Across the Kolgan Sea

by Benjamin R. Babst

  Solas paused, curious about my remark. I honestly have to say that to this day, these words haunt me, his rebuke quick, efficient, and above all a mirror of what I’ve done. “How on Mannheim is the true villain here myself? Is it nyot you who aligns nyow vith the dark elves?”

  Chapter 11

  The Acolyte

  Solas’ words struck true and it felt like I’d been lanced by a ghostly spear straight through the heart. I looked at the svartalfar that were scattered about, some had gotten up to flee while others decided to stay here with me, probably hoping they’d receive favor for pseudo-loyalty. He was right, of course, but I still refused to accept the fact. “Y-yes you are. At least I didn’t sell my soul to Aegir.”

  As those words flew off my lips, a svartalf had drawn his sword and charged down toward Solas, a youth judging by such rashness. By the time the young warrior slid to the bottom of the dried-up lake, Solas had descended from his watery pedestal and flung the entire mass at him. A flash of lightning cast a massive shadow of the two, the split second of sight told me Solas was staring at the encapsulated svartalf, and his captive was struggling for breath.

  He hollered up to me, “My loyalties were set long before you came, Shaloor boy. Not so with you, you did this out of pure spite, I’d wager.” A sparkling of gold formed in the bubble of water. It began to grow larger and larger until the entire prison for the svartalf was lit up with his own blood. “Is this true? Come now, don’t be coy.” The acolyte pulled the bloodied water away from the svartalf, leaving a crushed, contorted corpse behind and then began to walk up toward me.

  I began to walk backward, trying to find a way to escape. The obvious solution, running away, occurred to me, but it also seemed apparent that wherever I ran, Solas would simply overcome me. I needed something to distract him. “My position to the one who drains his veins,” I cried out to my subordinates. As I already knew, the svartalfar were an opportunistic, lowly horde that took to the offer with glee. All those who remained picked up their swords and spears or threw potions of many effects against him.

  I know I should have run then, but I stood there for a few moments, wanting to see them first pile up around my enemy before escaping. That desire turned out to be more foolish than I thought, as the rain got heavier as the svartalfar closed in on Solas, creating an impenetrable fog even before they were within a yard of Solas. The mist began to curl its way into the shelter I stood beneath. Thanks to the clanging of metal and screams of the handful of warriors that issued from the mystery beyond my sight, it felt like it was death trying to infiltrate the one domain of life left.

  I stared at the wall of gloom around me, but not daring to walk out into it. There was no way I could see in that and would thus be just as likely to walk into Solas’ strangling grasp as to escape it. To make matters worse, as the downpour became heavier, less and less light was able to enter beneath this ledge. The illumination grew dimmer all about me, but it felt like the space in front was darker than the rest, like the maw of some massive beast were closing down on me. Near utter darkness was soon upon me, but it surprised me how that was as far as it went. It was hard to sort it out from the nothingness around me, but I was able to see the faint silhouette of my shadow the source that spawned it only bright enough to shape the bottom half of it, leaving my upper body and head concealed.

  I turned around to spy out the source of the light and found a small tunnel. It was at the bottom edge of the wall, and the light that came from it was diluted by a rock sitting in front of it. The best option I had at the time was to hide, and this little crack would provide ample time to hide. I crept over to it slowly; I had a small bit of reservation about entering out of fear for what was in there, but I crawled into it anyway, more afraid of Solas than whatever might have been down there. I shimmied a little bit as I struggled to fit into the cramped little passageway.

  The rock surrounding me was cold and I had to plot my movements carefully so my head didn’t bump against the ceiling, but I pressed on toward the ever-brightening light. Fortunately, the tunnel widened as I went further down; unfortunately, it dropped off harshly at the end and I almost fell to the ground. I stopped myself from taking that one dangerous move forward and stood there to scan the room. It was a large, cavernous room filled with yearlings of numerous different trees. I eased myself down onto the ground, which was thankfully not solid rock, but soft topsoil.

