The yellow flame gathered around her exposed hand without harming even a hair. Ember’s hand was dainty and thin, muscles clearly visible, lacking the barest hint of fat present between her joints. The Wood Elves startled, recognized the fire, and decided it was a great time to make themselves scarce. This was not an arena they could stand in, and no amount of honeyed words were going to make a dent against Ember’s apathetic demeanor.
The time for deal making had ended. Artorian’s cheerleaders released him, a few pats of support on his shoulders as they hurried to escape as he snuck in a question. “Was that show of force really needed? I’m certain they would have gone if we’d just asked. Some diplomacy isn’t bad for health.”
Ember’s yellow flame just kept growing in intensity, and a clean beam of it split up through the canopy, piercing the sky. The fire was… odd. Under the canopy, it was clear as daylight, but the line that cut above the verdant barrier was ethereal. Unless you were specifically looking for it, he was certain you’d not spot it.
“They’re not running because I’m being abrasive.” She pulled the beam back in as the surroundings spiked in heat, Artorian clenched and tensed from the sudden unsavory feeling. He began to sweat as lines of flame raced across the ground in complex runic patterns. “They’re running because we have incoming.”
“We have what now?” Artorian blinked. The old man wiped his face off, tempted to bolt along with the fleeing Wood Elves that were… gone? How was everyone except him so abyss-cheating fast? What were the tricks these Elves were using, stepping into trees and transporting themselves through the roots?
Bah! His paths of escape were non-existent once he took a moment to turn about and look for them. The large open space felt cramped, and not due to the lines of hot yellow fire surrounding them. Had it always been this dark?
“Yellow means ‘caution’. They know this; you will learn. My flame will become white any moment.” Any follow up questions Artorian may have had were removed at the root. Pudgy, roiling masses of smoggy black tar whisked across the landscape and bashed into Ember’s purifying barrier with staccato *thuds*. The flame didn’t seem to purify much, but it at least sizzled the ‘creature’ and forced the incomprehensible, shapeless mass to recoil. The screeching wails that bubbled from the caliginous thing were as clear and crisp as a town crier’s calls, to the point that it took Artorian a moment to understand. He didn’t hear the sounds with his ears, he heard them in his head.
There wasn't an escape from this sound. You couldn’t cover and hide from it. Hands clamped on ears or not, the hunched old man fell on the stump he’d been sitting on. With a movement of her hand, Ember carved a pyroclasm through the landscape. The searing flame acted as a wall that went on for… well… he couldn't see the end of it. Panic gripped his heart, and he pressed himself to the log as the Mage threw Mana around with scalpel precision.
He was unutterably powerless here. Artorian’s sight registered the colossal blights as they kept pouring from the forest’s depths. An entire cardinal direction was hidden behind phantom smoke that shifted into mocking, poorly-copied shapes of living creatures that whispered heartrending lies. He couldn’t properly hear them between the roaring of fire that separated his ‘safe’ log from the living nightmare that occupied an amount of space he couldn’t properly conceive. Ember’s blazing wall may have gone on and on, but the ‘creature’—for lack of a better term—had massed itself against the hot semi-structure. It blotted out the sky, and Artorian was struck with terror.
He had signed up to get rid of this? How? How would a ‘Blooming Spirit’ be a functional weapon against this? Doubts began to spring up, and Artorian slapped himself on the cheeks again. No. Not this. Doubt was the real threat of the creature. Like the Wood Elves, the bodies he saw weren’t the real thing. They were just… conveniences. This living blight was no different. The visible body was a vessel, yet it wasn’t the real danger. It popped, bubbled, boiled, and burned off against the shearing blaze-wall, but it was for naught.
The screeching went on and on as the body of the blight threw itself at the barrier. Artorian glanced over at Ember, or he tried to. His eyes had flicked past her on first passing, as she looked no different to an unmoving statue. Her arms weren’t up. She was making no energetic motions. Her eyes were locked onto the threat, and she just… stood there. She was molding the shape, size, and power of her Mana to continue holding the miscreant at bay, all without any way to show that she was doing anything at all. Every now and then, he heard her sigh heavily.
