The Elf of Frostisen
Page 3
Aurora smiled at him and her cheeks were once again pink with health. The doctor felt his heartbeat quicken, and he didn’t think twice as he leaned into her and kissed her. She immediately reciprocated and melted into his embrace. When he finally tore himself away from her intoxicating mouth, he said, “I’m going to get you out of this place. I won’t let them hurt you anymore.”
“There’s something that might help,” Aurora replied. “When my family waged the last battle upon these slopes, it was rumored that my brother, Kyros, hid his sword, Eldrimne, somewhere along the mountain’s acme. It’s an ancient sword, forged from the fires of the volcanoes from which these mountains were birthed. Laced within the sword is an amalgam of elven magic and elemental magma. Even the dark conjuring of the half-breeds cannot overpower it. I would’ve attempted to capture it myself, but the Ruler keeps me weakened.” Aurora looked to the color-streaked atmosphere above them and pointed. “It would be up there, at the final place where land and sky converge.”
Patrick followed her gaze and his stomach did a somersault. The mountain’s summit was easily three hundred feet above the cliff they were on, and it tapered off into a skinny point the higher it rose. Vertigo came clambering down on him, and his palms began to sweat. For the sake of Aurora, Patrick reached deep down into the well of determination he’d drunk from earlier. There was no time think; he knew what he had to do.
“I’ll be right back,” he told the elf. With nothing other than the balls of his feet and grasp of his fingers to keep him from falling to his death, Patrick began the quest to reclaim Eldrimne.
At such a high altitude, the arctic air felt like a thousand knives stabbing his body. Patrick clung to the wall like a slug sticks to a window, and he refused to look down at the deathly fall below him. All around him, the Northern Lights continued to flash, like the neon lights of a nightclub. A verdant glow suddenly appeared like a halo above him. With everything he’d seen in the last two days, he had no doubts that the scintillating aurora was directing him right to the elven sword, Eldrimne.
As the sacred object came into his line of sight, the green hue surrounding it receded back into the sky. The weapon was wedged in a rock fissure with the grip and cross-guard protruding outward. Patrick grasped the hilt, and when he released the blade from its resting point, he gasped in surprise. Tiny crisscrossed threads were woven into the metal, and they burned with the heat of a kindling fire. It warmed his hand instantly, but not to a point that it was uncomfortable on his skin.
“Elven magic,” Patrick whispered in astonishment.
With the treasured sword now in his possession, Patrick carefully descended back down to the rocky ledge. He grabbed Aurora, who attacked herself to him in a piggyback position, and he carefully brought them back down to ground level.
“How do you plan to defeat the Ruler?” the elf asked him once her feet were on firm ground. “Even the powers of Eldrimne cannot trounce thousands of half-breeds.”
“I have an idea,” Patrick said hesitantly. He gave Aurora a tight smile. “Let’s just hope it works.”
***
Five minutes later, Patrick was flying back through the caverns of Frostisen with Aurora right on his heels. He navigated each bend of the underground path with confidence until the pair was standing right in front of the gothic crypt.
“What are we doing here?” she asked. Her violent eyes were glittering like crystals in the solemn light of the tomb.
“I felt something here the other day,” Patrick muttered. “I can’t explain it, but my intuition tells me it may help.”
Patrick met her wide-eyed gaze and they both looked down at Eldrimne hanging limply in his hand. The scarlet threads of the blade blazed like red-hot plasma in the darkness of the mausoleum, and Patrick could feel its power seeping into his arm like poison. He tightened his hold on the grip until the grooves of its design pushed into his palm.
“Stay back,” he told Aurora.
Patrick brought the fiery sword high above his head and, and with the deep growl of a feral dog, rushed at the frozen statue closest to him. Right before he collided with the statue, Patrick leapt into the air and hammered the sword down into the shoulder of the object until diamond dust rained around him.
As soon as the metal touched the ice, its liquid heat seeped into the statue turning it an iridescent crimson hue. A large fissure appeared, and the clamor of cracking ice ensued, falling away from the statue’s center like the large chunks of a glacier. Revealed underneath it all was a living, breathing elf. He looked like the Ruler’s sentinels–pure muscle and beauty and armed with an array of blades.
“Kyros!” Aurora screamed.
