by Simon Archer
“Who are you, and what are you doing to Eviorah?” I asked before I even looked at the mountain elf, working hard but successfully to keep the fear and uncertainty out of my voice.
“But haven’t you already figured it out, great mage?” the silk voice chuckled. I looked up at him now, and I really mean up. The guy was tall, really tall, like ‘stretched all the way to the ceiling’ tall. His skin was white as snow, and his eyes red like blood, just as the kingdom elves had described. He wore long, dark gray robes that stretched all the way to the floor, and his hair was long, straight, and white like his skin. Long, pointed ears poked out from under his hair on each side of his face.
“We’ve figured out that you’re stealing the forest and its inhabitants’ energy to use for yourself,” I said, making a point to look him right in the blood-red eyes. “But we want to know for what.”
“Oh, you do, do you?” the mountain elf drawled, raising what I imagined were his eyebrows. His face pulled up like that was what he was doing, anyway. He didn’t really have eyebrows, or if he did, they were so white that they blended into his skin. “Well, I will be happy to oblige. You will learn soon enough.”
And with that, bafflingly, he turned his back on us and returned to work on his orbs, which were stacked up against the wall behind him much like they had been in Viktor’s fortress when we confronted him.
“Um, excuse me,” Freyja said, her voice dripping with disdain. “We were talking to you.” The mountain elf whirled back around to face her.
“Were you, forest elf?” he spat, showing emotion for the first time. “How quaint. I knew not that your race had such capacities.” I clenched my fists and set my jaw.
“Don’t talk to her like that,” I growled. “You don’t know anything about the forest elves.”
“Ah, how gallant of you,” the mountain elf drawled, cocking his head at me. “I would expect nothing less.”
He turned to return to his orbs, but I quickly drew a mage’s circle in the gravel beneath my feet and began to play my cello. A golden sword appeared in the air next to the mountain elf and was about to crash into his back, but it met what seemed like a wall of air between it and our enemy.
“I believe you will find I am more than capable of evading your meager attempts at attacking me,” the mountain elf said without turning around. “Though by all means, continue.” He waved a lazy hand in the air, indicating that I was welcome to do as I pleased.
“But are you a match for all of us?” Godfried asked, stepping up and surprising even himself. I looked around to find that all of the kingdom elves had crafted mage’s circles by then and were preparing to begin their own spells.
“We shall see,” the mountain elf said, turning to face us now. “I must say, I did not expect you to follow me into the mountains. That was quite the surprise. Perhaps you have some more in store, though I doubt it.” As he spoke, my sword continued to knock against whatever was standing between it and him.
The kingdom elves all launched into their spells now. Daggers, broadswords, maces, and machetes filled the air, descending upon our enemy. Under pressure from so many attacks, the invisible wall protecting him began to crack, and with a quick shift in my melody, I slipped one of my conjured daggers through, clipping the mountain elf’s cheek before he managed to move out of its way. A gash appeared across his cheek, and small droplets of blood began to drip down from it. He snarled.
“And here I thought we might be able to escape this confrontation with no bloodshed,” he lamented, his lip still curled upwards in a snarl.
“Looks like we’ve already shed some of your blood,” I said, gesturing at his wound.
“This?” he asked, raising his muted eyebrows again and lazily waving a hand in the direction of the cut. “This is nothing. The blood that will truly be shed is yours.”
Then, in one quick motion, he jumped into a fighting position and raised one of the orbs up above his head. He muttered an incantation, and several tornado-like funnels of air emanated from it and out around myself and my companions.
I quickly switched tactics and threw up a shield around myself, Freyja, and Ishida. The kingdom elves did likewise for themselves, blocking the mini-tornadoes from causing us any harm. We all looked around at each other, bewildered.
Frustrated by our evasion, the mountain elf pulled back his funnels and switched tactics himself, beginning to mutter another incantation. But the kingdom elves and I took advantage of the brief reprieve, jumping back into our offensive combat spells. To our surprise, the wall of air between him and us seemed to have dissipated by then, and my mace crashed down on him as Godfried and Marinka’s daggers pummelled him. Jumping into action themselves, Freyja and Ishida rushed the mountain elf, knocking him off-balance.
