Numbing green pulls back, taking with it the tickling sweetness that became more than simply scent. Boughs above sway freely with the weight lifted from them, but Adris ponders how such a massive beast can retreat as if it is a cloud flying away.
With the great threat’s departure, the stillness after is unbearable; especially so once the overly luminous white depths of the village’s exposed roots swell again. With his eyes straining, Adris feels both trepidation and fascination.
(Whatever that was, the whole village fears it.)
The elf-brought rainbow haze melted like candy left in the sun when the beast’s vapors invaded. Stronger than the sum of every elf, it alone tears Adris’ burning mind from the once joyous day to the potentially horrible tomorrow.
For floating before the boy is a black cross waiting to hear his response to the beast’s oath.
“Why leave!?” Kol shatters the stillness where no one else will, rushing up to the sword’s pedestal to howl up after it! “If want to fight, then FIGHT!” The world tree’s dark and busy sky that obscures once more with closing rainbow haze doesn’t respond, though. A kobold that’s grinding back-and-forth, spoiling for a final confrontation with a shadowy calamity, turns her ire on an elf instead. “Threat! To us! Elf, challenge!” Kol pokes at the still shocked Ave, rousing her with a whip of her ponytail so that both face the other.
“Kol, has told many times, when Elf gets challenged, Elf has to answer it strongly!”
“… No one will harm us.”
Instead of answering, the snake elf zips around the “ancient” clearing every which way, staring out at hidden people. Finally she ends up before Adris.
(To fight that thing…? I couldn’t grasp even the minutest truth about it.)
Adris feels a burning in his gut at how lacking he was in meeting what challenged them.
But, he also feels a buzz of anticipation…!
(What an enormous opportunity.)
When Adris smiles with childlike-glee unspooling from his heart, Ave’s fair face replaces with a horrified gasp; then, she calms when he fixes his lacking self-control.
“No one?” Adris asks what Kol will next, his voice goading of Ave.
“No one.” Ave nods vehemently, then turns to stare upward at where the dark creature once loomed over them. The light returning to the elvish grove bathes her in its heavy mood.
“… I will protect everyone.”
Heaviness settles, and the sounds of the playing spirits perk up.
Announcing her intent rustles the leaves of the grove, narrows the cone of light from overhead only to Ave.
“This is all a misunderstanding…”
(The misunderstanding is yours if you think that creature’s dislike isn’t firm.)
“Don’t worry. We…? I’ll… meet her, to give greetings and to make things right. After I make my pact!”
“Which of the many dangerous circumstances, protecting from until that time? By what means, lacking both comprehension and allies?” Neesiette comes up to Ave to lift a hand up toward the haze and area they linger in. “All circumstances currently eluding proper explanation, does one not comprehend the many facets of possible danger requiring intervention when not even species compatriots choose to intervene?” A rare complaint since becoming Ave’s aid, Neesiette seems to lump everything in the forest in with “danger” now.
A moving sense of urgency to prepare does exist. That something has seismically shifted, forcing a new future where they must contest what others don’t.
The beast wants no less, condemning them as futile cowards.
(But what does it truly aim for? There’s more, because all this feels a little…?)
“Familiar?” Ave whispers Adris’ own thoughts, completing with her own reason. “‘Over a magic sword, the devil king sings of the hero’s doom…?’”
“ELF!” Kol jerks on Ave’s arm, failing to move the girl. “Time to confront it is NOW!”
“Why must there be a fight? Who even should we be fighting, and why?” Ave sighs at this, though her eyes stay worried.
“I still don’t know her name?”
“Stop speaking ‘scratchy leaves’ at Kol!”
“I’m sorry, Kol. But…?”
“No ‘but’! Powerful cross! Still floating!”
(It’s waiting, because it can’t decide for us.)
“Familiar” is right to Adris as he walks through Ave and Kol, and straight up to the pedestal to climb it.
While his own black icon observes, and the hanging light of providence from overhead rushes from Ave to bathe him instead, Adris’ palm hovers over the pommel of a beautiful elvish blade.
(Your maker has the same ‘anticipation’?)
Testing something important, his answer is for the blade that quivers in its prison of vines to exude a palpable aura that begs him to touch it.
And the “prison” purpose-made to present it by magic, to make this meeting appear ancient and foretold by myth despite being freshly made, finally reminds Adris of what he was trying to recall.
(Every elf favors dramatics.)
Kainan and Mython both stewed in longing “for something” once opening up to outsiders. But, they only shared once met upon their own terms, with their own flair.
Even this beast grew miffed at the thought of facing a wait, unwilling to say why, but properly setting a mood.
