Before El-Vador could form a retort, the man had gone. It left his prisoner with more questions than answers.
XLI
Few times have I questioned my purpose, my unerring path toward this final most complete of goals. Supposed wise men have wasted years of their lives pondering instead of doing, trapped out of fear of the consequences. I live with my consequences but I know the subjectivity of questioning my actions. To some I am a monster, I accept this. Perhaps I am.
Time passed slowly in the darkness, for it was truly pitch black now that El-Vador had relinquished his enhanced sight. It was a pointless drain on his energy when all that stretched out before him was endless nothing and the waiting therein.
He tried to lock things down, to keep his head clear and focused for whatever Salvarius had been implying. The hours ground down his vigilance in due course despite his best efforts, leaving him in a strange daze that bordered between sleep and daydreaming.
He thought back to the past, of his time in the mountains with his father and mother. They weren't exactly happier times but they were certainly simpler than the life full of vengeful wanderings. It hadn't been enough to simply bury Sarvacts under his fortress, part of him had hoped it would be. That he could go back to his people and find another village to be part of, assuming that the Orc had lied and there were villages remaining. He tried to push the thought down but it ate at him, what if he truly was the only Elf left from the unseen massacre of the northern peaks?
Thoughts of home and the wreckage that had been left continued to taunt him in the darkness with nothing else to occupy his time with. Until now he had been constantly in motion from the moment he woke until he dropped from exhaustion, always doing something to prevent death from catching up with him. Now death was at his feet and surrounding him with steel bars, caging him with an agonising patience and rendering him helpless to do nothing but wait. With that prospect in place, his mind took over.
So lost was he in his thoughts that he barely noticed the blinding light as the guards opened the chamber door cut into the rock face once more. A torch was carried in and he squinted blindly out at the flickering luminescence with more than a hint of trepidation.
'You may leave us,' the voice told the light, and in response the torch receded, with the sound of a door being drawn shut closely following.
El-Vador sat in the darkness again, listening to the breathing of the Orc now in his company and waiting for him to speak.
'You are from the north, I am told,' the voice finally stated, stupidly. Why would it ask such a thing? El-Vador nodded experimentally to see if it would generate a response. He suspected that being left alone in the darkness with this Orc was meant to intimidate him, and that his companion's sight wasn't entirely obscured.
'Have you no tongue, Elf? Salvarius has told me otherwise, raise your head and let me look upon you.'
That voice. There was something familiar about that voice that seemed to reach into the recesses of El-Vador's buried memories. Had he not been imprisoned in this place of no light, the sound may not have stirred any recollection. It tickled the back of his skull agonisingly as he tried to piece together its true source.
He looked up at the Orc as he had been asked and ignited his sight, hearing an intake of breath from the figure and watching as an artificial brightness started to flood the room.
He could see the recognition upon the craggy features as he in turn recognised them, it had been one of the Orcs that Sarvacts had tasked with guarding the fort outside his village during the occupation. It was clear from the look upon the face of this General that he remembered who El-Vador was too.
'You are the one from my dreams.' he said so quietly that it was almost silent. 'I am not a great believer in coincidence, Elf.'
Seeing no reason to respond to this, El-Vador didn't.
'I always hated the chill of those mountains.' the Orc said, seating himself in front of the bars and staring off into space in recollection. 'It would leech the warmth from your blood if it could, and even when we were running for our lives I could still feel its touch on my joints.'
El-Vador watched as the Orc absent-mindedly rubbed his knee with a free hand, he knew that a number of them had fled from the farming communities. He had also assumed that the voice had enabled him to track them down.
'I ran for many miles, and when I felt that I had taken my last step forward I would hear the wail of someone else dying. I have seen a lot of death in my time, but until meeting the Elves in their mountains I had never been forced into a retreat.
'No, this was different from anything that came before, I propelled myself on in a blind panic and still I kept hearing the screams, knowing that I may well be the next victim.'
El-Vador's features hardened at that word. 'You were not victims, you were hired killers who deserved everything you got from us.'
The Orc shook his head sadly. 'You are mistaken, young Elf. Some of us were soldiers, and invaders into your lands. Others were farmers, families, children. All of them were butchered for having the audacity to want a new life on the frontier. Did they deserve it, Elf?'
Was it an appeal to his conscience? Why was his captor posing such questions instead of exacting his own retribution for everything that had gone against his forces?
'They were invaders in their own way, Orc. They may not have brought steel or laid waste to our people, but they did the same to our lands with pick and axe.'
This brought another shake from the Orc, as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing. 'You would lump the crimes of the guilty upon those innocents unfortunate enough to be associated with them?'
El-Vador shifted uncomfortably. 'An Orc is an Orc is an Orc. I have not met one that is not worthy of death.'
'Is that what you told the fleeing children that you shot in the back? Do such vapid rationalisations help you to sleep at night?'
The Elf frowned. 'We did what we must, to protect our homeland from those who were not us.'
