Dissolving from the shadows, Esthinor joined King Hinthial upon the battle dais once again, “Things do not seem to be progressing as you would like, my Lord,” he said as he observed the Ogre’s almost unhindered advance.
In his ever-stoic demeanor, King Hinthial took the subtle insult in stride, reflecting the grace of the stars in all aspects of his actions. “Indeed. I did not anticipate the effectiveness of the Shaman.”
“I am sure you have plans for them?” asked Esthinor as he looked to the King.
“Yes, we have some illusions of our own,” he answered.
“It will take more than illusion to defeat this army I am afraid. Perhaps it is time I step in?”
“No. Your intervention will not be necessary,” answered King Hinthial pridefully. “As effective as it would be, the strength of the elves will not fail this day.”
“Pride. How I love its uses. If it were in my plans, I would allow yours to dictate your defeat today,” said the Grand Wizard.
“What are you doing?” asked the King, surprised by the wizard’s ignorance of his refusal.
“I am keeping you alive,” said Esthinor as he began to step forward on the dais. “I am not done with you yet.”
“How dare you!” addressed King Hinthial.
“How dare I? How dare I?” said Esthinor matching wills with King Hinthial. Stepping quickly to him, he continued, “I dare because I can. I dare because I am. I tire of your finite understanding of power and control. Who are you to challenge what I am? Who are you to presume to even address me in that tone? I have existed well beyond the combined remembrance of you and your people,” almost spitting the last word. “I have waited too long, been planning too long, and suffered too long to allow your ill placed overconfidence to moot my desires.”
“Your desires!” challenged King Hinthial showing signs of losing his stoic demeanor. “Because you are the Grand Wizard, and we have shared a mutually beneficial relationship, I am willing to overlook your insolence. But do not test it further.”
“This is no test,” was all Esthinor said before he unleashed his hate and gripped the elven King around the neck with an evil surge of dark liquid. “You see, my little child, there are none that will stand. None that can stand. My victory has been foretold. Now bear witness to true power.”
As King Hinthial’s feet were suspended inches above the ground, held so by the unleashed power of darkness, Esthinor turned around to face the battle field, stepping forward until he was right at the edge of the dais. Eriboth felt him gather the combined hatred from the elves and ogres, drawing it into himself. The power was so encompassing, the blind warrior thought not even the combined size of the moons housed within a single individual would have been as great. Such was the enormity of the hatred, Eriboth himself felt Satan’s heavy hand of oppression pushing down on his soul. When Satan released it, Eriboth wept. He wept, in part, for the Ogre lives that would be taken that day. But greater were his tears for the souls of his once brethren that would forever be altered. You see, Satan did not release his power directly onto the advancing Ogre army, that would lead only to destruction, and once the carnage was over, there would be nothing left. Rather, he used it to strengthen and influence the elves themselves. He gripped their long-seeded hatred for the Ogres and manifested his power within them causing each of them to be driven into a blood rage surpassing the Ogre’s tenfold. Frenzied to the point of explosion, the elves erupted with renewed power. Singularly focused on the destruction of their foes, they sought not to defend, but to attack.
The elven warriors were stronger, faster, and attacked with more fury than the Ogres. They leapt through the air to inhuman heights, responded with a quickness and speed rendering their visage a blur, and possessed a strength greater than two or three ogres combined. Had the elven mages not received a similar boon, the Ogre shaman might have been able to counter the elven army long enough to allow for an effective retreat; but the infusing of hatred into the magics of the elven wizards allowed complete supremacy over their ogre counterparts. Siege machines were exploded, the great esthuox were destroyed as if they were still youths, and even the elite force of the Ogre King’s guard was rendered impotent against the hate infused spells. When the battle was decided, and the elves should have ended their pursuit content with the successful defense of their city and castle, they halted nothing, choosing instead to engage a lustful glee for killing that solidified their enraged dedication to the death of their foes. As Esthinor smiled, Eriboth’s tears continued because he knew the Elves had been taken this day. Satan’s influence did not defend the elves. It defeated them.
“You there!” shouted a voice from beyond the outer door to the dungeon. “King Hinthial has called all forces to the wall to defend against the Ogres!” Vaguely familiar, Eriboth thought he recognized it, but his focus was being muted by the oppression he felt by the awful evil above. “Do not delay!” shouted the voice again. “All available arms have been called to defend the city!”
“Where is the lieutenant?” responded one of Eriboth’s two guards.
“He is already on the wall and sent me to relay the order,” answered the familiar voice.
“Why did he not come himself? He knows we cannot except any other order than those directly from him,” stated the other guard.
“Are you really wasting time and refusing to answer the King’s call to arms?” asked the voice, challenging the elven guards in return. They responded with an uneasy silence as they considered the consequences for both of their possible actions. Drawing their attentions back to him, the familiar voice shouted, “There is no time to waste! Your swords are needed!”
