The air was filled with an overpowering stench of decay as Ricar squelched through ankle deep muck. Rhania’s heart ached as she surveyed the forest. Dead trees stood, rotting as far as the eye could see. Their branches were bare. She placed her hand on one nearby and the bark crumbled under her touch. Was this due to corruption, or had something drained this part of the forest’s life energy? If it was the latter, what could it be?
It had been two days since they encountered the dog abominations and the manticore, and they hadn’t seen a sign of a living creature since. She glanced at Ricar who was struggling through the fetid foot deep mulch that was made up of the decaying leaves that had fallen from the trees. The man knew more than he was letting on. That was frustrating. What was the point of withholding information from her now? She was going to find out sooner or later. Could he be planning to dispense with her?
She shook her head. Even he couldn’t be that short sighted. She pricked her ears when she heard the sound of flowing water coming from up ahead.
“We’re close now,” she said. “I can hear the brook.”
Ricar nodded as he looked up through the bare trees and at the two white topped peaks in the distance. “I’ll take your word for it. Most of the landmarks I was hoping to use are gone. We are fortunate to have found the brook.”
Rhania nodded wordlessly and pressed on. They soon came across the brook and her fears were confirmed. The water was black and foul. She’d been hoping to refill her skins in it but that was impossible now. There would be a water source in the village. Perhaps that was uncorrupted. Then, something occurred to her.
“What happens if everyone in the village is dead?”
Ricar was crouching at the stream, looking pensively at the foul, black water. With great effort, he tore his gaze from them and turned to Rhania. “Then we bring those responsible to justice.”
“Are you going to tell me what the sole survivor who returned told you?” She had left it alone, expecting him to tell lies if pressed. However, she was desperate for information before they arrived at the source of this corruption.
Ricar paused thoughtfully before shrugging. “Nothing about this. Only that someone was seeking a font of power.”
“Who?” Rhania demanded.
There was another pause. “He mentioned the name Glonn. He was one of the villagers and not anyone of note.”
Rhania pressed her lips into a thin line before nodding. “Then we haven’t any choice. We press on.”
“I am of the same mind,” Ricar nodded.
“Then let us get moving,” Rhania said as she looked up at the sky. “If we keep a good pace, we should reach the field just before sundown, shouldn’t we?”
“That’s right,” Ricar got to his feet and hesitated. “Do you think it is safe to step in that?”
“Unpleasant? Certainly,” Rhania replied. Her feet barely created ripples as she stepped unflinchingly into the knee deep water. “Harmful, perhaps, but nothing we can’t handle. You’ve survived the enemy’s foul magic once already, remember?”
Ricar nodded slowly as he followed Rhania quickly across the brook. “Though I am surprised that my body was able to fight off corruption powerful enough to render me unconscious within seconds without the aid of a cleric.”
“Perhaps you have a stronger constitution than you think,” Rhania said. She had long since decided that it was prudent to keep secrets of her own from humans in general.
Soon, Rhania could see a break in the trees up ahead. As she approached, she was abruptly struck by an intense feeling of melancholy. Her heart began to race as she pushed forward. Then, beyond the trees, she saw a field filled with red poppies. Unlike the dead forest around them, the field was vibrant, and the poppies burned an intense red under the afternoon sun. An intense feeling of grief overwhelmed her, and she sank to her knees as tears streamed from her eyes.
“Are you alright, Madam Arbiter?’ Ricar asked, greatly concerned.
“A great kinslaying once took place here where elf killed elf,” Rhania gasped. The grief cut like a knife through her very soul. Her mother had once told her that a poppy would grow wherever an elf took the life of another. There had to be hundreds if not thousands here. She had heard of few kinslayings of such magnitude, and each had been lamented and immortalized as cautionary tales for the living. However, she had never heard of one occurring here.
She blinked away her tears and saw a modest village standing amid the field roughly three hundred meters from the tree line. She glared back at Ricar. “Why is there a village out here in the middle of nowhere? What are your people after?”
Ricar gave her a confused look. “This village was founded by woodsmen who wished to make a living off the surrounding forest.”
Rhania attempted to stand but could not summon the strength. Ricar placed a hand on her shoulder. “Perhaps you should stay here and take a moment to compose yourself while I investigate the village. It will be easier for me. I am known to them, and you do stand out.”
Rhania wiped away her tears and nodded.
“I will return soon,” Ricar assured her.
She watched as the wiry man flopped onto his belly and began crawling through the waist high grass and poppy flowers towards the village. When he was out of sight, she tried to stand again. This time, she was successful and looked to the south edge end of the field where she had heard someone moving through the forest. Probably a villager returning from a foraging trip. He would probably yield more answers than Ricar.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
She cast a wary eye at the village as she moved to intercept the villager. From the number of buildings, she estimated roughly twenty people called it home. Certainly small enough for a commune of foragers but not large enough for a lord to send his own steward to investigate the loss of contact, never mind for him to send a hundred men at arms. Then, she spotted something in the village that stopped her in her tracks.
It was a bloated monstrosity that only vaguely resembled a man. It stood on the edge of the town, standing almost as tall as a high roofed single storey dwelling. The villagers themselves were nowhere to be seen. What was that villager returning to? She decided to rethink her confrontation and entered the woods.
As she closed in on the footsteps, she drew her dagger. The gait was unsteady, but there was nothing in it that indicated that he had noticed her approach. Then, he came into view. A scrawny teenage boy clutching a small bag in his hand. She approached quickly, wanting to intercept him before he broke through the tree line and came into view of that thing at the village.
