by P R Glazier
~
As the bright white light got closer, JDC took aim down the length of the barrel. Amndo placed a hand upon his shoulder as if encouraging him, but yet staying his decision to fire. Nothing could be seen beyond the light it was so bright. But it was getting closer, JDC’s finger began to twitch upon the trigger, he was beginning to wonder if he should fire anyway, for they were at a distinct disadvantage in that they were blinded to whoever was carrying the light. But Amndo said, “JDC, lower your weapon, it is Nar’Allia.”
JDC lowered the ri’fal and both he and Amndo walked forward to greet Nar’Allia who had run forward to greet them. “How did you find us? What brought you here? For alas I think you may also be trapped in this place.”
Nar’Allia laughed, “do not be concerned we have a guide,” she stood to one side and there behind her holding the bright lamp upon a pole was the old shifter woman Deanola.
Soon the party, complete once more, found themselves once more in Deanola’s home, again they sat around the hearth drinking the hot tea.
The company felt at home now within this place, especially as they were reunited. Deanola didn’t ask any direct questions, but she was obviously probing for an explanation as to why the travellers were here in this part of the world. Nar’Allia felt obliged to tell the whole story, but she left out the detail of Minervar’s actual disappearance, just alluding to the fact that she had been abducted, disappeared suddenly. Deanola seemed to take a great interest in the part of the story that concerned their travel through the Rust Desert. She also seemed quite taken with the part where they had been within the facility beneath the sands. When Nar’Allia had finished she expected Deanola to ask questions or at least comment, but she did not. She seemed to sit there digesting the information for a while. Jonas and Amndo started to talk in hushed voices, Deanola seemed to awake from her inner thoughts and she looked at them, they immediately stopped talking.
When all were quiet Deanola stood and started to speak. “Many years ago, beyond all memory of any alive today, it is recorded that the men of the west made war upon our ancestors. The reasons for this conflict are lost to time, it is not recorded by my people, or if it was then none now remember the stories. But we do know that it was a great and terrible war. The men of the west used many technological machines and fought against us using the sciences that they had learned. Our people had long forsaken the sciences, but we had other knowledge, we understood the forces of nature, the natural forms of energy that course about the land and within. This area in which we live and much of the east has always has been a source of that natural energy. It is what we sought when we first came here in ages past. We learnt about the natural power of the world and understood many of its facets. We always used this power for good, always made sure that we and it were in perfect balance. But when the war came to us the decision was forced upon us to use the power in a different way, a terrible way for we countered the machines that the men of the west sent to attack us with great knowledge of the Magica that which the Elves call the arcane.”
She nodded towards Nar’Allia. Then continued with her story. “But even so neither side could win, for the tide of the great war ebbed and flowed. So it went on for many hundreds of generations. Then something unforeseen started to happen, what the original cause was and who was responsible is lost and probably no longer of importance. By this time our mages had opened a vent in the earth to access more and more arcane energy, this we called the Rift. The advances our mages were making in understanding and developing the energies we possessed from the Rift were ever more frightening and less controllable. We trod a dangerous path, but had no choice.
The men of the west’s technologies were also advancing at a great pace, the new machines they were inventing to give them an advantage became ever more devious and intelligent. Well the intelligence behind the men of the west’s machines and these new forms of energies that we were creating from the Rift somehow started to grow together, to combine. By the time we had discovered the effect it was too late, it was irreversible. We and our enemies had set in motion a terrible thing, beyond both our controls and understanding. The powers integrated and took on a new form. This grew beyond our knowledge and became an entity in itself, eventually turning against us both. Whatever the controlling force was, it became indiscriminate in its destruction of both our forces and those of the men of the west. Our enemies fled back to where they had come from. We were left with the horrific mess that the war had left behind.
