by Simon Archer
“Ah, I believe I understand,” Marinka said, nodding slightly in my direction. “Yes, I only see one face as well, Leo.”
True to our words, the massive carving in the mountainside was a long face with a proportionally long nose, and both the face and the nose were thin, too, not unlike the specters we had seen. Even though the figure’s eyes were etched into stone and lacked the detail of, say, a painting, that gaze still gave me a chill that ran up and down my spine. I could almost hear the discordant echo I heard back in the cave. It was as if the figure’s eyes were not just staring at me, but following me.
“I still do not see it,” Nadeine said, throwing up her arms in exasperation.
“Nor do I, sister.” Bernsten sighed, his loud voice carrying from behind us.
The forest elves were both also looking around wildly like I had been just moments before, trying to see what Marinka and I were looking at. Godfried, however, was looking at the stony face with an odd combination of awe and fear that I felt myself.
“Don’t you see it?” I asked as we rounded the corner. It was right to the right of us now, in full view, and I pointed straight at its long, thin, perfectly shaped nose. “Look. It’s kind of hard to see at first since it blends into the side of the mountain, but it’s definitely there.”
Bernsten, Nadeine, and the forest elves all cocked their heads almost in unison, trying to look at the mountain from a different angle. Finally, Nadeine gasped audibly.
“I see it,” she cried, moving a hand up to cover her gaping mouth. “I see it.” She spoke more softly the second time, her eyes wide.
“Oh yeah,” Freyja said, her head still slightly cocked to the right. “I can sort of see it now.”
“Oh!” Ishida said after another moment. “Oh! It is a mountain elf.”
It wasn’t a question. We all knew it to be true. Well, almost all of us anyway.
“I still do not see it,” Bernsten said matter-of-factly, throwing up his arms in defeat. “I believe you all are jesting me.”
“We are not jesting you, brother.” Nadeine reached out across both of their horses to take his arm and guide it up in the direction of the face’s creepy eyes. We were all at a standstill now. Even our horses seemed to know something was up, the tension they had displayed in the forest returning to their small forms. Bernstein followed where Nadeine raised his hand, squinting heavily, trying to make out what she was attempting to get him to see.
“Ahh!” he screamed out suddenly, lurching backward and nearly falling off his horse. This particular fate was prevented by Ishida, who grabbed hold of his shoulders and stabilized him from behind him on their horse. “It is glaring at me. Into my very soul.” Bernsten’s usually steady, booming voice was now quivering and hushed.
“It is alright, brother,” Nadeine said, dropping his arm and placing her now-empty hand on his shoulder. “It is not real.” But she didn’t seem convinced, her eyes darting to meet the disembodied face’s and then darting away quickly.
“It appears real,” he murmured, unable to take his eyes off it.
“Yeah, it kind of does,” I said, feeling another chill run up and down my spine. “But it’s not. It’s just a really good piece of artwork, very lifelike.”
“You are correct, Leo,” Marinka said. Unlike the others, she appeared not only unconcerned by the face’s appearance but rather excited. “I do not believe it will cause us any harm. Our enemy is far off in the distance still, though I do believe we are gaining more ground on him each day.”
I cast a glance back up at the faint cylindrical light off in the distance. She was right. It was growing ever so slowly closer as we traveled.
“Even so, let us leave it behind,” Nadeine said, shivering slightly, and I knew she was feeling the same chill I had a moment ago.
“Very well.” Marinka sighed as she cast one last long look at the statue. She didn’t seem to want to leave.
“Here.” I pulled my almost-useless cell phone out of the small pack of my personal things hanging at my side. “I can take a picture of it with my phone for you, so you can remember it better when you’re back with the scholars in the royal castle.”
“Oh, thank you, Leo!” Marinka said, relief crossing her face. “That would be most helpful.”
I snapped a few pictures with the camera and looked them over. Even in digital format, I felt like the thing’s eyes were following me.