“What of the prisoner?” asked one of the guards.
“His hands are bound to his ankles which are then bound to his neck. He is locked behind three sets of cell doors fashioned with elven magic from the strongest stones we possess. He may be one of the greatest warriors in Avendia, but he is no magician. Now let us go! I will be right behind you!” answered the voice. Both guards looked at each other, but neither moved. “Fine, I will relay your reluctance to the Lieutenant,” said the familiar voice as it turned to start walking away.
“Wait!” called one of the guards. “Where are we to report?”
“Report to the western wall. The fighting is strongest there. I will secure the prisoner and follow right behind you,” said the familiar voice. “Now go! Your swords could decide the fate of us all!”
As the two guards hurried to assist their brethren, Eriboth heard the remaining guard, the one with the familiar voice, open the doors and hustle over to him. As he bent down, he said with a severe voice, “We have not much time. The next rotation is due to arrive shortly.”
Eriboth had become used to his enhanced senses, but because they had been somehow muted, presumably by Esthinor, he had not been able to identify the guard until he heard his voice this close.
“Young Hundolis,” he said, “I had not thought to see you again. Are things well with you?”
“For the moment. Although I am sure once your freedom is no longer a secret, things will not be so any longer,” answered Hundolis as he began unfastening Eriboth’s rather extensive shackles.
“You are setting me free?” asked Eriboth.
“For the life of me, yes. Though I am not sure why,” he answered as the first lock clicked.
“We always know, young Hundolis. Ignorance is never the nature of our internal conflicts,” said Eriboth.
“Is that right? And when did you become an expert on internal battles,” he asked as the second of the five locks clicked.
“The moment my life was restored and my eyes were opened,” he answered.
“Then it is true. You were dead,” asked the young elf as one of the lock pics he was using snapped. “Blast. There is not the time for this. We need to leave soon.”
“Time. Yes, time is important to say the least. And yes, I was dead,” answered Eriboth who would have locked gazes with the youn
g elf, using the deep greens of his eyes to hold his attention before they were made pale. And while attentions were often averted by his uneasy and unnatural blank orbs, souls were not. So, when Hundolis successfully produced a second lock pick from his pouch, Eriboth took the opportunity and grasped his wrist to draw him in. “Why are you doing this?” he asked.
“Because I cannot reconcile what I am being told about you with whom I have come to know you are,” answered the young elf. “I have seen the Elven Lords prance around while they utter every evil about you imaginable. If what they were saying was true, you would never have saved my life when we were attacked. And when presented with the opportunity to run, you certainly would have capitalized on it. But you did not.”
Eriboth, upon hearing the young guard’s answer, did not let go. Instead he tightened his grip slightly and repeated his question, “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I cannot allow a man whom I believe is good and just under the stars to be sentenced to death knowing the greater portion of your sentence was solidified by my lies,” he said as his eyes turned downcast.
Eriboth gripped slightly tighter still and repeated his question again, this time with a greater sense of urgency, “Why are you doing this?”
“It does not matter. What matters is that I get you out of here,” deflected Hundolis as he worked at the third lock in the intricate series.
“All things matter, young one. But you will progress with your mission no longer unless you answer my question. Why are you doing this?”
“Just let me work. We have not much time!”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because I am, now let me work,” he said as he struggled against Eriboth who was preventing his access to the third lock.
“Why are you doing this!”
“Let me work!”
“No!” denied Eriboth.
“Why?” asked the young elf in return. “Do you not want to be free?”
“My freedom is not what concerns me. Now, why are you doing this?”
“Stop! Please just stop. I do not know why!”
“Yes, you do!”
“No, I do not!”
“Why?”
“Because!” shouted Hundolis. “Because I believe!” he shouted finally. “I believe in your King, The Man who saved you,” he continued as his obstinance and defiance deflated. “I believe and I want to believe He can save me as well. And the only way for that to occur, is if I set you free.” The third shackled clicked and fell free from Eriboth’s wrists.
He reached out and put his hand on the young elf’s face, “That freedom and belonging is available to you right now. You have already accepted His lordship in your heart and expressed your faith through your actions. Confess your belief in Him, Jesus, and announce to Him that you are His.”
“You are my Lord, Jesus. Please guide and teach me,” said Hundolis as his eyes were unable to hold back his tears any longer. With all chaos reigning down above them, in the midst of their precarious situation, one that was growing more dire with each passing second, Eriboth leaned in and held the young elf as he expelled a lifetime of never living up to the perfection of the stars and their awful blemish free existence. However, as emotional a moment this was for him, Hundolis emerged from his freedom drawn tears to break the embrace of teacher and student to stand and say, “This way. Time is short.”
