“What else would you do when playing a game, Kol?” Stretching her arms wide, Ave’s sinuous form becomes a lure when topping the root ramp ahead of everyone. “When there’s nothing found, you enjoy what you bring with you!”
“One day, Kol will be forced to stop asking questions with words if yapping is the answering.”
No normal game is begun by climbing the strange tree that is this unknown diversion’s arena, and even odd games wouldn’t see that tree circle skyward around itself to become the enclosure where the game is hosted at a plateau where its lower tier is.
A leafless tree whose branches spawn interesting, fruit-like fungal growths instead of leaves gathers the radiance from below the elvish glade into the arteries within its bark. Its pulse of life is not a heartbeat, but an electrifying thrumming in Adris’ ears. When he passes under the outer spiral of the higher trunk, that noticeable sensation subsides.
Instead, Adris a tremor strikes as if he’s suddenly moved much further than his feet should’ve carried him, accompanied by the usual mild vertigo.
Neesiette returns his glance when he searches her for an answer, but only nods passively at what she too must’ve felt. Always hiding knowledge, Neesiette is such a tease when believing he should already comprehend.
(Elvish mystery arts? Involved in a game?)
A smile cracks at that thought, feeding into how he playfully squeezes Still’s hand closed around his and then yanks her into the invisible boundary she stands tiptoed before. When her ample self catches in an invisible curtain, squirming and spilling through perceptibly slower than Adris entered, it takes yanking harder a second time to clear it. Adris enjoys the magical ambiance’s effect on her as she “massages” his kidney with her firm palm.
(And a thief that can’t enter unless invited! Consider me almost interested… can I bottle this effect if I grind up the grasses?)
Clear, rainbow grass instead of moss grows on the flattened circle arena Ave moves to the center of. Any-colored depending on angle when he glances around, these slender, stalk-tipped grasses crunch beneath Adris’ feet to become a raucous, giggling melody. Adris follows the singing notes skyward with some awe, finding elvish mysticism growing even more impressive when the musical energies join within large cages hanging from vines. Filled with dim white fairy orbs that also hum, these are clearly the focus of the tree’s boundary and what maintains it by the grasses that start bolster the white orbs to glowing.
(No, not more boundaries. I need freedom.)
They can only climb up the steep tree’s incline to its level center, closer to the haze enveloping its top, to see what Ave has waiting.
“A meeting place for fairy friends, this is near their play land, but just far enough that…!
Hmm, no, it should be closer, though, for us to share ideas that excite?” At first exuberant upon reaching the stage above, Ave rises up on her long tail and extends a hand toward the hanging cages which the obscuring haze of the village nips at only gently.
A coquettish curling invitation with her hand causes the cage to rock; then, she starts to hum loudly.
While she hums, Adris takes in the whole of this arena, letting his eyes stop on a strange hook-shaped tool made of formed wood resting along a low riser at the arena’s edge. Its razor point defies being for civil purposes. It’s the strangest, most out of place thing to be found here, priming his danger senses for some reason. That it’s left haphazardly in what seems like a common area brings him next to how overgrown the tree’s aesthetics are, with vines that sink feelers into the bark resembling the creeping ones of Xin’s forests that would suck nutrients from living trees.
The Castillo’s sleeping environs come to his mind, then, a question of if Adris’ steps upon the tree have been the first in a while…?
(How can the next bondage that is broken be made of brass instead of gold, oh “oldest elf”?)
His mind is elsewhere when Still tears backward with Adris with her, for one cage shakes so violently that the whole tree sways by resonance. The humming orbs within agitate to blinding brightness, changing their timbre as the cage lowers itself by its vines. When it’s the same timbre as the snake elf’s it stops, then Ave turns to another and rises her melody as it ascends in response.
Oblivious to all discomforts around her, Ave grows happier in the growing cacophony of now competing singing cages, and how the scenery around the party seems to jostle and jump before their eyes when the “voices” merge.
“Harmonic resonance intensifying, dangerous thinning of dimensional separation equally increasing.” Neesiette speaks over the deluge of musical voices, but Ave seems intent on more effects when whispering “The closer we come, the more the fun of almost meeting, but missing each other…!”