“Told you I couldn’t kill it.” Artorian’s mental picture of the scene fractured as she casually spoke without turning to look at him. Looking about again, he found that while the threat was in fact incredibly vast, it had failed entirely to gain even an acorn’s worth of ground past Ember’s roasting field.
Pushing himself from the log, Artorian weakly brushed his robes off. With uncertain steps, he made his way over to stand next to the Mage, who appeared just as sullen as he imagined she might. “I… I don’t see how anyone expects me to… it just goes on forever.”
The Elven words nudged him away from that assumption. “It doesn’t. It just looks like it does.”
The old man nodded, not sure what else to do at this moment. “So… you’re a cultivator, then? A Mage?”
Ember shrugged in response. “A crude term for an elegant idea that was lost to time.”
She bit her lip, opening her mouth as if she was going to speak more. She didn’t, but the old man next to her was quickly regaining his confidence and poise. It soothed Ember, and she found her words. “In the new tongue, ‘cultivator’ is likely correct. At least, it may have been before my primary Ascension. In my language, I am an ‘Ascended’. In yours, I am a Mage. While I use what you refer to as Essence, it is only to convert into a superior version of power.
“You would know it as Mana. I know it as the ‘Energy of The Between’. I do not often speak, and when I do, it is limited. I enjoy being short, to the point. You are wordy and long of breath. Since I have taken the mantle of instructor, I will explain in length… when able.”
Artorian folded his hands behind his back. Comfort and stability were coming back to him moment by moment, as he could clearly see that the threat was not only failing to make gains, but could feel Ember trying to break away from her consistent depression. What an odd sensation, to feel the intent of another so clearly. It must have been a combination of local factors he didn’t have the time to puzzle out right now, but it was an uncanny experience. “May I safely infer… not a Wood Elf?”
Ember grunted. Ah! He’d heard this syllable before, this one was ‘confirmation’. “I’ve had innumerable names, but none I wish to recount. My kind went through many naming conventions. Now that all is lost, I am merely a Wild Elf. As are all Elves who lose their heritage. It is frustrating to truly understand how diluted the ‘Elven’ honor has become.”
Artorian mimicked her own grunt back at her, which made the corners of her mouth twitch towards the faintest hint of a smile. Progress! He was going to make this sentinel crack with laughter in no time! “You know not my history, human. Why do you agree with me on something you know nothing about?”
The Academic squeezed his chin, brushing a hand down his beard. “When the best source of history tells you something is true, it must be so. Therefore, if it is your account that something has occurred to ‘Elves’ over time, then it is not debate. It is merely true.”
A sage nod followed, distracting him from the horror that still writhed and raged on the other side of a paper-thin wall. “I will certainly admit that I know nothing of Elves past what I have learned in the last few days. It will not be my intent to step on toes. I only have hearsay that it has something to do with ear shape.”
He pointed to his own, eyebrow raised at the Ancient Elf currently trying her best to be a mentor; a personality that didn’t play to her strengths. Anyone could tell that Ember was a warrior. One created, tempere
d, and hardened in endless battle. Her words were abrasive by impatience and irritation, but the source seemed to stem from unending exhaustion. If the threat could come from anywhere, to anyone, at any time like this… he too would fear the call of sleep. That the blight seemed to have free access to you if you did sleep… certainly did not help the prospect.
