The young elf looked up from her work when
she heard the taunts. It seemed as though the half-breed had found himself once
more in the wrong place at the wrong time and was now being tortured by the
other elves, yet again. She sighed heavily and lowered her head back to the
un-fletched arrows in her lap. When would he ever learn. . .
The mysterious half dark elf had come
with his full-elf mother only a few years ago, and had quickly made many
enemies. His existence had been somewhat tolerable until his mother was killed
when giants attacked the sheltered grove where the elves made their home, but
after her death, the dark skinned male had found little peace from the jeers
and threats made towards him. He had only been allowed to stay in Ervingallin
because of his mother’s reputation with the elders of the tribe.
The details on his conception and birth
were nothing more than rumors passed around by those trying to stay awake on
sentry duty, but it was common knowledge that Theanna, the half-elf’s mother,
had been captured when dark elves attacked the peaceful woods many years ago,
only to return with the strange child and refusing to speak nothing of her
history with the dark elves.
The elf maiden looked up from her
fletching again as the acrid scent of smoke tickled her nose. It was coming
from the trees on the other side of the clearing where the males had chased the
half-elf. She debated on getting the elders, but knew they were tired of
dealing with the unending bullying of the dark one. Another, heavier, sigh left
her chest as she bundled up her arrows and tossed them into the hollow at the
base of her tree. She quickly scaled the side of the tree to her sleeping
hollow and grabbed the lavender steal sword hanging on a branch near the entrance,
and then swung down to land softly on the mossy ground. It’s only a matter of time before that fool gets himself killed,
she thought to herself as she jogged lightly towards the source of the smoke. Why hasn’t he left already like any smart
elf would?
She caught up with the others at Herald’s
Tear Pond, where three elf lads circled a light body covered in a dark robe.
The oldest of the trio was holding a crude club formed from a tree root and
waving it threateningly at the dark shape. “You know it’s time for you to be
leaving this place and finding the filthy caverns where your father lives,” he
growled. “You know you won’t last much longer up here on the surface,
especially if you keep this thieving up!” With the last sentence, He jabbed the
club into the half-elf’s stomach, forcing him backwards a step.
The dark one clenched his fists and
glared with at his tormentors with the rich brown eyes so common among the
surface elves. “I took nothing of yours, nor would I leave so obvious a trail!
You may not consider me an equal, but I am surely not as stupid as you
believe,” he growled.
His show of courage and logic in such a
dangerous position clearly did not affect the brash young elves. Another slug
from the club brought the fierce half-elf to his knees, but his piercing glare
never faltered. A flicker of light on the dark skin of his hand caught the
maiden’s attention. She saw a tiny flame dancing there that no one seemed aware
of but her. She never would have even noticed it if not for the smell which
touched her sensitive nose. The others must have been too involved in their
cause to notice how dangerous the situation was rapidly becoming.
Not one to sit around and let her home
burn to the ground, the female softly murmured a spell and watched as a tendril
of water reached up and gently extinguished the flame. At the touch of the
water on his hand, the dark-skinned elf turned suddenly to face her and said,
“Oh, so you’re in one it too now. Why am I not surprised?”
“I am not with them, as a matter of fact,
Skitsora,” she rose from where she had been kneeling by the water’s edge. “I
was merely preventing you from burning the entire forest down.
“I was in complete control!” he shouted
at her, temporarily forgetting the others. His anger brought a larger flame to
life in his palm. However, a quick bash across the back of his head from the
lad holding the club sent the half-elf tumbling into the water where the fire
was once again extinguished.
For a moment, it seemed as though
Skitsora would be content just to sit and stare blankly up at the elves, but
that was not to be the case. His brown eyes seemed to shine with anger as his
signature glare reappeared on his face tenfold. A primal roar erupted from his
throat and a loud whoosh swept
through the clearing followed by a blast of heat as every tree in sight burst
into flames. She stood near the water completely stunned as animals cried out and
her own people began bolting; mothers to their children, scholars to their
scrolls, and spell casters to the flames themselves.
