“Real magic can never be made by offering someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.”

― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

The ways of the near forest were old friends to her. She knew the stand of willows beside the small forest lake from afternoons spent with her parents, on rare days when both were free. Watching her father fish while her mother busied herself preparing the collected herbs.

Farther in she came upon a clearing she knew contained delicious mushrooms but for that, she did not have the time. Then there was the brook with dark green waters drifting with leaves and bounded by moss, where she went in the summer to cool her toes after carving horse's hoof fungus to use as tinder.

She stumbled here and there her stamina nearly spent so she rested a bit beside the brook and ate a bite of bread, washing it down with water. Her fear soon drove her further and she endured until early afternoon when she simply could not go any further. She sought a sallow overhang and made a crude bed of leaves and some branches so she would not be immediately visible, then she went to sleep and as soon as her head hit the bedroll she was out cold.

Two days passed while on the run and she thought to turn back towards the road and seek a village or town to replenish her dwindling supplies. The forest grew darker and less familiar as she bedded down beneath the roots of an ancient tree.

A gasp and strangled scream woke her up and she calmed her breathing after realizing it came from her own lips. Looking around it was night time and the woods were still and silent. The reddish light of the second moon Ioreth was dimly seen through the higher branches. She strained her hearing for anything that could have woken her.

Far from here, she heard a horn and on the night wind the nearly unnoticeable baying of hounds. Grabbing her things she nevertheless took the time to be careful with arranging everything. Then she was on her way again. A few whispered words let her conjure a small globe of witch light which she thought was a better alternative to her stumbling and spraining something or worse. The spell did not give off much light and she held her cloak around the hand to further focus it.

She tried to remember ways to elude her hunters and looked for well-traveled animal paths as well as stony ground or a small trickle of water to wash off the scent.

If there was a hunter of Irkonos with them then she would need any and all tricks to help her. She was tempted and finally tried to use nature magic once. The grass she tried to invigorate back into shape firmly resisted her call but she could see that with some age came the possibility of perhaps making it work with practice.

Then she came upon a sheer cliff facing an even deeper area of the forest. From here she could see the outlines of old ruins towards the mountain, she had once been here in the daylight and avoided them because of an ominous feeling.

The ruins were elven in design and ancient beyond memory. Even the magically grown stone eroded with time and weather.

This was the farthest she had gone, for camping alone in the deeper forest is for the foolhardy and those tired of being alive. She hesitated for a bit, then pulled together all her courage and spoke words sounding breathy and full of song, a breeze picked up and blew around her as she stepped over the edge and fell, not as fast as she should, but faster than she would have wanted, towards the ground.

A tree branch smacked into her side and made her gasp in pain and she stumbled and fell heavily upon reaching the thankfully soft forest floor. Giving the cliff rearing nearly twenty meters into the night sky another look she dusted herself off and hurried further into the woods.

‘I should not go near the ruins.’ She thought. ‘Nothing good will come of it. I don’t even possess a weapon anymore. Excluding my gathering sickle perhaps. But if I simply travel through the woods I won’t outpace those men.’ She did not delude herself as being more fit than trained woodsmen and soldiers. The only thing saving her up til now was her head-start. Ok, and the cliff was helpful too in the end. ‘Even if the bruise hurts like hell.’

The lost eye hung low over the horizon and it seemed she would get to see another dawn soon as she reached the outermost ruins. Steeling herself she set her foot on the uneven stones paving a nearly overgrown street deeper into the village? Town? She felt a tingling sensation as she went further in and saw old runes marking and defining the boundaries of the road, probably the only reason there was still a road to see.

Elegant walls with arched entryways decorated with faded relief, framing empty rooms, most lacking in roof and furniture, alternated with completely destroyed jumbles of masonry, having succumbed to the ravages of time. It was completely still save for a light whisper of wind on leaves and rarely the distant baying of the hounds.

Some buildings still stood and most of those were a type of very slender tower, barely containing enough for a very tightly wound circular stair. In the upper stories of said towers, where stone bars wound around each other, ghostly lights could be seen flickering.

Mostly they had gone dark decades, perhaps centuries before. Trees burst through failing walls, while vines draped around the artfully arranged bridges between some of the buildings, like a skeleton grown through with weeds and bedecked with moss.

There was a profound sense of loneliness, of loss seemingly having seeped into the stones.

A few statues, marking gathering places perhaps, showed richly garbed elves in heroic poses, some scholarly, some showing a more martial aspect. Some were still mostly intact, probably due to ancient magics.

The ruins were far more extensive than she had thought as she went deeper and deeper. Here were the ruins of a civilization far greater than anything she had seen before.

And then there was movement in the ruin to her right. Nearly imperceptible but she saw the creeping mass of foliage, having remained still when last she looked, move in her direction.

And as she backed away showing she had realized the deception, it righted itself with a crackling of leaves and wood. A stick figure made of thorns, brambles, and wood bedecked with rust-red leaves, having claws of dripping thorns and now as if having opened them, two eyes of lambent green, sickly and poisonous looking. For fleeting moments the hunched-over figure of an emaciated elf could be seen nearly transparent, superimposed over the wooden construct.