'My name is Harg.' the Orc said, finally reintroducing himself. 'I am the General of this burrow, but before that I was the head scout of the frontier lands.'
El-Vador offered him a shrug, what did it matter what this Orc was? He was the captive and Harg was the jailer, everything else was an irrelevance.
'Oh but you see, it does matter. I want you to look into these eyes and remember this name as you perish. When we were slaughtered in the mountains, word came from the central burrow that we were to venture out with a new force led by me. Our mission was simple, discover what had happened in those mountains.'
This gave El-Vador pause, and the Orc smiled knowingly, having read the expression on his captive's face.
'Yes, you know where I am going with this, Elf. We found the frozen bodies of our comrades, including that of my younger cousin Gurgash. It was his first posting, Elf, he wasn't supposed to have another. Yet you killed him all the same, just like you did our women and children.'
He had to ask this Orc the question, he had to know. 'Why do you think it is I that killed your cousin?'
Harg offered him a grim smile in response. 'We searched long and hard for signs of a pursuing army, the one that had routed us, what do you think we found, Elf?'
El-Vador remained silent.
'There were one set of footprints, Elf. They were everywhere, moving at unfathomable speeds, but they were only one set. There was no army, it was all you.'
The silence stretched out as the two stared at each other, both of them knowing the truth and seemingly unable to speak any further.
'They thought me crazed, you know.' Harg finally said, his voice rising slightly in anger. 'Crazed, in believing that one Elf could have wrought so much destruction upon even our Champions. The snow preserves things, Elf. I know it was you that wielded powers beyond that of mortal ken. I have but one question of you, before I suspect you will tear this cage asunder and end me.'
Again there was silence, and in that nothingness El-Vador heard n
o voice urging him and no power coursing through his veins. Harg was completely unaware of just how helpless his prey was.
'What is your question?' El-Vador asked, half-guessing what it was already, but even the Orc's voice was better than the silence.
'How?'
The single word floated out through the space between them and El-Vador found a great reluctance in answering this creature's simple question. Was the voice subtly urging him not to reveal its presence to the Orc?
'I cannot say.' the Elf replied, though he could tell from hearing his own words that the Orc would not buy the lie.
'Unrepentant, unapologetic and entirely unreasonable. You are just like all the others I have seen of your race, believing yourselves aloof to the genuine concerns of others and moral arbiters unto the lesser races in your eyes. We shall see if you are more talkative after a few more days of darkness, if not then I look forward to personally executing you for your crimes.' The Orc rose, and turned as if to leave but stopped on the threshold. 'Or I could just leave you here permanently to mull over all that you have done. I've heard the Elves have extremely long lives.'
With a slam of the prison door, Harg was gone. He hadn't even asked for El-Vador's name.
Extinguishing his sight, he lay there in the darkness once more, pondering over all the Orc had said in spite of his best judgement.
He needed to get out of here, the voice had been of no help and Salvarius' hints did not merit trusting. It seemed as if everything that had once aided him had been turned against him, and that he was destined to spend all of eternity in this cell.
It slowly dawned on him in the outstretched darkness that without the Orc realising it, the fate Harg had threatened him with had been almost the exact same one he had doomed Sarvacts to.
XLII
Power. For all the foes and conflicts that I have faced in my long life, it has been power that is constantly the greatest threat. It is a hunger that is never truly sated, an appetite that when whetted continues to itch away for more. Power is both the tool of my trade and my greatest flaw, and at such a tender age it was all too easy to be consumed by it.
The darkness sprawled out endlessly before him, and try as he might to keep track of the time spent brooding behind the solid metal links encasing him it eventually eluded him.
At first he tried mentally to keep track of when he required rest, but his enforced inactivity left him pacing the confined floor like a caged wolf eager to hunt.
Nothing changed in this place of no light, there were no sounds and what little his senses could pick up soon diminished into a dull tedium of continuity. He found himself wishing that the Orc or Salvarius would just come back and take him to the gallows, or whatever torture they had planned for him. At least then he had a chance of being free to attempt an escape, however small the opportunity to do so would be.
Sounds came to him after a time, faint but distinct all the same. Footsteps from guards perhaps, signalling another potential visitor. Perhaps the time for his execution was already at hand, assuming that Harg had decided against leaving him rotting here eternally.
The door opened and El-Vador restored his sight swiftly, causing the room to explode in a white light that pierced his corneas and made him blink. Eventually he made out two distinct shapes, guards he had previously seen escorting Salvarius and Harg. They were stock still and staring at him blankly, were they waiting for someone else to enter the room?
A shadowy figure proceeded through the doors and between the guards, thinking it a trick of his eyes, El-Vador focused further upon the figure but could not see past the swirling shadows that seemed to accompany him.
'When first I saw you traipsing your way toward the Orcish burrow, I wondered what it was you hoped to achieve with such a direct approach. Then when you entered the sewers after following that armoured figure I had hope. Your clash with the beast displayed the undeniable prowess of your power, yet you are now captured and make no attempt to escape. This leaves me most confused.'