(You make a stage, and then dance on it…?)
Ethereal music grows more fervent as proof of this. The gleaming from the blade, stronger when Adris touches it finally!
A jolt of black current shocks deep into his Inner Expanse instead of the light of myth freeing the blade. Adris drinks deep a revulsion within it, a tearing drive to achieve at all costs lashing out!
Violent anger, lashing out at an unseen prison which contains all he knows!
(This blade is…!?)
It’s finally too much as he shakes his numbed hand to try to reclaim feeling.
Forced to release it, all that’s left is burning indignation within Adris’ heart. That anything should keep him from what he wants to experience…!
“A beautiful blade.” The weapon rings of struck metal when praised.
“It is… well-made, for a lower-tier mythical blade.” Ave agrees with him after some thought. “Do you want it? It seems to be offered. Nothing offered would be bad?”
“… It is bad, though, that an Emperor will not claim it, even if as a gift.”
Drawing his hand away, it causes the happy sword to die completely inside.
The cone of light shrinks to an inch-thick, then sputters out. A fantastical scene dries up.
(It’s so… easy to toy with these elves.)
A tickling happiness nestles within Adris’, but he hides it from his face.
“No enemy upon Zennia thus far is worthy of a weapon wielded by me, save for the Alchemaster herself.” Adris turns from it and walks back down.
“But, Boss fights many times? With many stranger things used than a sword.”
“But never with seriousness.” Adris laughs at Kol, trying to get her to shut up and not ruin the ‘scene’. “The day that I seriously wield a sword is the one that you have failed as my aspiring champion, Kol.”
“That’s… kind of true, but also annoying, Boss.” Kol clicks her tongue, then looks to the blade.
“Want it?”
“NEVER! Kol just wants to see wind on Perfect Weapon again!” Kol spits once more, then turns and stomps off with her tail dancing angrily. Because Adris betrays no fear of what happened, Kol’s own anger has finally died off.
“Momentarily withdrawn…?” Neesiette is already inspecting the poleaxe with her own naked hand, then she tilts her head with amazement. “Inaccurate. Nullified in effect it be, [wind-calling], without removing enhancement? Fascinating. Accomplishing this, many fewer applications of pseudo-Art can.”
“Comes back, yes?” Kol angrily strokes her weapon, but earns a nod from the doll.
“Explanation unlikely to be comprehended, analogy suffices: withdrawing air from the flame snuffing does this, reigniting the flame does with that air’s return.”
“Like deep underground where you choke?”
Neesiette blinks at this question, then smiles and pats Kol’s armor. “Perhaps? Standing as that does, a valid preliminary line of reasoning. Empirical observations thus far: no perceivable ‘magic’, nor Art, be interpreted of enemy’s presentation of power. Thus, either highly dangerous or treacherous it be, obscuring causation and theorems of manifested pseudo-Art.”
(It stole away the wind? From a “child of prophecy”?)
Thinking of the beast and its effects, Adris returns to what it had thought of the quiet favored elf who even now scans the haze for impressions of what others think.
Adris feels his skin prickling with why Ave seeks this. A living flame dancing on his body and around him, he’s burning up in so many gazes that can’t be proved to exist; but, he knows they’re out there, growing bolder in their watch as Adris steals Ave’s arm to himself.
“Adris?”
“A blade like that one is meant to slay an evil creature.”
“… Is what we met evil?” Though her secret language is a doubt, Adris intrudes into it now.
“Anything that stands between us and our destiny is evil, Avenalliah Aurmaris.” Because it must be in that tongue, for Ave’s shock grows sweetly bright, Adris gets to soak up attention even more strongly! “But don’t concern yourself with only a temporary obstruction like that thing.”
To the still hovering black cross Adris unwillingly draws Ave, leading her where she shies away from it.
“Avenalliah: the wind will be yours.” Lifting his own hand, he invites Ave’s to join him as he closes on the cross’ spoke. “We will obtain everything you’ve ever desired.”
Still against her, Adris lets their closeness become a heavy weight.
He enjoys the many moods she descends through, for an elf’s face can be more expressive than a clown’s magic porcelain mask when allowed to openly feel so much conflict.
Ave’s final thought must be positive, for she nods and smiles greatly.
“… Yes! I… will be useful against the Castillo!”
(“Useful?”)
Adris furrows his brows at that, but then visions of past sufferings play back.
He grimaces at how each time he felt, then later when she…?
“Aim higher! Become a hero that shines as brightly as Rouvenor.”
A hesitation clicks within her throat, but then she whispers. “I really hope…” After the whisper, she stops looking down and firms her smile.