She stood frozen, unable to believe the
extent of Skitsora’s power, until she felt rough hands grab her arm and pull her
into the water just as a crackling branch fell where she had been standing.
“Wake up, Aricka! You know, for a healer you can be very stupid sometimes,” the
calm voice of the fire-starter himself, along with the cool water, brought her to
her senses.
“You. . . you did this. . . all of this. .
.” she stammered. The cool water seeping through her clothes and the heat from
the fire against her exposed flesh created a stark contrast both painful and
soothing as her mind raced to escape the shock of what had happened. Aricka
barely resisted as he slid a damp cloth over her mouth and nose to filter out
the smoke.
“Yeah,” he said weakly. “I guess I did.
The pair floated in the middle of the
pond, well away from the burning trees until finally the fire had died down
enough for elves to enter the clearing surrounding Herald’s Tear and finish
dousing the flames. Skitsora and Aricka were pulled from the water, dried off,
and checked for burns by one of the minor healers in the tribe. Just as the
healer was handing a cup of warm tea to Aricka to help with shock, the bear
skin covering the entrance to the hollow was thrown open and four elders stormed
inside.
“Skitsora!” demanded Argen, the oldest of
the group. “You must come with us at once, or face immediate death.
Skitsora, who was still shaky from the
massive spell he had cast barely had time to utter the word “why” before he was
pulled to his feat and dragged from the hollow by two strong hunters. He barely
put up a fight even as the hunters leapt from the tree and landed awkwardly,
twisting the knee of their shared burden.
“Hmm, I wonder what they could be taking
him so roughly for,” The healer woman mused. “AS far as I know, his only crime
was being born with a darker color of skin.”
The maiden knew all too well what the
half-elf was being taken for, and she spilled the cup of tea she had been
balancing on one knee as she stood and walked calmly out the door, not even
turning to acknowledge the healers noise of dismay as she regarded the spilled
liquid.
When Aricka reached the central clearing
of the woods, which still smelled of smoke from the singed trees on its
northern edge, she saw that the hunters were still holding onto Skitsora’s arms
roughly as te elders spoke to one of the lads who had been tormenting him
before the fire. “You’re sure this fire was the fault of the dark-skinned one,
Dronjeihm?” a fair-haired elder asked the young elf.
“Yes, it was him. A fire kept igniting in
his hand while we were talking to him, and then he became extremely angry and
the entire clearing caught fire,” he said looking the elder in the eye.
“He was provoked!” She was surprised by
the strength of her own voice echoing through the silent clearing. “Skitsora
was being tormented by Dronjeihm and his allies, Grollen and Oakleaf.”
“Is this true?” the elder asked as he
turned his attention back to the now nervous lad. “Did you and the other two
indeed provoke Skitsora?”
“Well, he stole Grollen’s hunting knife.
We found it sticking out of the base of his tree when we were looking for it,”
the young elf looked at the tops of his shoes as he spoke.
“He’s lying,” Skitsora’s voice cut in
before the elder could speak. “I took nothing. I’ve never taken anything from anyone.
Besides, if I even wanted to steal his knife, I wouldn’t have left it out in
the open. Just because my skin is darker than yours doesn’t mean I am more
stupid or evil than you.”
The elders asked a few more questions
before gathering to converse among themselves. Aricka heard only a few snatches
or language as she waited nervously near Dronjeihm. She knew that she had taken
a risk in speaking up at a meeting she was never supposed to be at, but she
also knew in her heart that what she had done was right. Skitsora had been
provoked and wrongfully accused by the lads. Granted, he had no reason to
destroy so much life in the peaceful existence of Ervingallin, but he need not
be charged with setting the fire unprovoked. Besides, she knew that the penalty
of lying to the elders about petty theft would find the half-elf’s tormentors a
punishment much less desirable.
