Eli, Ormoc, and Liassus
Eli woke up to a warm fire, the back of his neck sore. He went to rub it -
“Don’t touch it.” A growl rang out. He turned his head. The red-haired woman had her eyes trained on him, sitting opened-legged on a fallen log with her sword on her waist. “Give it some time for it to settle.” She picked the petals of the lilacs and tried to throw them into the fire, though they'd flutter back and forth.
“Where am I?” Eli asked. He shot up, ignoring the pain. A sea of black trees surrounded them, shapes dancing among the bodies of the giant conifers, flared up at the tops, stretching imperiously into a starry night. It made the ground even darker.
Then, he remembered last night. “Pat!” His head flung around, hoping to see her, but there were only three people; the woman on the logs, an old man flanked by shadow, and him.
“Calm down.” She said. Before he could protest, Eli calmed down immediately. A soothing wave fell over him. “I have a question; how many people were in that house?”
“What do you mean?”
“That house you came from, was that your home?” The old man from the shadows appeared by the fire, his hands behind his back. He leaned forward to look at Eli, surveying him with curious eyes. “Was that your home? Do you live there?”
“I, uh…no. That was a vacation house we rented. I was on vacation with my fiancee.” He shook his head, and he felt something heavy, like a mass of flesh, lodged into his back. He wanted to reach for it, but something kept staying his hands. Was it the woman’s stare? “Why?”
The old man and the woman exchanged glances. “We think she may have been brought along with you, but why she wasn’t there…perhaps she's been sent somewhere else.” He ran his hands down the poor loops of his beard.
“Somewhere else? Like, what do you mean?”
“How comfortable are you with strange things? I don't know if revealing what happened is wise, but that is up to you and how you'll deal with it."
"I don't care about comfort. I want to know what's going on," Eli stressed. She grinned, though she didn't lock eyes. "Please, tell me."
"You’ve been summoned as part of a deal. I had thought it’d bring only you along, but it looks like you’re not the only one that came with it.” She glanced at the base of the mountain, its body peeking out from the tops of the trees. “I didn’t think it was going to bring your house with you. Or the trees, the soil, everything.”
“What do you mean ‘summoned’?” Eli asked.
She stopped playing with the lilacs. “My name is Liassus Ardal, and I’m the first princess of the Ardalian Empire. With me here is my compatriot and colleague, Ormoc Ihil, the genius behind deciphering the gate.” The old man, Ormoc, bowed. “You’ve been summoned for a simple reason: we need to know that the Elder gates worked, and….” Liassus beamed a beautiful, though ominous smile, “looks like it did.”
“Worked? For what?”
Liassus paused, her fingers swaying like those of a composer's, yet it was Ormoc who spoke. “We’re at war.” He tapped a small silvery blade on his waist, no more than a blacksmith's failed dagger, but a dagger nonetheless. “Her brother has unjustly usurped Queen Liassus, and in a battle for the reclamation of the throne of Ardal, we needed help. You, my good boy, are the help we need. What is your name?”
Help? Me? Eli thought. How could he have helped? “Uh, Eli. I’m sorry, but why me? What am I for?”
“You’re not done yet,” Liassus said. “But I need soldiers. Strong soldiers. You’re one of them. You will be tended to, trained, made ready to fight. I have few people I can trust, and I hope you will become one of them. And, well, the alternative is simple: I will make you someone I can trust, whether it's through magic or some other persuasion.”
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“What if I don't want to be a soldier?” Eli felt off about the proposition. He hadn't forgotten the kiss nor the pain. He also hadn't forgotten - though was too scared to mention - her words. You're mine. There didn't seem to be anything pleasant behind those words.
"You don't have much of a choice. Without the gates, you and your pretty girl are stuck here. Without our help, you'll be in foreign lands. But, you play the role I need you to play in helping me win my throne, and I will give you your place back. I will bring back this woman of yours, and together, hand-locked, you will both enter the gates home."
"So, where's Pat? Where is she?" He shuffled and hoped to catch a glimpse of fluttering tent, a flash of long hair or the quick steps of her feet. "Did you guys bring her?"