“I WILL BE THAT!” She grasps the black cross too. “I’ll be… a protector of all, someone that Rouvenor would be pleased to meet!” A latent burning of potential resides within it that climbs their arms to accept this ambition.
“Your oath is accepted, monster.”
(A village hidden within an isolated forest? Lulled into a depression so deep that the mere entry of a new person can totally upturn their worlds?)
Even the jilted blade shines again when the cross’ blacklight grows; for, it longs for this “scene” as much as the elves that set Adris and his girls up do.
“Avenalliah will obtain the wind, and when she does, every harm you’ve inflicted will fall back upon a beast harder.”
Ave’s happiness melts a bit when Adris hisses this. She stares at him with doubt and confusion as the cross begins to make ringing sounds of enormous bells striking.
(Anyone that wants to hurt you, Avenalliah, must be someone worth brutally punishing.)
Only the cruel and completely irredeemable have been evil to this timid creature.
Even a cold-case like Adris’ ghoulish sister had surrendered and returned limited kindness. It is necessary for all present, everyone involved in this starting “play”, to understand a rule that will make Adris truly mad if they transgress.
“By my oath as a false god, every mystery of this elvish wonderland will be made bare, and everyone that becomes our enemy will be trampled upon!”
“A… Adris…!”
Disappointment and dependency, Ave’s collapsing bravery becomes some mix of these two when she seems to lean completely onto Adris.
“I’ll overcome anything that…”
What she desires to achieve is lost, becoming only the last of her breath as it leaves her lungs; not as words, but as a moan of frustration.
A boom of darkness escapes the cross, jettisoned in all directions.
For a brief instant the foreign colors of the world invert into a white sky and black land.
Rainbow rushes back before what’s hidden can be recognized, though.
The many magical trees around them rustle with the living forest’s united elation!
(Yes, yes, appreciate me more!)
It’s a struggle not to laugh uproariously when Adris leads Avenalliah away without explaining anything of his unleashed frightening powers to the elves!
“Kol likes commitment!”
“One’s eternally premature posturings be…!?”
The other leading ladies stare at Adris: Neesiette with her contempt at what she must think is an “excess”, for the Lunamaton’s lips are pursed; Kol with a bloodthirsty grin, white teeth within her wolf helmet shining as she tries not to cackle too loudly to warn future prey.
(You think it’s rash to agree to this, Neesiette? Consider: it was already resolved to be our enemy before even one word from us.)
This inhabitant of the world tree that burst only nearly into view, made gross threats, and then invited their reprisals obviously is powerful enough to force them to confront it, anyway.
By setting the terms…
(All Ave has to do to win this oath is “obtain the wind”. By the nature of making the oath to me, I define the terms.)
Not to Cethran, or some random Zennian god. Adris carves his most painful lessons within.
(What a blunder!)
Fancy?
Obsession?
Adris thinks that elvish terms may simply fall into the category of “desiring to be witnessed at one’s best and most boisterous”?
Such a desire becomes clay for Adris to mold into a pleasing form, then fire that shape into fruition of victory. The elves of today and yesterday have been longing for some sort of change in their fates, so why not offer it?
Whether or not Adris and Ave were the intended remedies, he becomes now the currents they hope to carry them on; but, his lead to stormy waters where this beast reigns.
Drowning men are easier to please, after all.
(At the cannons’ finish for this performance, we’ll talk payment.)
Starting with the elder’s.
The blushing snake elf that has an exhibitionist streak may be an entity that can explain her entire race.
(Perhaps elves can only be moved through great actions and impressions, like she is?)
Ave doesn’t speak anymore when accompanying Adris, only glancing at the cross he swings, then over her shoulder.
(I might not have the option of being found lacking, even once? I can only escalate!)
“Boss, Kol doesn’t understand, though, waiting to have ‘showdown’?”
“Disciple, when others have expectations of what should be, it doesn’t matter if they’re rational or not. Powerful men have moods, and it’s only when destiny is truly at hand that we finally meet to unleash them.”
“But Big Shadow sounded female?”
“Power cares nothing about sex.”
“But? Kol, female, and strong? Would rather fight now?”
(“Shut up”, I’ve explained!)
Heading back for home with their moods high if still stuck pondering the confusions of the day, it’s partway to the elder’s fortress and along the knotty roots of the grove’s foundation that they encounter a stranger sight than an elvish blade and a beast it is meant to slay.
“Still?” Avenalliah’s questioning of a name precedes anyone else even seeing her.
Sluggishly dragging along on her way to who-knows-where, the fact that they run into the witch parallel to their travels isn’t as heart-racing as the lack of prescience about where she was before she emerged from the haze.
