther every time as she ran faster and jumped higher and farther with practice, earning her the nickname "The Gazelle" by her captors. Eventually it seemed she had given up on trying to escape but she was simply biding her time to start helping other slaves escape who were willing to try and guide them to safety before returning alone before daybreak.

While the guards had grown suspicious they could not prove that Cora was behind these escapes, but they would still punish her regardless. She kept this up for years, even gaining a helper in a young hyena boy named Kifeda who was sold by his own mother who only wanted female heirs. Kifeda would join the escape efforts to learn to navigate the terrain and surrounding area as well as Cora, so whenever she was being punished with time in the box Kifeda would lead the escapees which helped throw suspicion off of Cora.

Unfortunately this could not go on forever so when word got out the slavers were planning on finally doing away with Cora one last escape was planned to free as many of the slaves as possible. It took most of the night of evading patrols and getting the slaves to a hiding spot untill everyone was gathered. All went well untill Kifeda seemed to have gone missing as Cora was guiding the last group to the outer fence, against her better judgement she stalled there longer than she should waiting for Kifeda to turn up. She was relieved to finally see him sneaking towards the fence clutching a duffle bag, turns out he snuck into the main building to retrieve the stolen possessions of the slaves including Cora's hairpin.

But then things took a turn as a guard had spotted the two of them near the fence and the alarms went off. One of the guards started firing at Cora who had moved in front of the gap in the fence to shield the slaves just outside of it, however the one who was hit was Kifeda who jumped in front of her sending them both tumbling down the slope. Not wastign any time Cora picked up Kifeda and made a hasty retreat with the the group. Though she expected a persuit none came, glancing over her shoulder she could see part of he slaver camp ablaze which had been the real reason for the alarm as Kifeda has started a fire in the armory to create a distraction.

Months later Cora found herself back in that area, joined by some of the other former slaves who wanted to put a stop to the slavers for good. So now they harass the slaver caravans, freeing any slaves they can before they even are delivered to the camp. Unfortunately the old escape routes had been discovered so they couldn't be used to sneak back into the camp to free any more slaves that way, so hit and run tactics against the caravan was their only option for the time being. While Kifeda had survived thanks to a traveling group of Dama gazelle, he ended up paralyzed from the waist down and could not join any of the raids. Cora still blames herself for this to this day but it did bring the two of them even closer together, in fact they got married not long after Kifeda had recovered enough from the surgery.

Art/design by  Corvuspointer
Characters belong to me  Chakat_Blackwater