Lord Terill Estrial left the Shade of the Lyyn at sunset and headed back to his home with his head low and his spirit even more-so. The guilt that he carried for tricking Breedoria into carrying the crystal was a heavy load to bear. He reasoned his actions to lift the load, but the consequences were threatening to swallow him whole.
She was his only daughter. He had lost her once before when she turned Dark. Now he will lose her completely. The spirit will try to consume the magic of the crystal, and in doing so would release its power unto the user. It was devised in the same fashion as the Mrenx Ku. It is a power like a sponge; it draws from its user, absorbing all that it can, leaving the host clinging to life. Then only the strong would survive.
It was necessary, he told himself. She was already lost.
“It is done, then?” A soothing voice spoke to him softly as he walked into his home. “Did she seem herself? Tell me, Terill. Tell me how she looked.”
Terill lifted his head to see his wife, Oskalins, standing with a face as sad as his own. She was on the verge of crying. He embraced her tightly. “Remember her as she was when we knew her.”
A tear rolled down Oskalins’ cheek. She struggled to maintain her poise. “Did we do the right thing, Terill? Tell me this was.”
Terill took a deep breath and then sighed. “We’ve given her a chance for redemption and only time will tell now if our decision was right.”
“She was so young once. So full of light.”
“But no longer. This will be her salvation.”
She nodded in return. They stood nearly eye to eye. Oskalins’ skin was lighter and just as shiny as Terill’s hair, with a set of silver eyes gleaming with hope. She wore a floor length gown decorated with lace in floral patterns and wild colors. A ruby necklace matched a set of bracelets on both wrists.
“The crystal will not turn on her. She will be safe. She will save her love. In turn, she will play a role in saving us all. Before the end, she will see it so.” Oskalins reaffirmed this to herself mostly, gathering her composure and accepting what they had planned.
Terill nodded. He hated to see her hurting.
“I wish I could be there at that moment when the poison is gone and she is my daughter again, Terill.”
Terill smiled sadly. In truth, he did not believe that Breedoria was going to return. He saw the poison in her. “Time will tell.”
Oskalins saw the doubt in his eyes, as much as he tried to hide it. “I will see my daughter whole again, Terill.”
Terill nodded. There was no need to continue the conversation. “There is more we need to do,” Terill added softly.
“Walk with me,” Oskalins whispered. “I want time to mourn my child.”
Terill held her hand and walked with her through their house. She rested against him for support most of the way, crying silently to herself. It was an ache that would never leave, and he was tired of seeing her this way. The war needed to come quickly, he thought. If nothing more than to occupy their minds of something else.
The sky was turning a red and yellow mixture as the sun set beyond the treetops westward and nightfall was approaching from the east. Terill held Oskalins close, saying nothing at all through their halls and rooms, until she was tucked under blankets on their bed. A single lantern held a small flame on the table next to the bed. Terill stared at her stricken face; her eyes were on the verge of a very long cry. Terill kissed her forehead softly, squeezing her hand tight before letting go completely.
“I miss her.” Oskalins whimpered.
“As do I. Find peace now in this quiet time.”
Oskalins wanted to be alone. “Dornawee has something to show you. Go. Do what others cannot.”
Terill swept his long hand down the side of her wet cheeks. “I love you.”
He saw her nod, understanding that she was waiting for him to leave before she would release her emotions. So he left. He blew out the light next to her and closed the door behind him. As he walked down the hall, he heard her begin to mourn. He focused on putting one foot ahead of the other, pushing aside his natural instincts to run back to her. He held his own tears in check and focused on doing what was needed.
“What have you found, Dornawee?” he whispered to himself.
He walked out of his home to the trail leading down into the woods where a cropping of homes clustered together. He entered one of them, leading down into a cellar where a door stood locked from within. He knocked three times, then once more. A heavy bar was heard moving from the other side, followed by the door swinging open. A well lit room was beyond, with several elves standing around a table full of various items. Terill entered at once, and just as quick, the door was shut and locked behind him.
Terill walked over to the men standing at the table. One elf smiled broadly, leaving the others to greet Terill. He was elderly, skinny and tall, face all tips and angles. His aged hands clasp Terill’s.
“My Lord,” Dornawee announced, “it is good for you to be here tonight.”
“What news have you, Dorn?”
The old elf spoke excitedly. “I am on to something you should know about. I would not have sent word otherwise.”
“I know. Have you created a weapon?”
“Not exactly.”
“Speak freely, Dorn. It is late.” Terill forced a smile.
“Okay, let me tell you from the beginning. I know you said a cure to the Dark Elves doing would be found at the LifeWaters. I did some research. It took me the better part of two days to find something. But I did. I did find something.”
Terill was pleased, and tried not to let his impatience show. “What did you find, Dornawee?”