“Alright, let’s get out of here,” I said when I was satisfied. I pulled on Bill’s reins, and he was more than happy to oblige, darting off with vigor in the opposite direction of the face etched in the mountain. Freyja grabbed hold of my waist to steady herself, and I thought, not for the first time, how good it felt for her to be pressed up behind me.
“Why do you imagine it is here?” Marinka asked, moving her horse up next to mine. There was still noticeable excitement in her tone.
“I don’t know, and I don’t really want to,” I grumbled, not wanting to think anymore about the face and its wandering gaze.
“Agreed,” Freyja said from behind me, her own nerves clear in her voice. That said something. Freyja was tough, and it took a lot to phase her.
“Oh, I agree that the face was disarming,” the princess was quick to add, “but was it not also fascinating?”
I stared at her in disbelief before cracking a smile. “You really are a nerd, aren’t you?” I chuckled.
“What?” she asked, shaking her head in confusion. “I do not understand this term.”
“It means you’re smart.” I laughed. “It’s a good thing. It’s cute.”
“Ah,” Marinka said, her face flushing a bit. “Thank you then, Leo. I appreciate the compliment.”
“No problem,” I said, stifling another laugh.
“I still think it’s too creepy to be bothered with,” Freyja grumbled from behind me, and I couldn’t help but agree with her. Marinka and her scholar friends may find the face interesting, but I didn’t see how it could help us with our quest.
We rounded another turn in the trail, and Nadeine gasped again at what she saw. I was gaping myself. Bernsten and Ishida both cried out in alarm, and Marinka clapped her hands in even greater excitement. I felt Freyja stiffen behind me.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I managed, breathing out as I spoke, making my voice sound raspy and low. “I think it’s a town.”
“A ghost town, more accurately,” Marinka said, no hint of fear or concern in her voice, only interest. “It is, as far as we know, unoccupied since the last Great War between our peoples.”
27
I looked around at the scene, taking in the view. The town sat on the edge of the mountain. It would have provided its citizens with a most spectacular view of the other nearby mountains, which were disproportionately covered in bright green grass as far as the eye could see, standing in sharp contrast to this mountain, which seemed to only exist in shades of gray. The town itself, while foreboding in a way like the face on the mountain, had its charm. It was kind of cool, actually, full of small buildings made out of stone. Some of them even appeared to be small, elven-crafted caves, dug into the side of the mountain. A small road running through the town was paved but clearly hadn’t been kept up properly in quite some time, beaten and crumbling in places, and much like the settlements of the kingdom elves, lampposts lined the road, though their lights were long gone.
“This is excellent,” Marinka said, breaking the silence as we all studied the scene before us. “I have been hoping that we would come across something like this, and so has the council. This could be a wonderful opportunity to gather information on our enemy and his race.”
I eyed the town with wariness. “If you say so.” While I definitely was glad that it appeared unoccupied, something about that fact lent it an eeriness that made me uneasy. Then again, it was pretty cool and might be fun to look around, even if the council hadn’t asked us to investigate the mountain elves in general while we pur
sued the enemy.
“Alright, let’s check it out, then,” I said, dismounting Bill before offering Freyja a gentlemanly hand down.
“I find this whole endeavor rather unsettling,” Bernsten said, staying stubbornly put atop his horse even while Ishida and the others made their way back to the ground.
“Well, I think we all find this whole request rather unsettling, but we have to do it,” I reminded him, echoing my friend’s own speech patterns.
“Very well.” The big elf sighed and climbed down from his horse at long last, though he still looked very uncomfortable.
I cast a glance over at Godfried and was pleased to find that while the younger elf certainly looked uncomfortable, he was also composed and ready to face whatever awaited us in the town.
“Where to?” I asked, turning to Marinka after I finished tying up Bill to a nearby lamppost, though the lamp itself appeared to have gone dark long ago. My companions followed my lead and did the same with their horses.
“I do not know,” Marinka said, looking around excitedly. “We could begin anywhere.”