So we remained, helpless. Until one day we were visited by strange beings from the skies.” She stared at Nar’Allia for a while before continuing. “They came in a great ship of the stars that hovered above the world; we stood in wonder for it covered the sky as far as the eye could see. We feared for our lives at first. This great sky ship blotted out the sun and looked to us to be a malevolent thing, a final attempt by the renegade machines to destroy us, even destroy the whole world. But it soon became clear that this was not the case, even the men of the west did not have the technology or the resources to build such a vast machine that was plain to us. Then strangers from the great ship of the stars came to earth as friends. They stayed even when their great craft left the world once more. These visitors offered us help in returning the land to some semblance of normality, offered to aid us rebuild the world, or at least to start the world on a path of self-recovery. They offered their far advanced technology to capture the arcane energy of the Rift and cleanse it. They told how their technology could devour the erratic energies and eventually return the world to balance, nature would thrive once more and the results of man’s destructive invention would become as nothing once more.
Nar’Allia was thinking hard, she was putting things into place. “Deanola, these strangers, the ones from the ship of the stars, what did they look like?”
Deanola looked at her, especially at her races distinguishing features, her long ears. “We called them the sky people. They are said to have been different from each other in appearance they had their own names for themselves, but these are not remembered. The stories say that the ones we saw the most were a race of elegant beings with long ears and a race of short men that had the skill to make things. We called the taller the Elves and the shorter the Gnomes. There were others that are described in the stories, another race of shorter beings that carried weapons and a race of giants that also were armed heavily. But these are not spoken, for the most part they stayed on the great ship.”
Nar’Allia sat down heavily. She had many things she wanted to know, but couldn’t bring herself to decide what to ask first, instead she remained quiet.
Deanola took her eyes off Nar’Allia and continued. “We were sceptical at first, for we had made a mistake already, trusting in these arcane energies being coupled with technologically advanced machines, we had suffered greatly for many generations from machines of just this type. But the sky people eventually persuaded us to listen, for they promised they would control the chaotic arcane energies released during the war and in doing so control the machines of war that still ran riot and uncontrolled across certain areas of the world. Ultimately we had no choice for our numbers were few due to the years of war. So the strangers built their technology, we know not where for none of us were taken to that place. But slowly it did have the desired effect. The machines that flew over us and walked the land looking to destroy anything that moved became less until for many years we did not see a single one. The sky people left us. But they enclosed the Rift within the shroud. We were prevented from going inside, they said that the Rift was better left alone.
But the world did return and began to recover quickly. The sky people returned once only, a few generations later. They gave us much, they created vast gardens were plants and animals of all kinds thrived, they said these were the legacy of the old world and we were to use them to repopulate the new one. They said this was our one chance, they warned us not to fail. They asked us to look after the world once more. O
ur part was to become caretakers of this new world.
Well we did as they asked and the land recovered from the blight of the war, thick forests grew filled with all kinds of animals and plants, we lived in a paradise. After many generations we returned to some semblance of normality again. The sky people became just a story, a myth that we told around the fires of our homes. However, we became changed. Something happened, something unexplainable reaction between our world and the reintroduced biological materials that the star people gave to us to rebuild the world. Something affected us deep within, changed us forever. The interaction between the old world and the new gifted one gave us this ability to take on the form of an animal, for each to have a shade. I don’t understand why or how, but it happened. Because of this we became outcasts of humanity, others from outside did not trust us or our ways and we became isolated and alone. Many generation passed us by and then something else happened.
Then after many years we were visited by a group of long-ears,” she gestured at Nar’Allia, “the elven race, much the same as you. They came from within the shroud, they started out being friendly, they said that they were from the Gnome city and had been living there with the Gnomes for some years. They said that they had been learning with the Gnomes helping them, guiding them and now they wanted to share the knowledge they had gained. They said they wanted to teach us knowledge we did not know or had forgotten. This seemed to substantiate what the sky people had told us so we trusted the long ears. Successive generations of our people trusted them more, any mistrust was forgotten as the generations were born and died. But the dread elves, as we now call them, only wanted to harness the arcane power, of the Rift. That which now exists here within the shroud. In the end the dread elves brought warriors, large men, twice the height and strength of our fiercest warriors, these men came with hate in their hearts and a strong will to destroy and kill.