“Information.”
Dornawee smiled from ear to ear. He could barely contain himself. He began rambling on again, once he noticed the other was waiting for a better reply. “Oh, yes. Yes, yes. The information written in the old scribes I found was almost bleak, but there was a note about the Faerie creature living there. From the world of Faerie it is. I could not tell you how powerful this thing is, but I tell you that it’s there, in the LifeWaters.”
“This is not news, old friend. I need to know what kind of power is there. I need a way to harness the power. I need to know how it will affect the Mrenx Ku.”
Terill’s smile was gone now, his eyes were hard and intense. “Men will attack shortly. The demons advance past the Spira as we speak. We need weapons for all. We need to ensure that we will survive!”
Dornawee’s smile endured the scolding. “Yes, yes. Allow me to finish, my Lord. Crystals and potions are for men and demons. But if the source is not defeated, then there is no hope, no bother for anything else. That is why I’ve focused on finding the information necessary to better our chances.”
The old elf nodded, approving his own doings. “The dialect was broken and a bit unclear to me, being written so long ago, half of it in another language all together! Once the Faerie creature’s presence was known, I did some more digging. It was mentioned in a few other books, with little or no information on it at all. However, I did decipher a few key words that appeared in each text. Forever, and, purity, were mentioned repeatedly.”
Terill nodded. “Faerie creatures can live a great deal longer than you can imagine.”
“Yes, yes. But I believe the power living in the LifeWaters has the potency to purify something, allowing that to hold true forever.”
It was quiet for a few minutes then, as Terill Estrial thought things over. “Then it can be done. The Mrenx Ku can be defeated.”
“Yes!” Dornawee’s eyes glistened in delight. “And there is someone en route now to the LifeWaters?”
“There are.” Terill nodded. “They travel up the Spira now. We have two days.”
Dornawee frowned. The other elves around him groaned. The old elf shook his head. “That is not enough time. It would take days to—”
“Two of them, Dorn. Two.” Terill smiled faintly, nodding to each of them, and then walked out of the room.
Do
rnawee sighed out loud. “We need to create a talisman, soon.”
He turned back to the ingredients on the table, the rest of the men turning back to their tasks of mixing and matching, creating formulas for what they sought. Minutes turned into hours, and the sun was rising before they had anything valid. They were tired from working, exhausted mentally from trying to figure out a potion strong enough to handle the magic of the LifeWaters. The task was theirs, given them by Lord Estrial himself only a few short days earlier. He told them all he knew of the upcoming events, he kept nothing to himself, knowing the more his men knew and understood, the better they would be able to serve their purpose. And their purpose was to create magic again.
The men working in secret were hungry and tired, yet they worked non-stop. All through the day they tested and tried what they hoped would be the answer, failing each time. Out of frustration, one of them, an elf named Leis, stopped working and left. Dornawee tried to convince him to stay and work through it, but his plea fell on deaf ears. It was late at night when Leis walked out, muttering to the rest of them how they would never be able to succeed without more help.
A few hours later, Leis returned. Not alone. A smaller elf stood next to him, dressed in a black hooded cloak. His face was masked in shadow, and what little did appear, did not look healthy.
“You can’t bring him here!” Dornawee shouted vehemently. The others agreed.
“He can help!” Leis defended. “He’s the only one who can!”
“Dark Elves are forbidden! How did you even find him? If Estrial—”
“He wants to help! Listen to him, for our sakes!”
The Dark Elf stepped forward. The others stepped back instinctively. No one said a word for a moment. The elves were uncomfortable in the presence of the banished and it showed. When the Dark Elf spoke, his voice was raspy and breaking, as though he desperately needed water. None was offered.
“Old Elves have no magic. Only the Dark Ones.”
“Get out of here!” Dornawee replied at once. “You’re banished!”
“Hush, old one.” The Dark Elf raised one hand and pointed a very slender finger towards Dornawee, silencing him. “I’ve not agreed to come here only to listen to your cowardly words. You know nothing of us. You barely know your own kind.”
“He’s here to help,” Leis said in a low tone, listening to Dornawee struggling to speak. “Hear him out.”
The Dark Elf turned to each of them then. None of them spoke, none of them moved. “We share a common goal, you and us. The Mrenx Ku threatens us as well. Believe it or not, we’ve been working on a magic to stop it. But because of our own lust for power, we’ll never be able to finish the task. Our lust would have us consume one another instead.”
He paused briefly, looking down. “It’s not something that I am proud of.”
“He has a plan. We can work together.” Leis stated. “We’re running out of time.”
The rest of the group shared concerned looks, eyes filled with caution and uncertainty passed from one person to the next. Leis nodded his head with his approval, waiting for the others to join him. But none of them made a move, they were all waiting for Dornawee.