“Alright, let’s just start over here, then.” I gestured at a nearby building made of charcoal-colored stone, the same kind of rock that the majority of the mountains were formed from.
“Very well,” Marinka said, already headed in that direction.
I rushed after her, the rest of our companions following warily behind us, and I walked inside the building shortly after Marinka, the heavy door already hanging open for us. It looked like it had been that way for some time, as the inside of the building was damp from recent rain. Some dead leaves were scattered inside of it, no doubt blown in during a storm from an adjacent mountain.
“What is it?” I asked, looking around in confusion. The only furniture in the buildings were several small desks, also made of stone, covered in empty vials like something I would expect to find in a laboratory.
“I believe this is where they would make the substances that fill their orbs,” Marinka said, approaching one of the desks and picking up a vial for careful study.
“Careful, cousin,” Godfried called out as she touched it.
“I will be fine, Godfried,” she said, shooting him a pointed look. “I have trained for this moment my entire life just as you have trained for this quest.”
Godfried shut his mouth and retreated back a few steps in deference to her authority. Even so, I had my own concerns as Marinka handled the various equipment the mountain elves had left behind, expecting any moment for more of those specters to appear. But they did not, and Marinka was able to continue her careful study of the objects in peace. I stayed on alert, though, just in case, and discretely etched a dull mage’s circle on the damp ground beneath my feet. Finally, Marinka appeared satisfied with her investigation.
“I believe I will take some of these with me,” she said, taking two of the vials and placing them in a small pack hanging at her side. “They will be of interest to the other scholars. It would have been ideal had we also found some of the chemicals themselves, though I imagine our enemy has collected many of them for himself over the centuries.” She headed out the door, and the rest of us followed her. I breathed a sigh of relief when we made it back out into the open air without incident.
“Do you think he’s been here?” I asked when we were safely outside, glancing at her as I made a veiled reference to our enemy.
“Oh, yes, I imagine he has been most places over the years,” Marinka conjectured. “He has had a lot of time on his hands, after all.”
I nodded. “Yeah, that makes sense. It’s just kind of spooky, you know? To think of him having been where we are now?”
“Indeed,” Bernsten said, appearing rather green in complexion.
“You going to be okay, man?” I asked him, clapping a hand on his shoulder.
“I will when we get away from this place,” he said, his lips set in a thin line.
“I believe we are going to see more places like this as we travel deeper into the mountains, Sir Bernsten, so you had best prepare yourself,” Marinka warned him as she led us down the road to another building, this one a small cave carved elegantly into the mountainside.
“What makes you believe this?” Bernsten asked, stopping in his tracks and gulping audibly.
“Well, we have yet to come across any remnants of mountain elf society,” she reasoned, continuing to walk despite Bernsten’s stopping, waving her hands in the air excitedly as she spoke. “It makes sense that the brunt of their civilization would be focused in the middle of their realm. That is true for both our kingdom and the forest elves, after all.”
“That makes sense,” I said as Bernsten rushed to catch up with us. “By the way, how are the scrolls you found in the specter cave going?”
The scholarly princess tapped her lip in thought. “Well, I have made much progress on over this leg of the journey. The other scrolls were not about our enemy specifically, but rather about his people’s history and their magic. It is more exact than ours, as evidenced by these tools we found today.” She gestured at the pack hanging at her side. “They used alchemical powers to make their magic work with the orbs as opposed to your music. It’s truly fascinating.”
“So it’s kind of more like an ancient science than actual magic,” I observed, nodding slowly. “That kind of makes sense, actually. All three of the elven races are so different. It would make sense that your approaches to magic would be different, too.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Marinka said as we walked into the small cave. “These scrolls will truly be a wealth of information for our academic efforts to study the mountain elves.”
I had to blink several times when we entered the dark cave, waiting for my vision to adjust. What I thought was a small cave was actually very deep and narrow. The cave stretched deep into the heart of the mountain and was full of long, narrow beds like the one we had found in the first cave we investigated.
