The End of Bright Days

[Zadown]

Yes, I do remember that day. It was a long time ago, when I still could go out to the sunlight, when I still breathed, before the pact I made. It was a great day, yes, but not to our little group of travelling elves...

 

I was there, sitting in the roof of some human's house, I think it was the Count of Zanadin's; it was a warm day as most days in the Red Theocracy are and a gentle breeze blew from the sea. There was Avianne (oh, sweet Avianne), Remonar, many others and I - most of the faces are lost in time, and I cannot recall them. We just idled away our time, looking outward to the sea and at the Three Ships (as they were already known back then, even before the blessing) and soaked the warmth of the sun. Young and happy we were, then - and I envy those spectres of the past that remain trapped in that one moment. For the road I back then saw as a bright one turned out to be a darker than I could've imagined ...

 

The crowds of humans gathered in the streets and piers of the harbour of Zanadin, none of them having as good seats for the upcoming spectacle as us - only the best for us elves, as always. We drank some wine and watched the humans watching the priests do nothing. There were some pilgrims in the crowd, we saw, and although we had seen most of our small world in our travels, we stared at the few barbarians from the Phoenix Island and made crude jests about them, safe in our high haven. We laughed at the obvious discomfort of the pair of Aefian knights in ceremonial plate, their gear unsuitable for the heat, we probed at the spell-protections of a couple of old-looking mages obviously from Tyourun with our small and weak cantrips (yes, we were young and foolish to do so) and had generally had a good time. The sun climbed higher in the sky and the interval between our jests grew, as we lay there feeling drowsy in the spring heat.

 

After a long time, something started to happen finally near the ships. The many-voiced chant, created especially for the occasion, sung by both priests of the Maiden of the Sea, Uuvel, and the Raven of the Sky, Raaver, reached even our ears, faintly at first and then growing in intensity as the crowd grew silent. The breeze grew with the chant and banished the heat, and we shouted in glee as the wind picked up Ghemerna's hat and carried it away to the sea. After that, however, the feeling of power in the air, the still feeling you get only when near great magic, before storms or in the presence of deities, got to us, too, and we fell silent and listened to the chant, fully aware that this would be the first and the last time to hear it and to store it to memory as a worthy experience.

 

And it was good that we fell silent - jests would have spoiled the events that followed. First, clouds raced across the sky, and waves arose from the sea, twisting into unnatural forms. A single loud screech pierced the chant and the low hum of the wind, and as we looked to the sky, we saw what we had expected to see: Raaver flew through the clouds, high above the city and the harbour. At the same time, Uuvel arose from the sea, magnificent in her glory, carried by the waves. Our mood shifted quickly - even though none of this concerned us and those weren't our gods, we couldn't remain aloof and distant at the presence of such forces. The weather turned almost cold and the wind moaned, and we felt awe and a shard of fear for the power that was manifesting itself. Surely we elves were superior in every way to the humans and their brief lives, but they had their gods to protect them. For me, at least, that was the day when I realized that truth.

 

Still, we watched the event, and it proceeded as is written in the books of history: the Three Ships were blessed, the sacrifice was made and the alliance between the two gods was finished and broken. We sat through it, silent and contemplative, going through a mixture of emotions, felt strongly as only the young can feel them, mostly the same shades of awe and fear that the deities first enchanted us with. Now, I think those emotions were the first touch of Fate - without them, the evening wouldn't have unfolded as it did, and we would have escaped the jaws of tragedy; and I would be happily dead now, instead of telling this story.

 

The blessing of the ships ended and the deities vanished, swiftly and without the show of power they had appeared, dismayed by the end of their alliance (and already plotting against each other, as the future would show). We sat there, still silent for a while, watching the blessed ships float in the again calm harbour water, not daring to say anything yet. But soon the returning warmth of the sun made everything that had just happened seem like a divination gone wrong, a nightmare, and smiles returned to our faces; somebody spoke, we laughed cheerfully, and that broke the spell. So, we climbed nimbly from the roof, Avianne levitating down and teasing us others for our slowness, and we set forth to see the city better before our troupe of elves would continue its endless journey chasing its own tail across the world. The shadows set inside us by the show of power hadn't died quite yet, though, and instead of walking through the rich parts of the city as we usually did in strange places we steered our course to the parts where the less fortunate humans lived. Nobody said a word about it, and we didn't worry. We had the immortality of the young, and the world held no true terrors for us: we were invincible and drunk with our superiority compared to the lesser humanoids. And that was our downfall that night.

