“Well, we got twelve more rooms. Let’s go,” Alastair said. With that he turned away, leaving the other two flabbergasted at the sight that had just happened before them. Even though they knew it was coming, it was still an astonishing sight to witness it happening before them.

They went to each room, surveying the types of treasures that were left after they had completely eliminated The Boar as his crew of bandits. Some rooms were filled with nothing but power stones whether of pure mana or an element of nature. Others had luxury furniture and items, from large beds, pavillons, and even a gold lined tub.

But the most surprising between them all was the deepest room in the cave complex. It carried only two types of things, purple silks and glowing eggs being incubated. It was common knowledge that even the royal emperor had not been so arrogant as to use this much royal purple to line a room muchless as to cover an entire room with it.

Whether it was the difficulty in finding any source of this color or the almost impossible task of keeping this pigment of color from fading away the second it touched air, every part of the process was time consuming and expensive. That was not mentioning the fact that they had to be imbued with a certain mix of light energy only available to the Holy Religion and the Elven Coalition.

“Sir Alastair, there’s so much purple...a-are we in heaven?” Jacob whispered with a bit of fanaticism creeping into his voice. The muscle bound man couldn’t keep his hands from caressing the cloth hanging in a hundred rows from one side of the large cavern to the other.

Alastair did not respond as he looked beyond the purple to the eggs that sat under a yellow magical light. He pushed his way through, smartly followed by Kendo, towards them. Ass they reached the light’s vicinity, they felt a warm sense of comfort and caring. It made them pause for a second to take a deep breath, before they moved on.

Alastair walked up to the pedestal and stood before the glowing eight eggs. Each was at least as big as his torso and glowed a different light from the other. Red, blue, silver, green, yellow, gold, white, and lastly black.

He reached out with feeling the hard and rigid cover of each egg. They felt like rough stones more than simple eggs. Each time he touched one, he felt a zap of energy coming out of his fingers and into each egg. To him they barely felt like anything, but he knew it meant more.

Another skill was acting up, finally introducing itself to him.

Beast Connection

The zaps left an intimate feeling to each egg, he could almost tell what type of creature was in each. Alastair focused on the yellow egg, trying to understand what type of life existed in it, a vague figure began to appear. It was covered in a dark fog that made it difficult to see anything.

But, he did see the fangs, the slitted irises and a yellow aura that surrounded it. In a few moments, he would see a full picture and know exactly what it would turn out to be.

The fog began to clear it wa-

“Sir Alastair? Sir?” Kendo said in a worried voice.

Alastair frowned, he had been pulled out of the vision, he missed his chance to see what it was. “What?”

“Don’t you hear the voice? It keeps whispering the same thing over and over again. It’s really creepy.”

Alastair’s frown deepened as he focused on what Kendo meant. The harder he tried, the clearer he heard a very low sound. He walked around the eggs, the farther he went, the louder the voice became.

“...never speak. I will not betray. I will not speak. I will not betray.”

It sounded desperate, hanging onto the last vestiges of life with everything it could muster.

Alastair walked towards the cloth that covered the voices origin. With great caution, he pulled them out of the way. He was introduced to a very bright room that had him covering his eyes from the glare.

He felt a light wind brush against his skin that had previously been blocked by the cloth. Then he smelled a scent he was very familiar with. With the smell came the images he had been trying his best to bury deep within his consciousness. The room was filled with the reek of blood and decaying flesh. It's coopery tinge made Alastiar’s head hurt and heart to speed up.

Moving his hand from his face, he saw the bloodstained room in all of its horrific glory. Many bodies were chained high onto the walls, leaving them dangling down like rags. Everyone of them had a hopeless and dull look that brought a cold sweat crawling down his spine.

They resembled his nightmares, that far off look that knew they had been left by their most trusted. That death would only be the best outcome to reach their tortured existences. With bodies filled with bleeding wounds, they hung in their positions without moving.

His survivors guilt came in like a runaway carriage and blindsided him. They reminded him too much of how the soldiers had looked in his nightmares. Without conscious thought he began to walk to the closest one to him. The owner of the voice that they had heard.

“Sir, let's leave.” Kendo said suddenly. Hate dripped like venom from his voice.

That brought Alastair to a dead stop, he looked at the man behind him with a dark look. How could he leave them, he couldn’t and wouldn’t leave them no matter what.

“They’re elves, Sir. Just look at the ears, they might be cut up, but still quite obvious. We can’t help them,” Kendo pleaded.

“Why not? What have they done to deserve such pain and suffering?” Alastair said in a harsh whisper. He did his best not to lash out at Kendo because he had helped him so much on the way already. Giving him a chance to explain himself was the least he could do.

“They…They are elves,” he said like it was meant to explain anything. Noticing it didn’t do anything to convince Alastair and more importantly didn’t take away the frightening look he was being given, Kendo tried to explain.

“You know the story, probably better than me. They left our race to die against the Aemoh from the east and Barbarians from the north five centuries ago. As the stories tell it, if it wasn’t for a last second arrival of the Orcish horde beyond the eastern frontiers, we would have been an extinct nation remembered only in history books.

You can’t possibly try to help these backstabbing tree huggers. Right?”

Alastair felt the fire in him beginning to smoulder. He remembered being told of the tale and how the Empire rose from the ashes of such a desperate time. Even if he wanted to save them, he would quickly be ostracized by the entire human population if he took them in. And that was the most forgiving punishment he would receive.

“They have nothing to do with their predecessors. Five centuries is a long time, even in elven lives.”

It sounded hollow even to himself. But he had to help them, at the very least he could soothe his nightmares even a bit. More importantly, he did not want to add these faces to them.

“That's one and a half generation, Sir,” Kendo said. He was adamant in his position.

Hearing this, a crack in his indomitable facade started to show. A desperate look crossed his face very briefly, but it was enough for Kendo to notice it. Seeing it gave the treasure hunter a look of sudden understanding hit him.

Alastair turned away to hide his face, he kept his shaking hands on his chest to keep them out of Kendo’s line of vision. “I-I can’t leave them, at the very least I can give them some form of hope to get away from here.”

Kendo sighed, he knew the man before him didn’t need his consent to do anything. Yet, he still sought it out. In a way, he was flattered that someone so high up in the food chain would ask him anything. He had to give ground to soothe Alastair.

“Alright, we can give them some of the healing potions, but that should be it, Sir. It wouldn’t be good for any of us to be called elf sympathizers.”