His gait was unsteady. Looking at him, she could tell that he was exhausted and malnourished. Taking nothing for granted, she gripped her dagger tight and ran up to him as silently as a shadow. She pressed her blade to his neck and hissed into his ear.
“Not a sound. Do you understand?”
The boy froze and nodded.
“Now, answer me quickly, and if I think you’re lying, I will slit your throat, do you understand?”
Another nod.
“What has happened at the village?” she demanded.
The boy paused before stammering. “We… we found it… The Elven Blade.”
Rhania frowned. She had never heard of such a thing before. “Elven Blade? The elves have made many blades. What’s so special about this one?”
“I don’t know, I swear to Aertani, none of us do, except Glonn, he figured something out as soon as he set eyes on the cursed thing,” he babbled.
“Where did you find it?”
“In a ruin about a mile north of the village,” he replied. “Now Glonn has taken over, he has us out looking for a font of power.”
The gears in Rhania’s head began to turn and a feeling of unease grew in the pit of her stomach. So whatever this thing was needed power, and the power it was drawing from the forest wasn’t enough. But to what end was it gathering power? Somehow, she had the feeling that all this had to do with the unrecorded kinslaying that occurred here. Why had she never heard of such a thing? She had to find the ruins.
“I’m going to take the blade away from your throat,” she hissed. “You are to remain where you are and obey my instructions to the letter. If I sense anything amiss, I will not hesitate to kill you. Do you understand?”
The boy nodded and Rhania slowly lowered her blade. She quickly ran her hands down the boy’s clothes. Finding no weapons, she took sheathed her dagger and readied her bow.
“Turn around,” she ordered. “Slowly.”
The boy did as he was told, and his eyes widened when he saw her. “You’re an elf.”
“Do you know where these ruins are?” she asked brusquely.
The boy bobbed his head.
“Lead me to them.”
The boy frowned and held up his small bag. In the blink of an eye, she had nocked an arrow had it aimed at the boy.
“I foraged some food for my mother,” the boy babbled breathlessly. “She’s ill and hasn’t eaten in days. Can I bring this to her first?”
Rhania shook her head, and she could see the blood rush to the boy’s face. He was about to object when she heard footsteps behind her and whirled around. Forty paces away, she spotted Ricar creeping through the woods. When did he find the time to get behind her?
“I thought you were going to investigate the village,” she remarked as she repositioned herself so that she could keep both Ricar and the boy in her line of sight.
“Then I saw that thing standing watch,” he said. “I thought it prudent to turn back and discuss our next steps with you only to find you missing.”
“Master Ricar,” the boy stammered when he saw him.
The wiry man nodded curtly. “You have a lot of explaining to do. Where is Glonn?”
“Someone found the font of power a few hours ago,” the boy replied. “He took most of his retinue to look for it.”
“Where?” Ricar and Rhania demanded in unison.
The boy shook his head. “I don’t know, I just took the opportunity to slip away and forage some food.”
Ricar cursed. Rhania didn’t like the sound of it either. She turned to the boy. “Take us to the ruins. Perhaps it holds a clue to the ringleader’s whereabouts.”
She could see that Ricar wasn’t thrilled at the suggestion, but he cocked his head arrogantly. “Lead on, then but stay in the forest.”
“Gladly,” the boy muttered.
They walked in silence until they came across an oasis of life amidst the dead forest. Branches were covered in rich deep green leaves around an ancient cylindrical stone building that was covered in creepers. It was roughly twenty feet in diameter and ten feet tall. It was topped by a plain domed roof, half of which had collapsed, probably due to the passage of time. As she stepped into the area of living plants, she felt as though she had emerged from a fetid swamp. Perhaps some remnant of elven magic was keeping the corruption at bay. However, the boy mentioned an elven blade. Could that be the source of the corruption? If it was, why would something her people made corrupt the very thing they revered?
“Here it is, Master…” the words died in his throat as the wiry man plunged his knife repeatedly into his back.
“Explain yourself,” Rhania hissed. An arrow was in her bow, aimed at the man’s chest.
Ricar let the boy’s body slump to the ground with the knife still in it and held up his hands before turning around to face her. “That abomination at the village. You saw it, didn’t you?”
Rhania nodded curtly as he watched him carefully, ready to shoot at a moment’s notice.
“It was once a man,” Ricar said. “I saw the sole survivor of our relief force turn into one before our very eyes. I don’t know what the trigger is and wasn’t about to risk it happening again.”
“We’re going in,” Rhania said tersely. “And I’m not turning my back on you, so you are going in first.”
“Understandable,” Ricar replied. “May I retrieve my dagger?”
Rhania nodded. “There’s going to be a reckoning between you and me before all this is over, isn’t there?”
“I think so, yes,” Ricar agreed. “But for the moment, we have more important things to focus on.”
Rhania nodded and looked up at the ruins. They were of elven make. She had heard that the entirety of the Sawtooth Forest was once the domain of a single elf tribe, but they had since withdrawn like the rest of their kind into a territory that was but a small fraction of what it once was, and these ruins were a reminder of their glory days. Her excitement at exploring them had been tempered considerably.
"Come on then," Ricar urged.
Rhania’s heart began to race when he drew his sword. He looked over his shoulder and raised an eyebrow. “Your bow might not be of much use in there. Perhaps you should draw that sword by your side.”
She looked down at her sword and frowned. Her back ached from carrying it without being able to draw on nature’s blessing. Now that they were close to the ruins, she could feel the strength of nature around her, which in turn would allow her to wield it properly. However, she stubbornly drew her dagger.
“Lead on.”
Ricar gave her a dubious look before shrugging. “I’m trusting you with my back, Madam Arbiter.”