Adris tears himself away upon still feeling nothing, hopping the bright gap between roots with a bound to land beside the zombie sneak.
“Still!?” Adris mimics Ave by hissing into the witch’s mask-covered face after drawing her to him.
(We can’t be witnessed as being easily misled!)
Stuck with a sickly, neutral smile of being aware, the witch doesn’t even resist once grabbed. Dazed she seems, maybe even “pressed” into oblivion.
(Is… did the beast attack her…!?)
To her mask his fingers go, trying to tear it away to see her face!
And the moment he touches the edge…
{…
… THEFUCKYOUDOIN—!?}
A massive grazing shot to his chin shocks him less than the piercing outrage that explodes into his own heart!
“You wer—!?”
{LOOKINFORYOU, YAHFUCKININCOMPETENT!}
The witch’s torrents of emotion almost drown his own, for she wraps him up and starts pinching his cheek to tear it off. Every color other than blue, black, and purple exits Adris’ vision as his whole world becomes Still.
{You’ve got me spinning circles inside with yer own guts heavin’ up and down, good and bad all rammin’ my inner peace like an enraged, ruttin’ moose’s horns!}
A deluge of angrier signs follow Adris to his back when falling down, then he’s squatted over by an irate witch that’s stuck in a “mood” this red-hot only when Adris has personally affronted her!
{ALL THE WHILE, I’m cooped up in that crazy elf bastard’s ash dungeon, and now yer tryna’ nick my fuckin’ mask for my cares!?}
Once she notices that her panel skirt is just open over him enough for Adris to stare up into the wrong place, she flinches, then pinches his nose between her fingers.
{If I had a limit before, you’ve already raped it past ‘dead’.}
“This is not my fault!” He honks this with his nose shut.
(Why are you assaulting me for giving a shit!?)
{Back to ‘hell’, now!}
“Y-Yes!” Ave screeches agreement, then hurries after the witch that stomps away. From lost and confused, to “verbally” dominating Adris, Cyrene Stillwater has her “partner” hoisted by his armor to drag back and totally ruins his image that was building up.
“Are you… okay?” Ave stays beside Still, a worried expression tight.
{Couldn’t be better.}
And so they say goodnight to elfland once more, with more questions than answers.
The impressions left behind are very much to Adris’ liking, however, for no longer are the other elves the central figures of whatever story is being written.
(Ave is.)
An irate witch and overly-concerned doll can go sulk in a tower as they wish.
With a crisp flick of a rolled up vine, the leafy tendril Adris obtained springs to life to squiggle over itself. From leg-to-leg, then curling to become a seat and then the back, an elvish portable chair’s rigid form spreads out with Adris’ weight dropping into it.
Inches from a swinging hammock, a false god at the precipice of being overbearing leans back as the chair adjusts to this.
(Call me boring again, bitch, I don’t care.)
A stupid cat stares at nothing in particular, and the man who cares nothing about that fact lifts a polished wood teacup up.
“Yes, a moment!” At the wordless order, Avenalliah springs into action. Dutiful despite her mind being elsewhere, it’s a quiet minute of passing before heated tea aromatically cradles Adris. As the only one with a cup, the only one deserving of it this time around, the conman enjoys replicating that experience of savoring both the elvish brew and the position of supremacy.
(I don’t need your help, “elder”, to truly enjoy my own elf!)
“It’s troublesome to decide what to discuss first…”
“Really? Kol can think of quite a lot that can be said.”
At Adris’ musing, a kobold that has already climbed up on Ave’s swirling perch provides the impetus to start the next phase of the plan.
“First is, Other Elfs, just as strange as ours.”
“Why am I strange?”
Finished with her steeping and receiving no further requests, Ave slithers up to join Kol.
“Takes Boss talking to them to get them to talk to us! Why, always at first, Kol is treated like a disease until Boss ‘talks up’ Elfs?”
“Adris does have it easier?”
(True! Very true! I am eminently a bridge for sociability between races.)
Other elves like Adris, for whatever their varied reasons, but it does take time.
It’s only as impressions after the fact that he’s certain of his successes; for, reading them at the time was ever impossible. Elves, like this stupid, lazy bastard cat in its hammock, are reticent to their very cores until cracking through their shell and scooping them out.
Once done, every next favorable impression piled on faster.
“But Kol, that’s because they’re more similar to him than they are to you. When you try to converse, it’s more like… you’re stealing their air as you try to hang off of them…”
“That’s really annoying, to be compared to Boss as if Kol is the one failing, Elf.”
(Speak well of me more!)
Though not the source of any particular fun, aside from sometimes adding in a joke at Kol’s expense, it can be said that Adris was definitely…!
