by Justin Wayne
Chapter Six: New Developments
Darkness. Sweet, sweet darkness. No harsh rays of light to dilate ones’ eyes in such a painful fashion. To sit and relax, ease oneself into it, was mesmerizing. How warm it was! How utterly comfortable to lose who you are inside the writhing mass of darkness. A single mind, a hive of identities merging to defend themselves from the outside world, formed the outer umbra of the shadows. Within it, they’re all the same invisible being who doesn’t want to be seen.
It’s when they leave the darkness, or as much of it as they can leave behind, that their worth is judged and their fate decided.
Outsider’s eyes flicked open.
A searing pain shot through them and he grit his teeth as his left hand covered them reflexively while the right pulled the cowl of his hood low to his nose. Protected, he sat up slowly and instantly regretted it. An unsettling swaying began in his stomach and rose up his throat, threatening to choke him. He gulped in the cool air and scratched an itch on the side of his head. His fingers came away bloody.
One by one the memories of the night before flashed through his mind. Like paintings poorly illuminated by a single candle, they blurred and darkened in places as he struggled to view them and make sense of the situation. The last thing he saw was the knife in his hand fly free from his grip before darkness swallowed his vision and the candle was snuffed.
Steadying himself against the nearby wall of the inn, he stood shakily and sucked in a few more deep breaths before opening his eyes again.
A deep throated groan eased out a few feet to his left. “By Dirringyr’s hammer, what time it be?”
Within the bounty hunter’s cloak of shadows he was able to make out the prone form of the dwarf stirring and rubbing its hairy face. But everything else around it, covered in frost or dewy grass, was a bright blur that remained out of focus through the searing pain in his corneas. Unable to find his knives where they fell, he slipped the dagger he had taken from Thom from its sheath in his belt and beheld the snow-white blade.
His eyes filled with tears as the intense color stung his eyes like fire. It was like nothing he had felt since first seeing the sun. An insurmountable ache that tore at the back of his skull until he wanted to dig out his eyeballs and quench the flame behind them. He pressed his open palm to them until colors swam in the darkness and the smarting beneath his eyelids had lessened to that of a typical sunny day. He blinked several times to be rid of the blade’s afterimage.
A thought struck him and he recoiled as if the burning in his eyes had transferred to flame in his right hand.
“Darkbane.” he whispered, afraid anyone would hear him. The blade was legend among the dark elves and often used as a curse to those who would bear the dark people harm. Many stories had been passed down the generations of the mythical dagger who had claimed so many of their kin. Outsider however, with a renewed vigor, stared into its blade for so long he thought his eyes would bleed.
He memorized its every detail. Committed every facet of its ornate handle to memory, and imprinted the beautiful curves of the swept blade in his brain. It was indeed, the most stunning piece he had laid eyes on. A hilt carved from ebony grooved to fit within a hand with slight punctuations where the fingers were separated, adorned with a lavender gem on the pommel with a color so rich and vibrant the crystal was no longer opaque and looked delicate as a morning glory. The cross guard was like onyx and swept low over his fingers on the far end, with the high copying the shape in the opposite direction, going up along the blade; which in several ways caught his eye. Aside from the metal that was pure as ice and near the same color, its craftsmanship was breathtaking. Curved backward like a miniature scimitar with a single razor-sharp edge, blood groove and expertly engraved fuller, with runes lining its length on the dull side, beauty melded with application, turning a weapon into art.
He knew too of its enchantments, having feared them as a child. Around the dark elves, it would glow to its current fervor to hinder their brilliant eyesight and warn its wielder of their stealthy approach. Yet it also bore no markings of the countless battles it had survived, obviously indestructible, and seemed to have no weight save that of the gem.
What a wonder that you should fall into my hands.
He turned back to the dwarf who was now staring back at him, stunned, and crouched low defensively. Having stared into the blazingly bright blade of Darkbane for so long, Outsider found himself able to see everything around him in perfect clarity; the sun’s light upon them meager by comparison.
“Well, stranger? Be on with it. Strike me down with your blade and be on your way!” the thick dwarf challenged. “Seems your friend’s already left ye’ for dead.”
Outsider showed no sign of surprise but had actually forgotten all about the hobbit. He looked to the side, feigning boredom, and saw that he and Jiff were gone. Something else seemed to leap out at him however.
Drag marks.
The dwarf stepped forward, recovered fully with his race’s toughness and hard heads to propel him. “So what’ll it be, invader? Are ye’ here to kill or here to die? By me father’s beard I’ll go down swingin’!”
Outsider eyed the little fighter, noticing the axe in his hand, then travelled to his face. It was pale, gray bags under his eyes like bruises and strained as if sick. His clothes were that of a merchant with some amount of wealth as well as old armor underneath, but obviously hadn’t been cleaned in several days. The beard was thick and black, though graying, and unkempt. Blood caked the side of his face beneath his crooked nose and the side of his forehead above his eye.
“Relax, friend, I mean you no harm.” Outsider answered in as soothing a tone he could manage. “Last night was a misunderstanding and I’m sure had we met on better terms we would have had business together with coin to be made.”
The dwarf’s bushy eyebrows mashed together in a frown as he chewed over the words for a while. He brushed back his wild hair with one hand and gripped his axe in the other. “Explain your business. Why come here of all places? Have ye’ not heard tale o' the ghosts?”
Outsider shrugged and sheathed Darkbane within his cloak. “Admittedly, I had not.” he said sheepishly. “Had I, I assure you I would have gone straight past down to Delvin.”
“Why are you here in the first place?”
At this Outsider’s mind began to weave together a story he hoped would pass as plausible. Under normal circumstances he would have gone with a standard series of events no one could argue. But this dwarf here was paranoid and had been through something so traumatic his mind had been harmed.
