by Matthew Wolf
She fixed him with her sky-blue eyes, seeing his worry. “As this is your choice, so this is mine. I am not going anywhere, not without you—so you might as well get used to it.”
Rydel growled. Part of him was elated, and the rest of him was terrified. Somehow risking himself and risking her were two entirely different things. He couldn’t bear to lose her, but she was right. For better or worse, she was with him now. With a deep breath, he shook his head and grabbed his fallen, crusted blade. “Come then, we can’t stay here.”
She fell in at his side, moving through the leaf litter and beneath the dark canopy with practiced ease and perfect silence. “Where are we headed?”
“To the heart of the woods. We must find the Hidden Pool and gather a vial of its contents,” he said, extracting a small glass vial from his pocket.
Elisaria’s radiant face lit up with awe. “It truly exists? The Well of Immortality?”
“Unless Master is lying, which he never is, then yes. It is very real.”
They moved with haste, threading through the trees, many of which were crooked and bent like a witch’s finger. Elisaria moved silently and swiftly as expected for one of her ranks, keeping pace with him at every step. About them, Drymaus seemed to thrum. An energy filled the air, neither good nor evil, but the dense spark of life suffused them with a vitality that quickened their gait. Rydel knew every second in these woods was a second that could spell their doom.
In a verdant clearing, butterflies the size of his head flitted through the glowing air. In the next, a large cat-like creature with downy fur but no claws pawed at the ground, digging and nibbling at honey-colored roots. They even passed the ever-rare and elusive sprytes—little glowing balls of pure energy that frolicked up and down trees or in patches of moss and rotting logs. They were leafsprytes, the color of grass. Elsewhere they saw puffs of blue, watersprytes, who bobbed in aquamarine streams, or over a perfectly still lake the shade of lavender in full bloom. They made music as they danced, filling the air with a melody impossible to repeat, but lulled the soul and sounded like mischief incarnate. Each time, Elisaria’s eyes grew wide, as did his own. Yet as enchanting as it all was, every moment was a moment too long, a moment that made Rydel’s skin itch. This in mind, he pulled her along faster, never lingering.
Rydel’s keen tracking sense guided them deeper into the heart of the forest.
Elisaria grabbed his arm suddenly, dragging him to a halt. He knew not to question as they ducked behind a tree. There, his foot landed in foul bog-like muck that bubbled and frothed. Insects and other many-legged creatures crawled about the puddles’ shore and he covered his nose from the stench. A moment later, out of the woods a giant creature made of twining twigs, vine and leaf emerged. A balrot. Friendly as balrots were, they waited impatiently until the creature passed. Stories said one thing, but the reality might tell another. Rydel almost moved, eager as he was to continue, but he smelled a danger, and Drymaus echoed his fear. A shadowy hue descended upon the woods. Elisaria sensed it as well as she stiffened, fingers digging into his arm. “Not yet,” she whispered. “Something’s coming.”
The darkness grew. It had been sunny a moment before, but the woods now resembled a deepening night. Another moment later, stalking out of the trees came a nightmare. Its hide was the color of pale elven flesh in spots, and in others, it looked like dried moss. Scales spotted its body like a fish that had been rotting in the sun. As it moved, the thick, scaly hide rippled, blending with the woods as it stepped on long spindly legs—the hue vaguely mimicking the surroundings it passed. It had large pale eyes, cloudy and filmed as if it was sightless. The creature’s human-shaped head held a wide mouth that rhythmically opened and closed, revealing needles instead of teeth covered in blood as if it had recently feasted. On its bare skull were long, sharp ears and a row of fleshy spines that continued down its hunched back. The spines continued down a long tail that undulated along the ground. It was easily twice Rydel’s height and it moved on all fours. It looked like some strange misshapen spawn of an elf, demon, and dragon. Talons on the end of its spindly legs raked the earth, churning up moss and making the earth sizzle with every step. Rydel recognized it from the stories and pictures in his lore books. A drekkar. Rydel had been certain they were myth.
Stories said they were once elves who had tried to steal the magic and power of dragons. They had drank dragon blood and performed some dark ritual only for it to end horribly wrong—drekkar was the result. Beings neither elf nor dragon, nor of this world, and horribly twisted by the dark magic.