[Zadown]

First, everything was as it should be, fine, glorious and enchanted. We went to a tavern and drank some more, continuing what we started with the wine earlier, and we were thrilled by all that we saw: shady figures talking in corners with hoods over their faces, hard-looking mercenaries quaffing ale with the efficiency of a professional drinker, ladies of negotiable affection walking around in their revealing clothes. Zanadin's nightlife breathed in and out - it inhaled money, innocence and youth, and exhaled corruption and blood. But we didn't see that then: we had our fun there, ignoring the tavern regulars and their stares, the not-too-subtle signs that we weren't wanted, the loud mutterings. Big disasters are often heralded by their smaller cousins, and so it was that time, too. Remonar had had one or two more than the rest of us, and incited by the drink, he decided not to ignore one particularly loud comment about our party. He rose from the table, ignoring our pleas to stay seated, and walked to the bully who had belched something about elves being too frail for these neighbourhoods. The fight was brutal and short. We all had grown accustomed to having superior equipment and the aid of spells in battle, both of which weren't available in a drunken brawl. If Remonar would've been there alone, he would've met with even crueller fate, I know now. Then, we didn't think of such things, we were just alarmed and dismayed when he fell to the floor, bleeding and his nose broken and rushed to heal him. Avianne, more skilled in magic than the rest of us, quickly chanted a minor incantation and healed the wound with one gentle touch, and we then wisely decided to leave the tavern. But the damage was already done - our façade of invulnerability was cracked, both to us and to all who had been there in the tavern watching the brief brawl.

 

So, when we continued our journey, seeking another tavern, the bitter taste of fear tainted our mood. The shadows seemed to move, and I almost suggested that we should leave this region of the city and move back to our camp in one of the parks, but I didn't wish to show cowardice in front of the others. We were bound together, a stack of twigs adrift on the river of Fate. And the shadows did move, indeed. For the denizens of this place smelled our fear, sensed our vulnerability, saw our gold and silver jewellery glittering in the darkening evening, in the lamplights. They did not reveal themselves at once: they knew us better than we did, and they knew that we would go deeper in their lair, that we would travel to the heart of the darkness. It shone in the eyes of Remonar, who lead us. Mere humans had humiliated him, and now anger banished all terror from him. He walked with purposeful steps, swaying slightly, a hand on the handle of his rapier. He was the first to fall.

 

I remember that horrible moment even now, beyond the borders of life, as clearly as it had just happened: Remonar taking another one of his long steps and turning to look back at us, about to say something witty as was his habit, Avianne looking around, clearly feeling uneasy, me half-immersed in some philosophical thought. The bolt of a crossbow first wasn't there, then it was, jutting out of Remonar's neck, ugly and deadly, and he made a cry or more like a whimper. Time froze. Even though we were drunk, we still were elves, and our battle reflexes took mercifully over at once and thus postponed the reality of a friend's death for until it was all over. Avianne chanted an incantation, and a light flared in her hand, showing us the assailants: four thieves, all from the tavern we had just left. The magical light shone on their weapons and we saw the spark of greed and lust for violence in their small human eyes. Never before we had fought against humans - we had always thought they were inferior, as orcs, but relatively harmless. The shock of them attacking us was great, even in that part of the city, even after the brawl Remonar had lost, even though we all had feared something like this to happen in these shadowy streets. That shock hit me the worst, I think, since I had always been the poet, the philosopher, the romantic, and while that moment shattered my naiveté and halted me where I stood, the other reacted better. Ghemerna drew his bastardsword, made by the dwarves of the Serpent's Tooth and baptized in the blood of the orcs of the Black Mountains, and charged on, ever the courageous one. Jhella, I think her name was, faded in the shadows by the help of her cloak and readied her dagger before vanishing from sight, and the last elf of our party whose name I've lost to time also readied himself for combat. I just stood there, holding the hilt of my rapier, still in scabbard, overcome by the sheer speed and brutality of the events. The next few seconds were a blur for me: a noise of steel on steel, the colour of Avianna's hair in the eerie glow of the magic light, a human's cry as Ghemerna's superior blade bit flesh, the smell of the street.

 

Then my personal world truly ended, and now that I think back to that moment I can almost hear the heavy noise of Fate's lead coin, falling the wrong side up on the table up there where gods play their games on us mortals. In the glow emanating from Avianna's hand she was a well-illuminated target, and blind to the night by her own spell. She didn't see him coming, but I did. And I failed the test, miserably: I could've thrown my daggers, charged with my rapier, used my then minor magic, done something. I have seen that moment in my dreams and nightmares countless of times, every time cursing powerlessly that wasted opportunity to save her. But all I did was a shouted warning, delayed and mixed in the other noises of the battle, and a few steps closer to her, slow and clumsy. She turned to look at me, beautiful to the last - and the spear pierced through her spells of protection woven into her shirt and struck her in the stomach so hard it came out on the other side, and she was dead at once, impaled as some filthy vermin. That sight unlocked me in that battle and drove me into a berserk fury, far too late, feeling hopeless and broken under the rush of revenging anger. I spoke the word of command of my emerald amulet and a jet of green flames roared through the intervening air at the killer, who fell down, only to receive blow upon blow upon blow from my rapier. Around me, the noises of the battle died down, all the attackers slain or chased away by our elven might, but I didn't notice. My rapier broke, and still I struck the man, cursing his short life, cursing this evening and most of all, cursing myself for not being able to save Avianna. Blood soiled my clothes, but I kept hammering at that hapless former thief, tearing, stabbing, cutting, ignoring the outside world hoping that it would all be just a terrible nightmare from which I could wake up if I'd ignore it enough. Eventually, my survived friends pulled me off his corpse, and the hopelessness surged in me, and darkness claimed me.

 

Next day, I took the first step on my new road, and changed my allegiance to the Guild of Death. And since then, that has been the road I've been walking, the road of death in memory of a death long ago, before and after the pact. Countless have been my kills in her memory, but they don't bring her back...