Elf world the complete s.., p.123
Elf World : The Complete Series, page 123
Even now, I still didn’t know what the hell was going on around here.
And it was high time I got some straight answers.
Chapter 5
The walk back to the palace was surreal and dreamlike. While being caught up in the fight and concentrating only on the enemy in front of me, I hadn’t even considered how widespread the battle actually was. It felt like we were doing well at the time, and that was mostly true as far as the soldiers on the frontline were concerned.
But this was not just a city of soldiers, and the slow walk back made that point painfully clear to me.
There was green goo everywhere, the streets and buildings stained with sticky splotches. The putrid stuff smelled like raw sewage, giving off a pungent odor that could burn your nose hairs right off.
“That’s it. There you go. Hey, you’re doing so well,” came a female voice, her every word breaking in a quivering mess as she struggled to sound brave. I looked at the fairy leading her two small children through the bloodstained street. The two boys had their eyes covered with one hand, holding their mom’s with the other to form a guided line.
“Very good. Now remember, no peeking,” she reminded, obviously trying to shelter them from the horrors around them by making a game out of it. “That’s it. I’m so proud of you both.” Her face was twisted in horrified terror, a stark contradiction to her upbeat message of fun. “If you can make it all the way home without cheating, Mommy will give you both a treat.”
Her voice cracked again with her last sentence, but the cheer from her children proved that they hadn’t noticed anything strange. The ruse was working. Brave woman, I thought, watching her lead them through the carnage with tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Ahh!” came a shriek from the other direction, a bloodcurdling wail that stopped me right in my tracks. I turned in time to see a lady fall on the body of who I assumed might be her husband. “No! No!” she shrieked, clutching at his collar, shaking him violently. “Why? Why?! What were you thinking?”
His chest was so bloody that it was hard to tell where the wound was. Not that it mattered. This man would never rise again. Near his open hand lay a clean sword he may or may not have had time to use. The man had made the decision to defend his kingdom, his family, or both, and in doing so had paid the ultimate price.
My heart broke as I watched her sob on his chest. Then she rose with her fists clenched and screamed at the sky. My insides felt numb. There wasn’t a thing I could say or do to comfort her, so I just kept going.
I barely remembered the walk back to the palace, but the next thing I knew, I had the white drawbridge in sight. They must have seen me coming, because it came dropping down in a series of clattering clicks, and there stood Trixy and Luna, still surrounded by their loyal guards who had likely stayed right by their sides throughout the entire ordeal.
“Isaac!” Trixy shouted. One of her surrounding guards tried to grab her, but she struggled through his grab attempt and came running to me. She was coming at a dead sprint, but then pulled up at the last moment. “Oh, Isaac,” she said softly, her sad eyes roaming up and down my front.
I glanced down, only now noticing the state I was in. I was completely covered in sticky green slime, and even had a few bits of yellow guts and other unidentifiable bug parts clinging to the soup. I was under no illusion that I was ready for a night on the town, but I really hadn’t realized it was this bad.
She was about to say more when I raised my hand to silence her. Luna came rushing up to stand by her side, but just my appearance alone was enough to silence her too.
I pointed back toward the main city. “There are children out there whose fathers won’t be coming home tonight,” I said. “I think it’s about time that one of you told me what the fuck is going on around here.”
“Of course,” Luna said quietly, giving Trixy a quick glance. “Just please come inside, and I promise you will have your answers.”
Getting cleaned up was no small task, and it took the better part of an hour’s worth of scrubbing just to make the smell go away. After the thorough detox, I was led to a meeting room and left there to wait.
There were various maps tacked up around the walls, and with nothing better to do in the moment, I got up to have a closer look. Of course I didn’t recognize any of the land masses or their surrounding bodies of water, but I could appreciate how intricately detailed they were.
“Prevarion.” When I turned, both Luna and Trixy were standing right behind me. I had gotten so lost in the rich detail of these high-quality maps that I never heard them come in. “That is what our world is called,” Luna added, before gesturing around the room. “If you were to combine all the maps you see here, you would still only cover around ten percent of Prevarion.”
“That’s fascinating,” I said, tracing my finger along a random river on the map I was looking at. “And yet not at all what I’m here to talk about.”
I flicked the corner and turned to face her. I knew I was speaking to the queen, but it just seemed like the time for formalities had already come and gone. “I asked you a question just a short time ago. You know, when I was standing before you, covered in bug guts. You remember that, right?”
“Isaac, please have a seat,” Luna said softly. I did as she asked, and the two of them sat across from me.
This was the first time I noticed how tall this table was, or how short the chairs were, depending on how you looked at it. The arrangement was fine for a human like me, but the tabletop was almost touching their chins. I supposed that made sense, though. Meetings in the palace could involve any number of different races, so the accommodations needed to fit.
“Isaac, I don’t know where to begin,” the queen said.
“How about from the beginning,” I said, steadily growing more impatient with her constant stalling. “Let’s try that.”
Luna sighed, her face nearly disappearing beneath the table when she lost some height from slumping forward. “Orladrin is not so very different from other kingdoms,” she went on. “We have allies, and we enemies as well.”
