"Citizens and slaves, the years of Sunshadow approaches. We will be tested in our long years of eternal twilight. Many of you won't be here when the sun emerges again. But,we will persevere. We will see the sun"

- Ralegh Rainsteel, "The Sunshadow Address"

Faeve kneeled beside the rocky shore of the lake, her torch held high. The lake itself was fairly big. Dark water stood unperturbed, too ancient, too grave to be illuminated by something as puny as a torch. A frigid fog loomed over the lake as if it was knit out of a thousand years of spiderwebs.

That! That sickening feel again! Though at this point I wasn’t sure whether this was the cavern or the withdrawal.

Dammit! I kicked a nearby rock in frustration. The rock made a frightful cracking sound and flew towards the lake before sinking with hardly a splash. My eyes had caught the flash of a familiar colour. The colour of rotting bones.

“Stop!” I screamed at Faeve. “Get away from the water”.

Faeve didn’t move, her eyes staring deep within the inky pool. She stared at me, her brows knit together. “This…this is not water”, she sputtered. She sprang up, trying to get as far away from the shore as possible in a single leap.

A chill went down my spine. This..smell, I know it… familiar memory burned my nose as dots connected in my head.

I gripped Thirst and thrust down the ground. It sank with another sickening crunch. Bones. I retracted the blade and thrust again, this time at a different place. It sank with even louder crack. Fresher bones. Another thrust. Same. Another. Still bones. A cold sweat permeated my forehead.

“Faeve”, my voice was hollow.

She grunted in reply.

I looked over.

Hoisted on the tip of her dagger was a three-horned skull the size of a basketball. Blue and red flowers blazed in the empty sockets of its eye, hung through its jaws and every crevice. She stared intently at the flowers, her eyes wide.

Trepidation flowed from her to me as she scanned the skull. She gestured me to follow as she mowed down some more flowers and unearthed what lay beneath.

Bones, both ancient and fresh turned up no matter where we looked. We couldn’t even see the ground buried under layer upon layer of rotting, mold infested jaws, femurs, skulls and ribs. According to Faeve, if there was a type of monster in the desert, you could find it here. Curiously though, most of them were juveniles and hatchlings, rarely adults.

Oh, wait! “The size of the entrance!” I said. “That’s why no larger beasts could get in!”

Faeve nodded. “But what is the purpose, the reason behind this? Even the water in the pool is cursed”.

Cursed water?!

Faeve put her torch up high. The fickle fire light exposed twisting and strangely contorted cavern walls as far as the eyes could see.

A strange shadow caught my eyes. What is that?

The firelight had been close enough to a wall to throw the shadow of an object that jutted out from the rock. A familiar shape. A human hand.

“Faeve, quick”, I urged, “bring the light here”.

And sure enough, a hand stood outstretched from a rock as if frozen in motion while it had tried to claw its way out of its stony prison.

What in the world…

That wasn’t the only one. One by one, our torch revealed more hands and feet emerging out of the walls, the ground; all arrested in their forever motion of struggle. Their long fingers contorted in expressions of pain and horrors. Time and dessication had drawn the jet-black skin tight over the strangely long and fine bones.

“Moon Elves”, Faeve gasped. The firelight trembled as her hand shook. Even her fine alabaster skin had grown further pale.

“Elves?” I asked, “down here?” My skin crawled as I saw more and more remains. This…this strange picture of a dying struggle…this horror and pain…The cursed pool…

Faeve gulped audibly. “Oh”, She explained. “Oh. This must be an undiscovered grave of the exiles”.

Air, strangely heavy hung over this part of the cavern, chilling me to my bone. I shivered as I remembered the familiar scent. A sharp, sickly sweet smell so frigid that one could taste the thick cold of the scent. The smell of a curse.

The room in Salrest…I had done something similar. The faces…the half-eaten corpses… Bile rose in my throat. Their eyes…the dead eyes! Their body parts, torn and strewn about. I had seen such scenes many times over.

I couldn’t hold it in. I keeled over and retched. As I kneeled on the ground, my body wracked in fierce motions. Their eyes won’t leave me!

“This isn’t the same”, Faeve rasped.

She…she knew?! “How!” my breath came in ragged gasps. “How?” How long has she known?

“You speak of it as you sleep, human”, Faeve said while drawing in sharp breaths. “You dream of it, you are haunted by it”, her voice grated, “now stop thinking of it”.

“Sorry”, I mumbled, “sorry”.

“Neither am I a saint, make no mistake about that”, Faeve said with a pause. “But we can hardly afford to bear each other’s sins”.