After several tense moments, the elders
turned back to the accused, the accuser, and the uninvited guest. The head
elder, Kurina, stepped forward from the group and said to Dronjeihm, “Skitsora’s
intelligence is common knowledge, so it is unlikely he stole this knife you
seem to value so greatly, and though a knife owned by one so young as Grollen
must surely be truly valuable, it would appear as though you have found the
lost thing and therefore, there is no trouble concerning that.” The other
elders chuckled softly as Kurina continued speaking, her own voice tinged with
humor. “However, we cannot allow the destruction of any part of our precious
grove to go unpunished,” her voice grew serious as she turned her gleaming blue
eyes to Skitsora. ”We have given you shelter and a place to call home for years
even after the death of your mother. We have ensured that no trouble come to
the son of one of our finest warriors. However, your actions have become
increasingly unpredictable, and no one in this tribe has the experience needed
to train one such as yourself. Therefore, we have decided that it is time for
you to move on and find a better place to call home. Somewhere you may cause
less harm for others as well as yourself.”
Skitsora’s dark face seemed to almost
pale as the elder finished speaking. Though no words escaped the tight line of
his lips, his emotions were easy enough to see. Anger and pain danced across
his eyes as he struggled not to speak his mind and find himself with an even
worse penalty, though he could not see how anything could be worse than being
banished from the only home he remember.
“You will be given traveling supplies and
escorted to the edge of Ervingallin at dawn’s first light. After that, if you
are seen within the boundaries of our tribe, our warriors will suffer no ill
fate for killing you on sight. Do we have an understanding?” Kurina finished.
Aricka watched in dismay as the dark head
of Skitsora bobbed once in a determined nod. She opened her mouth to defend him
once more but received sharp looks from both the half-elf and many of the
elders which silenced all complaints she had been about to speak.
The young elf maiden was kept awake by
the anger boiling in her veins brought by the unfair banishment of Skitsora.
Though she had never had a real friendship with the dark skinned elf, she felt
strongly about justice, and knew from the looks on the elders’ faces that the
fire was merely an excuse to banish him. They didn’t want to keep protecting
Skitsora from would-be attackers who hated him simply for the dark color of his
skin.
Her anger came from more than just a
strong desire for justice. She also knew of the passion and devotion the
strange elf was capable of. She had often found him shooting arrow after arrow
at a target, casting pointless spells over and over, or performing precarious
routines with knives, swords, axes, anything he could get his hands on it
seemed, when she was out gathering feathers for fletching or components for her
spells. She knew that the few things that brought peace to the troubled elf’s
mind were also the few things he could spend hours meditating over. Others, who
despised the color of Skitsora’s skin, would find such activities suspicious,
and devise some story that he was practicing such skills as a way to defeat the
elves of Ervingallin when his darker family decided to attack again.
Aricka was not one to believe such
nonsense. She had found that her isolated tribe was quite judgmental of things
they knew little of; things like Skitsora and his skills. Her two decades of
life had supplied her with all she needed to know about her homeland, and ten
years of knowing Skitsora had supplied her with all she needed to know about
the dark skinned one.
The rising sun shed light on an elf
dressed for travel with a light pack strapped to her back, a bow and quiver of
arrows slung over her slender shoulders, and a pale purple blade hanging at her
hip.
Slipping out of the small village was easy
for the other elves were used to seeing Aricka going out to explore the forest.
She had been taken in by one of the most respectable healers the tribe had ever
known after her mother died on a trip to the human settlement of Felslora, and
her grief-stricken father disappeared, abandoning the couple’s young child.
Growing up under the care of Gradelva had taught Aricka many things about magic
and how to use it for healing, and the many trips she had made with her mentor
outside the camp and into the surrounding woods where they spent weeks camping
and studying the animals and herbs that could be used for medicines had given
her a chance to see much more in her 20 years than even some of the elders had
in their sheltered lives, for few had ever ventured far from their little
village in the woods, and even fewer had made a habit of it.
The brown-haired elf was waiting in a tree
above the main road leading from Ervingallin when Skitsora was escorted out of
the village. She could almost feel the anger rolling off his mind in waves as
one of the warriors tossed him a pack. His dark eyes shot a penetrating glare
at the elf who had handed him the pack, which only received him a rough shove.
