Of Dark Elves And Dragons

by Greg Curtis

  He sent a second fire elemental after the first and wondered if he needed to summon a lightning elemental instead. More powerful than a fire elemental though less useful, they had no weaknesses, not even water. But summoning them was a long and difficult process, and despite the fact that he was filled with hope and fear keeping him awake, he wasn’t at his best. Fire elementals were easier and he could replace them when he needed.

  Finally after several more complete circuits of the long spiral passageway and many more hours of slow and exhausting travel, as best as he could tell he reached something new and stopped in surprise. For the first time since he had arrived here, he had encountered a door, and that had to be significant; there hadn’t been any sort of physical barrier anywhere until then. He studied that door as though his life depended upon it. It probably did.

  It was a thick wooden door, probably oak, but aged for thousands of years until even as strong as it had once been, it would probably now have turned to dust if it wasn’t for the magic coursing through it. But there was magic in it, powerful death magic, and even through the elemental he was reluctant to test it out. Instead he turned his attention to the writings carved deep into it. Spells and wards if he wasn’t mistaken, some so powerful that they made his skin crawl even as far away as he was. But knowledgeable as he was of the ancients and their language, he couldn’t understand a single symbol and that was not comforting.

  Fortunately he had another option than going through the door, and he decided to use it. He sent a third earth elemental through the long passage ways which were now mercifully cleared of most of the traps until after a good twenty minutes of walking it too was standing there, staring at the fire elemental, and the door. But unlike the others the elemental was in the middle of a mountain of stone, its natural element, and there was no reason at all that it had to use the passageways provided.

  With a few simple commands he quickly had the elemental carving another passageway through the stone, intending to tunnel right around the door, and connect back up with the passageway behind it.

  The earth elemental made good time. At the touch of its monstrously powerful stone hands the passage walls simply turned to soft mud which fell to the floor around its feet, and scoop by massive scoop it began digging its way through the mountain, away from the passage.

  An hour and a half, maybe two hours later, the side tunnel was easily fifteen feet long, which was when he finally worked up the courage to have the elemental start carving its way parallel to the passage way. After another nap and some more food, and just when he was sure they’d finally passed the door as the tunnel was now some thirty feet long, he had the elemental begin the important task of rejoining the passage way beyond it, hoping only that there wasn’t a second such door behind the first.

  He congratulated himself on his cunning, knowing that already, even without having reached his objective, he had gone further than any other mage had on his own. It was too soon to celebrate perhaps, but it was still something to remember as he waited impatiently for the elemental to reconnect with the passage. Except that when he finally emerged into a lit area he discovered it wasn’t a passageway at all. It was a chamber. A gigantic circular chamber as large as a small village, with immense vaulted ceilings so high that he lost them in the inky blackness above the torches hanging from them, and a raised central circular platform, upon which four immense daises were perched.

  Had it been used as an amphitheatre, easily a thousand people could have stood or sat all around the central platform, and he wouldn’t have doubted that the voices of those on it would have carried well to all parts. There was something about the chamber that said it would also serve that purpose when occasion demanded it. But who would the audience have been? He didn’t need to be told to know that he’d reached his destination, and it was here that he'd find the sleeping chambers of the four ancients. His journey, or at least the first step in it, was ended.

  He took a moment to close his eyes and bask in his triumph. Despite all the traps, the dangers, and the difficulty of what he’d been asked to do, he had done it. He had succeeded where so many others before him - admittedly long before him - had failed. Just as when he’d faced the huntsmen he’d found that he was stronger than he’d thought, his elementals were more powerful, and if he took the time to plan things out he could outwit a true master. Though his fireballs looked more like firebrands at best and his lightning bolts were worse as they just fizzled, he was still a force to be reckoned with. For someone not yet thirty and half human to boot, that was something to be proud of.

  In time his mind returned to the task at hand and he directed the earth elemental to carefully approach the nearest of the daises as he was still worried about traps, but despite his fears nothing happened. No fire, no ice, no tornadoes or any other lethal force reached out to harm his servant. Perhaps the ancients hadn’t been so willing to risk such dangerous energies so near to where they slept.

  The elemental ascended the stone platform, slowly walking up each of the six massive steps infinitely carefully, and then when nothing happened, approached the nearest dais, barely fifty paces in front of it.

  The dais that he approached through the eyes of the elemental, was really a wide flat stone column that rose out of the ground itself, almost as though it was part of the same seamless whole, and perhaps it was. The entire chamber and everything in it was surely one single carved and shaped stone structure, though the carver had used magic rather than a chisel. The artistry required to mould such an edifice was immense, but he wouldn’t have put it past an ancient. He wouldn’t have put much past them at all.

