by Simon Archer
“Very well, Sir Bernsten, you have had your fun,” Godfried said, reaching for another small potato, but he was still smiling.
After dinner, while Marinka, Bernsten, and Godfried cleaned up, Nadeine and I made our way back through what remained of the underbrush and over to the ash-covered beaten path.
“We’ll see what we find,” I said warily as I drew a circle in the blackened dirt beneath our feet.
“What spell will you cast?” Nadeine asked. In an abundance of caution, she had grabbed her sword and a large shield that hung from her horse’s saddle before leaving the clearing. She held both up now.
“One for hunting that’s supposed to draw out wildlife,” I said. “It’s not a custom spell. You should have learned it at some point.”
“Ah, yes,” she said, nodding in understanding. “I believe I know of which spell you speak. This is the one you cast to help Freyja on our last quest?”
“Yes,” I said, nodding.
“Very well.” Nadeine set down her shield and weapon before drawing a mage’s circle in the dirt of her own. “I will join you.”
I nodded again. Having both of us try it could yield better results.
Together, we positioned ourselves on the edges of our mage’s circles, held out our hands, and closed our eyes. My cello materialized, and I sat down on the hardened air. I put my bow to my strings and breathed deeply, signaling to Nadeine that it was time to begin. Her voice blended with the sounds of my cello to create a multi-dimensional song that echoed throughout our deadened surroundings, bringing some beauty to the darkness.
Golden light appeared on the beaten path in front of us, and our two spells blended together as one. Long, straight tendrils of light shot out in every direction, winding through the trees, bushes, and underbrush, searching for rabbits, squirrels, and other prey that could serve as a source of food.
By the end of the spell, many of the arms of light came back empty-handed. But two came back with lifeforms, dropping them several paces in front of us before disappearing in a puff of golden smoke. Nadeine and I looked at each other in surprise and rose to walk over to the animals, our path illuminated by the light from my other spell, which was still hanging in the surrounding air.
“What… is that?” I asked, coiling away when I caught sight of the animals.
“I believe they are squirrels,” Nadeine said unphased. She leaned down and reached out a hand to touch one of the animals gingerly. It whimpered at her touch. Both animals were covered in black ash from whatever was afflicting the forest. Nadeine brushed some of it off, and it fell away easily, revealing the animal’s bony, sucked-in stomach.
“It’s starving,” I said simply.
“Indeed.” Nadeine reached out and brushed away the ash from the other animal. “There is very little left in the forest, I suppose, and no surviving plant life for them to consume.”
“That’s horrible,” I said, shaking my head.
“At least this proves that whatever killed the plants has not yet killed the animals,” Nadeine said, and then, in two quick movements, she snapped both animals’ necks. “There is no reason to prolong their suffering.”
“So the forest elves are probably still alive,” I said, hope percolating within me.
“Indeed.” Nadeine nodded and dusted off her hands. “They likely have food in the center to last them a few weeks, but after that, they will starve. And they do not have the food preservation skills that we do in the kingdom, though they are better equipped to handle this now than they were mere months ago. Our quest’s success is now even more urgent.”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding. I didn’t know what else to say. I thought of Freyja, Ishida, and my other forest elf friends in the center of the forest. “We need to get there as quickly as we can.”
“Indeed,” Nadeine repeated. “Especially as the forest elves outside of the center may be in more immediate danger. Our help may be required before we even reach it.”
“We’ll just have to keep our eyes out, then.” I looked around at the trees. The forest had been so beautiful and full of life before, fresh air all around. I hated to see it like this. I clenched my fists, anger at our mysterious enemy growing inside of me.
“You have a good heart, Leo,” Nadeine said, and she took my hand then. Gently, she unclenched my fist and intertwined her fingers with mine. “We will do what must be done to help these people, and to protect our own.” She squeezed my hand.
“Thanks.” I returned the gesture. “We’ll find this guy and get rid of him, Nadeine. I promise.”
With that, we turned our backs on the dead squirrels and made our way back through the underbrush to our campsite and our companions.
11
We carried on like that for the next several days, following our memories and my compass spell to guide us to the center of the forest despite the decay around us. Every once in a while, we would come across another sickly animal like the ones Nadeine and I had found on our first night, slowly dying from lack of resources. We came into contact with no forest elves during our first week and subsisted on preserved food and water we had carried with us from the kingdom.
The horses remained tense, and it was difficult to get them moving in the mornings, as they dug in their hooves, didn’t respond to us pulling on their reins, and staged a general protest against our presence in the altered forest. Eventually, we would get them moving, though, and we could continue our travels despite the horses’ best efforts. I could feel Bill’s muscles, tense and unyielding, as we traveled across the beaten path.
One afternoon, when by our best guesses we were about halfway to the center of the forest, I heard some noises off in the distance, up ahead of us on the beaten path. This was notable given that the forest had been dead silent for the duration of our time there. Bill stopped in his tracks, and I knew that he had heard the noises, too.
“Did you guys hear that?” I asked, holding out my hand for my companions to stop as well.