“Don’t you even think of returning to Ervingallin with any of your dark elf kin
to destroy the rest of our home. If
you do, we will kill you first in a way that will make even the evilest of dark
elves think twice of ever coming to the surface again!”
Skitsora glared once more before spinning
around to leave behind the most accepting home he had ever known.
Aricka followed the dark-skinned elf’s
path from the treetops as he walked, stopping only to gather food and rest when
it became too dark to see where his next foot would fall. She soon found herself
regretting her urgency to pack when her supply of dried berries and jerky ran
out, leaving her to find food and follow Skitsora at the same time, which
proved difficult due to his fast pace. Never the less, all went relatively
smoothly for the first four days.
She watched from the branches of a tall
oak as Skitsora built a small fire and started roasting a small squirrel he had
caught while walking earlier that day. She jammed her pack against the trunk of
the tree and lay back as he did the same on the ground almost a hundred feet
below. Sleep was just starting to cloud her mind when a deep growl came from a
few braches below her. Suddenly alert, she grabbed for her bow and aimed an
arrow downward, searching for the source of the growl. For several moments,
everything was still and silent. Suddenly, a movement in the darkness caught
her eye, and a dark silhouette became visible. A giant tree cat; one of the
fiercest creatures of the Northern woods.
The animal was crouched on a branch about
thirty feet below the Aricka. The cat was waiting to pounce on Skitsora, who
lay sleeping, unaware of the danger so many feet above him. Aricka could see
the outline of his dark face in the light of the dying coals from his fire. Aricka
tensed and drew back her arrow, but she was too late. The big cat pounced...
A great yowl belonging to some kind of giant
creature woke Skitsora. He bolted to his feet and drew his sword as a huge body
crashed through the branches above his head and fell into the tiny clearing
where he had made camp. The cat landed roughly on the ground before getting
shakily to its feet. It staggered slowly towards the elf, but Skitsora was on
the beast before it could go more than a few steps. He made work work of
slicing the cat’s throat with a well-aimed slash of his blade. Once the cat’s
final twitches had ceased, he knelt to examine his kill. There was an arrow protruding
from the tree cat’s back. The feathers on the end of the arrows shaft were died
a pale purple. Even though the true color of the feathers was obscured,
Skitsora knew they were from a snowy owl. That was the only one elf who would
go through the trouble of finding the white feathers of the owl and dying them
before fletching them just so. He had never met another elf so obsessed with
something so insignificant.
“Alright, Aricka. You can come out now,”
he called to the trees.
The braches rustled for several moments
before the silhouette of Aricka appeared. “Why are you following me?” Skitsora
asked her calmly.
“I wanted to get out of there,” she
replied just as calmly. “Besides. It would seem that you needed someone to
watch your back. You were sleeping so heavily, if I hadn’t of wounded that cat
for you, you’d be nothing but bones and drying blood by now.”
Two dark eyes seemed to shoot razor-sharp
arrows at her as she chuckled. “I would have been just fine. And why would you
want to leave? You were on your way to being the next great healer.”
“Among a herd of elves as stupid as the
cows humans like.” Skitsora looked stunned at the comparison.
“You’re going to have to go back,” he said
firmly.
“Oh?”
“Yes. I don’t want you with me, so you’ll
have to go back.”
“Says who? No one owns these woods and
honestly, the last thing I need is to hear that you got yourself killed because
I wasn’t there to wound all the monsters that want dark elf for dinner.”
With one final glare, Skitsora turned away
angrily and swung his supplies onto one shoulder before trudging away into the
darkness. “You know, I’ll just follow you until you let me travel with you,”
Aricka said just before he stepped from the light of the coals she was coaxing
back to life.
Skitsora paused. There would be no
shaking this determined elf. Someone who could spend so much time doting over
the fletching on her arrows would never falter in her quest to join a half dark
elf. Too much adventure and excitement were promised in the journey. Frustrated
with himself for giving in so easily, he threw his pack back on the ground and leaned
back against it. The unlikely pair fell into an uneasy slumber with hardly
another word shared between them.
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