  Finally, after what seemed like ages, the elemental reached the dais, and for the first time Alan was disappointed. The top of it was nothing more than a perfectly flat stone surface. There was no ancient wizard lying on top of it, no recess in it for a coffin or a body. It was just a flat, solid piece of stone. And yet that made no sense. It should have been an ancient’s resting place; that seemed only logical. So either the ancients had not made their chamber their resting place, they had left it earlier, or there was more concealed. He suspected the latter as he felt the magic coming from the solid rock structure. Life magic. There was something living here. Something or someone. He had to find it.

  Resigning himself to yet another wait, Alan summoned another air elemental, and when it appeared he loaded it up with spells of clarity, translation and vision and the like. Then he had to wait as the elemental made its way through the seemingly endless tunnels until it too made the chamber. At least it floated more quickly than the earth elementals plodded, but being so close to his journey’s end, that was never going to be soon enough for Alan.

  No sooner had it arrived in the chamber then Alan had it release the spell of clarity. Immediately the air elemental’s normally sharp vision became miraculous as its insubstantial eyes pierced the darkness. Suddenly through its eyes he could see the top of the arched ceiling perhaps a hundred feet above his head, and wondered how any wizard could have carved and shaped rock into such a grand structure. He could see the door he’d carefully avoided, and even the spells woven into it. They were deadly spells. And he could see the dais itself, and the tiny cracks and lines of light that were coming from it. To most eyes it looked like one solid, vacant looking piece of stone, but through his new eyes, he knew it had a chamber in the top, just large enough to hold a coffin. The ancient wizard was inside the dais, not on top of it. He could even see the tiny inscriptions that were carved into its base. He just couldn’t understand them.

  Without thinking his actions through, he had the elemental release a second spell in the chamber, this time one of translation sent into the chamber itself, desperate to find out how to open the daises. It was a foolish thing to do, rash and ill thought out, though probably he would have done it anyway in time since he had little alternative. But releasing magic in such an enchanted place could have caused all sorts of things to happen, not least of all for more defe
nces to be raised.

  Fortunately nothing like that happened and after a few seconds Alan released the frightened breath he’d been holding and started studying the now decipherable runes.

  His first thought was that they weren’t quite what he’d expected, not that he’d really known what to expect. But instead of powerful threats and wards of great magic, they were simply the names and stories of the ancient wizards contained within, plus some history of the wars that had driven him to this strange fate. But most important of all, they contained the simple formula for activating the dais and returning the ancient to life. Something that according to what they’d written, should have been done thousands of years ago. It just hadn’t happened.

  Alan’s heart pounded with excitement as he realized that in front of him was the goal he’d been striving for. That he had the answers he wanted. That he could now awaken four ancients where he had counted on only one. And that it could still be incredibly dangerous.

  The records of the ancient’s history, what little they had, said that these were the peaceful wizards, the ones who had hidden from the wars rather than fought them, but that was no guarantee of friendship, and a wizard would quickly realize that the elementals in front of him weren’t the actual wizard, and act accordingly. Unlike their traps they could find him, reach out and kill him on the balcony instead of his elementals.

  Still it wasn’t really a choice. If the elves were right, and he knew in his very marrow that they were, these ancient wizards were needed urgently, and he couldn’t put that off. Every day that passed more undead would roam the lands, and soon they would be followed by the more powerful undead such as the bone drakes and liches. Then they in turn would gather their fellow undead into war parties and armies, and then take the battle to the living. All of the living. In time, the undead would outnumber the living, and then they would bring the land into eternal darkness. Even his home. He couldn’t allow that.

  Cautiously he had his servant approach the nearest dais.

  “Ashiel Longfeather Falconer, arise!” Through the air elemental he spoke the words and his normally quiet voice boomed and reverberated in the chamber like thunder in the hills. But while that surprised him, it didn’t concern him a thousandth as much as the fact that the perfectly smooth stone top of the dais suddenly became lined with strange glowing symbols and the outline of what looked like a coffin lid. He had triggered something.

  Before he could suffer another loss of an elemental he had his air elemental take a few quick steps backwards, until it was at least ten feet from the dais, and then watched closely. He was only just in time.

  A silent explosion of colour seemed to engulf the entire surface of the dais, and then in a blaze of glorious yellow light, a good six inches of its top just disappeared as if it had never existed, revealing a coffin shaped depression within it. A depression which he couldn’t see into but out of which he suddenly spied a pair of hands arising, placing themselves on the edge of the stone.

  It was then that he knew he’d finally succeeded in raising an ancient, and a strange feeling of both hope and terror took hold of him as he finally had the sense to wonder what he’d unleashed. The tales of the ancients were without end, and mostly without reason, but in one thing they all agreed. They were powerful beyond all, and dangerous with it. And yet he’d had no choice. For good or ill this was the only way to save his world from the undead.

  A few heartbeats later he forgot all of that as the ancient sat up in the dais, and he gazed upon a face that hadn’t seen the light of day in perhaps five thousand years.