As she turned to flee she did not see another construct rearing up behind her and with a swift swipe, it caught her left hip the claws razor-sharp, drawing deep lines of liquid heat which soon dripped along her leg. She screamed and the pain and adrenaline made her act without thought. Her left hand burned with unlight, dark flames bursting to life grabbing the tinder of the animating soul burning not only the wood but the spirit. The black flames flashed into the undergrowth withering plants and killing any life it touched. Howling and wails coming from seemingly far off echoed into the still city.

Leaving a trail of blood, the white, dead skin having gained a millimeter of her left wrist she ran deeper along the road. It had been far easier that time, like forcing a door once opened and never fully closed

The wooden caricature of an elf followed her with a stilted gait reminiscent of an insect. She did gain a bit of distance but soon after, another one appeared on her left, also starting to chase her. She got more careful which allowed both pursuers to regain lost ground.

Stumbling sometimes as a burning sensation burst forth from the bleeding wound. She had realized what it meant as soon as she saw the thorns. Poison.

She already deeply regretted taking this seeming escape route.

Frantically thinking of possible ways to defend herself she stumbled upon a big plaza ringed with fallen buildings of formerly majestic proportions and design. Dried-out fountains would once have given this place a lively atmosphere but were now only cracked remnants of former beauty. Mosaics were mere hints underneath the grime and plant matter. More of the creatures had appeared and followed her, now more sedately with a menacing air of finality. A single building remained intact looking like a church or temple perhaps.

Delirious with poison and pain the stars in the great vault above her wheeled with cold indifference and the forest having encroached this deeply into the ruins rustled with a slowly intensifying wind.

After she entered the building the surroundings went very quiet. The interior was clearly not spared the touch of times passing and the once beautiful fresco was mostly worn away or grown over with moss and lichen. Some fragments of a roof remained, casting the whole in a lattice of moonlight. A single statue remained near the middle of the opposing wall depicting an ethereal seeming woman holding a harp. Her eyes seemed like distant stars twinkling with subdued light.

If someone were to later ask her about her face she would have only been able to describe the stars shining with an icy blue-white light and that the face was truly beautiful even if somehow indescribable. Her head was hollow and light with the effects of poison and blood loss.

The wind picked up and carried faint hints of night flowers in bloom. And amid the faint susurrus of this breeze were words. “So at last you have come. Come to end an age. Come to us.” silence engulfed her “We began an age of wonder. Living on the corpses of titans who had come before. Lapping the blood flowing from their wounds. Building cities on their bones.” Sometimes it seemed that there were more voices than one speaking in a chorus or alternating between each other. Alyssa nervously looked around hoping to see a glimpse of the speaker while slowly nearing the statue, having sensed the nearing wooden figures circling the temple. “The old gods were awake then, they visited us and graced us with wisdom.” a sigh “The god of song and poetry once held court in these halls. Here he gave his heart to the princess of the icy stars. And as she faded from this world his heart was stolen.” a whisper “stolen” and again and again. “we want to make a bargain with you. Guttering candle in the night. Your life ebbs and the shadows draw near.” a chorus “as we intended, as was foretold.”

Alyssa had not been idle, in between bouts of dizziness and nausea she had drunk a potion and fixed a crude bandage over the wound. But it seemed to only delay the inevitable. She was too hurt and distracted to try a spell, though try it, without much effect, she did.

“There was once a woman, she feared the end more than she feared the lack of life. She stole the heart. And was cursed, we were cursed.” silence reigned.

Her heart hammering Alyssa dared to ask “what do you want from me.”

“Resolution. Absolution. The heart. The end.” whispers echoed in the vaulted hall. Then she felt someone draw near. A specter hovered before her in the suddenly still air. “I will accompany you if you allow it. I will lead you and assist you if you promise to undertake this task.“ other voices whispered, “If you swear it.”

“You will gain by our association but you will also dedicate yourself to this task. If you do not, we and you and all of this land will fall into decay and darkness. Yet you can choose still, choose to let go. This place will be your final rest.”

“NO, I will not die here. I will not give up! I will do it if you save me.”

Dead eyes looked into hers. “Accepted. My name in Life was Asandria First Dancer to the Lady of Icy Stars. Come to her statue, take a bit of your blood and swear in her name that you accept our pact. That will be enough to make it work.”

Alyssa forced herself towards the statue one step at a time, her left leg did no longer feel like it belonged to her, making her stumble and she nearly fell. There was a lot of blood soaking into her clothes and running down her hip so she simply took a bit of that and pressed her bloody hand against the lower leg of the statue while she desperately vowed “I swear on the name of the Lady of Icy Stars to accept the pact in exchange for my life.”

Cold light pulsed out of the statue she felt feathery hands on her shoulders and the cold brought quick relief to the burning sensation, strengthening her failing heartbeat and giving back clarity of thought.

‘What in the world was that?’ thought Alyssa as she then saw the figure of the female elf looking as she probably did when alive, slightly transparent, and hovering a few centimeters over the ground. A whisper “I will be with you. We could only steer a bit, we are not the cause nor the reason for all of your distress. Simply talk to me and I will answer.” After that, she slowly grew more transparent until she vanished. The wind came to a stop, the statue no longer shimmered. Some of the thorn-men entered the temple but did not seem to see her.

She could feel the cold presence of Asandria settle somewhere within her.

‘I will need to learn something to defend myself. That was much too close for comfort.’ Random thoughts shooting through her head she edged away from her would-be assailants towards an unguarded breach in one of the walls. And thankfully even her fatigue was gone.

She had some hunters to evade.