  There was a kind of peace this brought to me—young trees growing all around me, the smell of tilled soil beneath my feet, even the light that was magically shed from the ceiling made it feel like it was a peaceful summer day. I turned a corner and came to a massive root. I ran my hand against its exterior and found it was dry and bark-like due to contact with air and magical sunlight for so long, but there was something else present. Everything brightened up and became sharper than was normally possible. I blinked and the image of Freyr’s tree popped into my head. That put everything into context for me because I’d only known for things to look this way when in contact with Freyr’s tree. Surely, the alfar had made this as a nursery a long time ago, expecting to use it just for when a fire burned the forest down. The vigor of the sacred tree would certainly aid them in growing and provide a steady source of magic for the false sun over my head.

  I looked behind me for a moment, the sounds from outside were non-existent in this little cave, giving me confidence that I was safe. With only faint hints of anxiety and paranoia nagging me toward thinking of my doom, I lay back against the root and contemplated all I’d done. “Wasn’t I the one that allied with dark elves?” I repeated that question of Solas to myself. As I mulled over it, it sounded pithy but true. I recounted everything I’d done that day. Solas may be as black as the ocean floor, but was I any better? He sent a fire giant to lay waste to the forest and in order to find me, but such a deed is equaled by my sending the svartalfar to terrorize the peasants of Elderbear. Worse yet was how I slew that fire giant. Not that it didn’t deserve such a fate, but the calloused way I did it, just staring there as he died.

  I gave a chuckle as something occurred to me. All of my life, I’d always looked at the Agrians as the vilest thing native to my realm, but here I was contemplating how I’d done things just as fiendish as they. It still felt like it was worse for me to do it. The Agrians and Solas specifically may have had their own reasons for hating my people, but the fact I’d stooped to their level just because they stooped to that level first seemed petty and hypocritical. How was it Alodia put it? “He who eats a wolf is still a carnivore.” That pretty much summed things up. “If I ever make it out of here, I’ll watch all I do carefully for such hypocrisy,” I thought to myself.

  Hope of survival dwindled within me as the soft shush of water poured down the tunnel. “He’s found me already?” I said to myself as I sprang to my feet. I looked around for anything else for me to hide behind and there was only the blind corner between me and the opening that could shield me from him. I recalled the spell Kaihar had cast. It seemed like a long shot, but figuring out that spell was my only way to escape. Hoping it would provide me with even a grain’s worth of extra power, I placed my palm once again onto the root of Freyr’s tree and concentrated.

  Figuring that spell out was still a very tricky thing to do. All I knew was I was pushed into one tree and came out another. The first time I tried to do it, I merely attempted to will myself someplace else. Had I recalled any of my training in magic before, I would have known that wouldn’t have worked and foreseen the consequence. With a loud crack, I was knocked to my feet. Both the root and my hand were injured—the root quickly sealing up the hand-shaped break, my hand unfortunately retaining the splinters in it. There was the echo of a battle cry descending from above me followed by the cry of a typhoon and the cry of the stream still falling steadily down the tunnel to me. “No, No,” I shouted at myself. “Remember what Ahrad told you? Separate your intent from your actions or it will never work.”

  “
Let’s see,” I thought to myself as I tried again with the other hand. “From my experience, that trick Kaihar did only works with trees. That makes sense with other alfar magic. So if I were a high-caliber transportation spell that worked like that, the first step would probably be to merge with a tree or something. That means I should pretend my hand is part of the tree already and push forward, right?” I tested my idea, and my heart beat faster from excitement as I felt my hand and even some of my arm meld into the root. Water began to slosh and soak a little bit into the soil, bubbling as it traded places with air. The sudden swap from trickling down to being here surprised me, throwing me back once again. This time, there was a large divot in the root about half a foot deep but that still closed itself up by the time I rose to try again.