(The closer to whom or what?)
A forthcoming crossing while standing still falls upon Adris. Stronger even than the displacement of entering the world tree, the enticements of the music draw invisible fingers on his shoulders, elbows, and thighs like sighs of the wind where this village is ever unmoving.
Music draws his mind toward the center of the arena where the rainbow grasses tinkle so vividly, and more than five shadows now cast over the ground…!
(I feel like we’re close enough already!)
“Ah!?”
What pulls on Adris relents abruptly when an enormous gray-black owl swoops down and alights upon a raised perch on the ring’s outer edge.
(No, not a bird!)
A stalking shape cloaked in feathers and heavily shrouded by the cowled head of a wizened owl stands to upright before them. This interloper’s rapid competing hums of different tones jolt various cages to moving again. Ave’s earlier gentle urgings contrast with the violent demands of this ethereal one’s voice.
Adris sighs with relief when the feeling of “crossing over” fades, for the cross’ own subtle ringing joins in vanishing.
(There was danger.)
Avenalliah alone bears the brunt of the yellow-slitted eyes that stare from beneath the darkness of the cowl after the bird singer coaxes a final new alignment of cages.
“The wind I bring as a hope to feel yours, mingling as pleasurable as the sun upon your face.” Ave’s musical greeting is quick, sure. Ave’s confused expression only grows astonished when the owl leans forward without returning it.
They stand off in their own racial decorum which ignores Adris and others, this tall snake elf raised up on her tail and the child-like glider the same height as a boy; yet, the owl who can barely be made out as human seems the bigger party.
Adris can’t interpret elvish social cues yet; but, the instant Adris’ cautious battle stance shifts when searching the owl with his aura senses, he’s given opportunity anew.
The intruder’s head seems to swivel just like an owl’s, mirrored eyes catching a white kobold in one while Adris sees his pretty face in the other.
“Challenging Kol!?” A squire growls with surprise, then hisses when the reply is for the owl to lift an arm beneath its wings. Revealed is an empty woven-strap scabbard designed for a blade too long to be called a knife…
Eyes that see all and killer’s blade,
unseen face, soul filled with despise.
Adris’ vision fires with a sudden impulse of another shape when the elements seem familiar…!
“You are Xin’reh?”
Adris swallows hard, for two sets of eyes overlay when instead of yellow eyes there rekindles flaming orange.
The question also revives an old fear of meeting “his own kind” on that day that they stood at the center of a mass of pitiless men.
(Fucking tyrant!?)
“Perhaps.”
Because it didn’t confirm or deny, and his tone was uninterested, it left vague all their efforts when he cared not to even keep looking upon them. This lean man who was only slightly taller than Adris himself did not obey the expectations that commoners would have for what a powerful man appears as.
The only proof any other needed that he was mighty was when the gleaming blade at his hip was unleashed.
But Adris won’t back down this time to the copper-clad killer who defied expectations with lethal efficiency. An ominous brass-thorn-crowned helmet with a metal mouth guard hid all emotion from the studious Adris, never coming off and making the legend greater. Adris steeled himself against the isolation felt then before this man by believing a beautiful woman might wear it instead one day over his corpse.
Even when alone together, not a single shred of human sociality was ever shared between “sworn brothers” that didn’t show their backs. So, Adris ever skulked behind their leader, searching for an opening.
“Dying requires my permission. So, too, Ascension.”
Again he can hear this law that Adris no longer obeys, enforced by a man motivated solely by self-interest. His sight followed those victims no matter where they fled. The flying blade he sent after them whistled as it cut. Its shriek was the cue to pray to the Emperor, for no auraic alloy could protect against its edge…
“To bleach in the sun, or to challenge the heavens: either path is through me.”
(Dead men don’t tempt the living!)
Adris’ rough breathing has Kol’s even fiercer when the camp scene of the entire cadre judging two neophytes vanishes into the haze. The kobold keeps inching forward, her growls happier when Kol notices Adris’ evil scowl directed at this threat… until Adris halts her with a firm, tight hand sign and smiles.
A strange fever memory that comes out in a moment passes just as fast.