“Kol just wants more meatfruit.”
“Berrybread! And you had almost the entire harvest of the day for yourself!”
“Yes? And?”
“Why can’t we ever have nice things without taking all of it, Kol?”
“When golds glitter on the floor after beating up peons, do you leave some behind?” The kobold chortles at the insanity of self-moderation, then yaps down at Adris. “When Boss finds something he wants, he takes everything! Just like all the Elf trees! Boss didn’t leave until they had nothing fun left to show us~!”
“I don’t think that my kin are the same as the Alchemaster’s thugs!”
(EXACTLY RIGHT, THOUGH, KOL!)
The steamy cup of tea finally comes to Adris’ lips.
A perfect lead in allows him to finally wet his tongue, priming it before he adds in his own piece. Ready to tear at an opponent with simple thoughts, just as this retarded, unmoving lap beast deserves. So smug, when staring past everyone behind “tired” eyes as if he hasn’t slept the entire day!
“But, well, that is a question…? So elusive, they were. I’d wait, and ‘seek truth by bathing in theirs’, but… my kin often turned their ‘light’ away? Elder, why do they …?”
If Adris weren’t having such “fun” right now, the tea cup would already be smashed into this information-hiding buffoon’s temple. But at Adris’ lips, the delicious brew that he first encountered within the Castillo becomes only his to savor this time; and, with perfectly imperious flair, Adri—!
Sunlight so strong tastes like the sweat of toil and tribulation.
But also, joy. Victory!
Eternally growing experiences!
Within the sweltering forest that is emerald green, a very small boy reclines on the tree that he settles onto after floating forever toward the forest’s center.
Birds sing mournful and uproarious songs together, all musically chattering about the ruins so vast that he could play forever within their crumbling walls. Seeking their treasures by crawling on the great roots and branches twisting through them, what once belonged to mankind has been claimed as an inseparable part of the living wildlands that stretch to eternity in every direction.
(Nature… reclaims…?)
That’s what the pinkish gossamer flowers that cushion him whisper.
They smell of strong cinnamon! A lulling, chill zestiness to how they and their roots wrap around him.
“To sleep forever, but awaken again, then live so vividly”, with every scent the winds shake loose from them claims this promise!
(Even me… I will belong to it…!)
The boy collapses into the forest, allowing it inside him. The birds with glowing green eyes flutter over to him to sing, their shrillness drowning out his woes as their glittering feathers spread wide! They gather to strip him bare…
An ecstasy spreads with how every part of the cradling labyrinth of life consumes the bad thoughts from his veins. All the red poison within flows out into the delicious flowers’ extending hollow tubes, leaving behind only fulfillment in becoming a part of paradi—!
“What do you think, Adris!?”
(I THINK…!?)
Adris keeps his cup from spilling, his tongue completely numb from the wash of blinding flavor. He can’t even control it, for it snakes around his mouth with a mind of its own.
(I think your tea is WAY more psychedelic than I remember!?)
Imbibing even a sip leaves him drunker than a gallon of honeywine!
The unseen vastness of the elder’s ash fortress pulsates with the blackness now having degrees of dark!
He stares into his cup, wondering what the question was; then goes stiff, because the elder has a mirthful smile with his eyes closed. Beaming, like the hateful feline he is!
(B-Bastard…! He’s mocking my reaction!? Ugh, I blanked out, but she couldn’t have said much between what I remember and…?)
“Between your people and the Alchemaster’s slaves, I don’t see any similarity.” Pretending to take another sip, resisting his tongue that tries to lap at the inside of the cup, Adris throws out what he thinks is the appropriate response.
“… Oh? That’s great?” Ave sounds confused, prompting Adris to look up.
Instead of her being at the top of her perch, she’s instead right beside him with her bag opened on top of a solid-compacted-ash table that didn’t used to be there.
Only Kol is still higher up, laying on top of an angry-looking metallic wolf.
(What?)
“That topic… we were talking about that a [Short] ago? Before the elder heard everything about today.”
(The fuck we were!)
A Short being an hour, Adris refuses to believe that the time passing between a sip of tea, a strange daydream, and the next time he was spoken to was that long!
“I meant how we shared such trivial things with them, yet they reacted so strongly? So oddly?”
“Your gifts…?”
Adris recovers, thinking of what he can say about them.
(Why undersell your efforts?)
“How can you think anything you could offer would be trivial?”
“Would they not be simple trinkets, only hopeful things to give that could hardly measure to much happiness?” The fact that Ave looks down at him with such confusion makes him want to throttle her.
(Mython acted like you gave her royal treasures! Stop mocking poor people!)