She scoffed, a humorless laugh directed at some private joke. “But I must admit, there are times when both seem to have eerily similar goals, so much so that it is not always that easy to tell friend from foe.”
“Sounds like our worlds have more in common than you know,” I said. I could see where she was coming from, and it wasn’t all that surprising to me.
“An ally will offer assistance in exchange for something in return,” Trixy added. “While an enemy, on the other hand, will simply try to take what they want by force. But in the end, it’s all motivated by personal gain.”
“So these bugs,” I said, arching an eyebrow, “are you telling me that they attacked your kingdom for personal gain? And if so, does that put them in the friend or the foe category?”
“Neither, and that is my point,” Luna said. “There was no agenda here, nothing to be gained. This was not a natural phenomenon. What you saw today was nothing more than a conjured swarm sent here to murder my people.”
That sounded right to me, given their unnatural behavior. They fought right to the end with no fear of death. In that sense, they reminded me of one of Moana’s summonings. Driven only by their master’s command, they, too, would just fight on until they couldn’t fight anymore.
“Today, it was a swarm of giant insects,” Trixy said. “But it could have just as easily been a flood, a fire storm, or even a horde of undead. Each new attack is almost always something different. We have no way to prepare ourselves because we never know what’s coming next.”
“Wait, hold on a second,” I said, rising from my seat. “So you’re telling me the kingdom is being randomly attacked by anything from the walking dead to oversized cockroaches, and you still have no idea who or what is behind it? How is that even possible?”
“No, we knew exactly who is behind it,” came a voice from just outside the open doorway.
I glanced up to see an impossibly tall fairy, even taller than any of the elite guard. He was thin, with slicked-back blond hair, and wore thick-framed glasses balanced right near the tip of his long, pointy nose. His eyes were more red than pink, making him look a little demonic. But his smile was pleasant enough.
“Ah, Cirro. Come in, please, we’ve been waiting for you,” Luna said, motioning him in. The giant of a fairy actually had to slouch a little so as not to hit the top of his head on the doorframe. “Isaac, I would like you to meet my advisor, Cirro.” The tall man nodded to me. “I believe he may be able to explain the situation better than I.”
“So you know who’s behind all these attacks?” I asked, cutting through all the formalities.
“Indeed, we do,” he replied, being equally direct. His soft voice didn’t exactly match his towering appearance. “But the man I am speaking of was not always our enemy.”
“Cirro,” I said, gesturing to the remaining seat across from me. “I think you better start from the beginning.”
Cirro lumbered over to the table and fell into the chair with a heavy thud. “His name is Zodarin,” he said, slumping over in his seat. “He is a powerful mage who lives in the mountains.”
“A powerful mage who lives in the mountains,” I repeated. It was almost funny how normal an explanation that was to me these days. “This mage, Zodarin, you said?” He nodded. “You know him well?”
“Well enough,” Cirro said with a shrug. “As much as anyone can, I suppose. A hermit of sorts, like many mages tend to be, he mostly keeps to himself. Spell components and dusty old books are about all the company he ever keeps, or wants, for that matter.”
He gestured to the ladies seated next to him. “He has always made his presence known in one way or another. In fact, the fairy kingdom owes him a great debt, if I’m being honest. Although he does not care much for personal relationships, he does value fairness and equality above all else.”
Cirro rose from his seat and began a lumbering walk around the table. “Our kingdom is no stranger to dealing with shadow enemies. Not that we have wronged any of our neighboring towns, mind you, but that is simply the nature of politics. It is a never-ending power struggle, and we are all caught in the ever-turning wheel.”
“Sounds idiotic and pointless, if you ask me,” I said, his words hitting a little too close to home for my liking. I was hoping I had left all that nonsense behind when I left my world, but apparently not. “And what does any of that have to do with—”
“Zodarin would agree with you,” he cut me off quickly. “So much so that he has been known to intervene when things go too far in one direction or another. He seeks not only fairness, but balance in the realm, if you will.”
“Balance in the realm?” I drummed my fingers along the table, waiting for a bit of clarification. “Am I missing something here?” I asked when he took too long to follow up.
After completing one last slow lap around the table, Cirro flopped back down into his seat. “That is where his loyalty lies,” he explained. “His true loyalty. He does not align himself with any particular faction or kingdom, and certainly has no love for the political games the rest of us have grown accustomed to. Balance is the key to everything in nature, and little else matters to him.
“I’ll give you an example,” he said, reading the confused look on my face. “Assassins disappearing without a trace, or even battle units combusting into flames without any cause or explanation. These are but a few of his trademarks when he seeks to tip the scales in one direction or another.”
“But he doesn’t do it to help allies or to hurt enemies, correct?” I said, beginning to see the pattern here. “He’s only chipping away at the winning side to keep things balanced, as you say.”
Cirro slowly nodded. “We are not a warring race, Isaac,” he went on. “Nor are we particularly power-hungry. Because of our low ambitions when it comes to such things, the fairies tend to lag behind when it comes to these political struggles we care so little about in the first place.