(What was that?)
All that is before Adris of merit is this lithe figure that dresses to vanish into gloom like Mython did. The similarity makes Adris nod once after it’s utterly wrong, discovering now why he remembered instead that unforgiving leader who led Adris and Serras into one bloody battle after another.
(Not as kind as Mython, and not a woodsman. Something else motivates the garb besides merely being unseen.)
“Don’t announce so loudly, or a fool’s trek through fairy lands you’ll start today with misplaced glee.” The cloak this flippant owner wears bears hoops for carrying objects. Adris’ gaze darts to the sharp hook a third the size of the elf that rests beside the perch.
(Her. “Miss Whiny”.)
More than one hook could be carried upon upon this encompassing, but shabby, cloak. Nearly all the feathers are faded and frayed, with many missing down its wing-long lengths. Adris can’t use that as an insult when the elf hops down, for the movement is so sudden and his eyes want to move past where she stops.
(This was the elf that called Mython a jester.)
This elf steps forward with a predator’s advance of certain half steps, an effortless one that’s purposefully unnerving.
(Not a drop of love for others.)
“Your rush to be heard will silence you.” Her eyes as constant as the Zennian moons, Adris finds that she’s not once blinked. “Knowing not the kind of kin you burden…”
“Unknowing? That’s not true!”
“NOT TRUuuu—!?”
Ave’s confusion metamorphs, explodes into a shrill cry of joy when seizing the hidden hands of this new elf and buckling her aggressive bullying! Even an owl’s speed was too slow for a spring forward of Ave’s tail.
“‘Master Under Moonlight’! Protector of the forests which yield not to invaders, even when filled with them!”
This new elf’s arms are clad with the starry sky, a black bodysuit painted with white dots.
“[Owl of Kainan]!”
(“Raptor”, more like!)
The dead-eyed, saucer-big eyes of this huntress go creepily wider when named this. A rigid sneer of hatred that Ave’s lunge revealed softens to become an open mouth of surprise.
Even more angular in features than Ave, this elf’s fair lines are sharp with cultivated mental precision that makes her alluring in the way that isn’t sexual, but rather spiritual.
“… So I am.” She might even be sexually appealing, if not so cold.
After this firm line that offers no further explanation, the whiny, but fierce, tone of a huntress grows strangely petulant. “And… name the wind and then what, [Unsung] (OUTSIDER)?”
(Why would you call “beloved kin” that?)
“Then what!? I don’t need to do anything!” Ave ignores what can only be a slight, gushing even louder. “You’re a hero of all kin, that’s what you are, a legendary being that will be shared forever on the wind’s breath, speaking its own truth!”
“Hero…!?”
That shock of the feathered killer’s becomes a mewl of pleasure for a moment, finally blinking once in pure disbelief before steadying her hatred anew.
“Mine is a title no kin shou—”
“Kainan (GREAT WISDOM)!” Ave’s shout interrupts her, becoming a great oration. “Those named as such by the high elf lord were the sole protectors who stood against the unending evil tides constantly falling upon the groves of Salleus Evard. For, you swooped in to stem it when others abandoned all hope and left! Adris!” Adris has to step back to avoid being struck by Ave’s flailing hand. An entirely childish enthusiasm forces a grimace from him when he’s dragged into this odd meeting. “You’re meeting a HERO who might’ve personally fought right at the side of Rouvenor against the elder green dragon Tosphanes! A mighty being like yourself, sworn to oppose the dark while becoming one with it!”
“Who?” Almost like an owl’s hoot, the elf gasps when Ave’s hand swings wide and tries to catch the scene she sees in her mind to pull it into the arena. The grasses tinkle louder to match her enthusiasm!
“At the den of its evil nestled beneath the choking river that despoiler made its own, they joined hands against the poison of the deep! Turned away claws that could rend mithril with shining feathers instead when the dark broke by their will, and stared down mystic sight possessed that could coat rock upon flesh in an instant with their stoic pureness of heart to guard them!”
“… Were you… there when…?
What is this joke!? We couldn’t descend into poison so thick you could scrap it from the tunnel walls.”