The old elf thought about it for a long minute. But in the end, he nodded as well. “Time is short for all of us. If the banished wish to help, so let them help.”
No sign of joy came from the Dark Elf. He stood motionless for a few moments, staring at Dornawee. It made the old elf uncomfortable. Until finally, the Dark Elf motioned for a staff resting against the table.
“Your staff,” he said softly. He reached out and took it from Dornawee once it was offered. He stared at it with great admiration. “So long since I’ve seen fresh wood.”
“How can you help us?” Dornawee shifted his stance to lean on the table. He tried his best to not sound intimidated. “What do you have to offer?”
The Dark Elf didn’t seem to hear him. He quietly talked to himself for a few moments, then looked up from the staff to the others. “You have resources that we do not. Fresh water. Clean earth. Wood that is not rotten.”
“That is your own fault,” Dornawee shot back.
A hissing sound from the Dark Elf silenced Dornawee. “We have magic. True and pure. Strong. Very strong. What each is missing, the other has. Your resources and our resources can create the talisman needed.”
“You’ve stolen all the magic for yourselves!” One elf shot back in frustration.
The Dark Elf’s hands began to glow red. The group backed away from him. “I can take what I wish from you, if that’s what you would prefer, old one. You are no match for me. Not with your trinket potions and your pathetic concoctions.”
The other spit to the floor. “You don’t have the right to keep what you have!”
Underneath the Dark Elf’s hood, eye sockets began to glow red.
Leis interjected quickly. “This bickering will not help us. We need to stand as one! We all know the past. What we need is to focus on the present!”
“The future.” Dornawee added quietly. “Young elf, you are the future. What has happened to you was not done by us. You not need be bitter now. We are not here to judge you. Our mistrust in you is simply misplaced ignorance. If you can help aid us, then you will prove your worth. Leis is right, we need to end this distrust.”
Dornawee stretched forth one hand in greeting to the Dark Elf, who waited a few moments, allowing his hands to return to their natural opaque color before joining hands. “Let elves stand with elves.”
One by one, each of them added a hand until they stood united. The Dark Elf looked up, his thin lips crooked and bent upright at the corners.
“What is needed?” Dornawee pressed, anxious to be working again.
“Fresh water. Earth. This staff.” The Dark Elf set the staff on the table, the others giving him room, moving their elixirs and containers out of the way.
Two men left the room for a short time, one returning with a bucket of water, the other a bucket of fresh black soil. They set them on the table. The Dark Elf dabbled his tongue in the water and shrieked as if scolded. He took another drink, then began to play in the soil.
“The water you have is so pure,” the Dark Elf groaned. “It would take some getting used to.”
You’re banished. You don’t have to get used to it. Dornawee thought. He turned away from the Dark Elf and focused his attention to the staff. He wasn’t sure why it was necessary. Wood was very seldom used in potions, he thought. But just as he began to look it over, a small set of hands was sliding it away from him.
“I’ll need to take these back.” He turned to Dornawee with a smile that could not be overlooked and mocked with great pleasure. “Back to the banished.”
“How will—?” Before Dornawee could finish his question, the Dark Elf grabbed a hold of the staff and buckets, then disappeared.
It was black in the Shade, blacker than Lyyn midnights. The Dark Elf appeared in a shabby room, a would-be shelter deep within the swamp. The buzzing of insects filled the silence, and the stink in the air could almost be mistaken for fog. He set the buckets down on the floor and rested the staff on the table. He had other implements as well, a few crystals of different sizes and shapes, a few flat stones, and a bowl of some kind of liquid—back and moving.
He went to work right away. He knew he had a short window to work with before the others would sense his doings and arrive. He didn’t want that. This was his work. The others were fools.
He began to cover the staff in the black liquid from the bowl, rubbing it on slowly, smoothing it out with his bare hands and then washing his hands in the water afterwards. The black liquid squirmed its way down into the wood, disappearing quickly. The Dark Elf then placed one of the crystals in the bucket of soil, summoning his own magic to set off a reaction in the bucket that lit the room with blinding red light, repeating a few set of words out loud while doing so. When finished, the bucket sat smoking. He stood the staff in it, watching the wood absorb t
he smoke.
Hurry! They will be coming now!
Just the thought of the other Dark Elves made him sick. They were tormented, he knew. They despised one another like plagues. He more-so than the rest, because he distanced himself from them. He fought off his disease, as the others didn’t realize that they had one. His hunger was fed sometimes, though he scolded himself afterwards, vowing not to let it run his life. He would not fall even more lost than what he was. He was not like the others. He understood the sickness; he understood that he was dying. But as the others fought for more power, craving it, satisfying themselves against all odds, he fought for redemption. This was his chance to set things right with himself.