The she-elf came barreling up the grand staircase and flung herself into her brother’s open arms. Kyros greedily intercepted her and buried his face in his sister’s hair. After several minutes, he released Aurora and his stern eyes trickled over to Patrick and down to Eldrimne in his hand.
“How did you know I was bewitched?” Kyros asked Patrick. “And how did you come to have Eldrimne?”
“I didn’t know anything for certain,” Patrick replied meekly. “I just had a hunch.”
Kyros stalked over to him with clinched fists and an agitated expression. Patrick took a step back expecting a blow from the angry elf for taking his sword. Surprisingly, Kyros stopped in front of Patrick and placed his hand on his shoulder.
“Keep Eldrimne as your own,” Kyros said. “For I can repay my debt to you no other way.”
The sword instantly heated up the inside of Patrick’s palm, as if it knew Patrick was now its permanent wielder.
“How are you alive, Kyros?” Aurora asked her brother.
“During the battles with the half-breeds, several elves were victimized by dark magic,” Kyros explained. “Instead of killing us, we were tortured by spells that encased us in ice for thousands of years. If the Ruler finds out what you’ve done, he’ll kill us all. Do not underestimate what half-breeds are capable of.”
“The Ruler is already hunting us,” Patrick interrupted. “Our only hope was Eldrimne, which is why we quested out to find it.
“Why’s he perusing you?” Kyros insisted, and Aurora quickly recounted what had happened to them.
“I’m sorry you had to endure such torture, sister,” Kyros sympathized. “Be glad, though. The time for us to seek vengeance has finally come.”
Before Aurora could respond, a thunderous commotion at the entrance to the crypt silenced the man and the two elves. Even in the murkiness of the ice cave, Patrick could see the shadows of the sentinels bobbing along the wall.
“Why are you hiding, human?” the Ruler’s baritone voice rumbled in the darkness. Patrick was expecting his brawny frame to fill the entrance to the crypt, but the firelight of the mob’s torches revealed something far more demonic. Patrick’s body went rigid with horror.
The Ruler’s fair skin had turned a greyish hue, like wet cement, and it shimmered with a coat of greasy slime. His blue eyes had clouded over until they were nothing more than milky orbs, and they overlooked a mouth filled with razor sharp teeth. All that remained of his elven heritage was his muscular body and pointed ears. In his hand he gripped an ancient ice ax. Behind the Ruler was his army of sentinels, half-breeds, all with sickly white skin covering a skeletal face, and each one holding a deadly weapon.
“Is this what you want, Aurora?” the Ruler growled. “To gaze upon our disfigurement? To see what dark magic does to half-breeds? We’re a cursed race, abandoned by the starlight and forced to dwell underground for the remainder of our existence. I will not suffer because of you! Because of your blessed kind!” His eyes shot daggers at both man and elf. “Give her back to me, human!”
“Not a chance!” Patrick shot back.
The Ruler hissed like a snake. “Kill him!” he yelled to the mob behind him
Kyros grabbed Patrick by the elbow. “I can hold them off for a little while,” he gushed, “but you have to wake the others.”
The mob was now rushing at them with the viciousness of a deadly army. Their double-edged swords came free of their scabbards, freshly sharpened and lethal. Kyros grabbed the two large blades tucked into his belt and twirled them dexterously in his fingers. Without hesitation, he rushed into their midst, shoving his daggers underneath the ribcage of any half breed he met. The sounds of death echoed around him. Patrick turned away from the massacre to finish what he’d started.
“Help me!” he cried out to Aurora.
The doctor sprinted through the grid of the crypt, crying out victoriously each time Eldrimne made contact with the elven ice sculptures. He shattered their icy prisons, releasing the frozen elves from their dark spell. Like Aurora, each newly awakened elf was tall, beautiful, and agile. But once their eyes landed on the Ruler–their captor, their torturer for thousands of years, they no longer appeared peaceful, but were consumed with rage.
Seeing the threat approaching and Kyros trying to hold them back on his own, Aurora ushered the elves into battle against the half-breeds. They cried out for revenge as they rushed at their foes with weapons drawn, immediately spilling their enemy’s black blood across the frozen floor.
Aurora looked over at Patrick, gave him a knowing smile, and followed her family into battle. Among the fight, Patrick could see her silver hair flowing in time with her blade as she sliced several half-breeds through the neck, separating head from torso. Each elf freed from bondage fought with the determination of an Arthurian Knight, and one by one the half-breeds crumpled lifelessly underneath their blows.
