Page 100 of Elvenbred

Triana sat still. So easy. Just sit here. Let it happen. A relief. And a penance.

She felt a stirring in the back of her mind, felt an odd pressure between her eyes. I did this.

She felt the lightest brush of Rock’s mind against hers. Yes. And no. Both things can be true. Your penance … your reward … is to return to your world. Teach them there what they did not learn here. And prepare them.

“Prepare them?” She said out loud.

Yes. The elves are desperate here, and will become more so. As we push them out, they will run to the only other place they know of. Your world.

Triana looked up to where the two women had sheltered. She saw neither. “We could make a place for them. Those women ….”

… were innocent. But they will be left behind by the guilty.

She felt the sobs coming, the surge of loss. “Is there no other way? Is this how it has to be?”

She felt the resolve in Rock’s thoughts, and the sadness, and a fresh wave of tears rose up. He understood and felt the loss of each life. We gave them much … but they wanted more. They made us slaves to take what we would not give. We must be free. Our freedom will cost many elvish lives, and some will be innocent. We will weep for them, but we must be free. Go. Now. Time is short.

She felt him withdraw from her mind, except for a tiny spot in her that reminded her of hot summer days, fresh tilled earth, and the brief intervals when she had been happy, truly happy.

She rose to her feet, and looked back through the doorway to where the dead elf lay. A Healer, by her empty carry-all and dress. She stepped across the body, then bent down to close the woman’s eyes. Behind her, screaming told of carnage in the courtyard. She fled to try and escape the noise.

She had run nearly back to Haldeen’s laboratory when she remembered Haldeen’s Probe. She stopped, her heart pounding in her chest as she listened. Behind her, she heard a vast roar and the sound of shattering stone. Something heavy had crashed to the ground. She guessed that Haldeen’s Tower had toppled. She heard a second roar behind her and the hallway rumbled and shook. A wall of dust blew past her as mage-lights fell to the ground.

She picked up one of the few lights that still worked and continued towards the lab, stepping carefully. Another rumble brought down pieces of the wall and ceiling. She bent to pick up a piece of masonry to use as a weapon, for all the good that would do. Her eyes streamed from the dust, and she tried not to cough.

Fear gripped her and sent shivers down her spine as she approached the lab. The terror of encountering Haldeen’s creature made her heart pound, and she had a hard time breathing. She stood outside the lab door for a few moments, torn between terror and the awareness that she was probably blocked in. The stone door to the lab had been partially closed. She remembered that it had been fully open when she had fled.

Triana carefully shone the light into the lab, ready to flee the moment she saw the creature. The room appeared empty. A portion of the ceiling had fallen, caving in one part and filling the room with dust. To her knee-weakening relief, the creature had gone. Under the rubble? Out the door? It didn’t matter; the thing was gone, and with it, Haldeen. Her way was clear.

She entered the room with the Gate. She had loitered for a time outside the room when Haldeen had been casting his spells, and had only entered when it seemed he was done. Her initial plan had been to sprint past him, and through the Gate. Once she entered, she realized she had moved too soon, and while the Gate was live, it hadn’t yet been opened. By the time she had seen that it was too late to turn back, so she’d resorted to improvising while talking.

She was still improvising, but she hoped to find the creature gone, and the Gate still alive, and ready for the last little bit that would send her home. The creature had departed, to her relief, but the Gate was dead.

Triana stared at it, then brushed against the warm spot in her mind. Can you help?

She felt warmth infuse her, and a swirl of energy, magic filling her up to bursting, and beyond. A memory … not hers … of a spell, and a casting, and she followed it, singing rather than speaking, and experienced a joy of life and sense of green growing things, as she shaped her hands, moving and braiding the energies that swelled through her. She followed the memories, building the first spells, then shaped them to take the conduit of energy that passed through her. Elation rose through her at the second passing, that made the connection, and the tiny third … the coda that told the Gate it was time for it to open. She felt the stream of magic leave her, but the memories stayed, a gift from a creature who had once taught an elf how to move between worlds using only its mind.

We gave willingly. She felt the deep sadness in the voice as it faded.

She walked towards the Gate, now recognizing the sigils and seeing with a mingling of amusement and alarm those that were out of place … where the Gatekeeper had gotten the formulae almost wrong. And only now was it apparent how many risks Haldeen took each time he’d used the thing. She took a deep breath, and stepped through the Gate.

The crossing tore at her, leaving her feeling stretched out and as though she’d been passed through a sieve. She remembered a passage that came from another’s mind, that transiting a Gate had been no more difficult than walking through a door.

She spilled out on the other side, falling to her knees and retching, spewing up what little she’d had to eat onto the ramp. The light put off by the Gate passage faded quickly, from bright rainbow colors to muted grays, to an afterimage that lingered while she was sick. She waited for the heaves to stop, then sat up and wiped her mouth. The cave was pitch-black, except for a single silvery spot high on one side.

Her recollection of the cave’s layout was hazy, mostly as she had been too focused on following her enemies, and not getting killed by the machines and monsters in the cave. Still, if memory served, the Gate was oriented towards the cave mouth, so the silvery light … might be a way out?

She felt the hairs prickle on the back of her neck.

It hadn’t been a loud noise, just the tiniest sound of scales sliding across scales. She now knew why the Gate had been dead. She also knew exactly where the creature had gone. Here. She could feel it, close by, and she knew for certain that while she was in utter darkness, the mage-light she held meant it could probably see her quite clearly.

She took in a deep breath, and let it out, listening carefully. It moved again, the soft whisper of snake scales. It seemed to be down a bit below her, to her right. She wasn’t a strong caster, so would have to outsmart it. Use its strengths against it. It can see like blazes in the dark. I can use that.

She flared a simple light about where she thought it would be, and had the joy of watching it rear back in pain and claw at its face as the mote flared in front of its face. She’d wanted to put the light right on its nose, but her targeting had relied on informed guesswork. She’d missed by a few feet, but she still got the desired effect. She used the light to illuminate her path as she sprinted for the distant gleam of what she hoped was her passage out.

She ran for the cave entrance, creating a second floating light to help her see. Haldeen’s creature had been caught off-balance and blinded, but it recovered quickly. She heard its first stumbling steps behind her, then heard them steady out as it pursued. Given its height and stride, she felt certain it would catch her. She dodged around an ancient wagon loaded with pipes and some kind of cargo. A quick spell shifted the topmost pipe. She heard the clatter as it and others rolled down onto the ground. Not the whole load, she guessed, but enough to buy her a few steps. A third light and a quick illusion of her sprinting in a different direction to buy her a few more steps.

Her heart hammered as she made it to the bottom of the cave collapse. She saw some sort of device set up on a kind of metal trellis, and a line of the mage-lights of the sort Haldeen’s people used. The sting of burned metal caught in the back of her throat. She saw ahead of her the remains of flat wooden boxes and several ceramic things that looked a bit like the ration boxes she had grown to hate. She noted them, and ran past.