“Indeed,” Nadeine hissed in a low whisper so her words would carry but not alert whatever was ahead of us to our presence. “It sounds like voices.”
I followed her lead and lowered my own voice to a whisper. “Angry voices.”
“What do we do?” Godfried asked, an edge in his voice.
“Well, we have been hoping to run into some forest elves…” Marinka’s voice trailed off with uncertainty.
“Not if they are dangerous,” Bernsten said. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t keep his naturally booming voice low. “They sound as if they are fighting.”
“We can take them if they are,” Nadeine reasoned.
I nodded. “She’s right. We should keep going. It might be a risk, but it might lead us to survivors.”
“Very well,” Marinka relented.
I pulled on Bill’s reins sharply and ushered him forwards. He wasn’t pleased but ultimately gave in, resuming his trot down the beaten path when he realized I was serious. As always, the other horses followed his lead. As we made our way down the path, the voices grew louder and clearer, crystallizing in the air around us.
“Please,” a woman’s voice called. “This is the last we have. Without it, they won’t eat.”
“Hand it over,” a harsh male voice growled. “Now.”
“Leave her alone,” another male voice said, his tone frantic. “Let us be.”
“It’s every elf for themselves now,” a second female voice, also harsh, growled. “Hand it over. You’d do the same if you were us.”
“I wouldn’t steal from children,” the first woman cried.
We were growing closer now. To keep the element of surprise, I pulled on Bill’s reins to halt him, dismounted the horse, and motioned for my companions to do the same.
“Godfried, stay with the horses,” I instructed in as low a whisper as I could manage, not wanting the younger elf to panic in a bad situation. “Follow behind us and make sure they don’t run off.” He nodded and took all of the hor
ses’ reins in his hands. “Everyone else, let’s try to surprise them. Don’t speak if you can help it.”
Together, Nadeine, Bernsten, Marinka and I crept down the side of the beaten path to where the voices were, hiding behind the blackened tree trunks alongside the path as we went. Godfried waited for several moments and then began to follow us slowly on foot, leading the horses behind him.
Eventually, I could see the forest elves who we had heard. There were four adults, the two men and two women we had heard. One pair was trying to wrestle leather packs away from the other pair. Behind the man and woman holding the packs cowered two small children, watching the scene from off to the side in fright.
The moment I saw that, thoughts of stealth were out the window. I wasn’t going to stand back and let these folks, especially those children, suffer a moment longer.
“Hey!” I called, hopping out from behind a nearby tree. “Leave them alone.” I charged at the would-be thieves, beginning to hum a spell as I ran. Nadeine and Marinka followed suit, while Bernsten followed with his sword in his hand.
A golden sword appeared in front of me, and I halted in my tracks to let the magic do its work. Nadeine conjured up a mystical sword of her own, while several daggers flashed in and out of existence in front of Marinka. Bernsten continued to lead the charge, rushing the bandits accosting the family of forest elves while swinging his physical sword at them.
Before any of us could do any damage, the attacking forest elves realized who we were and what they were up against. Their eyes grew wide in panic as they clambered to run back across the beaten path and into what remained of the underbrush. The woman dropped the pack she was trying to steal, enabling the children’s mother to pick it back up and hug it close to her chest. However, the male thug was able to capitalize on the father’s surprise at our appearance and grab the pack for himself, carrying it with him as he fled.
“Drop it,” I screamed after him. “Drop it now!”
Bernsten saw what I did, so he continued to chase after the man carrying the stolen pack. With a subtle shift in our harmonies, Nadeine and I sent our magical swords after the thief, as well. Marinka gave up on getting her daggers to materialize properly and instead rushed over to the mother and children to help them gather up their scattered belongings. When the bandit saw the golden blades rocketing toward him, about to behead him, he dropped the pack and skidded to a halt.
“Fine, fine!” he called, holding up his hands in surrender as the pack fell to the ground. “I’m done, I’m done.”
But Bernsten, already carrying a rush of momentum, crashed into him and pushed him to the ground near the pack.
“It’s okay. He dropped it, he dropped it,” I called out to Bernsten.
He heard me and released the man from his grip before he pummeled him into the dirt. The female thief woman was long gone, having disappeared into the blackened underbrush, and before we could get a chance to stop him, the man scrambled away from Bernsten and ran after her.
We stood there in stunned silence for a few moments, panting and recollecting ourselves. There was no need to chase after them. They didn’t get to actually steal anything, and considering the state of the forest, it almost seemed cruel to hunt them down for no reason. Bernsten grabbed the pack, walked back over to the family, and handed it to the mother.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice small and her eyes wide.
Bernsten bowed his head to her. “You are very welcome.”
“Are you alright?” Marinka asked, looking around at the young family.
“Yes, thank you,” the mother said before looking around at her family. “I am Ione. This is my husband Gerardo and our sons Kish and Tyr. We’re grateful for your help.”
Having finished gathering up the scattered contents of her pack, the woman rose to her feet and patted each of her children on the head, reassuring them. “It’s okay. It’s okay, now. The nice people are here to help.”