“Ognods,” said Nar’Allia before she could stop herself.
Deanola continued after the interruption. “The reason the giants came was to attack the Gnomes, we tried to help but we were few and no match for this new threat and we were prevented from going into the shroud. Eventually the Gnomes fled, they left their now ruined city within the shroud. Soon after the army of giants returned to the shroud along with the dread elves. Why they should do this I do not know. I suspect to hide the evil work they undertook inside, for they released the Rift once again and now the dread elves have control over the Rift. The dread elves however are free to come and go into the shroud as they wish. They have made a home, a great city around the core of the Rift, hidden from the rest of the world by the arcane power that flows through that point. We remain few in number, we are no great builders of cities, no great academics, we are in reality a simple folk. It is that I believe that prevents the dread elves from attacking us, they do not see us as a threat, for they may have far more important aims and desires in their black hearts. But to our dismay the world started to change back; many things came about following the dread elves arrival. Slowly the forests rotted and fell. The plants would not grow and death and decay lay everywhere. We greatly feared for our survival yet again. For it seemed to us that after surviving a man-made disaster we now faced an even more terrible fate. But slowly the landscape changed, new plants of a different type started to grow, nature adapted. So part of the sky people’s gift, their legacy for recovery and evolution did survive. The land fought back and although it changed it survived. This is what you see today.”
Nar’Allia was awed by what Deanola had told them. She had to think, the sky people, the dread T’Iea desires to tame the arcane powers. By the Maker this was all too close to the tales that Minervar tells, or told. But there was something else, some other thing she had not heard before, the dark T’Iea had allied with the Ognods?
She had to ask Deanola, “my step mother tells a tale of a great machine, she was a member of a group who were tasked to fix the machine, for the dread elves, whom we call the T’Iea’Neat’Thegoran, had tried to destroy it or at least try and control it. The result was that the world was placed in great danger, Minervar, my step mother helped to restore the machine and save the world from impending disaster. One of your people, Teouso, the one of which I spoke was also part of that group, although he died protecting the group from evil.”
Deanola nodded in response, “It gladdens me that one of us was able to help in this way. We were supposed to be custodians of the Rift. Gatekeepers the sky people named us. In that task we have failed, but at least a small glimmer of hope exists if their technology, most probably what you call the machine is now functioning as it should once more.”
“Deanola,” Amndo spoke, “the Rift, what is it exactly? Do you know?
“The Rift is a kind of vent, it is much like the smoke holes in the roofs of our cottages,” she pointed to the hole in the roof above the hearth in her home. “Yet this hole above me has a single purpose, to allow excessive smoke from the fire to vent to the outside. I can control the fire within easily. The Rift does allow arcane energy to vent to the outside from within the world; these energies can be drawn upon. That is why the Rift was opened in the first place. But once opened, control it we could not. The energy was free to flow in whatever way it chose, it was free to pollute and change things at will. The technology given by the sky people is powered by the same arcane energy. But it can exert controls on the amount and type of energy being vented to the outside, where we could not.”
Amndo then asked, “could this machine, this technology as you call it, be changed in any way, made to be more malevolent perhaps, adjusted even to be some kind of weapon?”
“I cannot be sure. But the technology itself was designed for the good of all, to aid in the world’s recovery. I believe the technology does have intelligence, but I do not believe that its original purpose can be changed and become malevolent. But, if some twisted mind could limit the effects of the technology once again then perhaps the unrefined energy would be fully available once again and could be used for evil purpose. But you would need to gain access to the machine, not only that but also understand its secrets to be able to control it.”
Nar’Allia had been thinking along the same lines, she said, “I will wager if the T’Iea’Neat’Thegoran are looking to control it, then their purpose will certainly not be for the benefit of anyone but their own misguided thoughts and aspirations.”