“But… elder, about… her?”
(“Her” being…?)
The fact that Ave’s voice quavers a bit can only mean it’s about the beast that descended to challenge them.
“That one is just my next victim of hubris, Avenalliah.”
With a contemptuous grin, Adris dismisses their greatest threat. All while studying the elder’s face with rigid discipline.
“Why would the world tree host any being of evil? Ysanne, like the others, should be a place only of beauty. How could a being so… powerful like she is exist here, while also sounding so heartless?” Ave wraps her arms around herself, losing her nerve that she had when making her oath.
(A very good question.)
The elder’s eyes open again, a sleepiness clearing as he rubs them.
After yawning once, he finally speaks for the first time.
“Ysanne is home to many even stranger beings, all variously disappointing.” After that boyish response, the idiot cat rolls around, then stretches so much that his open robe almost reveals his manhood.
“Why would anything here disappoint!?” Ave is aghast at the answer, then circles the elder in a frenzy to moan about his belief. “This is Ysanne! The world tree! Home to one of the most ancient of our forests, where all the wonders of primeval Zennia still thrive!”
“Disappointment is a matter of who is disappointed, and by whom.”
“Kin should have no capacity for disappointment here! I don’t understand!?” Ave screams uncharacteristically loudly, prompting the little people in their tiny homes to stare out of them.
As the center of attention, Ave visibly sulks after the elder doesn’t answer.
“Kol likes this tree, why wouldn’t you weirdos?” Ave stares up along with Adris to see a scowling kobold glaring at the elder.
“If there’s a better place than here, tell Kol so that Kol can go there.”
(Who WOULD find disappointment with this paradise?)
Endless food; unlimited entertainment.
Zero human danger to a hidden village.
At the heart of Zennia’s gathering of what might be “aura”, elves are apparently natural perceptors and sensitives of it. Everything Adris is exposed to leaves such strong aura tinges that are growing ever more potent…!
(The worst thing I’ve met that could ruin that is [The Beast]!)
At that thought, Adris wonders about how dangerous it might be; but, then he shakes his head, for even if he thinks of their first entry to the town…
(“ITS [pangs] will pass. No matter how novel, do not trust the wind that carries ‘hope’ so long as one feels that caress here.” One of the elves said that? Was that some sort of… code to talk about what later appeared? “Never false, just a poison called ‘what’s wanted’.” What poison could they possibly be suffering? None of them appear to be in any pain, except that bloodthirsty owl and her rage.)
Even if The Beast is a threat, what of it: there are no signs of deprivation, so far, nor any apparent tyranny if this monster might be ruler of the wilds outside?
(A [demesne], this place could be? Castile and the other slayers said that the world tree was a place ruled by something, but I was sure it would be favorable to elves since the tree belongs to their race.)
Information still lacks, but Adris is certain of his own forthcoming rebuttal. “Anyone bored of this paradise isn’t worthy of being alive, much less being an elf.”
“Ah!? You… you can’t…!” Ave flashes up with an angry stare and lifts higher up on her tail, but then calms when Adris’ finger raises up to silence her.
“Do you really accept the way your people avoid opening up to us? How they don’t care about each other?”
“…” Crossing her arms again, Ave turns back to the elder who offers no real answers.
Only infuriating smiles.
“…
… Elder Caller. Something isn’t… right about my kin.”
“Very little has ever been ‘right’. Now, then, or ever to come.”
Unclever semantics send Ave grinding her teeth, but not yet to anger.
“What should be common is treated as myth, what should be myth isn’t even known! The Callers remember, so that nothing is lost! Of all I’ve given out without deep thought, all of it was treated as wondrous! There… should not be such a reaction, nor should kin turn away from me when asked why… to not… share true ‘thoughts as feelings’?” Again, Ave tries to be tactful by making her voice contrite.
“Can you speak for them, no, for yourself… and correct for me the…?”
“Misunderstandings don’t exist.” The elder’s voice tightens, grows firmer and stronger. Still tired, with eyes unfocused, the slovenly elf scratches his cheek.
“There must be one, because I don’t understand!”
“You chase the sirocco, the only wind you’ve ever felt.” His gaze turns sharp.
Ave clamps her mouth shut when the elder says this, then turns away from her to show his back before continuing. “Others don’t speak, you don’t listen, the ‘dilemma’, a comedy that’s only ironic; dry heat and smothering cold meet, becoming more as one: catastrophic.”
“What…?” Ave draws back, retreating from the elder’s singsong voice. “I’m… a catastrophe?”
“‘The wind is its own truth’. Be what you will be.”
(Insulting sophistry!)
