Unbeknownst to Humanity at large, it was not, in fact, Magister André Caparrogy who boarded the Saint-Denis and headed to La Réunion, but the Wood Elf Archdruid and exile Lëordan. He impersonated the Magister (To the day of writing, Lëordan has refused to comment on the fate of Magister Caparrogy) and commanded the landings of the mass transport ships Saint-Denis and Saint-Louis, which were dismantled to form additional bastions and administrative centers. Then, he took to the task of evicting the Orcs from Le Port, by taking the then ill-perceived step of negotiating with the Harpies to add Mages to their aerial assaults. After two years of harassment from all directions, the Orcs sued for peace and were escorted back to their ancestral lands, on the flanks of the Piton de la Fournaise. When asked for comments in recent discussions, the High Shaman Shameek simply left the premises, while Chieftain Barmak laughed and spoke about “a proper scrap” before describing some of the “highlights” of the conflict in which he had personally participated.

Extract from History of the Last Men, by Tanaka Inagi, First Librarian of La Réunion

A shape left the Garden. It staggered, then walked alternatively on two, three or four legs of creeper and wood. It made a beeline toward Damien, who was sitting, conscious but unresponsive. He was still looking at the Garden. He felt the strange being touching his torso and his back, passing under his clothes with its animated creepers, and didn’t resist. The being, probably some kind of Root Elemental, did something unexpected.

One of its appendages, as thin a a human nail, dug deep in the earth while two others pierced Damien’s skin on his front and his back, going through it and between the ribs, touching his hard-beating heart. Damien glimpsed at a flash of green light arcing from the ground, through the elemental and inside him. The appendages extracted themselves, leaving two circular pink scars where they broke through Damien’s skin. The elemental shriveled into a piece of wood covered in symbols that Damien recognized as sylvan. He tried deciphering them, but was still disoriented by his ordeal, and couldn’t translate it.

Damien’s heart finally calmed down. He pocketed the wooden block, intent on discovering the meaning of the runes on it, and looked around him, taking in the extensive damages caused by his outburst. Now that the danger of him exploding seemed to pass, Orcs, militiamen and students rushed to him, worrying about his health.

“Alright, guys, I’m better now,” Damien told them, exasperated. “It seems I won’t blow up any time soon.”

“What happened?” Julia looked at him worriedly.

“No idea. I just looked to the Garden, then I felt like I was having some kind of heart attack.”

Manon approached too. While she was looking at him, Cûn Anûn manifested, grunting and whining at Damien. He shot an interrogative glance at Manon, who nodded. He gingerly patted the Spirit Hound's neck, not noticing the smidgen of green light flowing from his finger into its neck. The Spirit dissipated, leaving a green thatch of grass in its place.

“So… What now?” Pyrite, who had arrived well before anyone else since she didn’t think it becoming of her position of leader to carry someone, had been admonishing her troops for their “slowness” until Damien had lit up like a firework.

“No idea,” Julia responded. “We were just supposed to camp near the Garden since it’s kept safe by lord Lëordan. Are we going to circle back around the Piton des Neiges’s eastern side?” She asked the Cadet.

“I was only told to get you safely to the Garden,” the officer sighed. “I think I know what’s going on, but… I suggest we set up a camp and wait tomorrow morning to see if I’m right.”

With some grumbling, the soldiers and the Orcs found a open space large enough for a dozen Acolytes, twenty soldiers and thirty Orcs down the valley, at the Garden’s boundary that was delimited on this side by a river. One of their comrades, an 18-year old Earthen Transmuter, made shelters for his classmates and protectors. He offered to make some more for the Orcs, but Pyrite refused, saying something half-way romantic about how their race slept more at ease when they could see the stars. If Jean had been there, he would have recognized it as a citation from his uncle exalting the Orcish way of life.

The whole camp was sleeping. That wasn’t right, of course. Militiamen, despite their name, were professional soldiers who wouldn’t go to sleep without organizing a watch, especially when they were responsible for a group of Acolytes. Neither would Orcs, who were used to being assaulted by magical critters of all size in their sleep otherwise.

The river stopped flowing. A humanoid silhouette crossed it, looked at the shelters, nodded, then entered, ignoring the sleeping guards. It knelt beside Damien, and snapped its fingers, producing a light. The stranger, now illuminated and visible, sported pointed ears, an elegant, if slightly haggard face and white hairs. He examined the sleeping Damien, stopping on the fading scar on his chest, and opened one of Damien's eyes, bending a little to observe it. He gnashed his teeth as if insulted. He sat immobile, thinking until the sun began to creep up. Only then, he began to move, his decision taken.

“So this is why you failed so. I will honor her legacy and the heart in your chest. Rejoice, for you are but the first of your kind. Alas, you will be the least of them all.” He tapped Damien’s chest, then his pocket, discharging magical energy each time. Elven runes shifted on a wooden block. He crossed the river again, threw something in the water, and left, his sing-song voice murmuring.

“How your flames were mighty, Domitius Ahenobarbus, how far they spread! From the Alps to the Sea, did Cacus’s wrath shine! Ahenobarbus, breaker of forests, city-builder, road-tracer! Forevermore Elf-killer, wood-burner, innocence-taker, Cinis Pontifex! Your children burnt your work, burnt themselves. Their ashes are ours to claim.”

A sad, ironic laugh escaped his lips, and he disappeared into the Garden.