The shabbily-dressed killer throws off the immense strength Ave possesses by sliding away like a dipping lizard. She sends a sidelong glare at the rest of them with contempt.
“How is being a hero a joke?” Ave keeps smiling, but cracks her voice a bit. “And of course you descended, you…?”
“‘Hero’, another jest after your first against Mython? Your knowledge is marred, and who the disease sends matters not.” The elf shakes her hands as if they’ve been dirtied. “This ‘game’ is not one I’ll ‘play’ ever again.” Such a confusing ultimatum is just another tack in Adris’ behind at this point, leaving him silent without his usual boasts in support of Ave as he can’t follow the twists anymore.
(Nothing seems mistaken about the history Ave shouted given the response, and Ave seems to comprehend how to speak to her, since this elf has opened up considerably.)
Aloof and hateful at first, now this elf is just hateful. A masterful conversion of interest that Adris isn’t sure Ave understands.
“Ah, no, we were the ones who were going to play…? No, you weren’t uninvited…” Ave’s confusion returns, then she sighs as if something was missed by stating that when the owl elf responds by backing away from the circle’s center. “For sharing a story you’d kept within by choice, can ‘spring leaves enjoy the sun and not shrivel with winter’s cold’? (HAPPY, NOT SAD, OUR FUTURE INTERACTIONS)”
“…
… There… is no winter at hand only now. Be about your own desires, I’ve none here.” As if lost to respond, the owl elf strays out of the circle completely. “Their… those fairies find fun, within the green world’s clutches, in more… ‘variety’ than you could be used to, Unsung. Know the heart’s ache? Whether it’s your own you feel, you might not know if rushing headlong in.” After this warning, the unblinking elf says no more and loses all emotion, even despise, as she shows her back to them to stare out into the haze.
“Boss… that Plucked Feather challenged Kol.”
(Kol, do NOT try to eat her!)
“Not all stares are necessary challenges.”
Only physically standing in front of Kol keeps the kobold from stalking after her new enemy. The threat of the black cross lifting brings Kol’s hand up to cover her helmet by instinct.
“This feels very necessary.”
It takes Ave slithering up and patting Kol’s shoulder to get the squire to stop growling.
“Kol, it’s time to play!”
“… Nnn. Then, fast, show this game that is ‘nothing’ to prove that Kol isn’t wasting time.”
“Okay, but to play nothing, you should take nothing in with you.”
“Meaning?”
At Ave’s insistent hands patting her armor, Kol stares hard at Adris before sighing. Since Still still drags her poleaxe…
“Perfect Armor!
DEPART!”
The roaring kobold throws her arms up, then seems to hop out of the black steel cage that bursts open to hunch down behind her. Squealing violently the whole time, white flame paws blaze to life for it to roam on as the menacing “wolf” born anew immediately tries to leap at Neesiette.
“Hmph.” The contraption plants its helmet into the rainbow turf, shrieking in disgust as it thrashes around before Neesiette’s feet. Green radiance from within its neck hole coldly strangles the bloody red flowing within its depths that animates it. “Adjustments be required. Allow this lady to indulge.”
“Wait! Neesiette? Iâ is best played with many.”
“Explained that be, yet design of this lady be diametrically opposed to forthcoming setting, or rather, ‘location’ of play. Thus, excluded she must be.” Adris senses no duplicity in the doll’s behavior, so he waves it off as he steps in.
“With Still, we have four. Even numbers are holy to me.”
“That’s promising! Still, let’s play with the fairies!”
Kol, Ave, and Adris turn in unison to catch a witch on her knees trying to crawl through an invisible thickness rejecting her attempts.
{… I… and… fairies…
… are not… particularly…} Each sign is so pathetically intense, almost as if Still might be trying to avoid her usual insults. {… On good terms.}
“You don’t want to play.”
{NO! I…!} When Ave’s voice is flat and distant, Still kicks her legs around with a rage before calming and then pleading with her desperate signs.
{I… want to play! Due to my teacher’s proclivities and… various events, I’m very much likely… uninvited at the boundary you want to play at…} Hand to her breasts after this, a rigid smile on Still’s mask paints over the likely heinous crimes that are folded into the innocuous word “events”.
