Alma had walked along a narrow path through a thick brush of frozen trees going North for almost half an hour. Without realizing, at some point during those thirty minutes the forest had gone deathly silent. The usual songs of the birds were missing and a creeping stillness began to take hold.
"Well, shit. I better not be lost," she muttered. Her moist breath filled the air in front of her. "It should only be a couple more miles but I’m not gonna even see the damned outpost with all these trees in the way. And I am not gonna be late on my first fucking day."
She gave a quick look around, trying to look for any sign of human life. The early morning mist had cleared up just enough for her to make out a signpost a few feet ahead of her and if she focused her eyes hard enough, she could even see the outline of something perched on top of it. The sign was completely coated in an icy frost, making it almost illegible. Walking over, she scraped off what ice she could, causing the weirdly translucent figure to fly off into the ground. Alma stared transfixed at the solid patch of snow the ghostly creature had seemingly phased through, shrugged and then tried her best to decipher the sign in front of her. She continued scraping the sign clean with her nails but the bitter cold quickly caused her fingers to throb in a numbing pain.
"What’s wrong with me? I'm usually so good at navigating this forest..." Her voice trailed off.
The inner voice in her thoughts was suddenly booming. The unusual silence had made her remember a story she was once told by her grandmother, who had herself first heard it during her time living among the Eldon elfwin.
Alma's grandmother, who she affectionately called “grandhag,” was a wild vixen of a woman, who did a lot of traveling back in her younger days. Settling down with the elfwin of Eldon for a time, she had learned a lot about their culture and had picked up the odd folktale here and there.
The green elfwin from Eldon were an ancient subspecies of elfwin that settled in the northern outskirts of the region of Eldon a few millennia ago. They are among one of the oldest species of elf in all Sarracas, making up more than 60% of the elf population.
Eldon elfwin also tended to be the most superstitious. Having been around longer than most, they've stories for everything; from why the sky is pink to why water is wet. Particular though, are the stories of the things that go bump in the night. Ancient tales told of beings lurking in the shadows outside of the regular world, far older and far wiser than any man or god—primordial beings that occasionally creep their way from their lands into this one. The one specific story that came to Alma's mind was often repeated by her grandhag to her and Zulema, seemingly to warn them about straying too deep into the woods during especially bad blizzards. A cautionary tale about an entity that comes out mostly during the winter, specifically on snow-polluted days like this one.
She remembered the way her grandmother would often lick her lips and deliver those lines in a low, hoarse voice,
"Now, the elfwin had many names for this entity but my memory's been fairly finicky lately," she'd say while scratching her chin. "Ah... Actually, they were more like titles rather than a proper name. The Lord of Gales, Tempest Shaper or something like Duskwalker to name a few. The list goes on.”
According to her, very old eyewitness accounts would claim he appeared as a tall, humanoid behemoth with colorless, gleaming eyes. Although no two descriptions of him were ever alike, those were the features that seemed to be the most prominent. He was said to be able to manipulate the piercing winds of winter, using it to freeze prey alive almost instantly—if you're lucky. Otherwise, you'll find yourself being dragged about by your feet as he prowls the skies, for they say he's a creature that is able to walk along the tides of the winds as easily as one does on the ground. Interestingly, there's even been talk of small groups of elfwin that took to forming cults in reverence of him as a god and it's said that those cultists who worshiped him are found to be bestowed protection from a frozen demise in the icy wastes.
Alma never placed much stock into these old tales and if anything, they only served to quickly anger Zulema who argued that "Macha would never allow such an unsightly beast to desecrate her land!"
But the mind can easily betray one's own sense of logic in times of stress and the anticipation Alma had felt all morning for her new assignment was rapidly developing into pure anxiety.
And then, all at once, there was a sound of a deep rumbling followed by a piercing scream.
To this day, Alma still wasn't sure what compelled her to run towards that noise. Treading through that thick snow in a different direction from her outpost, the only thought going through her head being that someone might be hurt and needed her help.
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The adrenaline pumped through her body, helping her ignore the weight of her rifle bag rebounding against her back as she ran. The sound of steel hacking against something like bone becoming more audible as she got closer. She fell, snagging her foot on something half-buried. On her knees, she looked behind her to see what it was she had tripped over. It was the frozen body of a soldier, lying face first in the snow.
“Hey, man! Get up! Is the enemy here? I need you to wake up and tell me what the situation is. Are you okay? Please tell me you’re okay.”
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Alma tugged on his shoulder, frantically trying to get an answer, but receiving no response. Fearing the worst, she gently turned him over and immediately fell back, trying not to let out a scream as she looked upon him. The area where his face should be was completely gone. Only ripped remains of cartilage and sinew strung along a frozen, faceless blue head. Pulverized eyes and a lipless smile stared lifelessly back at her, warning her of the real danger to their profession. She was almost, irrationally sure that his face had been eaten off. With pursed lips, she refused to let the tears well up in her eyes. She had never seen a dead body before, but she had always known it was going to be something she needed to be ready for as a soldier.
Regaining her composure, she tried to return her focus back on the sounds of fighting not far from her position.
As her figure disappeared into the distance, the frozen body of the mutilated soldier shakily turned its head and watched her leave.