Sins huh? But I’d do it all over again, how many time it needs to be done. I wanted a god dead. And I will have it.

“So what’s the deal here?” I asked. “What happened to the Moon Elves?”

“We, the Sun-Elves happened”, Faeve said while she knelt down, her eyes lingering upon a balled fist jutting from the rock, small enough to be a child’s. “When the First Cities rebelled against the gods, they found themselves with few allies. The Sun-Elves…” She said with a pause, “fought for the gods, against the alliance of the First Cities”.

“You said Sun-Elves, not Elves”, I remarked.

“Yes. The Moon Elves stood with the Humans of the First Cities. It is said they became arrogant and spiteful of the Tree of Life, for they envied its power. They joined the humans and fought against their brethren, the Sun-Elves” She said while she tore her eyes from the small hand and walked forward.

The innermost parts of the cavern encased within them even more vivid poses of death. Sunken and mummified heads and bodies jutted out of the walls, contorted. Beside them, whole pillars of translucent stalactite and stalagmites stood with bodies inside them, as if someone had taken the time to arrange them in neat rows, far from the haphazard posture of the bodies near the entrance.

“So you guys did this?” I asked. “Imprisoned them in rock?”

Faeve’s voice shook as she saw even more bodies of obsidian bodied little children, their heads and arms too big for their shrunken bodies. “No, not like this”.

“After the gods won the war, and the First Cities were razed to the ground…the Sun-Elves sought to punish the Moon-Elves for their transgressions. The warriors who were still alive were executed by the Tree. The women were taken as slaves and whores. The children…”, her voice was empty, “followed either the women or the warriors”.

Unknowingly, my fingers had balled into a fist. Same story. Same as earth.

“And the sick, the wounded and the old were cast out the Elven kingdom, without food, without water. They were left to die. We sought to eliminate entire generations, and turn the remainder into our slaves; our property”.

I couldn’t utter a word. What will I say? Nothing could be said in front of little bodies huddled together in death, deformed with extreme hunger and pain.

Faeve’s eyes burned with a fire, a cold anger that coloured my senses too. Her pretty face was set in stone like some vengeful goddess hewn out of marble. “That is, of course, the half-truth. Being royal grants one extra privilege of knowledge. Though in this case, it is a curse”. Her steps carried her to the end of the cavern. The firelight illuminated the last of the mummified corpses.

“The Sun-Elves, even before the days of Vashtii Ragetide had warred with the Moon Elves. The bad blood of the centuries before had come to full circle after Vashtii took the throne. The four Sun-Elf tribes had the king and the advantage of numbers on their side over the three tribes of the Moon Elves. They weren’t made slaves after the war with the gods. They were abused, exploited and enslaved long before. When the Moon Elves stood with the Humans, it was to end this tyranny. To end the Sun-Elves who ruled with the mandate of the Tree of Life”.

“So the fight of the Moon-Elves…” I uttered.

“Was a rebellion for their freedom and way of life”, Faeve confirmed. “For the Sun-Elves, however, it was nothing more than a slave-rebellion. That is why the penalty was so harsh so that they cannot rise up again. That is why they weren’t exterminated fully, for we still needed slave labour”.

“And these graves are…?” No matter the world, the race…people just…

“The ones we cast out were the weakest ones. The Kingdom was sure that they would die, and even if they lived they would as a disgraced, weak people living on scraps and pity”. She pointed at a mummified child in a fetal curl, “This...this is that legacy. Groups of the exiled tried to find a new home. Most of the groups perished on their way in unmarked graves like this, alone, hungry and in terrible ignominy”.

So that’s what that curse is. A curse of their dying breaths, a curse against their gods and people

Faeve knelt down beside a dark figure than lay prostrated. Half of the figure had calcified into a Stalagmite, becoming one with the cave. Its outstretched hand held a piece of jagged crystal that sparkled in the firelight.

“There should be an inscription”, Faeve whispered. “Find it.”

My eyes scanned the walls…There! A section of the wall shimmered as if a veil of light floated over it. The Wall seemed to absorb the torchlight and…lines in an unfamiliar script bloomed into existence, mimicking the light of the torch.

“There!” I shouted.

The script, a mass of wavy lines shimmered again and..English?! It's English!

My mouth hung open. This was the first time I had seen English script in this world. “English”, this time I uttered out loud. I finally knew what butterflies in stomach meant.

Faeve came over and looked at me curiously.

“language from my worl…hometown”, I said.

Faeve looked at me, her mouth spread in a sad smile. “No, it is magic. The script would mimic the language closest to your heart”, she said.