“Ave is a prophet for the future, sworn only to her desires!” It’s Adris who lunges in to take up Ave’s side, interlacing his hand with hers in one swift motion, that turns the dynamic around.
“From my enlightened perspective, the question of ‘what is an elf’ has only ever been answered by Avenalliah.”
Ave avoids her face being seen, as beet red and embarrassed as she is, so Adris goads her into what she must say.
“Cowards that can’t speak without hesitating, they who shy away from meeting me until I force the issue, such ‘kin’ hardly match the tales that have been told!”
“… They do hesitate, don’t they, when kin never would…?” Ave hisses this, anger in her voice at that truth.
“If the village whose name is ‘a shadowed place’ was always such before our arrival, then the light that is gifted to it now comes from only one source.”
Towards the elder, Adris thrusts Ave forward, though without being able to move the massive tail that she travels by. Ave blanks in seeming loss of what to say when the elder stares up, but then she blurts something out.
“The kin I know… would never be so fearful of meeting another, of even living their normal days!”
“Indeed, they are tainted.” The elder agrees. “But then, so are you, as reluctant ‘to be’ even without any fear left.”
“I am not!”
Ave tears back, drawing Adris with her. Angry, then making a deep “shaaa…” sound with fangs bared. Staring so potently, with absolute ire!
“Avenalliah! Our day was exciting, wasn’t it?” Adris asks this instead.
(Only your opinion matters.)
“Yes! To have, well, almost everyone together, it’s rare that we do!”
“If we can have that, then they can, too.” Adris draws her in, calming her with a pat to her back. “They need a shining example.”
“Me?”
“If the past of elves was more glorious than their present, then return it to them!”
(You’re a better elf than these sorry simpletons are, so far.)
“… Return… the past? To now?”
Ave looks to her bag, staring into its open depths, then to the floor beside the elder where a leaf book called “Tale of Rouvenor” rests. She reaches for the elder and pulls him over to face her.
“Is it… ‘shining’ enough to bring it all back? Without the Elveara being heard?”
So many expressions flash across her face when she seeks something from the elder’s gaze after whispering that. Rather than share that multitude in turn, the elder displays one: an arched eyebrow of annoyance.
“Sing of the wind as you think it should be sung, or accept that nobody now sings such songs. Either way, Ysanne already has enough disappointments without adding another.”
“Nobody will be disappointed by what I have planned.” Adris boasts this when rising up from his seat like some night haunt, looming down (as high as a boy can manage) to press Ave’s advantage.
“Oh.” The elder manages only a moan that doesn’t sound very inquisitive.
But, it’s enough!
(GOT YOU!)
For the first time…!
The elder’s focus is only on Adris when the depthless swirling purple of his gaze grows wider.
Adris feels a tingle up his loins… but mostly his back.
(I win! He spoke to me more than an insult~!)
The achievement is claimed!
“What I’ve had commissioned might be lewd, but beauty often is.”
Ave moans when Adris’ hand moves from her back to her lower half where the coils meet the skin of a young girl.
“I know that a woman’s perfection should be hidden just a bit, yet elves reveal it, naked to all! That’s boring. How better to enjoy the potential satisfaction to come…?” Adris reaches for Ave’s skirt to pull up on it, prompting her to place her shaking hand on his, though she doesn’t stop him. “… than for me to re-imagine what could be when my woman is wearing a… ‘swimsuit’?”
(Slayers, those horny barbarians, can be sparingly brilliant!)
“Once they witness this, they’ll despair for it not having been their idea!”
Adris can’t even imagine the final product, but the very idea itself makes him want to tear it off of—!
“Whatever the form of the novelty worn, none of your own desires will reflect in what tempts you.”
A verbal coup de grâce from nowhere sends Adris’ knees shaking.
The elder’s lazy smile, now seeming almost… pitying, makes the boy…!
“ADRIS!?”
Gripping onto Ave’s “behind” and causing her to twist around, it’s all Adris can do to struggle!
“My desires are evident in EVERYTHING I do!”
Her embarrassment at his breach of decorum is only half her response, because the rest of her more primitive needs send her whole tail wiggling to its tip in sequence!
(See how she reacts!? This is because of ME!)
“I do what I want, when I want to. There’s never a moment wh—!”
“Even now, there’s no ‘wanting’ without ‘reason’.” The elder’s pitying voice groans ever sadder, then he shakes his head.
“Only a flame that others light. Never burning for its own sake.”
(KILL YOURSELF! Kol, Still, Neesiette, even Ave, every woman I want becomes mine, exuberantly, doing WHATEVER I want when the situati–!)