  She was a woman, a young woman at that, and despite her power and threat, his first thought at seeing her was to wonder that she looked so normal, even so weak. No terrible flames of fire shone from her eyes, no smoke came from her nose. She didn’t even seem angry. She was just a woman, an elven maiden like any other, except that she was even younger and smaller than most. She didn’t look that dangerous. His second thought was to realize that she was naked. Either she’d gone to her sleep that way, or else her clothes had turned to dust over the many thousands of years as she’d slept.

  She was more than just naked however, she was exquisite, something he had never expected. He wanted to look away, he should have as it was only polite and proper, and it was expected of one of noble birth. No, not expected; it was demanded. But he couldn’t, and instead he gazed upon the surprising perfection of form as she slowly and carefully got to her feet, stretched and then gracefully vaulted down from the dais to the platform on which he stood, or rather on which his air elemental did.

  “Lights!” She called for them and his spell of translation seemed to be working perfectly as he understood her as if she was speaking trade. Speech as well as writing, he silently congratulated himself on his preparedness. But only for a heartbeat. Suddenly the formerly dark chamber became filled with light until every corner of it shone as though it was a sunny day, and perhaps the most amazing thing it revealed was her.

  She was gorgeous. Beautiful in a way that words could simply not do justice to. She might be small in stature, perhaps only five feet or so, but in every other measure she was well endowed. His eyes couldn’t help but follow her full, perky breasts leading down to a gracefully slender waist and then good child bearing hips and long graceful legs. And her face was as if the gods themselves had sculptured her. Full lips, a delicate nose and beautiful big brown eyes, and all adorned with a crown of golden hair that cascaded down like a waterfall to her waist, a perfect contrast to the silvery sheen of her skin. Even her ears, somewhat longer and more pointed than he was used to, were perfect as they stuck out through her hair and headed for the ceiling high above.

  Rosalie he knew, could never hear of this. They might not be serious, or at least their friendship hadn’t been formalised into anything more, but he was sure that if she found out, she would be angry, and she was surprisingly capable with that bow of hers. A man could learn to regret upsetting her.

  Still the lights had revealed a miracle. And as he eventually realized, with it surely, they had also revealed him. She could see him - or at least his servant. Air elementals were by their very nature, difficult to spot, and so in the gloom his servant had been all but invisible, but suddenly he felt exposed and out in the open. Fortunately she either didn’t notice him, or she simply didn’t care as she went about her business, first off stretching some more, and then looking around at the other three daises and no doubt wondering why she had been awoken and not them. A matter he was sure she would address shortly.

  “Greetings honoured maiden.” The words came out of the elemental’s mouth almost without his having bidden them, but the moment he realized that she might awaken the rest of her family, he knew he had to greet her before then and make his peaceful intent known. With only one awake, there was hope that things would go well; with all four, they might well destroy his elementals before he could say anything, and him straight after.

  His words though, produced an unexpected result; fear. She spun like a dancer with lightning in her veins, hunting for the speaker, and then the instant she spotted the air elemental’s form, ducked behind the dais itself, almost as though he’d frightened her. But how could that be? Sure he might have startled her, but still he would have thought that she would never have been afraid of such a simple creature as an air elemental. But then again, she had only just awoken, and perhaps she was one of the ancient’s children rather than the mother and not yet as powerful as she should be. Perhaps too, she didn’t understand him as he understood her words. Perhaps his spell of translation had not affected her.

  “Please my lady, I mean you no harm.” Of course if she didn’t understand his first greeting, then his next words would have been completely useless too. But he couldn’t stop himself from saying them, even as he watched her eyes widening in fear as she peered over the top of the stone dais and tried to find him.

  “Who are you?” At least her voice was strong. There was no sign of f
ear in them anyway, even if she was still hiding behind the dais. And just maybe she had understood him after all.

  “Alan Feralis. I have come only to beseech your help.”

  “Liar!” He almost, or that was his air elemental through which he was acting, almost took a step back in surprise at the vehemence with which she accused him of lying. “I know of no Feralis House. You have broken through countless wards of concealment and confusion and entered my family’s chamber, hoping to finish us all. You work for the fallen ones if you are not one yourself.”

  “Fallen ones?” Alan was mystified by the term, but he guessed it had something to do with the ancient wizard wars. Some of the wizards must have fallen, whatever that meant and she obviously thought they were still at war. She clearly didn’t realize how long she’d slept. That too he remembered from reading some of the reports about the other ancients who’d been awoken. They had never intended to sleep for so many thousands of years and when awoken it had taken much time and effort to convince them of the truth.

  “Do not deny your evil, and do not approach. I will destroy you where you stand.” Yet even as she said it, Alan had the strangest feeling she was bluffing. It made no sense but he was sure that she was scared, and she didn’t know if she could destroy him. Just what sort of ancient all powerful ancient wizardess was she? And who were the fallen ones? Still it wasn’t his place to ask.