Ysolde

Member
Shadows pool around me hiding my form from the group of them on the road. Their torch light blinds their eyes and would keep them from seeing me even were I not so well hidden. I scan the emblems on their shields and the banner they carry and determine that they are exactly what I am hunting and have been hunting for a very long time.

Before I take my bow out my hand trails down my necklace and my fingers lightly touch the gem on the end. Her memories lie deep within, but I can’t see them because my magic was never strong enough to use a gem. Our lives together would originally have been limited to perhaps a thousand years before my memories tangled and my mind failed me. She took me anyway even though she might live ten times longer saying that she would always have a memory of me. I put the gem down the cruel and bitter irony that I live while she died, that our life together was barely a few decades before they destroyed it.

I put the gem down and now I pull out the bow and begin my attack. They fall one by one not even having a chance to scream before I put them down. I move to them and search through their things looking for information on where I might find more of them. I find documents, but I can’t read them their language was easy to learn to speak, but we never learned how to read their symbols. Still, I can follow their tracks back to where they came from.

I have tracked them back to this tower overlooking one of their box groves. Their race lives in this scattered assortment of boxes instead of in the forests. They know nothing of how to convince the trees to grow and provide food. They know nothing of how to take only what they need, but it is not the residents of the boxes that I hunt it is the people in the towers. They are the ones I remember their symbols are burned forever in my memory and tonight I will hunt them all.

Darkness falls and I make my way to the lower stones of the tower. Why they make them so easy to climb is beyond me, but I do not care it just makes my hunt easier. At the top I slide into the shadows and watch as the ones who would alert the others look out beyond the tower their eyes seeking the hunter, but not seeing her. I take the gem in my hand again whispering to her in silent words and then I put it down promising that I will live. My bow comes to my hand and arrows take out the watchers on the tower, then I move to the door. I push, but the door refuses to move. How they make dead wood stay still like this I do not know, but the solution is easy. I touch the dead wood and call to it gently waking the dormant spirit of the tree and asking it to help me. Green shoots grow and push seeking the soil and pushing the door open. The rocks shatter in loud pops and I move into the tower even as my prey begins to stir inside.

Two walk up the stairs of the tower in a rush and my arrows take them out. I move down the same stairs and begin my hunt in earnest even as the new tree assists me by destroying the tower in its desperate search for the soil. I go down stairs taking my prey one by one with my bow until I am out of arrows and then I pull out my knives even as I find a large group of them. “An Elf! Use a disjunction rod.”

The one who shouted has already pulled out a rod and I feel my connection with the growing tree end, but that was the entire limit of my power anyway. Others are pointing rods at me as well, but I am in their midst. My blades slide into gaps in their armor one after the next. Their attacks may as well be those of children as I dodge past them and slide my knives into place. Blood flies through the air and they die one by one until it is too much and the remaining prey begins to run. They are too slow, far too slow and I easily catch up. Done with this group I search for more, but the others are either dead or they have gone. I search through the remains of this place finding more documents that I do not truly understand. Nothing is in my language and so I collect my arrows and depart.

Outside the ruined tower I search for tracks. Sadly most go into the box grove and I know that there they will merge with the others of their kind and I will not find them. So, I head into the forest where I will make more arrows, hunt for food and when I am ready head back out.

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For hundreds of elven generations they lived peacefully in their forest cities. When their people met the dwarves it was an amicable exchange interesting metals and gems for wooden plants and magical embument of items. The elves lived in harmony with their forests though some did visit the Dwarves and a few clans even began to enjoy living in the stone places. It was these elves who created the gems, teh gems that allowed the elven people to truly live forever.

When an elf became of age they would bond their magic with a gem and thus store their memories. With this magic they lived even longer lives and so did their dwarven allies. Then a new people came the humans, but they lived away from the forests and away from the mines. Still barely an elven generation passed before the humans came to the forest home of the elves seeking their wood. At first the answer of no was accepted, but the humans also met the dwarves seeking their metal and gems. The answer of no there was less accepted especially when it came to gold.

The first war was between humans and dwarves, but the elven clans assisted their allies. The humans lost and lost badly. They licked their wounds for a breif blink of time barely a hundred years. The second war was between humans and elves in their surface forests. Again the humans lost their numbers not enough to overcome thousands of years of experience. Then something strange happened, the dwarves began to die. No new dwarves were born and their people became sick. In barely a span of fifty years every dwarf was gone. The elven people mourned their allies, but not for long because a third war began. This time the humans went into the dwarven caverns and the clans of elves living there were less able to stop them. A peace was signed, but not before all of the old dwarven lands were in human hands.

The fourth war was the last. The humans had learned from the past and had gained knowledge of the elven gems. Using secrets they had learned from the dwarven cities the humans created disjunction rods. These rods were able to shut down the elves connection to magic and their conection to their memory gem. When an elf with a memory gem was hit by the disjunction they would be rendered unconscious. With such a weapon in hand and numbers on their side the humans took the elven lands for their own and made the elven people who survived into their slaves.

Some elves survived, some still live in deep caves and in deep forests hiding away from the people who destroyed them and the dwarves. One elf though doesn't hide. She is on a quest of vengeance one that will take her through the human armies and all the way to the human king. Though perhaps her quest could be ended, perhaps there are elves and dwarves still out there, still left who can guide her away from the dark path she walks....

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So I'm working on this story....
 
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