Adris’ forthcoming yell dies in his throat.
(Situation? No, wrong, the circumstan—no!)
Instead, a cold sweat breaks out, along with his skin, muscles, and ligaments feeling slimy with both words.
(Desire! My desires!)
“Adris, can you please stop in front of…?” A plaintive, needy whisper from Ave stops when Adris rips his hand off of her behind. “… It… I didn’t mean… to rush you…?”
(Mython doesn’t know my true wants, is that it!?)
“Mython’s vision isn’t sufficient, Ave.”
“Sufficient for what? HOOH!?”
Ave cries out when he drags her away, forcing her to slide sideways!
“Boss!? Enemy!?” Kol cries and gets ready to jump, but then Adris points a finger and shouts!
“Only Ave is required!”
“‘Pardon’?”
Kol’s impudent growl is meaningless, though, for Adris has the cure. His fast hands crack a bar from within his jacket, then loft what breaks off upwards.
“Umu! Kol doesn’t… gruh, feel needed, now~!”
While Kol munches her pemmican “tribute”, Adris quickly unstraps his armor and starts throwing the lamellar protectors to the black floor.
“Boss, why becoming weak now?”
“It’s weakness to cling to what isn’t needed, disciple. I taught you that, but ignored my own lesson. We’ve no enemies inside the village.”
To imply to the elves that he needs to fear them insults both ways: their hospitality, and Adris’ own personal majesty.
(Avenalliah Aurmaris is the strongest elf! I am sure of this, now, because even the elder hides from fixing things outside of his own home!)
No wonder The Beast had struck when acting too cautious despite this fact: it’d watched them bumble along all day waiting for it to strike, when they should’ve trusted the elves to warn of it. They’d only gifted half of their attention to getting closer, worrying about an inevitable potential betrayal.
(Elves are so strange, I’d have gotten on with them better if I’d been more informal. I’d have learned who their foes might be if I’d chosen to be more emotional sooner? If they believed that I would side with them.)
It’s madness to say that in his mind when knowing how easy it is to be betrayed, and the rest of his purpose-developed survival mentality roars at him not to do what he’s about to do.
But, a conman’s cultivated sensibilities calmly point out that he must do the exact opposite of past actions precisely because all of his expectations have been proved wrong. He must lead by example and audacity, for it’s stronger to be perceived as dismissive of danger than to be dreading it.
“Ave! Strip!”
“…
… Yes…!” Refusing to look him in the eyes, Avenalliah goes for her sashes and cloak to pull them totally off of…
“Sashes make you agile in view, leave those.” His hand stops her, then he unwillingly draws back. “What’s an elf without wearing a leaf cloak? Your bodysuit distracts from the easygoing rest.”
“My bodysuit?”
“Can you remove it alone?”
“It comes off in pieces…?” Rather than taking everything off as she might’ve been doing, Ave quickly pats her mithril scale bodysuit, then stares back with surprise and comprehension. “How foolish!?” Along a hooking seam similar to Neesiette’s, but of much rougher make, Ave starts to work on loosening the bodysuit. “I blame others for barriers between kin, but I’m the source of one…”
(It’s fine! Mython, now!)
The seamstress needs Adris, he can predict it!
“What about angry Puddle and Moon~?” A mystified kobold teases with a question.
“Tell Still that…!?”
(What about them!? Ave is the important one!)
“Tell Still that nothing I’ve done to her is wrong.”
“Kakaka! Kol, will enjoy doing that.”
Adris’ heart is beating so quickly that he can’t hear his footsteps while running into the haze. Bereft of his armor, he wants to jump the entire distance in one leap.
“Adris! This way!”
With a quick hop, he springs sideways to rejoin Ave at a root diverging from his path.
“Nobody has fun quite like us.”
“Yes, this seems familiar! But, it’s not THAT way either, Beloved One!”
“Are you sure?”
Ave, once frustrated, keeps lightly laughing each time the impatient Adris turns back to have her point out the right direction. Over the criss-crossing giant roots of the village’s base, he makes a fun game of taking the wrong path anyway just to jump back to land beside her.
Each time he does so, Ave’s mirth lifts the heaviness she must be suffering; Adris distracts himself, too, choosing to gift his total benevolence.
(I’d rather ride Ave’s climb in popularity than suck up to the elder! Maybe then, if these elves look to her for guidance instead…?)
To Mython’s tree through the twilight and rainbow, Adris has a cold fury. Its enveloping creep blunts the burst of equally chilly rage that can only come from a witch believing she’s been shunned by his departure.
(Given the future threat, and the rewards to be had, I know you’ll soon be kissing my hand instead of stabbing it, Partner.)