“Still has few friends, but many who don’t understand her humor, Ave.” Adris crosses his arms and tries to sound as at ease as possible now that he’s been abandoned by the useful party member. “Three is also its own complete number. Kol is the one most taken by something new.” When Ave softens her dismay, Adris turns up his palm and motions toward her. “If you teach Kol, Kol can teach Still later anything she can’t learn by watching.”
“Kol will be happy to teach Puddle how best to be buried. Just learned that.”
(Why can’t you ever relax?)
“No, three isn’t right. We shouldn’t have less fun than we could have!” For the first time in a long time, Ave outright rejects Adris’ goading to resolve a problem his way and slinks away.
But she doesn’t go to a sneak or the sitting moon lady beside her. Ave instead slithers to the edge of the arena where a stoic owl stands, just now swiveling to glare at this proximity.
Ave’s hand extends past the invisible boundary, defenseless before this strange elf that Adris feels far too aware of. The way this elf sizes up Avenalliah without consideration for her kindness is a very…
(You’d fit perfectly in the cadre.)
“What game would make your heart beat with joy?”
Ave’s question, though, seems to strike an unknown quantity, for this elf then stares away with the timidity of youth instead of cultivated stoicism.
“… To… be honest…” It’s Ave that breaks first in the standoff, finding it hard to speak quickly. “I’ve not played for a long time, nor with many others even before.”
“… Rare for you, to find something in nothing?” Tilted and shocked, the bird elf regards Ave with what seems like pity. “Others should have found you without anything easily if you searched with empty hands.”
“Yes, isn’t that strange? Idle games are important, but… there was always something going on, it feels like… I always had to juggle so much even when nothing was happening.” Ave’s frozen offered hand dips when speaking her private language, one which widens the owl’s eyes anew. “I’ve only ever played my own way, so, how then… does one fill the time, here? How do other kin?”
“Foolishness.”
Instead of taking up Ave’s hand, the elf re-enters the arena to reach the center of it.
“We don’t.”
Unwilling to retreat from this challenge, Adris keeps his cool despite the abrupt change in the elf’s demeanor to share the center with her.
(Maybe… we are being challenged as some plot, Ave.)
The elf’s starry hand lifts from beneath her feather cloak.
All the humming white orbs zigzag around in their cages, alive like fireflies the moment this elf breathes out an assertion.
“… [A ball must be kept aloft, lest the one who drops it regret that faux pas.]”
Held on her palm, a white, circular object lifts to eye level.
Adris blinks with shock, for no sleight of hand produced it!
(Technique? Magic?)
“That sounds fun! If a bit simple to start.” Ave slithers around in a frenzy, eying the ball, then the elf holding it, and finally clapping her hands.
She decides on something, for she takes up a space many feet from the owl Adris simply calls “Kainan” in his mind now and lifts her hands into a readied pose.
“Ball game? Toss? Kakaka, easy, Kol has played this!” A kobold nods her head, then takes a distant position like Ave has, with all three making a triangle between them.
(Catch?)
With a huff of contempt and choosing to take his time, Adris makes the corner to a new square and pulls off his half-cloak. Still gains a new covering when he spreads it over her; more importantly, Adris gets to bask in the attention when he pops his wrists after this dashing move, then starts limbering the rest of his body.
(I’d expected something a little more entertaining.)
“At periphery of effect sufficient to destabilize influence, this lady be confident in shielding Still from any foreign influences or notice.” Neesiette calls to Ave to confirm that they may start. After this, Kainan pulls back her leg and then throws the ball in an arc toward Ave, who responds by swinging her arm behind herself instead of forward to grab it.
“[To keep it enjoyably aloft, we need something long to hit it with, don’t we~?]”
The thwack of the white ball reveals its core as something hard. It sails further upward than Kainan tossed it, for a paddle made of gleaming, polished wood is what Ave used to smack it.
(Where did that come from!? Eh, no, WHERE DID…!?)
Adris lifts the paddle now in his hand to stare at it. Two feet long, its flat end is scooped on one side to be sure to catch an object exactly the same size as the white ball dropping toward Kol.