“To be an Elf, back when it was more than just a thing to lord over one another… it meant to dedicate yourself to the eradication of conflict by waging an endless war. The reasons are long lost. While I knew once, I know no longer. The ears are a reference to the oldest of traditions. In those early days, we needed a way to easily show all who saw us what we had come to do. Our ears were a symbol to the upholding of an ideal. We forsook family, community, and companionship in favor of the pure pursuit of the power that would let us eradicate the endless threat that is…”
She stopped herself, and a heavy sigh fell from her lips. “Now, being an Elf is a species reference. The purpose was lost over time, and some instead became obsessed with their appearance and self-importance. Their superiority, since some of their skills were better than that of another. Some put their status above all else, such as High Elves. Pride and hubris rule their rotten hearts. Some became lost and found a new path, such as the Wood Elves. They discovered an abandoned cultivation method, and threw themselves into it fully.”
Ember shook her head as a mother would when disappointed in her children. “That flawed experiment in unity… I am one of the last of the Elven line that knew of the originals. When the mountains were green and not a road cut the land. My path is one of endless wars, and I wander from one field of battle to the next. I can find no rest in times of peace so long as I cannot fulfill my original purpose. I fear I never will.”
Her hand rose, and opened slowly. It was difficult for Artorian to discern what occurred on the other side of the blazing barrier. When he did, the comfort he had gained shattered to fragile, fearful chunks. Torments from his past freshly found their way to the surface at what he saw, their cold claws digging into his heart.
“Oh abyss… no…” Glowing orange and matted black swirled on the ground beneath the roiling blight. It started low to the ground, turning in on itself as it spun, forming a miniature whirlwind that—for now—did nothing. “No… no… no…”
The telltale sound that had haunted his nightmares for decades started dreadfully low, like thunder heralding a storm. He knew this; he knew it well. It was the sound of fiery death. Hands clamped to the sides of his head, and he dropped to his knees, unable to turn away as he received a refresher on something he’d hoped to never see again. Visually, the air seemed to coil and birth a telltale familiar, horrifying orange glow from the swirl of ebon particles that mixed together in the air.
*Boom*.
If his mind could make a sound as a piece of it shattered, it would have done so with the crackle of sand as it snapped to become glass in the sudden conflux of torrential heat. A pillar of twisting flame eradicated entire columns worth of blight.
The creature recoiled as an expressionless Ember watched the carnage she wrought. Retaliatory waves bashed and broke against the pyroclastic wall. The phantom-smoke didn’t retreat, the mass just dissipated into itself, becoming nothing. Within moments, the distance-spanning tarry cloud was gone. Having expended their mass, the shadows retreated. The only sounds remaining were the hot crackle of a flame wall, and a collapsed old man sobbing on the ground.
Chapter Eight
Ember stood over the weeping Elder as he rocked himself. She was uncomfortable. She was accustomed to war, and the agony and horrors it brought. She could handle herself, surrendering everything to the apathy and letting it all drain away into an endless void of nothingness where it couldn’t get to her.
Watching someone else go through it… that was difficult. If she let this drain away, it would be difficult to teach her student. If she tried to handle the situation herself, she would fail. Lesson one. If you can’t, don’t.
Conflicted, she stood there and squeezed her hands into fists as she emotionlessly watched him cry. Why was he in such a state? The phantoms were temporarily rebuked, their hold should be at its weakest. To confirm, she ascertained the current location of the lesser Elves in movement. She corrected herself. Wood Elves. No falling into the same trap of those whose pride ate them alive from within. Yeesh. This human was putting her on seriously shaky mental ground.
She was content to feel that the Wood Elves had passed the distance threshold where the blight could no longer sense them. She’d known having such a large congregation was going to be a beacon for the Phantoms: it was a promise of a sizable buffet.
Abyss these Wood Elves and their particular vulnerability. Gestalt consciousnesses were strong when unified, but collapsed if pushed into disharmony. The blight would swallow them up whole, as it had done to numerous other groups of Wood Elves. They’d lost the entire Elder grove just a few months ago, and had she not arrived in time, Alder would have joined them.