Damien woke up to the sun in his eyes. He tried to listen to the camp’s noises, expecting boiling water and the sound of rations being freed from their paper containers but heard nothing. He quickly changed in a new T-shirt, then left his shelter. He was greeted by the snores of “watchful” militiamen and Orc sentinels. Deciding to help them wake, he fetched a small wooden cup, went to the river intending to fill it and “accidentally” empty it on one of the Orcish shirkers. Knowing Pyrite, it wouldn’t be a problem, and the commotion should wake the militiamen too, he thought with a malicious grin. Once he arrived, the mug escaped his hands.

“How the hell… Is someone there?” He called. Before him floated a group of small boats, complete with folded sails and oars, decorated with elven runes covering every square centimeters of the inner hull. He turned around, hearing footsteps.

“Yep, the Cadet thought it would be like that,” Pyrite smirked, ignoring Damien’s surprise at her sneaking on him. “Those are the boats he uses to send you guys food since you apparently can’t hunt for everyone… That’s cheating, by the way. And don’t ask me where he keeps them. Apparently, someone asked him how he could be sure that the boats wouldn’t be attacked by Mermen, and he just said they knew not to try…” She sniffed. “Did your smell change during the night?”

Damien reddened. “I changed my shirt! I can’t go around with dirty clothes on all day, you know”

“What the hell is going on! Soldiers, report!” They heard a very irate officer dressing down his men for sleeping through his watch. And the two followings, according to the Cadet’s colorful language.

After a moment, Pyrite appeared next to the officer, a smile on her lips. “They’re not to blame, Cadet. I think someone put us all to sleep this night. We were perfectly safe.”

“Oh. In that case… If you are sure…” The Cadet fumbled.

Pyrite nodded seriously. “As sure as lava burns Mermen.”

“Alright then. Anything else I should know?” The Cadet asked, still not entirely awake himself.

“You were right about your way home! Isn’t that great?” Pyrite teased him, showing the boats on the river.

“First good news of the day, then,” he whispered to himself. “Alright lads!” He ordered, using a Clarion Call-empowered necklace, “Wake up the last sleepers, tidy up the camp, say goodbye to our Orc friends and embark!” He took another look at the boats. “Three soldiers and two Acolytes by boats! Check your gear before getting on! Hurry up, I want us to be on the sea before 10:00.”

Damien was bored. He had thoughtlessly offered to help navigate while embarking, but the soldiers that accompanied him had laughed at him. The boat was navigating itself. And, as gifted as he was an Enchanter, he had no idea how. There was, as far as he could see, no Core to support the enchantment, and the wood looked like ordinary pine, although he couldn’t spot any traces of its builder’s work. They were in the last boat, following five others, maybe two hundred meters behind the next one. As the Cadet had hoped, they’d joined the sea early in the morning, and were now going north, their sails full of the usual eastern breeze of the Indian Ocean. His only distraction was to look overboard, trying to find signs of underwater life, and mull over the lessons he’d learned during his trip. Chief among them, he thought, was the fact that he was not as good a Combat Mage as he’d hoped. He shivered, replaying his bout with the Crowned Cobra and the poor militiaman he’d been too slow and too hesitant to save. Even more so, he was beating himself over the amateur error that had been his use of experimental Glyphs in live combat against the Ants. It’d turned out well, but could have been a deadly mistake if his comrades had not been so competent… His ruminations were interrupted by movements in the waters.

“Careful!!!” He cried out. Something rammed into the boat. Something heavy, with so much strength that it should have made the relatively small boat capsize.

“Did you see what it was?” A militiaman asked, grabbing his spear.

“Some kind of big fish, maybe a shark!” Damien answered. “The boat held up well, I don’t think it can capsize!”

He saw the thing once more, swimming away and circling around the boat.

“It’s going to try to jump in.” A militiaman realized. “Brace; spears ready!” He ordered the two others.

Damien began to prepare a spell. Considering the size of the thing, a cantrip wouldn’t stop it. He sighed and began channeling Embers in his Astral Body. The shark charged and jumped out of the water, it’s maw open wide enough to swallow a man without biting down on him. Damien cried out “Ember Knife!” then ducked.

The knife of Embers flew in the shark’s maw and exploded in its gullet. From there, its shards dispersed in the beast’s maw, heating up as soon as they found living fuel to heat them. To his surprise, Damien did not feel the vertigo he’d come to associate to the direct casting of Ember spells. The shark was now writhing from the pain and stuck on the boat, which did not budge under its weight. When it tried unsuccessfully to bite at a militiaman, its teeth crumbled, cooked out by the inferno that was its maw. A few strikes from the soldier’s Lightning-wreathed Elemental Spears, and it stopped moving.

“That was a bit too close for comfort.” One of them commented. “I wonder from where it came… Oh”

Damien followed his gaze. There was an empty harness of seaweed and fish-bone on the shark’s back.

“Can we make this thing go a little quicker?” He asked. Then he looked at the coast and saw Saint-Denis’ fortified harbor’s shape. “Never mind. We’re almost there, and there’s a welcoming committee.”

Half an hour later, Damien’s boat docked. With an extra passenger, as they’d decided to take the shark’s carcass with them, considering the boat’s speed didn’t seem to drop anyways. Damien spotted his father among the crowd of parents and officials and ran into his arms.

“Welcome back, son.” His father told him gravely. “I hear you guys have quite an epic to tell us. But first, I have some good news. Mrs. Montel gave birth this morning, at dawn”

Damien smiled. Their neighbors, the Montel, a couple of squibs and early retired militiamen, had been trying to have a child for years. However, looking at his father’s face, he didn’t see the smile he expected. “Is something wrong with the baby?” He asked, horrified.

His father glanced at him, preoccupied. “You could say that. It’s a girl. A Half-Elf. And she's theirs, we already checked.”