“Kol, feels like it’s odd that…” The squire who is just as surprised as Adris recovers in time to lean away and then try to cream the ball with her own paddle. But, her exuberance is lacking a skilled connection with what she treats like a cudgel.
“Nah!?” Missing with her swing, Kol cries when the ball strikes the rainbow grass. “Hah, missing already? That’s very—GRACK!?”
Black vigor spurts from Kol’s mouth when she bites her own tongue!
A white ball that landed softly on the ground is now drilled into her jaw, and after striking there, it swoops around like a hummingbird to then dive for her temple!
(An enemy attack!?)
Adris’ senses find no aura or magic except what now fills the arena spilling in from the cages, yet the ball keeps slapping itself against Kol as she tries to hop around and swing her stick to dodge the impacts.
“STOP HITTING KOL!”
Another swoop of the paddle she bears misses, earning a riposte to her cheek. After two more tries, Kol throws the paddle away and screams!
She slaps the ball with her hand, but it just veers back toward her.
“[Kol should be able to use hands or self…!]”
A reared of fist drills through the ball, hurtling it at Adris!
“[… not fair to use shit weapon!]”
(Oh, is it my turn to dance?)
What seemed to obsessively hate Kol now flies so fast that Adris can only lift his paddle to bunt it off instead of swinging. The spinning white ball curves madly toward Kainan without returning to divebomb Adris.
(Thank the Ascended that it only hates kobolds.)
Kainan’s stare is icy when the elf swoops and slams the ball back toward Adris.
He takes that in stride, using his agility to loft the return higher.
(Didn’t every child play ball hitting with sticks when they were young? Why is this special?)
The owl dips and spins to slam the ball up even higher than Adris lofted it. On the return, she announces the reason this game will be different.
“[No one person twice, nor without more fun added.]”
Adris’ muscles ache when he winds up to send the ball toward Kainan.
His throat goes dry in a moment without having spoken, exactly like he’s stepped into the view of the sun on one of those distant, deserted sky islands that have no life on Xin!
(… That… that is the key!?)
“[The ball shall bear my symbol.]” The constriction on his throat releases, and to Kol is where he slams that ball that now bears the spinning glyph that is the family name of [Xin].
“We have a spot to strike for! Thanks, Adris~!” Ave cheers at him, misunderstanding entirely the reason for his “addition”.
It is a terrible curse and crime to replicate this holy name if not permitted. But, a game for elves obeyed his request without hesitation, nor without identifying how it painted the black curse there.
(You say it on the serve, and it happens? No way that’s it.)
“[Boss’ symbol is also Kol’s, so Kol’s should be on the ball, too!]”
The white sphere that flies toward Ave has two black spots on it: one, a name; and the other, a violet half-moon, silver shield, and black cross. They appear at polar opposites, giving the player two chances to strike true on center.
Magic of elves is willful enough to read their desires and make them real!
(That is it!?)
Adris hustles when the ball comes toward him, picking his brain for something innocuous to add in!
“[Twirl the paddle once before striking.]” With a flourish, he slams it toward Kainan.
“[Whistle once before twirling, for let’s hear your own breath sing.]” Adding a whistle after this, the elf sends the ball to Ave as if sharing Adris’ dread of Kol.
“Sing? That’s a good one, but why only our voice…?” Ave whistles cutely, then twirls her paddle.
(It’s a game about adding more?)
Adris’ mind is now awake, finding the possibilities simply too endless.
But, he keeps a cool on his feeling that danger could spring forth, for no “game” goes so far as insanity or violence unless drunk.
(It’s just a diversion, it’s not like Ave or this elf would—)
“[A ball isn’t that difficult, so why not a cuddly cat!?]”
(—she would make it worse!?)
Kol gapes at what flies toward her, for a round ball floofs out into what hisses and is made of pure hatred.
“Mmmm, usual Elf-ness.”
To the consistency of the rules’ credit, the beast’s forehead has Adris’ symbol, while the back end has Kol’s own tabard’s.
A wide-eyed, white alley cat proudly twirls overhead with their emblems, ready to rip Kol’s face off.