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Once she was close enough, Alma cautiously knelt down behind a fallen tree and tried to silence her ragged breathing. Rocking back clumsily, her coat dyed itself white from the frost scraped off the dead wood. She cautiously peered over her shoulder to the sounds of fighting below.
What greeted her was a sight stranger than fiction. A she-elf with a dusky complexion and coarse, ocher-red hair with pale blonde highlights—the back half of which was tied into a short ponytail. She was prancing all alone among the forest of lifeless, gnarled trees, swinging her weapons at empty air.
Unlike the green elfwin that commonly resided in most of Eldon and Albion—as in the slender pointy-eared folk Alma was usually familiar with and also the ones that drove her grandhag crazy—the woman before her bore the features of a Hecatian Red. Hailing from the southern part of Sarracas, they tended to have tall, muscular builds more adept to fighting in close quarters. Their pointed ears stood higher on their head and were covered in a deep fur while their claws and canines were razor sharp. And they all had thick, fuzzy tails—a feature that seemed to be missing on this particular girl.
Alma watched in awe at the rare sight before her. Her first thought—wondering exactly how it was the elfwin girl could possibly endure the freezing climate in those clothes. The Hecatian wore a black low-cut, sleeveless leather vest with a wide, open collar lined with a puffy white fabric that flared up and out toward the back. The jacket hooked down the middle using three small belts. Around the red elf’s neck was a pristine, shimmering white cloak accompanied by a strange necklace that hung down loosely. Her swift movements also revealed shoulders armored in medium-sized, redsteel pauldrons that were engraved with a fancy curvature that continued down on stacks of smaller plates that covered the length of her brawny, upper arms. Just below that, her lower arms were encased in tough-looking vambraces made of the same redsteel alloy that clasped tightly around her wrists.
Alma always found it funny that despite its name, Redsteel took on more of a bluish hue when it first gets melted down.
Hugging the girl’s waist was a thick, jewel-encrusted, garnet-colored belt that held twin leather sheaths and just below that she wore a tight pair of ebon shorts that revealed tight curves and strong, voluptuous legs. Her boots entrenched in deep snow did nothing to hinder her movements while each hand held sharp, foreign looking blades that had taken on a dark patina from constant use. A dim yet distinct luminosity seemed to be emanating from both swords that left an almost imperceptible trail of light with each swing.
Bewilderment washed over the young soldier as she watched the girl twirling her blades in mesmerizing spirals and pulling off incredible pirouettes. Her movements were reminiscent of the fancy elfwin fan dances Alma had once seen in her youth. Her awe was quickly cut short as she realized the truth. It was only in her anxious state that she thought the elfwin girl had been performing some kind of dance, when in reality the Hecatian was locked in battle with invisible, unearthly foes.
She can see them, the markswoman thought. How can she see them? The apparitions that haunted Alma's daily life were somehow visible and even tangible to this girl. Strange, ghostly distortions had been crawling all around her, jumping out and attacking her. The elf had not been simply swinging at nothing and that caused Alma a strange sense of dread.
She's ripping into those... things! Who is this chick and where did she get those swords? I-I should…
Her instincts had been telling her to run and never look back. But her ambitions wouldn't allow it. Realizing the elf was in dire need of help, Alma dug into her canvas bag and liberated Esme from her confinement. She grasped the rifle's laminated stock in her hands.
Esme.
A silly name she gave to the rifle she was issued because she liked the sound of it. It harked back to a piece of advice given to her by her father about naming something precious to you. In this particular case, a weapon. The reason being because it was bound to get one out of many scrapes—just as a childhood friend would. Not that she’s had many good experiences with those.
A tactical-laden military rifle, Esme was built with the most recent state-of-the-art technological advancements. It had a range of modes that allowed her to switch bullet types on the fly. Alma took the weapon's stripper clip and loaded a few rounds into her rifle, snapped the bolt into position and peered through the scope to calculate her shot. With help from its magnification, she was able to get a much better view of the situation. It seemed that the elf was not fighting alone. On the ground, by her feet, was an incapacitated woman sinking pitifully into the snow. The woman on the ground had an intensely pale complexion—paler than either Alma or her sister. It was almost as white as the snow itself. She also had strange, platinum colored hair peeking out from under the hood around her head. A cloak, the same one worn by the Hecatian. If not for the help of Alma’s scope, she would have thought the girl buried under a blanket of snow. It was difficult to perceive in detail but judging by their foreign appearance, it seemed they weren't from around here. Alma began to wonder if the whole thing hadn’t just been a hallucination brought upon by a slow death to hypothermia.
The elf unleashed a flurry of slices from her sword as another distortion jumped at her, the vambraces on her arm sparking violently as they helped to block the blows from her invisible opponents. The glow emanating from her blade was somehow searing into the bodies of the distorted silhouettes, leaving strange scars floating in the air. As she dodged another unseen strike, she twirled and stabbed one of her blades into the ground. It had pinned one of the creatures, causing it to convulse and stain the snow with its other-worldly fluids.
More ghostly creatures continued their attacks unabated against the struggling fighter. Alma held her breath and lined up her shot near the attacking monsters, sweat forming on her brow.
Alma recited a prayer to Macha in her head before she fired off a shot, unloaded the empty round, fired again, unloaded another round and fired once more—to no visible effect.