~o0o~

Kelim knew where the house was.

All the kids did.

Ghirardelli, The Swamp Hag lived in a sod roofed, moss covered hovel, deep in the swamps, in the pine forests to the west of the salt marsh.

Kelim had been here before, many times.

On a dare.

It was something kids did.

Dare one another to go to the Swamp Hag's house and rip a board of her fence as proof you did it.

There wasn't a kid in town who didn't have a piece of the old Hag's fence.

Kelim began panicking as he thought of the fence.

"What if she recognizes me as the one who stole a piece of her fence?"

Kelim stopped walking and sat down on the grass. His head was spinning. He felt he was about to faint. The ground was still cold. The snow was mostly melted. Flowers peeked up through last fall's dry leaves. Kelim lay on his back in the cool young spring grass and stared up at the tall towering pine trees. A sickly sensation of Vertigo sunk in his stomach as his gaze followed the trees up their 150 feet of height. Little brown birds ran down thick bark, head downwards and peeking under the cracks looking for ants. Kelim wondered how they did not get dizzy or fall off from the blood rushing to their head. He was getting dizzy just thinking about it. Kelim closed his eyes, but that did not make him feel any better so he sat up and looked out across the swamp in stead.

"I gotta do this."

Kelim hated coming out into the swamp alone. The water was black and sickly looking. Not the clean, healthy, clear water anyone would want to drink. It stank too.

Ghirardelli wasn't Human. Of this Kelim was certain. He was certain because everyone in town said it and it must be true if so many people said it. She wasn't a Faerie either. Kelim didn't know what she was. She was a Hag. But what was a Hag?

What was a Swamp Hag any ways?

A Demon?

He didn't know.

He didn't really care.

Hags were not Humans or Faeries or Fairys or Elves or any other such race. They were some sort of Monster race. Something akin to a Demon.

But..

He didn't know.

And. . .

He didn't care.

He just needed to think about something other than that he felt like vomiting right now. Most of him just wanted to run back to town. Kelim looked out at the swamp again. Where the edge water sat still, there was a brown rusty coloured gelatinous foam coating the leaves and sticking to twigs. That icky looking sludge seemed to be the sources of the smell.

Kelim got up and started walking again. He had to hurry if he wanted to talk to the Necromancer and still have time to get back through the woods again before dark. He walked round the edge of the water knowing that the Swamp Hag's house was around here somewhere.

The forest was getting deeper and darker.

The trees closer together.

The deeper Kelim went into the forest, the cleaner the swamp looked.

The swamp widened significantly now. The water at its centre more like a shallow pond, but still black from the thick peat floating at its surface. Tall grass and prickly spiky vines grew around the water's edge. Kelim suspected he was coming to the end of the swamp as he could hear the sounds of running water up ahead. He had yet to find the Necromancer's home.

Did he not live in the swamp after all?

A woodpecker screamed from a rear by hemlock as if to answer.

"Don't be silly," Kelim scolded himself. "It's probably all just a stupid rumour, anyway."

Kelim passed the glade in front of the large thatched roof hovel of Ghirardelli, the swamp hag. A tall stockade fence surrounded the entire place. Kelim stood, counting the missing panels that created gaping holes in the ancient wooden fence.

"She's a Witch, and she has a Necromancer staying with her. Why do I let Witsnot talk me into these things?"

Kelim counted the trees to keep himself from feeling like he was stuck in a nightmare. He tried to convince himself that he was just getting worked up over nothing.

In the far corner of the swamp an old hovel was half hidden in the shadows of tall trees lined up behind it. It was the only sign of any life. So he strolled over, trying to look casual.

He hesitated a second before knocking on the door. There was no answer at first. He knocked again. Still no answer. He knocked louder. Kelim was about to give up and leave when the door swung open so suddenly it made him jump back.

He had expected the Swamp Hag to answer the door. But it wasn't her who stood before him now.

It was an Elf.

Not a Common Elf.

No.

A High Elf.

Kelim had not expected the Necromancer to be a High Elf.

Nor had he expected the alien creature to be the one who would answer the door.

The door had been answered by a pale skinned Moon Elf with long silken bum length white hair, large brilliant icy pale blue eyes, and dressed head to toe in eye popping bubblegum pink robes, embroidered with huge platinum beads and magenta silk hearts. The Elf's opaline skin stood out in pale evening light, shimmering like moonlight on freshly fallen snow. Kelim had heard rumours that moonlight had this effect on the skin of a Moon Elf, thus their name of Moon Elf, but he'd never before seen it. An eerie prism like glow hovered over the Elf's frosty white flesh, making the Elf look as though it had been carved out of ice. The effect terrified Kelim, who had heard rumours that the High Elves had a deep dislike for every race other than their own.

Kelim had never met an Elf before.

Common Elves were scary enough.

But the High Elves were terrifying.

Ruthless.

Brutal.

Emotionless.

Cannibals.

Predators.

Emotionless predators.

Sharp fanged.

Vampire-like.