El-Vador knew that voice immediately, he just couldn't understand why it had been following him. 'What business have you with me, Anacletus? Are you also in league with the Orcs? Have you come to gloat over my captivity and implore me to extend my powers further?'
Anacletus laughed at him, tapping one of the stock-still guards on the shoulder with a wispy arm before waving smoke in the Orc's eyes. The guard did not so much as blink.
'These simpletons are easy to control, I am no great friend of the Orcs, especially after my previous encounter with Sarvacts.' he made his way closer to the bars now, more gliding than walking. 'My powers have doubled since that débâcle, and I have you in part to thank for that. We may have been even when we parted ways, that much seemed apparent to us both, but in no small part thanks to further repercussions, I feel that in my mind there is still this one act to perform to atone for all the trouble you went through in accidentally saving me.'
El-Vador deciphered the strange man's sentence eventually, and wondered briefly if he had come to kill him.
Anacletus divested a sack from somewhere within his shadowy robes and placed it upon the floor, rifling through it he removed the Elf's weapons and laid them out before him.
'Your journey has not yet run its course, these are the tools of your trade now, killer.'
El-Vador stared at him suspiciously. 'You're breaking me out of here?'
The man offered him an easy smile that he wouldn't have seen but for his enhanced sight. 'We are very much even now, Elf. When we next meet it will most likely be as foes. The guards will remain inanimate for a few moments after my departure, do what you wish with them and then embrace the potential I have seen in you.'
'Why are you actively seeking to make someone who would be your enemy in future more powerful?' El-Vador asked, still suspicious that he may be walking into an even greater trap by complying with Anacletus' wishes.
'We live in a post-antediluvian world, Elf. There are few of us left from the great fall and even fewer living that yet remember. I may well regret freeing you from these bonds should we come into contact once more, but it is a risk I must take for the sake of the upcoming war.'
The Elf blinked as Anacletus robbed one of the statuesque guards of his keys. 'What war do you speak of?
'Nothing so childish as a war of darkness and light, but merely that of the forces that conquered once before and the forces that seek to conquer in their absence.'
The man spoke in riddles, and El-Vador cared not for war while locked away in this cell. All he had left to do was escape this place and plan his vengeance, events of the world at large mattered little. When the cell door opened and he gathered his weaponry, he offered Anacletus no response to his words of war and conquest.
'I see you feel this does not concern you, Elf. It will in time, mark my words.'
Before El-Vador could respond, the man had slipped away into shadow and beyond sight.
The cuts were swift, and stemmed from anger at being locked away for such a length of time, the Orcish blood steamed on the floor as the guards slumped down with blank looks still etched upon their dead faces. Now he had to plan his retreat and then map out further attacks upon this burrow somehow.
'No, you don't.'
The voice had finally spoken, now that he was free of this place it chose to communicate with him.
'Only Harg sees you as a genuine threat, and that is because he is a dream-addled fool that has laid importance upon you more out of luck than realisation. Now you will show the rest of these spawn exactly how much of a threat you can be.'
Finally the voice was empowering him, at last he was being given a chance to exact retribution for all that had been done to him and his people. He said nothing, waiting further instruction as to just how he would do this.
'Stretch out your limbs and place your palms upward.'
Never before had El-Vador received such a strangely specific command from the voice, he immediately obeyed, sensing the impo
rtance of the action.
'Now quest out with your thoughts, and latch on to the patches that burn brightest, my pawn.'
He refused to bristle at being called a mere pawn once again, knowing that in the grip of power the voice could punish him severely. Instead he did as was asked of him and sent his thoughts outward, questing into the space above while closing his eyes and extinguishing his sight in deep concentration.
'Good,' the voice crooned at him unnervingly. 'Now search amongst that darkness for those patches, and seize what is yours by right.'
It was a strange sensation, as if he were walking in another plane of existence where darkness reigned eternal. His form was not corporeal, he drifted from place to place and he saw the world through eyes that were not his own. The patches the voice spoke of grew over time in brightness as his own detached senses became attuned with what they were witnessing.
'I see one of them.' El-Vador said.
'Silence!' the voice boomed back at him. 'You cannot speak in this realm, do not attempt it further.'
Stinging at the harsh rebuke, the Elf instead chose to drift closer to one of these multitudinous patches of light.
'Now assume the form that I had indicated to you prior,' the voice instructed.
He did so, and the light came streaming toward him, the sound of a faintly exhaled breath brushing his senses as it became one with his own consciousness.
'Good. Good,' the voice crooned in pleasure. 'Now continue with your ministrations to these lights until there are none left.'
El-Vador complied, finding that he moved swifter now through the darkness. He also discovered that amongst the bright blaze of the previous patches were lesser hints of colour and form, barely perceptible to what he assumed was his sight.
El-Vador's Travels Page 30