Oh. The rush of hope and joy turned to a sour, metallic taste in my mouth.

Faeve had already fallen silent as her eyes darted on the inscription. Well, fake or not, this is the first bit of English I saw so… I started reading the words of flame.

“I, Sorluk Valaren Nightbow, Moon-Elf of the Black Moon Valaren tribe writ this text in the ardent hope someone will discover our fate. Be you wanderer or treasure seeker; hunter or farmer; good or evil matters to us not. What matters is you are here and you listen to our tale”

Wow, that magic even converts to modern English.

“After the Great War, we Moon Elves were exiled. Our sons and fathers slaughtered; our daughters and mothers taken as slaves by the King Url’ok of Spring Leaf Tribe of the Sun Elves; cursed be his name and all hereafter of his lineage”

I guess his curse did spell true, didn’t all but one of the royal line of Sun Elves die out?

“We were chased, disgraced and beaten. Only the old, the infirm, the injured were spared. Spared to die. I know not where the others went, but we entered this accursed, sun-blasted land to find shelter, and live out our final days. All we found were deserts and dead men. Oh by the moon! The destruction of…” part of the inscription cut off. I guess even magic couldn’t protect against time and decay.

That wasn’t the end, however. Part of it still remained and glowed brightly compared to rest of the message. “ We started out a five score and twenty-nine people. The desert and its damned monsters have claimed all but two scores and ten. We have no food, no water and no hope to go on. This cavern will be our final grave, of this I am certain. O’ traveller, do not leave our remains be. Pray for us, even if just a moment. Pray for us poor souls and spare a bit of water, if not for me, but for the children who died sucking on limestone.

I use the last of my magic to write this message. Weary traveller, shed you may tears in our memory? The accursed sun has dried our eyes, we have nought to shed for the ones who fell before. May moonlight’s blessings follow you on your journey; your waterskin be full of cool water, your pack full of meat”.

Wow. A sigh escaped my lips. These kids…My eyes fell on the small rocks sprouting hands and feet. They died of starvation.

My eyes fell on Faeve, her eyelashes quivering by the light. Her hands clasped in front of her, she mumbled the contents of the inscription in her own language; again and again.

“It was the resentment, wasn’t it?” I asked. “The lingering resentment and pain of the dead cursed this place?” After all, I had seen it happen before.

Faeve answered while kneeling, “Yes. Resentment, anger, and add to it the dead being improperly interred.”

Thought so. Proper funeral rites were a necessity and held sacred in this world where the dead have been known to haunt people and the menace of necromancers were a real threat.

I looked at the calcified mummies again, frozen in motions of agony and horror. I have no right to…

Huh, wait a second. “The writing said there was no water”, I inquired, “so the pool is a recent formation?”

“Pools like these could be seasonal in the desert and the writing is millennia old. The curse itself preserved the bodies to this extent. When they were here, the pool might not have existed”. Faeve’s eyes glanced at the pool before she continued, “actually, that pool is not water anymore. It might have been at one point, but the accumulating curse transmogrified it into something else. The pool might also have been formed by the curse itself, their hatred and pain congealed and given form of water—something they wished for in their deaths”.

Huh. Curses can work like this too?

“The Pathfinders”, I uttered.

“Affected by the curse water, they lure creatures to their deaths—subjecting to them the same horrible way the Moon Elves died. Such is the curses’ form. Seeing as we saw no bones of intelligent or large creatures, the hold of the curse is weak. Only unintelligent, smaller creatures get enchanted by the pool water and waste away in this cavern”.

But there are thousands upon thousands of bones…how much did this curse consume?

“So, we can get out right?” I asked. I don’t…want to be here. Reminds me too much of what I did…

“You can if you choose”, Faeve’s voice hardened. “But I will stay and offer prayers”.

“There’s no water here”, I chided. “No food, and we still have long ways to go”.

“Do not be afraid”, Faeve said coldly. “I will not ask for your water or food. I will give mine. But I will not go without trying to give them at least some measure of peace. Such is the way of my people”.

“Your people killed them, Faeve”.

“I know”, her eyes were downcast. “And that is the reason why I must do so”.

How long will this continue? I sat near Faeve as she mumbled prayers in a singsong voice that enveloped and reverberated in the cavern. Her face had a strange calm to it as she knelt beside each body, her head bowed.

Did they also want prayers? I had asked myself in Salrest again and again whether what I did was right. No, it never was. I knew it then, I know it now. But every time my eyes fell on the corpses, something gnawed at my heart. Arin…would she…would she even recognize me now?