  I had little time left to figure this out. Solas was sending a flood down after me and I was expecting him to drown me. Taking a few deep breaths to calm myself, I tried again, this time receiving no distractions and merging my entire self into it. It was a rather interesting experience. being magically inserted into a tree. All around me I was surrounded by reddish brown, parted by winding rings. The pattern seemed to have imposed itself onto every surface that surrounded me, and the longer I looked around me, the more directions I was able to look in at once. At first, it felt like each of my eyes were looking at something different from the other, and then both of them were looking at two places each. My vision kept splitting more and more until I was looking up, down, north, south, east, and west all at once, and when I reached that point, I was able to look farther and farther. When I directed my attention to the sacred tree, I noted that the entire structure—trunk, branch, and root—showed a dank, rainy atmosphere, no doubt because it was an exit and a storm lay outside of this strange land mine. “That far won’t do,” I thought to myself. “I’d still be trapped up there. It would be a waste of my time.”

  As such, I searched farther and farther until I saw the same anomaly as with the sacred tree. I prowled a great expanse that no doubt was valid transportation just yesterday, but only found some near the shore. Through house-shaped windows, I saw dozens of people running through the streets on foot and horseback and (sometimes quite embarrassingly) found people going about their daily businesses indoors. “I couldn’t go there,” I thought to myself. “I might as well turn myself in right now.” Once again, I tried to extend my range of sight to find someplace else, but it seemed I had already reached the maximum distance of the spell.

  “Hiding in Yggdrasil is foolhardy,” came a voice echoing across the expanse. In my nigh omnipresent state, I zoned in on the source of the voice. My gaze came into focus at that humble cave, but I still stood near Elderbear. The owner of the voice was Solas and he stared into the root, my gateway into this strange realm, as if he knew this was exactly where I was. “Those who hide vithin the vorld tree cannyot hide forever. Vorse things live in that realm than even me. Great mites, and maggots, and even the dragon Nyidhoggr.”

  In this quasi-realm, I leapt all the way to Solas and looked into his eyes as he just looked blankly at the root. “You should have stayed home and left us alone.”

  I looked back at Elderbear for a moment. “Yeah I should have,” I said out loud, even though he couldn’t hear me. As quickly as I could, I reached out and grabbed Solas by the arm. “But the same to you.” With no time for him to react to my ambush, I pulled Solas into Yggdrasil and flung him back to his hall. His scream of frustration reached me through my mind, and stopped suddenly as he was pulled out.

  Now that it was safe for me to do so, I stepped out of the realm above ground, through the trunk of the sacred tree. I fell onto the ground as soon as I exited the tree, the wind and dagger-like rainfall working fantastically well together for such a sneak attack. I’d landed face first into a mud puddle and when I tried to wipe my face off with my sleeve, I found that too was already soaked through. As I sloshed my way back down. The downpour was so heavy I wouldn't have been surprised if fish were actually swimming around in it.

  Halfway down, I reconsidered my decision to exit up here. Originally, I came out up there because I didn’t want to climb all the way up that likely wet and slippery tunnel, but this was worse. Frankly, small patches of ice I could deal with. It was when one can’t see them through a sopping wet face and shrieking winds that it became a problem. Aegir must have been having a good bit of fun with me, as just when I got back down to the lake and didn’t need to worry about falling to my doom, the rain died off and all the clouds vanished like a specter. As I walked around the lake, I fought down the urge to shake my fist at the ocean, a deed that would no doubt encourage that old giant to torment me even more.

  Svartalfar filled up the lakebed and a trail of yellow liquid led up the little tunnel way. There was a svartalf lying down at the entryway, drenched but not dead. He stirred for a moment and then looked up at me; as I’d learned to expect from them, he was in awe at my presence. The svartalf looked at the tunnel for a moment and then at me. “How…how did you get up here?”

