Bladeshire 23
By David C. Daoust
The long-lived races, said to be the first intelligent life, consisted of both the dwarven descendants of giants, the Baeldryn; and the wild-spirits made mortal, known as the Faedaris. Both would come to be known as the Ancients. Who was first, was ever a point of contention. Needless to say, both knew exactly which race was first. Such things were not discussed. But long before such civilities were established, when the Baeldryn first came across the Faedaris, living under the open skies, a conflict erupted that tore at the very heart of the world.
The First War began and carried on and on for generations.
The Orcnean. Monstrous primitives; troll, ettin, goblin, ogre… the Ancients blamed themselves for these monsters very existence. They believed these beings were wrought from their own hate, from their own horrible actions. They believed that their wars corrupted the natural world, created a great blight which infested Drue, and that it was from this infection that these vile creatures were born.
Ultimately, it was not until the Ancients witnessed the primal Orcneans’ destruction of the world around them, that they recognized their own folly. The Baeldryn and Faedaris finally set aside their terrible war.
Peace was wrought between the Ancients.
Most of the Faedaris (Wild Elves) returned to their forests. Many others, however, would never return to the old ways. They had advanced too far, become too powerful in their own right. They instead used these advancements to build; to create. These elves became known as the Zhudaire, High Elves. Great High Elven Cities sprouted behind walls no wild elf or dwarf had seen beyond, since their construction.
Centuries later, when the Ancients first came across humankind, they quickly judged them as a threat. The short-lived beings bred like bunnies, yet they destroyed the environment like Ogre. Humans were lumped in with Orcnean– easily.
It was not long until the Ancients declared war on the entire human race. A bloody war that spanned generations. Battles that led to greater wars, greater conflicts. Man and elf and dwarf –all tried to kill each other. The Trinity War had begun. It did not end until a Great Archon successfully united the primitive tribes of man, forced back the Ancient’s desire to cleanse the short-lived humans from their lands.
By the time this conflict ended, the long-lived Ancients had to recognize the humans as more than just a corruption running rampant across the Northlands. The Zhudaire were forced back to their cities and the dwarves were sent packing back to their mountain halls. The humans claimed victory over both the ancient races, and with that victory, claimed a large portion of land in the name of humankind; a realm that would become known as Ethia.
Ruled by the fabled Wizard-king, Ethia was the first of the four great human kingdoms that would later become the Tetrarchy of Keirkanland. The Baeldryn and Wild Elves accepted the humans’ claim, took hand in writing new treaties, and would one day become great allies to the Northern Kingdoms.
The Zhudaire, however, refused to recognize the human Kingdoms’ sovereignty. Stubbornly insisting such beings could only be a blight. These elves turned their back on the other factions, turned their back on the Ethian Courts that promised to hold the peace, and even the forest realms of their kin in Eldinaer. The High Elves’ walls grew taller, and they drew further into isolation.
Centuries later, when the Baeldryn sought help with the encroaching undead, the Zhudaire were nowhere in sight. As the conflict festered and changed the face of the world, many laughed with the thought of Zhudaire warriors cowering behind their walls.
The truth was far different. Creative genius, magic, and the arts, all flourished in these cities. But while the High Elves had thrived in their solitude, they were cut off from the happenings of the world around them. Thus, as the undead swarmed the southlands, the Zhudaire were oblivious.
Once the Lord Knights of Keirkanland scattered the armies of the undead, leaving them with nowhere in the south to hide, the insidious creatures invaded the elven realms of Eldinaer, focusing on the High Elven city– they seized the crown. The undead licked their wounds as they waited for the day the balance would shift and their armies would once again march across the land, filling their ranks with those they killed.
Because of the high elves’ isolationist ways, no one ever knew that what was once a great city of art and creativity– was now a city of the dead. A city ruled by the greatest Vampire Lords the undead had to offer.
The High Elves, that survived, were enslaved, fed on— forced to hide the enemy of life from the surrounding world.
“All the male elves were slain?” Khadory asked, shocked, having just been informed of the Zhudaire plight in Eldinaer. Undead overlords occupying the High Elven City, it was a lot.