I closed my eyes unable to bear the corpse in front of me. Who am I kidding? There was no respite. Every time I closed my eyes, it was the room in Salrest that haunted me. Truly, the dead were the most patient of all, they could afford to be relentless.

Thes aren’t the people…I know there is no way for me…But as I saw as an assassin, taker of lives offer her respects…what have I become?

I couldn’t stand the sight. Oh, fuck it. I got up with a sigh. A bit of water and a bit of food, huh? I don’t know why but I knew what to do. I grabbed my bag and poured some sea water on the glowing flowers that grew over the pile of dead bones.

Almost instantly, flowers started browning and dying off. I am sorry, I mumbled to no one in particular as I poured more. The flowers burnt up and dissipated like ashes over large swathes of the meadow.

The fog in the cavern began to shimmer like sunlight had penetrated its depths. As more and more flowers wilted, the water in the lake rippled.

I took a look at Faeve. She stared at me wide, her eyes strangely warm. She nodded, and a faint smile spread on her face.

“It’ll be a problem if you gave away all of your share. Can’t cross a desert lugging a dead Elf”, I lied. Misplaced redemption is all we have. Maybe it’s fake…but it’s something. You know that too, don’t you?

The lake churned and tossed, assaulted by an invisible storm. The water dissipated in the air like bad dreams come morning. The flowers also had all but vanished, and with it went the oppressive air of the curse.

The sea water it took to lift the curse was nowhere as much as I thought it would need. Guess its more about the sentiment, eh?

Faeve was still halfway through her ritual. She cut up little chunks of Soroscope meat and left it in the outstretched hands jutting out of the rocks. When she knelt beside the mummified little boy, she left him a bigger piece.

“Rest thee well, little one. Let you go to the meadows of the Moon, where fruits are ripe and rivers plentiful. Off you go, child of the moon”.

Why did she say that in common tongu… She didn’t, did she?

The horribly imprecise Gift of Knowledge had finally worked, letting me understand Elventongue. I stared at the bag of water in my hand. I wonder if this had to do something with it?

Faeve’s ritual ended not long after. As she stood up, a smile spread across her face. “Time to go”, she declared.

Finally. I sprang up eagerly, a flash caught the corner of my eye. It had caught Faeve’s attention too; she walked at a brisk pace towards the now empty river.

It isn’t empty?

A small puddle worth barely a few mouthfuls stood at the shore. It’s quicksilver like surface shone with an unseen light.

“Moon Water!” Faeve exclaimed breathlessly. She leapt towards the sparkling liquid and inspected it carefully. A few barely audible whispers from her in Elventongue sent the puddle quivering violently. In a slow, but smooth motion, tendrils of silvery threads rose from it into the air and congealed into a sphere that descended on Faeve’s outstretched palms.

“Mind explaining?” I asked of Faeve.

“Moon Elf magic. One of the rarest of all potions”, she gushed excitedly.

Another one of those. I knew from my time back in Salrest that potions and the sort in this world were rarely without side-effects. Neither they were the miracles in bottles they were advertised as, and prolonged use came at deep personal costs.

“What’s the catch?” I grumbled. That beastkin in Salrest…I shook my head as I remembered his death. Used too much potion and lost his sense of pain. He died in a fire in his own house, as his insensitive skin burned without his knowledge.

“Mmm”, Faeve pursed her lips. “MoonWater is a cure-all potion. No matter hungry, thirsty or unlucky, it solves all. But…” she whispered, “not all the way. No matter how much you take, it never is enough. Your thirst will never be quenched fully, your luck will never be good enough. Like the illusions of the Moon. It’s intoxicating in its incompleteness”.

Sigh. “What is it doing here?” I said while walked away to leave. Too much time has been spent here.

“probably…the blessings of the moon. Curses and Boons are powerful magicks with consequences. Just as the resentment was able to develop into a powerful curse, so were our actions here rewarded. Moon Elves are a proud race, and they would not fail to return favours”.

As we trudged out, the passage didn’t seem to be as long. The pathfinders had died with the flowers, and the tunnel was no longer illuminated with their eerie luminescence. The cave had lost its wonders, along with its curse.

While we were stuck in the cavern, the world outside had gone on. The sun shone on the other side of the ring. As our eyes adjusted to the harsh sunlight my legs felt unsteady.

What’s happening?

Faeve widened her stance to maintain stability.

The earth rumbled and shook. With each passing moment, the ground was more and more unsteady. Loose rocks fell and skittered away from the walls of the canyon around us.

“Earthquake!” I alerted Faeve

“No”, Faeve said while her face went ashen. “The Lord of the Land approaches”.