As they rose through the depths and channels of the underbelly of the Castle of Light, they heard the sounds of battle begin to breech the eerie silence. Eriboth’s seasoned ears were able to delineate what the young elf’s were not. He knew there was something unnatural at work. Though he was able to feel it growing inside him the way storm clouds seem to silently grow on the horizon, he did not need to rely on his still developing sensitivity to evil’s presence. He could hear it in the absent battle cries of the Ogres as well as the abundance of elven bellows of victory. “Enon Prodoc” (There is none greater) was the traditional elven victory chant uttered stoically at the conclusion of every battle. So prevalent had it become over the ages that it was used on every occasion from the time boys played games of conquest on the fields to the intellectual battles as the elders concluded their mental challenges. Eriboth even remembered speaking it the first time he landed a successful blow to his brother. That phrase signified superiority. But not just superiority for the individual emerging victorious in the moment; it signified the superiority of all elves over all others. And while the elves were victorious and were using their ageless chant to signal the battle’s conclusion, it was not being used correctly. And that is what both unnerved Eriboth and confirmed that something darker was at work.
While it was expected and even welcomed for this phrase to herald a favorable outcome for the elves, it was always, as everything else in elven culture, embraced with a stoically scripted preparation and execution. To hear its use deviated from the unified precision normally reflective of the perfect discipline of the elven militia, was something that all elves should notice; however, today, they did not. Frantic, gleeful, barbaric were a few of the words brought from Eriboth’s considerable descriptive repertoire. But what could have caused such a deviation in the fundamental constructs that made elves what they were? Though it could have been dismissed as the effects of battle upon those who were desperate in their defense, and no doubt would be by the Elven Lorekeepers when they wrote about the glorious defeat of the invading Ogre armies, he was not so naïve to believe that a single elf, let alone the whole of them, would or even could, suspend who they were in their cemented identities to adopt the behavior of the very behaviors they stood against.
“It sounds as if we have won, or are winning at least,” said Hundolis with an entitled relief.
“Winning and losing are often not understood until the ages have passed their judgement upon which was greater, the prize or the cost,” answered Eriboth, though Hundolis appeared not to hear him.
He smelled blood, Ogre blood. It was a deeply musty stench that rose the bile in his stomach. Because of its putrid aroma, there were legends that told of its potency when contacting mortal skin. It was said to carry the properties of some of the more corrosive poisons concocted by the Potion Masters of The University. Because the Ogres, and hence their blood, were segregated by the natural geographic separation of The Spine, it rarely came into contact with a large enough sample of skins to adequately test the theories. However, as numerous as they were, there was enough Ogre blood spilled this day to drench not only the battlefield, but the elves as well. And not one of them suffered even the slightest ill effects from its touch. In fact, as King Hinthial observed the battle, now in its final stages with his army of elves relentlessly pursuing those Ogres fortunate enough to have survived the furious initial retaliation, he was sure that the spilled blood of their foes increased the effects of Esthinor’s spell. The legions of the Elves were historic without being bolstered by any magical effects, and now, with Esthinor’s magic propelling their mortal abilities to above mortal levels, even he was stunned with their newly developed lethality.
He felt the spell land inside of him. Felt its power course through his muscles and infuse his veins with its power. He felt the surge of invincibility within his mind and comprehension of exactly how he had been empowered. He knew he was stronger, faster, quicker than the Ogres. He knew it, and he longed to prove it. But because he was still on the Dais observing the massacre and not in the fray, he was unable to release his growing desire, his growing need. As he aged from youth and gained greater responsibilities within his House and kingdom, he believed that wars and battles were fought by the young for they possessed two things the aged did not. Firstly, they believed in the perseverance of ideals in the face of any obstacle. Secondly, their youthful vigor allowed for an unquestioning compliance to directions and orders as they preferred to do instead of to contemplate. However, he did not feel the same way when under the boon of Esthinor’s spell. Gone was the contemplative disposition o
f experience and age. Replacing it was a long-forgotten desire to prove his worth in battle, to test his new-found abilities and produce more evidence to both his attackers and fellow elves that even the eldest of them were still capable of terrible destruction.
Because of the change in his principle affect, he understood the increase in the youthful warriors must have been even greater than it was in himself. His supposition was proven tenfold on the field as it was lined with the darkened blood of the invading Ogres. Even the King Tatharak was not immune from the magically enhanced elves. When the initial attack of the Ogre King’s entire force had been repelled and then countered, he was forced to take the field. Under normal conditions, without the influence of magic on the scope of the Grand Wizard, his presence could have been pivotal. But as it was, he was soon washed away by the flood of elven determination and destruction bent upon the complete annihilation of the Ogres. As the few remaining forces were fleeing, hoping to save their lives and return to the safety and solitude behind The End, King Hinthial turned his attention back to Esthinor and said, “What type of magic is this?”
“Magic? You think I use magic?” he answered.
King Hinthial was lowered until his feet met with the stone floor again, “Is that not what you have used? How else could this,” he paused searching for a word appropriate to describe the total effect of what had just happened, “battle have been decided so thoroughly?”
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