Before he fell, he muttered another incantation, and the forest elf corpses rematerialized, crawling out of the ground as if out of graves. They were the very same forest elves that had attacked us the previous two times, and I recognized Misho and Marius off to the side near the kingdom elves and their mage’s circles. I hurriedly transitioned my spell to daggers again, as did the kingdom elves, and together we pummeled the corpses with the weapons, while Freyja and Ishida took down two near where our enemy had been standing moments before. Like the previous two times, we defeated the reanimated forest elves with relative ease, but while we were distracted, the mountain elf was able to slip away and begin another spell.
He was muttering another incantation, orb in hand, this one far longer than the previous ones. With horror, I watched as the cylindrical light that was previously outside the cave entered it and shone on our enemy himself, unable to do anything because I was still dealing with the last of the reanimated corpses. Several moments into the new spell, something began to happen. In tall, slender bursts of light inside the cave, more mountain elves began to reappear, the cylindrical light containing the forest’s energy washing over them. The kingdom elves cried out in fear and alarm.
“What… what is happening?” Bernsten stammered as he stared, eyes wide, at the growing number of mountain elves. Luckily, they didn’t seem to be paying much attention to us, pouring single file out of the cave to make room for more of their kind to come into existence. I struck down the last reanimated forest elf and looked outside the cave to take stock of how many mountain elves there were now. It looked like well over a dozen.
“I… I think he’s resurrecting them,” I said as I watched. “That’s what the forest’s energy was for. Bringing his people back.”
“That… cannot be…” Marinka said, her voice trailing off, but I could tell by her expression of horror as she watched the mountain elves’ numbers grow that she knew I was right.
“We must stop him,” Nadeine cried, and I leapt into action, transitioning to yet another spell and creating a mace that fell upon our enemy’s slender form as he continued to mutter his incantation. Or at least, that’s what I tried to do. It appeared, unfortunately, that the invisible force field that had been protecting the mountain elf had reappeared, stopping my spell in its tracks.
“Dammit,” I cursed, slamming my clenched fist into my thigh in frustration. “We have to find some other way. Some way to stop him from being able to use the forest’s energy.” As I spoke, Freyja and Ishida rushed over to the orbs against the wall and began to pull them down and over to me. Our enemy, entranced by his own spell, paid them no attention.
I placed my bow back on my strings and prepared to play again. I stared at the orbs and began to play, this time a complicated etude set in a B minor key signature with lots of harmonic notes. It was the same spell I had used to destroy Viktor’s orbs back in his fortress and reverse the spell he had cast on the forest.
Particles of golden light appeared all around the cave, coming together in what looked like planets rotating around each other. The planets spun around the room and then shot one by one into the orbs as I played through the etude, just like they had before, replacing the gray cloud-like patte
rn inside the orbs with the golden light itself.
As soon as the orbs were destroyed, I quickly transitioned to the custom spell I had made to rejuvenate the forest. As I played the long, complicated piece that might as well have been a symphony, golden tendrils of light shot out of my cello’s f-holes and out across the mountains in the direction of the forest.
The mountain elf, who had begun paying attention to me again when I destroyed his orbs, stopped his own spell, and cried out in anger, lunging in my direction… but my companions had my back. Freyja and Ishida fell upon him with their jagged swords, holding him back and preventing him from reaching me. At the same time, the kingdom elves restarted their own combat spells, and soon the mountain elf had giant golden weapons pointing at him from all directions. All of a sudden, his face cracked into a wide, menacing grin.
“You may have stopped my spell short today, young ones,” he snarled, looking around at us as I continued to play, “but I have done enough to ensure your doom. You will rue this day, all of you and all of your kind. We’re coming for you.” His lips curled even further upwards as he spoke, his grim smile distorting his otherwise fine features. Freyja had clearly had enough then and lunged forward with her daggers, aiming right for the elf’s heart…
And in a puff of dark gray smoke, he disappeared, her blades cutting through the air where he had once stood. We all stared around at each other in surprise.