“Well, if the theory holds, your fiancee might also be in another place.” Ormoc scratched his head before walking over to his sleeping bag. “She might’ve been brought over as well, there are still a few things to figure out about how the Elders structure their platforms, but this is a good start. We know it works.”
“That it works? Works for what?”
Silence fell between the two of them. It was clear that both of them were figuring out how to break the information to Eli. Their fingers rapped on their swords as they did. “For war. You’re going to help us. I’m going to prepare you, and in return, we’ll send you back.”
Eli's eyes narrowed at the thought, “How do I know you’re not lying?”
“We've said this before - you don’t. But I don’t think you have much of a choice. Besides,” he looked at Liassus, “she’s good on her word. You’re in good hands with royalty." Darkness slid down Ormoc's gaunt face, the shadows running like ink. "We can always talk a little bit more about what this means tomorrow.”
“We can.” Liassus droned and then looked at Eli. “You should go back to sleep.”
“I don’t want to be a soldier - ”
“Sleep.”
He fell asleep immediately. Something washed over him as if the power had been sapped out of him. His eyelids, heavy, fell shut.
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Ormoc was already in his sleeping bag. Liassus remained sitting, her eyes fixated on the fire. “I’m not sure I like the idea of another one.” He kept his eyes up at the stars. “We’re lucky we got to this one, but another one? Somewhere out there?”
“Something of that magnitude…uncontrolled. I understand your worry, but even should Heaven abandon us, we can still catch her and keep her under control.” She frowned as she spoke, her hand gripping her sword even more tightly. "We've found one lion; he might be what we need to tame the other."
“Can we even keep this one under control? How long can your blood last?” Ormoc shot Eli's sleeping body a dirty glare. "The boy is too impetuous. Why didn't you bring over a full slave? Something that questions without concerns or thoughts?"
"If I cared enough to control the minds of my subjects, then I wouldn't have done what I did to you or any of the people under my charge." She glanced over at Eli. "And there's something I'd rather not lose; a man from another place, queer to us, a speaking and thinking being whose knowledge is so foreign that even the most basic things can seem exhilarating. Does it not exhilarate you in turn, Ormoc? Does it not tickle your sage's mind?"
"Alien bodies do not excite me. The very fact that it is alien worries me. I don't even know how different and strange or differently strange this creature is. Rather, it frightens me more than anything else." The faint howl of wolves in the distance drew his attention, though he turned back to Liassus almost immediately. "He is dangerous; you must know that. The amount of magic coursing through his body is something that needs to be accounted for."
"I will account for it." She tapped her sword, though Ormoc shook his head.
"You've already given him the ability to think freely; I can hardly say that's accounting for it."
She broke her gaze on the fire and looked at him with a reassuring smile. “I have my plans. He has his reasons. I want to ensure that we're compatible, that it works. I can't rule on indoctrination alone, but you mustn't worry. He isn't the only one with a deep well of magic, and I’ll die before it runs out.” She picked up a small twig and threw it into the blaze. “It doesn’t matter what comes out of that portal, and I’m not scared of it. I’m glad we didn’t get a dragon. Just a house and some rodents, it looks like. I’m not scared of some devil's vermin.”
Ormoc shrugged. “I guess that’s true. I hope it’s only two of them, that gives us some time.”
Ormoc didn't sleep; he just laid there, quiet. Liassus kept watch as the flames went out, a song of leaves in the night surrounding them. They could hear the foreign squawking of otherworldly fowl. The portal did indeed bring over something else, but what did it matter? Even with the tinge of magic, a crow is a crow. None of it mattered, just another note in the forest.
That was the idea. However, some eyes reflected the dim light of a new, virgin moon. Like the rafts already wading in the still waters at the balcony, the scratching of beaks and fangs upon unsuspecting flesh, or the scurry and squeaking of wings and claws alike, there was a deluge. Native animals heard the chirping of new things everywhere, the squeaks of tiny beasts and the buzzing of stranger things filling the first cold night in weeks.
Even as they spoke, things were already swimming in the waters, swimming in the blood. Crowns of an intrepid few finding out a new world, and unlike Eli, they were not sleeping.
In the shadow of Ilma, something as old as anything anyone could remember, something new was coming.