He hated everything about himself. He hated himself for allowing his life to end up where it was. He hated the magic for luring him and swaying his mind to side with it, instead of with reason and righteousness. His mind was a ball of madness, anger and frustration. It was the poisons’ work, he knew. It was the reaction to the use of the strongest magic. The type of magic that did not allow the user to live without it. It was how the Dark Elves were formed. It was how they would all die too, he knew.
But not him. His life was shortening each day. And each day he had found ways to help it shrink.
Deny the magic. Deny its hunger. Starve it, and it will leave you.
But the price for it leaving was death. But his life, as he saw it now, was already suffocated. He was merely a host for something else. The thought of it made him mad. He was supposed to be more than this, he knew. His life was meant to be of more value. And now that he had the opportunity to prove it, he would not fail.
The Dark Elves could claim their abyss, their banishment to the Shade of the Lyyn. I want nothing of it!
Anger spewed from his fingertips in red bursts, pouring his magic into the staff heavily. The swampland around him lit up as if it were on fire. Still he worked hard, emptying himself into the staff, using the magic of the stones and crystals, the potions from water and earth, the madness from within. For several long minutes he continued, sweat streaming down his face and hands, his cloak soaked through and through.
Then he stopped. Exhausted, he toppled to the floor. The room was spinning. Air was vacant. But he was finished.
He began to sit upright, when a voice whispered behind him.
“Smells like you have something for me.”
The Dark Elf quickly stood, hands snatching the staff off the table. Another of his kind entered, moving slowly on all fours like an animal. Its face was bent and twisted, jaws open, snapping at the air. Sounds emitted from it as if it carried deep wounds. But in the darkness, none were seen.
“You cannot have it! Back away!”
“I must have it!”
The Dark Elf turned instantly to protect the staff and use his magic to disappear, but was too slow. Clawed hands ripped into his chest and back, flaring with crimson heat a second before he fled.
Once gone, the animal screamed viscously, howling as it began to rip the room to splinters. In the darkness outside, dozens of red eyes began to move closer.
“I’m not sure where he went! How would I know when he’s coming back?” Leis shouted in response to the interrogation.
“Where did you find him?”
“He came to me!” Leis was tired of the questions.
“You brought him here. How did you know—?” Dornawee stopped talking, as the Dark Elf’s body appeared suddenly between him and Leis.
“My Lord!” Leis gasped, noticing the blood flowing out of the Dark Elf’s cloak.
“Set him on the table!” Dornawee shouted, the others clearing a section of the table at once.
But as they moved to lift the Dark Elf, he stopped them in protest. “Don’t touch me! Get away from me!” With the aid of his staff, he slowly made it to his feet. Blood stained his cloak, dripping down his hands to join the puddle on the floor.
“What happened?” Dornawee groaned.
“Here. It is finished.” The Dark Elf handed Dornawee the staff. It looked the same as when he had left with it. Seconds later, he collapsed to the floor.
The others quickly removed his cloak, seeing now the terrible rips into his flesh. They tried to stop the bleeding, but there was little they could do now. Dornawee knelt down next to the Dark Elf’s face. It was pale with splotches of open sores. His eyes were half open, streaked with red lines. His cold body was trembling.
“The staff will work. I promise.” The Dark Elf began coughing up blood, choking on his words. He looked into Dornawee’s eyes and smiled, whispering softly. “I’m not scared anymore.”
A second later, he stopped breathing.
Lord Estrial wandered the garden pathway at his house, pacing back and forth between the giant mass of flowers and bushes as the sun began to rise. He did not sleep the previous night. As he lay in bed next to Oskalins, his thoughts remained solely on Breedoria. He second-guessed their decision for hours, until he began to cry. He then left his wife and spent the rest of the morning in the gardens.
He was still pacing when a voice called out to him. He turned to see Dornawee walking up the stone path towards him. His face was nearly as stricken as his own.
“Good morning, old friend.” Terill greeted.
Dornawee handed him the staff. His hands were red with blood. “Give them this.”
“You’ve done it, then?” Terill accepted the staff and looked it over with a smile. “Very good, Dorn!”
“I wish I could take the credit, my Lord.” Dornawee’s eyes were still in sorrow, his posture was slumped and he looked tired.
“Are you okay, Dorn?”
Dornawee looked away to the sunrise. His voice was distant, his thoughts someplace else entirely. “By the time you figure out what life is about, you are faced with its replacement.”
“Dorn?”
“I’m going home to my wife, my Lord. I do not expect to be bothered any time soon.”
Dornawee looked briefly at Terill, then walked away. Terill stood where he was until the old elf was out of sight, watching him go, thinking of what he had said. He held the staff in his hands and swore he felt a pulse.
CHAPTER NINETEEN