“Where did he go?” Nadeine asked, rushing over to the cave’s entrance and looking around wildly. “We must find him.”
Bernsten walked up to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. “He is gone, Sister, and we have accomplished what we came here to do. Now we must let go and prepare to fight another day.”
As they spoke, I continued to play my piece to undo the mountain elf’s spell, which was nearing its end. The cylindrical light was progressively diminishing as I did so, evaporating with it any chance our enemy had to resume his spell to resurrect the other mountain elves. Finally, I finished, leaving my bow hanging just over my strings for a moment, letting the sound resonate throughout the cave.
“That was beautiful, Leo,” Marinka whispered after the ringing of my final note finally dissipated. “In fact, I believe it was the most beautiful song I have ever heard you play.”
“Thanks,” I said as I stood up and watched my cello disappear in a stream of golden particles of light out of the cave and over the mountains. “I think so, too, including everything I played back on Earth.”
“What do we do now?” Ishida whispered.
“Well,” I said, glancing over at where the cylindrical light had been just moments before. It was completely gone now. “The forest should be back to itself by now. Or at least, most of it should be. As you said, we’ll have to rebuild the treehouses and other structures. But I have plenty of spells for that. We’ll work on it on our way back to the kingdom. After that, I guess we’ll have to prepare for war.”
“War?” Godfried asked, his eyes wide and brows raised in alarm.
“Yeah, I think so,” I said, walking over and wrapping an arm around his shoulders, and another around Freyja’s. “Even though we stopped him short of what he wanted, he still managed to resurrect maybe thirty or forty mountain elves, and if they’re all as powerful as he is, we’re in for a pretty good fight ahead.”
“I believe you are right, Leo,” Marinka said. She was over by the small desk where the mountain elf had been working, reading a scroll. “This document details his plan, I think. I cannot make out all of the words at first sight, but he mentions something about marching on our kingdom now that the forest is destroyed.”
“Well, the forest isn’t destroyed,” Ishida said stubbornly. “It should be good as new in no time now that Leo Hayden has revived it.”
“This is true,” Marinka said, nodding as she continued to scan the scroll’s text. “He will have to adapt immensely now that we have thwarted much of his plan, but I imagine he will still press on. As you said, Leo, he has an army now, even if it is not as large as he wished. Oh!” She cried out and pointed at the bottom of the document. “I believe this is his name. Eldred.”
“Eldred,” I repeated. “Doesn’t sound so fierce, does it?” I looked around at my companions. “We beat him once, twice if you count Viktor. We can beat him again. You guys were great. All of you.”
“Indeed,” Godfried said, the distress falling away from his face, replaced by a wide grin. Unlike Eldred, the expression illuminated the young elf’s features instead of distorting them. “This has been an amazing experience. It has forever changed me. Thank you, my friends.”
“Thank you,” I told him. Then, looking around at the rest of my companions. “Thank you all. Together, I know we can do anything.”
32
Eldred
The boy and his friends had thwarted much of my plan. There was no denying that, no matter how much I wished to do so. I paced up and down the tracks at the top of the mine as I thought, watching as my people worked below. But he had not thwarted everything. Far from it, in fact. My people’s presence here was proof enough of that. I stopped my pacing and placed my hands on the rails of the cart next to me, leaning over it to look down and watch the activity below.
Dozens of my people, at long last risen from the dead, bustled about the mine below, using the assorted tools and carts to mine the ore from the mountain’s center that was necessary to create more orbs and replace those that were lost when the boy destroyed the ones I had been using. We had been unable to use the main mine, of course, since I had made it collapse in one of my several failed attempts to halt our enemies in their tracks. But we had another, far from where they could find us.
I shook my head and grimaced at the memory of my failure. I would have to do better next time, there was no question about that. What had passed was inexcusable, but I would do better… we would do better. I was not alone anymore. At long last, I was no longer alone. Together, we would rebuild our great civilization and march against the kingdom. We would have to destroy the forest elves again as well, now that the two races were inexplicably working together. But it was no matter.
Together again, we could accomplish anything.
A Note from the Author
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