The nightmarish drekkar paused a dozen paces away. It sniffed the air with its holes where a nose should be as if sensing something. A moment later, its scaly skin rippled, melding with the woods and going nearly invisible. Hunting form, Rydel knew, panicked as its head swiveled their way and they ducked back behind the tree. Blood pounded in his ears. Rydel knew drekkar had an impeccable sense of smell, but stories said nothing about them being blind. Could it see? Cautiously, he glanced around the tree, peering through the foliage. His breath caught—the drekkar had taken several steps closer in their direction, sniffing as it stalked.
Smell…
It can smell our breath, smell us, he realized.
He grabbed muck from the oozing pit and rubbed it on himself, gesturing fervently for Elisaria to do the same. She did, smearing the smelly mud over her body, coating her green-plated armor and her face with the foul substance. Rydel suppressed a gag from the stench and as he looked to peer around the tree… The drekkar was there. It towered over him, and each footfall crushed the grass, burning it into ash as it stalked around the tree to face them. It opened its bloody maw with a hiss to reveal rows upon rows of razor-sharp teeth. Rydel held his breath and Elisaria did the same. If it truly was half-elf with its long, pointed ears, it would hear their breathing. The drekkar cocked its head, looming over them, sniffing, trying to catch their smell. Foggy white eyes stared without seeing. It crooned, a terrible clacking cry from deep within its throat. Its jaws snapped a breath away from Elisaria’s face. Every muscle in Rydel’s body wanted to cut the creature down, to tear it to pieces but knew they hunted in packs. If he cut this one down, more would come—many more. So he resisted every urge inside him. Elisaria’s eyes were wide in terror and then she shut them, continuing to hold her breath. Soon the air in Rydel’s lungs burned, and he wanted desperately to suck in a breath but he refrained. The drekkar flicked a long too-elven like a tongue. It tasted Elisaria and every muscle in her body was rigid. But the demonic creature only garnered a fleck of mud on its tongue. Immediately hissing, the drekkar recoiled, shaking its large head in disgust and then slowly stalked away. After another few painstaking moments of lungs burning for air, Rydel gasped and Elisaria did the same—gulping sweet, life-giving breaths. He grabbed her but she pulled away. “Are you…”
“Fine,” she said, her voice rattled. “I’m fine. Let’s keep going.”
Rydel felt troubled, but he gave her an encouraging smile and they ran, deeper into the woods, faster and harder—sprinting until—
The trees stopped.
A vast glade opened and there… in the center of the glade was a pool surrounded by glowing rocks. From the pool itself issued a soft blush of blue, a cerulean hue. “That’s it. The Hidden Pool.”
“The Well of Immortality,” Elisaria whispered in disbelief. She stepped forward and Rydel grabbed her arm. “What are you doing?” She asked. “Isn’t this what we came for?”
“Nothing’s ever this easy,” he said.
“Easy?” She snorted. “You call that easy?”
“I didn’t train all my life just for that,” he replied. Then he sensed something. Something different from what he’d ever sensed. It wasn’t like the drekkar or any of the other magical beings thus far. Beings that existed of spark—the essence of life. This was something else. The hairs on his arms stood on end and his skin prick
ed. The flow. It was the magic of the gods, of divine or primordial beings. Beings that existed since the beginning of time, since creation. There weren’t many of those. Ronin were one force, darkwalkers and phoxes another… and… “We’re not alone,” Rydel announced, every muscle in his body tensing.
Dragons were the last.
Every instinct in him that had been trained assess danger, to fight or flee, told him to run and run now. But he knew there was no escaping this creature.
Behind the Hidden Pool sat a tree. It had many names. It was Eliwarian the Elder Tree. Other cultures and races had their names as well: Ig’mal, Fondorus and more than could be counted. To most, it was simply The World Tree. A behemoth that connected the world of the living to the world of the dead—its limbs touching the heavens, and roots the underworld beneath, binding the spiritual realms. Rydel tried to take in the trunk that was so wide it spanned much of the of the clearings width and beyond. If he was not an elf and prepared for such a sight, he would have thought it a wall of wood for the way it stretched beyond sight. The tree had birthed the world—a god in its own right.