“My friend, I don’t know if you saw the ropes on him, but he is sick and deranged; started attacking people and speaking in tongues. I was taking him to Delvin to receive medical attention when I noticed Journ nearby, having nearly missed it in its current dark state.”
The dwarf’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What ailment he be sufferin’?”
“Our town healer couldn’t diagnose it which is why I was bringing him.” He could see the lingering doubts in the warrior’s eyes and strived to relinquish their hold on him. “What’s your name, son of the mountain? Surely a mighty fighter such as yourself has a befitting name for such?”
At this the dwarf shuffled his feet and hesitantly dropped his axe into the loop on his belt. “Merlon Axebringer of Journ, son of Neirk Kingfeller. And you?”
The name Neirk was known to Outsider, but the title of Kingfeller was not. He realized Merlon was waiting for an answer and quickly recovered. “Aegis, son of Garren” he lied smoothly.
“Where ye’ from, Aegis? We dwarves have good vision in the dark after generations underground mining, but yours belittled mine.” His finger scratched at the loop holding his axe close at hand. At the hesitation he saw, he stepped forward and pointed to the cloaked man. “Be true with me, stranger and I swear it upon me name to judge ye’ with equal resolve.”
Outsider nodded slowly and uncrossed his arms. “Fair enough.” He
held Merlon’s gaze evenly as he threw back his hood and revealed his length of silvery hair and light gray skin with the subtlest of a blue tinge. Merlon tensed but made no move for his weapon. Instead he studied the features closely. The high cheekbones and sharp angular features, a high bridged, prominent nose and bright gray eyes that smoldered like coals. Last of all were the tall and pointed ears within the shaggy mane of hair that hung to his chin and blew in the wind.
He was tall for an elf; about six feet or just under and something seemed off about his color for he wasn't nearly as dark as most.
But the scars would forever linger in his mind just as they would the elf’s face.
Long and thin, the wound stretched from his left eyebrow and across the nose to his right cheek. A trio of scars as if from an animal was along the side of his jaw as if reaching for his eye, and a third at an angle down his neck that curved in a crescent.
They were silent for a long while as they measured each other’s strength. It had been years since Outsider had allowed his hood back in view of others or felt so naked. Even surrounded by enemies with nothing to defend himself save his hood, he felt more secure than he did now. The scrutinizing of his bare face made him cringe, but he revealed no discomfort, a mask of proud defiance staring back at Merlon.
“Dwarves have no love of elves. ‘Specially dark elves.” he said at long last. Outsider tensed in anticipation of an attack and regretted that he would have to kill such an honest dwarf. “But your eyes burn differently. I’ve fought many a dark elf in me time as a soldier two hundred years ago for me father. Together, our clan toppled the dark elves’ hold on Temperith Wyat and cast ‘em from our lands. But yer aura is odd. The same darkness within has a different light…yer not pure dark elf are ye?”
The words rang with truth and vibrated some other sense within Outsider with their power. “You have some magic within you, Merlon.”
The dwarf waved his hand as if to knock the comment aside. “Ah, me mother was attuned to people. She always said you could see their auras if ye’ just listened with an honest heart. Guess I listened to her as a pup.”
“She sounds like a remarkable woman.” Outsider pulled his hood back up thankfully.
Merlon smiled at this, his eyes crinkling slightly. “She was.” He sucked in a shaky breath and laughed at himself. “Be gettin’ sentimental in me ol’ age.”
“Regardless, Merlon, I thank you for being so straight forward with me. Very few have shown me such kindness or tolerance in my few years on the surface. Not even the dark elves as I am half surface elf and crossbreeding is deemed sacrilege. But for all intensive purposes 'dark elf' is the most common term I am called and accept.” Outsider said and strode forward, hand outstretched. They shook briefly. “If your mother was anything like you I wish I could have met her. However, I did meet your father.”
Merlon’s jaw dropped into his beard. “When? How? Been missing for decades he has!”
“I’m afraid it was some time ago. Two years I believe.”
“So he is alive.” Merlon mused in deep thought. “I guess a part of me had given up hope.”
“He is very much alive. He found me wounded after a vicious ambush by those who lack your racial acceptance. He brought me in and fed me, gave me treatment for my wounds. He told me his name but not his title.”
“Kingfeller.”
“Kingfeller.” the elf echoed. “I assume it was the king of the dark elves in Temperith Wyat he slew?”
The fighter nodded. “Saw it meself. I had an arrow through me leg and was busy strangling the one responsible when the king comes forward and bears down on me with a magical staff. He waves it overhead and lightning spits from it with a boom like thunder.” Merlon shuddered at the memory. “I never seen nothin’ like it. Or felt. I was down, me whole body just frozen in pain, when me father tackled him to the ground and buried his axe in the king’s chest.
“I suppose he was worried it would offend you to know he killed your king.”
Outsider shook his head. “He was no king of mine. I was born here on the surface.”
This intrigued Merlon to no end. “You are full of surprises, elf. I look forward to hearin’ your stories some time. But for now, we should get.”
The thought of having someone to talk to stirred something long dormant within Outsider but was quickly suppressed. “Yes. I’d best find Thom.”
“Your sick friend?”
A pang of guilt lingered in the elf’s chest. He hated to lie to one so honest, but discretion was one of his most prominent tools and pertinent to his job. “Exactly. I fear he may be dead, lost somewhere in the woods delirious with disease.”
“No worries, my friend. We’ll find ‘em. I’ve been needin’ an excuse to leave this place..” The dwarf ran into the inn and returned with a bag of supplies strapped to his back. “Been packed for weeks now. Come, Aegis, let us rescue your Thom!”