The Woodsman: Chapter Seven

 They hid together.

Four dark elves, all of them male, wandered around their camp. They spoke in the dark elf tongue, which he did not understand; the lyrical and wisping words had this darkly beautiful quality, reminding him of the sounds shadows would make if they could speak.

Ophelia’s eyes edged full of panic, and they darted around the scene from figure to figure.

He kept a reassuring hand on her was all he could do.

The elves were armed and armored, with the black scale and ring mail common to their kind, designed less for protection but complete silence, yet the black, unholy metals were still alien and stronger than dwarven steel. Swords and weapons were drawn among all of them, the wickedly curved and styles longswords still straight, but with cuts and curves inside the blades to make them look more like fancy fish skinning knives than swords, and the steel was marbled with that same black metal in hypnotizing, darkly beautiful patterns along the lengths of the blades.

He saw those blades slice a man’s arm off as if it was just air the weapon cut through.

One of them seems the leader, the one wearing the cloaked tunic, and his voice seems the angriest of the lot. His words hissed and spat with a ferocity of an angry swath of darkness, like a morning shadow cursing the sun as it slowly shrunk and faded away, not wishing to give up the cold night. He wore his hair long, but the sides were tied together behind his head in a tail that overlaid his slightly more extended than shoulder-length hair.

A fifth figure emerged from the far woods, moving silently, and descending upon the others like a ghost. This one wore no armor but a long black leather coat with metal rings interwoven into the elven leather armor. The dark elf was strangely bald, except for a stark white mohawk that ran to his back and ended in a long, waist-long braid. Just looking at this man gave him a deep sense of dread, as if he had somehow laid eyes upon the seeking figure of Death himself.

The bald one moved to the leader, grabbed his chin, and shoved the dark elf against a tree with darkly threatening ire. His face, starkly accented by the bare skin on the sides of his head and his long ears, twisted into a leather-like grasp of anger with the wrinkles running deep across his features.

His language surprisingly shifted to human.

“We speak the language of the gutter humans when hunting them, Tal ’Aisle!”

So, the leader was named Tal ’Aisle? Fact noted. The mohawk-wearing one could push his weight around meant he had some higher station than even the leader of the soldiers, who all flashed the confrontation a quick look but went back to searching the camp for them.

Tal ’Aisle spat back. “Why do we speak the language of bastards and filthy whores, Darigoth?”

A wicked smile crossed the taller one’s, apparently Darigoth’s, face. “To be inside their heads, hunt them all the better, know them as they die, and savor their final words and death throes. Murdering them, and tasting those final words, is the frosting upon the cake, Tal ’Aisle.”

Darigoth let Tal ’Aisle go with a sneer and sadistic smile deeply etched into his face as if the look had resided upon it thousands of times before. The deep lines in his skin look cut in, almost as if a leather-cutting tool has been used to permanently mark a leering wicked grin on the dark elf’s face.

Darigoth turned towards the cart of his dead friends and sighed. “I thought I told your men to leave some of them alive? I needed a few captives to bring to my underground lab so I may experiment upon them.”

Tal ’Aisle leered at the tall one. “The only good human is a dead one. Even the women and children. Best not to let them breed. They grow like mold, and they ruin all they touch.”

“Still,” Darigoth smiled as he inspected the corpses’ faces with a sick fascination, “they are life. And life has uses in studying death. I like to study things as they die. Slowly. They give me great insight into the magic of undeath.”

Ophelia grabbed his leg so hard he almost jumped. So, this was the one who nearly killed her with death magic? He seemed like the sick sort of bastard who would. The fact that he studied his dead friends’ faces and sought enjoyment out of the pain and suffering frozen on their faces turned his stomach.

I have a special place for you in the green hell of the deep woods, you sick son of a bitch.

Your name and face are noted. You may be vastly more powerful than I, but everything dies, even you, as your words say.

The hunt begins.