“That’s it! I am done!” Bernsten turned on his heels to flee the scene. “Where they worked is difficult enough to go through, where they sleep is too much. No. No no no no no. I am done.”
Nadeine cocked an eyebrow at him and scoffed. “What are you going to do when you actually encounter our enemy, brother?”
“I will have my war face on then, sister, and thus be quite composed,” he said, not turning back to look at her. “But until that time arrives, allow me my fear, I beg of you.”
“Very well.” Nadeine rolled her eyes, but we all knew that Bernsten was right. When he was in battle, he transformed into a completely different person, his goofy sense of humor and pleasant demeanor replaced by a stoic warrior ready for anything. Her brother disappeared out the mouth of the cave, while Marinka walked up and down the row of beds, brushing her hand against the bedposts as she passed.
“How odd,” she remarked. “Did they sleep communally? Or is this some kind of hospital?”
“Who knows?” I shook my head. Bernsten was right. Something about the place was creepy. It was so… clinical. There was no sign that people with actual lives had lived there. I pulled out my camera again and began to snap several pictures to show the rest of the scholars.
“Thank you, Leo,” Marinka murmured, hearing and seeing the flash.
We looked into every building in the town after that, or at least Marinka and I did. The rest of our companions slowly grew bored and dropped off, returning to rest with the horses. We found that there were individual dwellings in the town with beds of their own, though not many. We also found what looked like a small schoolhouse, and what we guessed was a government building. I snapped pictures of everything, and Marinka gathered up several more artifacts to take back to the kingdom with her.
“Thank you for accompanying me, Leo,” she remarked as we walked back to the edge of the town where our companions were waiting for us. “I know it is likely not nearly as interesting for you as it is for me.”
“Eh, it wasn’t that bad.” I shrugged. “
It was actually pretty interesting.” While it had been a little boring at times, the ghost town was actually pretty cool.
“Ready?” Freyja asked impatiently when we approached.
“Yep,” I said, reaching down to untie Bill. But before I got a chance to, a loud screeching sound penetrated my ears, much like the one we had heard the first night.
“Dammit,” I screamed, shaking my head in disbelief. Not again.
Several specters, far more than had attacked us before, swirled into existence, rising from the grounds and the very stones of the buildings, forming a makeshift line between us and the creepy face etched into the mountain. There were no less ghostly and hair-raising in the later afternoon sun than they were in the darkness of the mountain cave.
“Hurry!” I quickly drew a makeshift mage’s circle beneath my feet and directed my companions to do the same. “Get ready! Same strategy as last time. Freyja and Ishida leave first, then Bernsten and Marinka, then Nadeine. Godfried and I will go together.” My companions understood even before I got my directions out and had already assumed their positions.
“What of the horses?” Bernsten called out. “And where do escape to?”
I glanced over at Bill and the other miniature horses, who were dancing around restlessly, disturbed by the specters’ frightening appearance and the horrible sound, then I thought to our past encounter with the specters. Those things had been bound to a place… a place where a mountain elf had lived. Like a small village where many of them lived.
If I was right, all we had to do was get out of town, and when it came to the horses, I had an idea.
“I know what to do!” I said with growing confidence as I reached out into the air for my cello. “Make a break for the edge of the village. They won’t chase us past that! As for the horse, I’ll lift them up when we get to the other side.”
“Alright,” Bernsten said, looking uncertain. But he trusted me.
That’s when my golden cello flew through the air and snapped into my hand. Without a pause, just as the ghosts bore down on us, I sat down and began to play an advanced combat spellsong. In the back of my head, I thought of it as the Cuisinart Concerto, not because it was a concerto, but because it conjured a whirling array of razor-sharp daggers that would blend any for like they were in a Cuisinart. I was hoping my blender of doom would disperse the spectral matter of the creatures so fast that they would be forced to concentrate on me. That way, my team could get away safely.
