S01E06 - The Alefin Ways (Samuel POV)

*****

Ryllae walked along a faded red brick road into the rising sun, leaving us men to follow. Sandwiched between Brice and Colin, Simon and I picked our way over the rough, broken bricks. A light swirling fog surrounded us, reducing visibility to a hundred metres. Small rocks and loose gravel littered the path, threatening to turn our ankles with every step. After half an hour the road opened onto a boulder strewn landscape and Ryllae lead us on a meandering path through the foggy maze.

The footing was much better here, with few of the brick pavers missing, so I took the opportunity to forge my way to the front. Despite a bemused smile and head shake from Brice, I fell in step with Ryllae. "You said you were interested in hearing about the other Elves," I said. "Would now be a good time to chat?"

She ignored me, her eyes always moving, scanning the area nervously, but I waited like a stone knowing that elves do things in their own time. The red brick path turned north then east again when a ravine appeared and stretched to the east and west as far as the eye could see. The far side was covered by a dark forest where blighted leaves clung to gnarled and twisted limbs. I could see shadows moving through it, pacing us as we walked.

"Tell me about the other elves," she said at last. "I would hear of our almegimli, our spirit-kin, that live in other worlds."

And so I told her of the forest and wood elves that were most commonly described, their arboreal homes grown from seedlings and lovingly tended over the centuries. I described the elegant carvings that adorned every tree and the clothing they wore. I spoke of the mountain elves with their cities carved of living rock, where every surface was a work of art that would make mortal men weep and their clever enchantments that would puzzle even gnome artificers. Finally I shared what little knowledge I had of the outliers, sea elves that lived deep in the under the oceans and celestial elves that rivalled even the angels in beauty.

As we walked east with the ravine on our left, the landscape to the south had slowly changed from that of a blasted hellscape to poison green sagebrush and cactus with glistening needles. Small things had left tracks in the soft sand and the occasional skeletal remains of larger creatures were a reminder not to step off the faint path under our feet.

When I finished my monologue, Ryllae unslung her flask and offered it to me. I knew elves were a private people. Hell, everyone knows that. There are entire shelves of books filled with titles like 'How to Make Friends with Elves and Influence Them' marketed at soon-to-be teenage heroes. She offered me a drink from her flask. The flask where she puts her lips.

I took it and hesitated.

"I'm familiar with the symbolism of the cup." I said, my hand hovering over the filigree stopper carved to resemble a mushroom. "But I'm uncertain of the ceremony of sharing a flask."

A faint smile crossed her lips. "One accepts the flask and drinks." She said. "Sometimes a flask is just a flask."

I laughed and took a drink. The water was as cold and pure as if it had come from a mountain stream. I began to stopper it when she reached out to pull it from my hands and take a sip.

"Now it is symbolic." she said, twisting the mushroom stopper back into place and slinging it across her shoulders.

"What would you know?" she asked.

"Everything." I said without hesitation.

"That would take a lifetime to tell." She replied.

"I'm human," I said. "I'll be gone before the leaves of the Loia turn gold."

Her laughter was a bright bell ringing through the misty air and vanished all too soon. "We have no Loia trees in Avelan," She said, her voice sombre. "We are forced to burn our dead to keep them from Misabnu. The god of death would use their bodies as grotesque puppets for his play. Lady Avelan is helpless against his power, for even gods die on occasion."

"All around you is Alefin," she said, gesturing at the hazy desolation. "This was once home to untold millions of Fae, where we lived in peace and beauty from the dawn of time. But evil came to Alefin and in our innocence we did not recognise the corruption for what it was. A black ichor leaked from the nexus where ley lines met and every living thing it touched was cursed, twisted into unnatural form and filled an unnatural hunger for blood and flesh. We learned too late that the Fae were not immune to the corruption and its effects were far more insidious, weaving sly tendrils of evil into their thoughts even while granting them dark powers. The corrupted raised a Demon King and creatures of shadow were released to ravish and feed upon us, children who had never known war."

She trailed off, lost in her thoughts.

I kept silent while she relived those years, mourning the loss of her world. Another hour passed before she spoke again.

"We did not summon Heroes, having no knowledge of such magic. Instead, in the final days of the war we fell to despair and conceived of a plan to contain the evil that had infected Alefin. We sacrificed the Loia." He voice broke and she drew a shuddering breath. "We pulled them up by the roots and hacked them to pieces. We killed our ancestors in our desperation to live."

"From their bodies we carved the Henges that touch the world of Avalan." She said. "We burned their silver leaves and golden boughs to fuel the magics that opened the portals and allowed us to flee Alefin. We came into Avalan as ragged refugees seeking safety and shelter, and we were welcomed. It is a debt that we cannot repay."

Horror filled me as her tale drew to a close. The henge was not made of stone monoliths, but of Loia wood that had been somehow fossilised by magic. Sacred Loia trees grown from the bodies of immortal elves who had either died by accident or chosen to become a part of the collective forest-spirit. The fruit of those trees were filled with the spirit of those that had once lived, and eating it allowed new generations to be born and filled with the knowledge of every elf that had died. It was worse than genocide. There is no human concept for the atrocity committed.