Her hand twitched. She’d forgotten what to do. Unable to ascend further, unable to finish the blight, and now unable to support a single human? Ember’s hand spasmed harder. All the power in the world didn’t help her here. She could flatten battlefields, break proud castles to crumbling ruin, and turn vast armies into glowing dust motes. Yet if a child were to hug her leg, she’d stand there clueless as to how she should act. Should she pick it up by the scruff of the neck and return it to the mother like it was part of a cat’s litter? Should she shake her leg to try and get the little creature off?
A similar discord struck her now. The human was just holding his head as he sobbed, trying to cope with something awful it must have experienced. Again, she looked around for lingering threats… yet still sensed no shadows that had remained nearby. If it had been something as simple as a phantom, she could have chased it away and the crying would have been over. If the outburst wasn’t from an enemy… there was no reason that this should be happening.
Ember reached down slowly; shaky hand outstretched. She had only just barely touched his shoulder when he violently recoiled, rolling away and getting to his feet. Then taking off in a thoughtless sprint. “No! Not again!”
Her hand clenched into a fist, and Ember winced at her failure. Of course that wasn’t going to work. When had anything she tried that wasn’t killing ever worked? She straightened and frowned as she watched him run. He clearly didn’t know where he was going, sprinting at full tilt through the trees. Her frown remained, and she took a single step. The force it propelled her allowed her to catch up to him as if she’d never left his heel.
Artorian didn’t have the time for rational thought; he just ran. His hand remained pressed to the side of his head as his vision overlapped with memories of a desert and swirling masses of ebon orange that tore the battlefield asunder. Pillars of flame that took from him one of the families he’d spent years getting to know.
He stepped on a root and tripped, but rolled up and kept going. The luminous outline of his younger self passed him, the one that didn’t trip in Socorro. That young commander with eyes full of fright, shouting orders to retreat so people would live. He didn’t feel the forest floor crunch and snap beneath his feet. He felt only the push-and-give of gravelly sand.
Unlike last time, he saw no cave.
No hollow of respite.
As the forest endlessly flew past, so did the loop of the desert sands as the surroundings exploded, burned, and broke. He remembered and tasted the smells of men cooking, armor melting to flesh, and endless eye-raking winds cutting across his vision. He was in two places at once and wasn’t able to distinguish either one as real while he ran.
Where in the desert he had never seen the culprit that had turned his friends and fellow soldiers to crumbled hunks, now Ember was there. Vivid. Real. He could swear that when he looked over his shoulder, she was right there. It spurred his mad dash forwards, and his foot caught again. This time, he didn’t catch hims
elf.
In the desert there was vast open space, in the forest… there were trees. His head bashed into one at full speed, and the dizzying blow shattered his illusion as he fell onto his back. It didn’t quite feel like he hit the ground? Only half-conscious, he felt dazed and as if he was being moved around. Did it just get brighter?
Ember caught the human as he ran into a tree and practically knocked himself out. A flutter of her hand forced a plume of flame to burst from the ground, a bonfire settling into place. She laid the old man against a tree, where his body remained slumped. It was good enough, so she sat near the flame herself. She considered if she could have done something different for him, but her eyes glazed over and dulled.
Her forehead found the exposed support of her arm and dropped to a rest. Once again defended by the curled-in position, she checked out of reality, the lack of answers fueling her depression.
Artorian hazily saw a bonfire before him. Blinking owlishly, he thought he was in his failure space. “Drat. Did I do it again? Have I failed so badly that another plans to take the mantle?”
After a few moments of contemplation, he noticed that it just didn’t feel the same. No stumps surrounded this flame, and there was no shrill sound of whetstone rasping over metal. Pain stabbed his forehead.
His hands came up and he felt the bruise. No wonder his head felt like it was splitting, that was a big goose egg. He attempted to pull from his celestial Essence, but there just wasn’t enough of it to go around. Artorian would have to let this bruise heal the old-fashioned way, or he’d need some starlight to cultivate. Glancing up, this canopy didn’t have a big hole in it. It was gloomily obscured, and attempting to cultivate in this was only going to make him slurp up corruption.
Artorian's Archives Omnibus Page 43