The kids still looked pretty spooked. Like all of the adult forest elves, the mother and father had assumed some of the characteristics of an animal. Ione looked kind of like a deer, and Gerardo like a fox, much like my forest elf lover Freyja. The children, not having settled on an animal form yet, looked like vaguely furry humans with pointed ears like the kingdom elves.
“Hello Ione and family,” Marinka said kindly as she placed a comforting hand on the woman’s arm. “I am Princess Marinka of the royal family in the kingdom. These are my companions Sir Bernsten, Dame Nadeine, and the ultimate mage Leo Hayden.” She looked around behind us, and I followed her gaze to where Godfried stood with our horses a few yards back from us on the beaten path. “And over there is my cousin Godfried. We are here to help you.”
“Thank you,” Gerardo said, sighing with relief. “We are grateful. This is all the food and water we have left.” He pulled the pack Bernsten had retrieved closer to him.
“You are running low?” Marinka asked, her brows furrowed in concern.
“Yes,” Ione said, pulling one of her children close while her husband held the shoulders of the other firmly. “We have been rationing for some time as we’ve been trying to reach the center. Gerardo and I have not eaten ourselves in two days.”
Nadeine and I glanced at each other. The couple did look rather pale and thin, dark bags under their eyes.
“Here,” Godfried called from behind us. I turned my head to look at him again and he was undoing a pack on Bernsten’s horse with shaking hands. “We have food and water from our realm. You may share some.”
He pulled some fish fillets and two canteens of water out of the pack and walked over to the forest elves to hand them off, motioning behind him for the horses to stay. They did so, and Bill shot me a nervous look. I smiled at him reassuringly and he made an obstinate huffing sound as if he didn’t believe me that everything was okay now.
“Thank you,” Ione said, taking the fish from Godfried as her husband grabbed the water. “Thank you all so much.” Then she looked at me, “We had heard great things about you and your companions, and what you had done for our people. But now, I know how great and how far your kindness extends. You have saved our lives, in all likelihood.”
“We’re happy to,” I said, stepping forward and motioning for Nadeine to do the same. “You’re the first people we’ve seen here since we entered the forest last week. When did this happen?” I motioned around at the blackened trees.
“Not long before that,” Gerardo said, shaking his head as he followed my gaze around at what was left of his home. “Everything just went dark. It was like a wave. We could see it coming, but couldn’t do anything to stop it. One moment there was life all around us, and the next there was nothing.” He threw up his hands in disbelief.
“You don’t know what happened?” I asked curiously. With how emotionally traumatized the family clearly was, I tried not to press them too hard. “Or why?”
“No.” Ione shook her head as she rose to stand next to her husband. The child she had been holding wrapped his arms around her legs as he sucked on the edge of a fish fillet. “Though we assume it has something to do with that mountain elf we’ve all been hearing about.”
“What do you know about him?” Nadeine asked sharply. When I put a hand on her shoulder to calm her, she relaxed slightly, her tone quieter when she added, “Anything at all?”
“No,” Ione repeated. “Only that he exists. The mad kingdom elf was acting on his orders, and there are rumors that flashing lights came from his dwelling recently.” The mad kingdom elf, I knew from my last stay in the forest, was Viktor, the man who had taken my friends’ magic and fled into the forest many centuries ago.
“Do you think that he did this?” Gerardo asked, motioning to the charred tree trunks.
Marinka’s shoulders slumped. “We were hoping that you could answer that question for us.”
“But we’re operating under the assumption that this is his doing,” I added. “It would take a powerful spell for this to ha
ppen. This wasn’t natural.”
“It certainly didn’t feel natural.” Gerardo shivered slightly at the memory.
“Are there a lot of survivors?” I asked hopefully, thinking again of Freyja and the others. “Did other forest elves die when it happened?”
“We don’t think so,” Ione said, exchanging a look with her husband. “We weren’t affected, at least not at first.”
“The way our people are dying is through the lack of resources,” Gerardo clarified in response to our puzzled expressions. “The same with the animals, from what we’ve seen. We were able to get meat at first, but now, the game animals are dead like the plants, and those that survive don’t look that safe to eat.”
“I ate one a few days ago,” the mother added with a faintly nauseous expression, “but I grew ill. Since then, we’ve been subsisting on what little we had left from our last hunt.”
Geraldo put an arm around her and pulled her close. “We’ve been trying to make our way to the center of the forest. Word is that the people of the center have been working on preserving and stockpiling food there since the mad kingdom elf was destroyed several months back.” He sighed. “The problem is everyone seems to be headed that direction, and it’s difficult to find now that there are no landmarks.”
“We can barely tell up from down let alone east from west,” Ione said sadly.
“You could join us,” I offered. “We have a lot of food.”
“Yes, you may join us on our journey,” Marinka said, looking around at us to make sure we all agreed. She found no objections from us, not even Godfried. “We are also traveling to the center of the forest, and we have spells to help guide us there despite the altered state of the forest.”
“Oh, thank you,” Ione said, reaching out and grasping Marinka’s hands. “Thank you so much. How can we ever repay you for your kindness?”