  I just smiled. “Magic,” I said casually. I could tell through the svartalf’s shocked but curious look he was about to ask me more about the magic I used. Not wanting to tell him, I changed the subject with the first thing that popped into my head. “Where are my friends Alodia and Reokashothi, the woman and alf?” His jaw just flapped up and down like a shirt in a gale, not a word escaping. He just turned his head to the north and pointed. It felt kind of awkward talking to a svartalf now, probably almost as much as the svartalf felt, so I tried to make things brief. “Thank you, now please go and gather the others to discuss assembling a ship. I’m leaving the moment it’s finished,” I said and just walked away in the direction he pointed me in. He was evidently even more flabbergasted by my last comment, as his flapping jaw now stuttered. Perhaps there were better, less blush-worthy ways to have said something like that. Before actually heading off, I turned around to explain my predicament. “I have dangerous enemies, the likes of which you and your society can’t defend me against. I promise to find someone to replace me before abandoning you.” That didn’t seem to help much either, as utter terror was thrown into the awestruck mix.

  “Th-the-the-there is-s-s th-those who are mightier than y-y-you?” He finally managed to get words out of his lips. They were reluctant to come out but they got out. There seemed no stopping him from being that way. All that I told him only seemed to disturb him even more.

  I pressed my lower lip against the upper half and looked around, hoping for something to make the escape seem less awkward. “Bye, then,” was the best I could muster. The embarrassment had reached a nigh unstoppable point in its progress.

  I was surprised the svartalfar didn’t keep my sick friends in a cave or any such place. Instead, they had been moved into the castle ruins carved into the mountain wall. The svartalfar had the courtesy to have them at the very back and in a corner, so Alodia and Reo weren’t in the midst of the clamor of the svartalfar exploring their spoils. The nurses who were assigned to the two had the sense to build a fire to help keep Alodia warm and to place Reokashothi behind a drape, as to protect her from the smoke. Of course, such bedside manners were no doubt out of fear of my wrath than genuine consideration for their patients’ well-being.

  Reokashothi was already up, and a blanket charm was draped over her to keep her warm, but Alodia was still unconscious. I looked over at the nurse who was giving her medicine. “Is she well yet?” I asked, making an effort to stay calm, not wanting to even accidentally sound spiteful.

  Nevertheless, a look of fright came over her and she stumbled for words. “Th-th-the drugs are more potent w-with your kind, my dverv…” The nurse’s eyes darted to and fro and then she snapped in another comment. “But she should wake up soon.”

  “It’s okay.” I raised my hand, beckoning her to calm down. “I’ll just talk with my other friend for now.” I sat down beside Reo. Shadows cast on the canvas showed me that the nurse was sti
ll uneasy, the shape of her head never completely turning away from my general direction. “How are you?” I turned and asked Reokashothi.

  “F-fine, I guess.” Her head still seemed to be foggy as she spoke softly and had to think about even simple words. “I…remember someone with dark skin, and being given some kind of…powder. But now I’m here, and these svartalfar seem nice.”

  “Yeah, I know all about that stuff. You were drugged by them and were meant to be kept as a…trophy from their victory over your people. I ordered them to heal you as soon as I could.”

  She squinted at something in the distance as her eyes dilated. “So it’s true, you’re in charge of the svartalfar now? Some of the ones attending to me told me that, but I didn’t quite trust them.” After a short pause, Reokashothi looked down at her feet and rolled up into a ball. “Is it true that…everyone is…gone?”

  I sighed as I struggled to find the courage to break news like this to her. Ignorance was bliss only if it won’t hurt you, after all. “Everyone…you, Alodia, and I were the only prisoners.” It seemed appropriate for it to be short and succinct, nothing to soften the impact, because that would only stretch it out too far.

  “Oh…okay.” She just kept staring at the floor, not even a sniffle came out of her. It took a strong person to take something as horrible as that so calmly. Of course, at times like this, strength of mind and just plain old mindless numbness are indistinguishable. “I have a confession to make.” Her voice reached a monotone. “About picking on you before—”

  “It’s okay, I know you were just having fun,” I interrupted, assuming she was getting to an apology.

  Reokashothi gave a slight smile for a quick moment. “No, no, no, there was little bit of that, but that is not why I did it. Kaihar—he told me to do it, something about you needing to learn to cope with it.”