“Not a one still breathes,” Llyalith confirmed in Chantilles voice, from her very mouth.
Khadory was disturbed. He had offered to help the wayward wizard in the hopes of getting to the bottom of these intrusions into Chantilles’ mind and body. Llyalith was a Zhudaire mage… or so she had claimed. A Zhudaire mage that currently possessed Chantilles body…
The Zhudaire were not considered an ally to the crown, but, truly, no one had seen such an elf in… well, probably since the end of the last Great War. Khadory now knew why.
“So… you’re trying to research how the humans defeated the undead?” he guessed this from what she had said earlier about having learned the stratagem of limiting their domains.
She shook her head. “No, I am searching for an artifact. There is a tome here, said to be written by one of the Last Devout. A Devout of the wild gods… listing old rites and rituals,” Lyalith paused cautiously, then pushed ahead haphazardly, hurling like an accusation, “the type of information lost when your ‘One God’ Ascended, and wiped the old lore.”
“Wiped the old lore?” Khadory had never heard it said in quite that way. And the implied accusation only made her sound nonsensical. He held back a chuckle.
“You might not know about that,” Llyalith looked someone disappointed, “It would just confuse…”
“No, I do,” Khadory interrupted. “We are to protect against such things, lest the demons use it to confound us. Where did you come across such information?”
“A demon,” Lyalith confessed with no care at all what he thought of that fact.
“Then it is a lie!” Khadory pointed out, definitively.
“Well, I need this tome,” Llyalith pressed, “I need to know about the wild gods, it is our only hope.”
Khadory laughed and explained as if to a child. “There is only one God. There only ever was one God… Beseech him! If there is an answer, He will have it.”
“Well, that is a lovely thought,” Llyalith said dryly, “You’re not living under a Vampire Overlord.”
Khadory nodded and shrugged, as though she had just made his point. “Beseech Him,” he said again simply as he rose from his seat on the ground.
The pair still toiled in that burrow; they cared for the elders yet unconscious all around them. After inspecting old’man Hindal, the man whom Llyalith had healed at random, Khadory allowed the wizard to heal more of the men. It gave him pause but… he was still working out how they would ascend back into the light above. Able bodied men were a much better start.
It was as Khadory wandered back to the hole, inspecting the broken ladder on the ground, that Chantilles leaned back from the metal-liquid filled pool that showed her the image of her friend’s interaction with her real body.
Chantilles had found him healthy and okay when she was brought back to this room, even as she cried in pain. The sun itself had burned her flesh, she could not say why. Her borrowed face still sore; she touched it gently. It did not hurt quite as much. Her left arm and shoulder were starting to look less like charred meat… she assumed her face looked the same. She was healing quickly, far faster than what would be considered normal.
The lithe form of an elf maiden occupied the room with her. An elf that was pacing, back and forth, the whole time. Chantilles was not sure what she may be waiting for. She had black hair and alabaster skin. Cut-short, spiky; her hair style was unusual to say the least. She did not wear the silken gowns like the rest of the elves in the palace. Instead, she wore tight leather pants, unseemly, black as her hair, with heavy boots. Her top was more like a wrap that hugged her torso. She had a cruelty about her that Chantilles found disturbing.
Her stride was suddenly long and strong as she came at Chantilles.
Chantilles was not willing to look up into her violet eyes, she kept them downcast.
The elf suddenly reached down and lift her chin. Eye to eye the Elf asked, “Do you know what I am?” she said with wild eyes. “You think I’m a High Elf?” she pressed. “You are not to be here,” she stated as she let go of her chin with a shove. “You’re to be in that crystal…” she said pointing at the hovering shard, “and she…” pointing at the pool, “the Queen is not to be spilling our business to that human, light-addled priest-boy!” She stopped abruptly, pointing up as though to make another point, “This is bad, this is all bad.”
Chantilles did not relax again until the insane elf-girl started pacing again. Even then she could only hope that she would leave. Just leave, she hoped. She felt the tiny hands of the sprite clamped on the roots of her hair behind her neck, hiding behind the curtain of blond tresses. In a frightened voice the fairy insisted, “Don’t let the Dark elf see me.”