Every dark elf, even the soldiers, felt way more potent than him, and he had no doubt their speed and deadly grace would mean his quick and sudden end in one-on-one combat. Tal ’Aisle, the leader, seemed an exceptional swordsman, and the death mage felt especially frightening if his magic could overcome a powerful spellcaster such as Ophelia.

But mark my words, one by one, you shall all die.

Even trees alive for thousands of years die when an ax is swung into the wood enough to make it fall. Such is the way of nature and man.

A dark elf soldier returned with Ophelia’s clothes and presented them to Tal ‘Aisle. The master swordsman’s face twisted into anger and shock as he hissed words in dark elf at the stoic soldier.

Darigoth wore a nefarious smile as he walked over, grabbed the dress, and ran it through his fingers.

“She must be sleeping with this man,” he said with a sick grin. “Does it bother you your bloodline is so impure that your flesh and blood would be screwing a human man? Such a disgrace, Tal ‘Aisle.”

He threw the dress on the ground and turned away. “I always knew your sister was a whore.”

Ophelia started trembling in anger, and he squeezed her shoulder to calm her. She turned to him, violet eyes flaring anger upon her features which gave him a chill but also seemed darkly appealing to him in a strange fascination with the woman.

She was beautiful, even when angry.

He mouthed the words to her, “I know. I know. But wait.”

She nodded and blinked slowly as if she had plans for her brother, and he bit his lip, knowing the pain she must be feeling.

The dark elves searched their things some more, and he watched as Tal ‘Aisle inspected his woodsman’s ax he left embedded in a stump with a dismissive sneer. He bit his lip and shook his head; a blade is still a blade, swordsman, and you may be staring at the ax-head of that weapon as it is embedded in your bleeding heart. No matter how dark and twisted, all trees can be cut down.

“Come!” Darigoth said. “We have seen enough. We have a second group to track, and since this one is so attached to his dead friends, they will not move very far tomorrow. If we get moving, we can catch the others at the bend in the road at Grave Hill, and these two will do our work for us and step right into our trap.”

Tyler’s eyes narrowed. A second group? There were others out here? He nudged Ophelia.

She nodded but kept staring at the group of dark elves until they melted away into the forest. She kept staring for a good long while before she spoke. She collapsed against the tree, too spent to care, her eyes closed and a tear running down her dusky blue cheek, which he wiped away.

“The others are exiles from my church.”

“You were a part of their group?”

She nodded.

He glanced down at his boots, staring at the wet carpet of leaves underneath them, keeping his voice a whisper as if every shadow were a killer.

“Where were you going?”

She opened her eyes, staring into his, her face wearing a look of lost hope.

“To the Waystones.”

“What are those? I have never heard-“

She managed a sad smile. “Ancient portal stones scattered around the world. Linked to each other upon the ley lines of magic that cross every land. Built by the Ancient Gray Elven tribes.”

He furrowed his brow and blinked. He has never even heard of a Gray Elf. The capital has stonework depicting the ancient elves, but he always thought those were elves and nothing special. Just the usual sort of reverence for those who came before and walked the path of the world in an earlier time.

He lowered his brow as he remembered his mother taking him to the capital’s Grand Library and pointing out the figures which decorated the buildings’ friezes. His mother was always interested in legends and fairy tales, but he never really thought they were real.

Just a thing that mothers tell their children.

“And someone in your group can operate, these Waystones? Do you have someone that can make them work? To take your people to safety?”

She nodded and managed a weak smile.

“There are those among us where the blood of the Gray Elves runs strong through our families. The runes and their writings make sense to a very few elves, no matter the kin. In dark elven society, in the practice of magic, they hide these runes in the books we use to learn. Those who stumble across them are singled out, either to be killed by the Cults of Death or to be brought into the Church of Magic.”

He nodded. “So, you have someone with your group with this bloodline? Someone who can operate the stones?”

She lowered her eyes a moment and blinked, and the look told him the words he already knew.

“I am the only one who knows how.”