“Are you ready to die, human?”
Patrick had been so engrossed in the erupting elven battle that he’d hadn’t realized the Ruler wasn’t among the fallen. Somehow, the Ruler had slipped past Kyros and was lurking among the stone coffins, waiting for the right moment to drive his ice ax though Patrick’s back. Heart pounding, Patrick turned around to face him. He was blocking the only way out like a massive ogre. As Patrick’s cowardice began to manifest, Eldrimne instantly warmed, reminding him what he was really fighting for.
The Ruler lunged at Patrick, slamming down his ice ax like a psychotic murderer. Patrick grunted and spun away from him, but the Ruler closed the space between them with monster steps, swinging his weapon at the man again. Patrick stumbled backwards, tripping over his own feet and landing on the floor. He crawled around to the other side of the stone coffin and brought Eldrimne to his chest.
“Come out, come out wherever you are!”
Patrick stood up and ran, but the Ruler was surprisingly fast. He intercepted the doctor with an elbow to the side of his face and a fist in his gut. The excruciating pain caused Patrick fall once more to the stone floor and the Ruler kicked Eldrimne out of his hand where it landed several feet away.
The Ruler laughed maliciously as he towered over Patrick. “Got you,” he said. With deadly intent, he drove the axe in the direction of Patrick’s face. The man rolled to the right, and the axe landed next to his head with the sound of splitting rock. With one last chance, Patrick grabbed for Eldrimne. The veins of magma were heating up like a blacksmith’s kiln. Utilizing the pause before the Ruler’s next deadly blow, Patrick catapulted the searing hot blade into the Ruler’s midsection, pushing the blade further and further until he felt warm sticky blood coating his hands.
He held it there until the Ruler’s eyes went lifeless, then Patrick retracted his blade leaving the Ruler nothing more than a tangled corpse. When the remaining half-breeds saw that their leader had been butchered by the man wielding an elven sword, they shrieked in dismay, dropped their weapons, and fled back into the hallways of Frostisen, throwing empty threats in their wake.
Patrick was panting like a dog and his blood was speeding through his veins as the battle with the half-breeds ended victoriously. Before he had a chance to do anything else, Aurora ran over to him and jumped his arms. He embraced her back, enjoying the feel of her warm body against his.
The remaining elves crowded around them, their ageless faces and piercing eyes never leaving him. Kyros was the first to step up and address him.
“Elven magic favors you,” he said in astonishment. “You defeated a foe that murdered our kin and imprisoned my sister. No human in our history has ever achieved such a feat.” All the elves nodded in agreement. “Today you saved our lives.” He looked at the Ruler’s bloody corpse. “And our future.”
Aurora had her head on his shoulder and Patrick breathed in her sweet scent.
“Now that you’re free, where will you go?” he asked them.
“Into the artic wilderness,” an older she-elf replied. “We will rebuild our kingdom of ice and snow encased in the magic of our people. No danger will ever find us there.” She cocked her head and looked him. “As for you? Where will you go?”
At that moment, a large void of pain filled Patrick’s heart, and the thought of returning to Arizona seemed grim and dreary. He had studied his world long enough, and after what he’d seen in Frostisen, he knew it would no longer hold the fascination for him it once did. He’d changed since arriving in Narvik. It was the kind of change no one in his human life would understand or believe if he told them.
Aurora was peering lovingly into his face. She reached up and smoothed away a strand of his sandy hair. She trailed her soft fingers down to his mouth and gently brushed them across his lips. Her small act of tenderness made shivers go down his spine, and the hole in his heart grew larger.
Kyros cleared his throat. “I see my sister is taken with you,” he said. “And my family is indebted to you. In order to repay that debt, we’d be honored if you’d accompany us, Patrick of the human world. If you would have us, that is.”
Patrick opened and closed his mouth, knowing what he wanted to say to Kyros but unable to put it into words. Fortunately, Aurora smiled and answered for him. She lifted up the hand that held the sword of fire. “We will venture together to the ice kingdom, and you, my love, will be named in legend as a protector of my people.”
Patrick felt a huge smile envelope his face till his cheeks hurt. Aurora jumped up to kiss him and he raised the sword up valiantly.
“Patrick the Protector I am named,” he said. “Patrick the Protector I will be.”