“In that regard, Zodarin’s actions usually help us more than they hurt us. That is, until now...”
“That’s like, the purest definition of true neutral I’ve ever heard,” I said, thinking back to my RPG-playing days. “I mean, it’s like he’s playing god or something, and everyone is forced to play by his rules.”
“Zodarin would tell you that he’s playing peacekeeper,” Cirro countered. “And as I said, his actions have nothing to do with personal gain.”
“Then what changed?” I asked. “What made him turn on you?”
Cirro leaned way back in his seat, wiping his large hands down his face. “That is the question we have asked ourselves repeatedly. We simply do not know. But what we do know is that we cannot hold out forever. If these attacks keep up, it is only a matter of time before our kingdom will lie in ruins.”
I glanced over at Trixy. “Have there been any attacks on other nearby cities?” I asked, trying to gather every bit of information I could.
“We’re not sure,” she admitted. “There are smaller fairy towns nearby, but we have received no reports.”
“I know this may sound stupid, but has anyone tried reaching out to him?” I asked, pointing out the obvious option. “You know, find out why the hell he’s doing this in the first place?”
“We have no way of communicating with him,” Cirro explained. “He has sealed himself off from us. Or, perhaps more accurately, he has sealed us in. And that was my next point.”
“Sealed you in?” This just kept getting weirder.
“Do you remember when I teleported the two of us back here into my world?” Luna chimed in.
“Er, yeah,” I said. “Teleportation between worlds is sort of rare where I’m from.”
“At the time, you wondered why we landed so far outside the city. Well, that was both as near and as far away from the city as I could bring us,” she explained. “You see, he has placed an anti-magic spell of sorts...” She stopped right there and waved off her unfinished explanation.
“Here, it would be easier just to show you,” she said. “I will attempt to teleport myself directly into the nearest town, and then back again. But now watch what happens.”
Luna stepped out into the center of the room. She ripped the air with a clawing motion, opening a shimmering golden portal. She stepped through and the glittery doorway snapped shut behind her, but barely a second passed before another one ripped open right beside it.
Luna came flying out, ejected roughly like a spit watermelon seed. I cringed as the poor queen landed right on her ass. Trixy moved quickly to help her mother up off the floor.
“You see that?” Cirro said. “We’re sealed off. Oddly enough, we are still able to teleport to other worlds, as Luna demonstrated when she went to find you. But we cannot travel locally within our own realm, hence we have no way of reaching Zodarin.”
“Shit,” I muttered to myself. This really was bad. Trapped in their own city like rats, were they really just condemned to sit through these attacks until they no longer had the strength to fend off another?
“Isaac,” Luna said. “Now do you see what we’re up against? We have no way of sending a messenger to go reason with him, or even send soldiers if a fight for our very survival becomes the only remaining option. Furthermore, he is locked on to us somehow. It’s like he knows our every move before we make it.”
“He knows every move the fairies of Orladrin make before they make it,” I repeated, reasoning out what she was really trying to say here. “The fairies... But maybe, just maybe, the human from Earth can still move about unnoticed.” I nodded to myself. “And there it is. That is why you brought me here.”
“Yes,” Trixy said, dropping her gaze to the floor.
“Isaac,” Luna said, her eyes glistening with wetness. “I am begging you, please do not mistake an act of desperation for an act of deceit. Don’t you see? I couldn’t just tell you everything right away without it sounding crazy; you needed to see it all for yourself.
“The attacks, the proof that we are indeed cut off from the rest of the realm, everything. And now that you know the truth of it all...”
I wasn’t mad. I could see where she was coming from and why she took the steps she did. I could just hear her now babbling away about some crazy wizard who was threatening to destroy her kingdom, and how he had effectively locked down their city so they could not teleport. In truth, I might have thought she was batshit crazy.
“Help us, and my entire kingdom will be indebted to you forever,” Luna said, her eyes still moist. “Walk away, and I will be powerless to stop you. The choice is yours.”
“We know it’s a lot to think about,” Trixy said. She came around the table and sat beside me. “You don’t have to decide now. Stay as long as you want, and take all the time you need.” She made a sharp slashing motion toward Cirro. “Have the servants prepare a guest room. Make sure it has the softest mattress, and the fluffiest pillows, and...”
“I’ll help you.”
“...make sure the wine shelves are stocked full, and... What?” She jerked her head back. “What did you—”
“I said I’ll do it,” I said with a shrug. “I have no fucking idea how I’m going to do it, but that’s never stopped me before.” Her bottom lip began quivering as her eyes pooled up like her mom’s. “Oh, come on, lightning bug. Did you really think I was going to leave you hanging? I wouldn’t have even come with Luna if my mind weren’t already made up.”
She squealed with joy and threw her arms around me. Luna was there in a flash to join in the group hug.
“Oh, but everything she just said still applies,” I called out to Cirro, who was already halfway out the door. “All of it, you hear me? Big room, fluffy pillows, and a stocked wine shelf. Seriously, don’t skimp on the wine!”