Animals existed here. Several stags bounded through the woods, a large owl perched on the bough above watching inquisitively, and two squirrels chittered at one another. As the darkness swelled and shadows and light joined, Drymaus was announcing the arrival of something else.
The squirrels scrambled into their burrows, the stags bounded off, and the owl took flight. Elisaria watched with him, her breath quickening. “You need to leave,” Rydel demanded. He turned to her. “Please, Elisaria. I beg of you.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she answered, stepping closer to him, but he heard a note of fear in her voice.
Just then, out of the immense otherworldly tree came a thundering boom. And another. Footsteps. Immense, terrible, earth-rattling footsteps.
“What is it?” Elisaria asked, stepping back with him, her voice shaken.
“A creature bound to the wheel of time.”
Out of the shadow of the tree’s recesses stepped a giant claw the size of a building, and a scaled body followed it shortly after. Rydel’s eyes tracked the creature all the way to its massive head that towered stories above them.
A dragon.
The creature was perfectly white, with scales that shone like the sun hitting the first snow. The alabaster plates were each the size of Rydel’s head, interlocking and overlapping in a seamless display that would shame and awe the master smiths of Eldas to tears. As it moved, the scales and its body flowed, curling around the Hidden Pool protectively. At last, the dragon fixed them with its huge cloudy-white eyes, gazing down upon the mortals. Rydel felt drawn by those white eyes, sucked in as if falling into fathomless depths of knowledge and time. At his feet, he was distantly aware of the eddies of wind swirling, tossing leaves into the air. “Welcome, mortals,” the creature intoned. The sound of its voice was bone-rattling. It trembled the woods and made leaves quake and fall from nearby trees. But most miraculous of all, it sounded both within Rydel’s head and without. “What is it you wish?”
Rydel stepped forward, letting go of Elisaria’s hand. “I’ve come for the Hidden Pool.”
“It lies before you, what are you waiting for?” The boom of its voice held a hint of mirth and a mischievous glint flickered in the dragon’s eye.
Rydel desperately wanted to trust the creature but hesitated.
“Don’t,” Elisaria said. “It’s a trap.”
Kneeling in the dirt, Rydel bowed his head and stuck his blade into the rich soil. “With your permission only, great dragon. I humbly request a vial of its contents, nothing more, nothing less. Grant us this, Lord of the Woods, and we will leave the way we came.”
“Elves, the most cautious of all races. And Lord of the Woods, is it? What a small realm you give me providence over. I am of all lands, of all things, as are you. I am air and wind itself. As for the way you came—it is gone.”
Rydel gulped but he held his ground. “What must I do?”
“Defeat me,” the creature boomed in a voice that was both in his head and aloud, making his teeth shudder.
Rydel felt his blood freeze at the reply. “Surely there’s another way.”
“Another way?” The dragon’s body shook and he realized it was… laughing. “Come now, little elf, you didn’t think taking a sip of immortality would be free, did you? All things have their cost. This water is our life-blood, the lifeblood of Farhaven. I will grant you your vial, your precious sip if you defeat me or one of my brothers.”
Rydel’s hope and despair were balanced on a knife’s edge, fists clenching at his side in rising fury. Nothing about this was right. Defeat a primordial creature? It was impossible. Not to mention, dragons held neither good nor evil. Unlike the drekkar, he had no ill will towards such a being. If anything, he was in awe. While it was as likely to snap him in two as leave him be, Rydel couldn’t imagine vanquishing a creature that had existed since the beginning of time. Dragons were said to be bound to Farhaven’s fate—their lives tied to the survival of the world itself. Defeating this beast would be, in essence, striking a blow to Farhaven itself. “I won’t fight you,” Rydel said adamantly.
“Then, little elf, you will leave this place as you found it and never return.”
“No,” he said fiercely stepping forward, “I cannot leave without the vial.”
“It seems you are in a predicament, little elf. Choose wisely and choose now.”