As we walked, the ravine to our left had narrowed to a gap only a dozen feet across and which grey fog crept from the forest to flow into its depths. The blighted forest on the other side had grown thin and populated with dead trees, their desiccated limbs grasping at the overcast sky with angry claws.

The wan sun had passed overhead and began to fall behind us as we negotiated a small hill. At the top Ryllae stopped, the first time she had ceased moving since we had entered the Alefin way. Tumbled against the base of the hill were ruins of some Fae town, sitting there as if someone had dropped a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. Wooden roofs had crumbled with the passage of time, collapsing into the interior of the homes and buildings. The faint trail we were on ended at the remains of a street where stone pavers were thrust aside by thick black vines that crawled over the walls of the decayed structures, clinging to them with curved thorns and pulling them down to the street below.

"This is not right." Ryllae said under her breath. "This should not be here. Something has disturbed the Ways."

Brice, Colin, and Simon joined us at the top of the hill, surveying the dead village below. "Will we have to go around?" Colin asked.

Ryllae shook her head. "The path leads through the village. It is safe as long as we do not leave it. We must keep moving before the path behind us catches up and closes the Way." She negotiated her way down the hillside, nimbly finding footholds where the rest of us struggled to keep our balance.

We cautiously followed the path as it lead us through the broken street. The black vines never crossed it. We meandered through the ruins, empty doors and windows leering at us like skulls while unseen things rustled within. The red brick path, always in contrast to the faded and stained street around it, lead through a large plaza where an enormous fountain stood with a bronze statue of an elf crowning it. Time had eaten away at her features, leaving her face covered with verdigris and leprous white lichen.

As the path skirted around the plaza, a nest of cancerous white tentacles burst from the fountain as we passed near it, wrapping around Brice and Simon. Yelling in horror, Brice struggled to free his arms and draw his sword. Ryllae drew and leapt, slicing two with a flash of her silvery blade. Simon screamed as he was dragged off the path and to the lip of the fountain. Colin surged off the path and hacked at the thick tentacle that held Simon, yellow blood splattering while Simon fought to keep from being dragged over the lip. An eerie wail rose from the depths of the fountain, the sound of a hungry infant.

I froze in shock, unable to process what was happening.

A smaller tentacle lashed out at Colin, wrapping around his leg and threatening his balance. I took a step forward and Brice yelled at me. "Stay on the path! Move forward!"

Hesitating, I took two steps back, and then several until I was seven metres from where my comrades fought for their life. I tried to focus on what I could do, desperate to recall some spell that would help them. Flame arrow? Lightning bolt? No, Ice Lance would be perfect, assuming it would work in this world. I began to chant and trace glyphs in the air.

"I command thee Nictus to come forth and dazzle mine enemies with thine glacial light, impaling them upon thine ..."

"NO!" Ryllae screamed, parting another tentacle and freeing Brice in a clatter of metal and curses. "Use no magic here, even the gods are dead and corrupted!"

I dropped the spell, allowing the glyphs to burst into argent motes and fall into nothingness. A thin tentacle had wrapped around Simon's throat and his face turned red before Ryllae cut through it. He clawed the wriggling remains away from his throat, leaving behind bloody welts. Colin finished sawing through the tentacle around Simon's waist then grabbed him by the collar and hauled him back to the red brick path. Brice and Ryllae joined us on the path moments later, leaving the wailing nest of evil to flail uselessly.

"Come, quickly." Ryllae said, grabbing my arm and dragging me along. "We must hurry and leave this place."

Brice and Colin supported a gasping Simon as we jogged along the path. A chorus of chittering and clicking surrounded us as we ran, eager to escape this dead city. Ten minutes later the last of the buildings were behind us and the red brick road lead us into a sickly yellow grassland. The fog thickened here, cutting visibility to maybe 20 metres.

Ryllae stopped again and examined Simon's neck. The tentacle had scraped away the skin, leaving dozens of tiny bloody gouges. Pulling a small alabaster jar from her backpack, she applied an ointment to the wounds and then wrapped his neck in gauze. Simon tried to thank her, but all that emerged was a frog's croak.

"We cannot afford delay," She said, putting the ointment away. "Every minute we stand still the road behind us vanishes. At sunset it will reach the Kaliana henge and vanish, leaving us to the darkness."

She set a blistering pace along the path, leaving me sandwiched between Brice and Colin again. Filled with angry thoughts at my impotency, I vowed to make sure I always had a weapon on me in the future. I was never going to be caught unarmed again.

The sun sank toward the horizon as we sped along the red brick road, giving the overcast sky behind us a bloody appearance. The deepening gloom made our speed hazardous and I stumbled repeatedly in exhaustion. The backpack that Simon had handed me in the morning now felt like it was full of bricks and the straps dug painfully into my shoulders.

The path meandered through the grassland which was broken by the occasional blighted tree, twisting sometimes north, sometimes northeast, but always returning to place the weak sun square behind us. The henge appeared abruptly before us as the shadows thickened and moved strangely. Ryllae commanded us to wait at the edge of the path as she hurried around the outside of the corpses of her ancestral trees, touching and stroking the engraved runes to life.

The henge sprang to life with a soft golden glow and we hurried off the path and inside, leaving behind the Alefin Way.

*****

Author's Note: Tomorrow is Family Friday and we'll be swapping over to the girls and their adventures.

Finished date: 15NOV2019

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