Rydel turned to Elisaria. “You’ve done everything you can,” she said. “There’s nothing more to do.” She pulled his arm, eyes crinkling with a worried smile. “Come, we can tell this story to our children one day and no one will ever believe us.” Her pull took him a step away and he nodded, when… words echoed in his mind… a memory from long ago returned.
Master Trinaden sitting before the fire.
“Rydel,” Trinaden spoke. Then he was silent for a long time, staring at the flames until finally, “Your lives are no longer your lives. If you survive this, you’ll be able to change the course of history. Dryan needs to know that this isn’t about you. It isn’t about me. If you survive, you may likely save us all.”
Rydel stopped Elisaria’s pull. Immediately, he saw her face break into such sorrow that it threatened to break his heart once more. She knew what he would say. “I’ve got one last thing to do.”
“Rydel… please, don’t do this. You will die!”
And he found a smile, cupping her cheek. “Everything I am, everything I’ve trained for—my whole life—has come down to this moment. If you care for me, know that who you care for is the elf that needs to do this.”
Elsaria’s face warred with pain, sorrow, and hope. Finally, she nodded, but as he stepped away, she sobbed.
Rydel faced the great beast and took a deep breath. “I’m ready.”
“Come then, little elf. Show me the power of the Hidden who trained you.”
————
Rydel had been trained for every possible scenario by the best warrior the world had ever known, but fighting a dragon was something else entirely. Still, he had a blade. He had scrapped off the spider’s encrusted webbing and now its edge was as sharp as ever, gleaming like a second-sun, made by master elf craftsman—the best blacksmiths in Farhaven. If he could find an opening, the blade would cut. He prayed.
Rydel charged, and the dragon rose onto its hind legs, issuing a bout of flames from its wide maw. Expecting this, Rydel lunged and dove away from the scorching flames in the nick of time feeling their heat on his back. He rose smoothly as more flames issued forth. Again and again, he dove, moving with lightning speed, faster still. His muscles reached their breaking point. As a new bout issued forth, he dug his feet in and cut a deep arcing slice into the ground creating a fan of sod that doused the flames. Through this he dove, entering the dragon’s range. He cut with all hi
s might letting loose a terrible cry. As the blade made contact with the thick opal-like scales, sparks issued, but his slice harmlessly slid across the creature. Surprise and disappointment spiraled through him, but he didn’t waste a moment. Clawed talons like pillars came crashing down where he stood and he rolled to the left, barely evading their rumbling blow. He saw the damage they caused—rivets into the ground that would have buried a full-grown elf, followed by ragged furrows that broke the nearest stone guarding the Hidden Pool. Each claw gleamed with such an edge that it put his blade to shame. An idea struck, and immediately he was back on his feet and running up the clawed hand, up the scaly arm.
The dragon’s other claws raked towards him and he leapt—air rushed past him as he fell a dozen feet then—snatched onto its wide white wings, the sockets of his arms threatening to pop, but he held on and cut. The tough leathery wings resisted his cut at first, but finally, the sword’s edge found purchase and the blade bit. He fell as if slicing through the cloth of a ship’s sail, slowing his descent as he cut. The dragon roared and whipped its wing. Snapped violently by the motion, Rydel catapulted through the air, landing hard on the ground. Rolling absorbed some of the brutal impact, but he felt something snap in his chest and knew he’d broken a rib or two. The world blurred but Elisaria’s cry brought him back. With painful breaths, he grabbed his fallen blade and staggered to his feet.
The dragon turned, but Rydel was now at its back. Its scaled back looked like a spiraling ramp, curling up its long tail towards its head. Pain lancing through his chest, Rydel sprinted as the beast moved. With Elvin agility he raced up its spine, slaloming through the row of knee-high white spines that lined the creature’s back. The dragon flailed as he ran, tail and body whipping back and forth to throw him free, but Rydel didn’t slow, balancing with difficulty. Reaching the top, claws tried to scratch the dragon’s back where he ran, raking at him. Rydel leapt their strike, diving aside and dangling by a long spike—and the creature’s own claws slashed its scaled body. Razor sharp as they were, the talons clanged off harmlessly, ruining his plan. Gritting his teeth and crying out, Rydel pulled himself up from where he dangled, ran the last of the beast’s spine and reached its head.