Blood thirsty beasts that had fallen from the sky and were trapped on Earth against their will.

Kelim knew the stories.

No blood relation to the Common Elves.

Not Elves at all.

No blood relation to anything Earthly.

Aliens from another time.

Another world.

Another galaxy.

They hated being trapped on this alien planet. They hated all life on Earth. They kept to themselves and shunned all of Earth's inhabitants.

The High Elves were rare and even more rarely seen.

So rare that rumours deemed them mere figments of over active imaginations.

And yet, here was a High Elf.

One of those rare alien vampires, was now standing face to face with Kelim.

Kelim stared at the Necromancer, uncertain what to say.

The Moon Elf was looking at him with an expressionless face.

Kelim had not expected the pale Elf to answer the door.

He was taken by surprise at this.

This was the Swamp Hag's house after all.

Why would a stranger answer her door?

And while this was clearly an Elf, he was uncertain if it was the Wizard or not.

The strange, unearthly, shimmering, prismatic, somewhat phosphorescent skin of the pink robed Elf terrified Kelim.

Kelim had heard rumours that the Moon Elves had a deep dislike for every race other than their own, and this Moon Elf was looking at Kelim with an expressionless face.

Kelim may have prided himself in knowing the stories told about the Moon Elves, but the fact was, that Kelim really knew next to nothing about Moon Elves in general, or this the Last Moon Elf in particular.

Had Kelim known the actual history of the Moon Elves, and the truth behind how Quaraun had become the last of his kind, Kelim would have been running scared shitless, to get as far away from The Pink Necromancer as he could.

But Kelim only knew the stories.

The rumours.

Not the history.

Not the facts.

Not the truth.

If he had known the history, and how they had died, Kelim would have known that what he was talking to was in fact NOT a Moon Elf, but rather a Thullid, whom had killed the Moon Elves and was wearing the skin of this Moon Elf, like a coat.

Ghirardelli had known this.

And Ghirardelli could have warned Kelim of the danger he was in, were she alive, which she wasn't.

Ghirardelli was dead.

Quaraun had been a Moon Elf, many, many centuries ago. But now, like Ghirardelli, Quaraun was dead, and his hollowed out body was the skin worn by the Thullid living inside of him.

Had Kelim known this, he would have known that the words Quaraun was right now muttering under his breath, were not Elvish, but rather, were Thullid.

Kelim didn't know Elvish or Thullid, so Kelim just assumed that the Moon Elf was speaking Elvish.

Assumptions were a bad habit for Kelim.

Making assumptions bout those around him, was the easy way through life.

To act on assumptions and treat them as truth, was the lazy man's way of facing the world.

And Kelim, well, Kelim was as lazy as a lazy man could be.

Except Kelim was not a man.

Kelim was a pixie.

A lazy Pixie.

A very, tremendously lazy Pixie prone to making assumptions and acting without thinking.

Kelim was making a lot of assumptions right now, as he stood gawking at The Pink Necromancer, in all his pink striped silk finery, dripping with gold jewellery, glistening with pink tourmaline, and warped in fuchsia pink marabou feathers.

One: Kelim was assuming that he could get a wish granted, with little ease, and quickly be on his way, to find Ophelia waiting at his house to tumbling into his arms. After all, hadn't Ghirardelli told every one in the village of the night The Pink Necromancer had visited three years ago? Had she not met him during The Great Gale of 1846? The day, when the factories collapse, the towns were levelled, the apple orchards razed, the railroads destroyed, and everyone woke up to find hundreds of cats and dogs roaming the streets of The Godforsaken City?

Had Ghirardelli not told everyone of her encounter with Quaraun the Insane, and how easily he had granted her wish that the hurricane's rain would turn into cats and dogs?

Yes.

Kelim knew the story.

He knew it well.

He'd heard Ghirardelli in town plenty of times, raving and ranting and trying to convince some one, any one, to believe her.

To believe that the cats were not a herd of strays chased here by the storm.

To believe the stray dogs were not a wild pack that had roamed in seeking safety from the flooding.

No one believed her.

Why would they?

Rumours of The Pink Necromancer were ancient. No one believed he could still be alive after so many years. Had he not roamed the Earth in 800 A.D? Was it not now 1849? Three years after the The Great Gale of 1846? The infamous wizard would be well over a thousand years old by now.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

And so, people laughed.

They laughed at Ghirardelli, and he story of a pink jellyfish, roaming the Maine forests, disguised as an Elf, granting wishes, and making cats and dogs rain out of storm clouds.

But Kelim believed her.

She'd been too convicted, too convinced, too certain, for it not to be true.

Kelim believed Ghirardelli's account of a wish granting wizard, garbed all in pink, capable of bestowing any wish you could imagine.

This was Kelim's first mistake.

Second: Kelim assumed that what stood before him was a female Elf.

This was Kelim's second mistake.

Three: Quaraun had been asleep moments ago. Asleep and plagued by visions of pumpkin patches, and grateful to be brought out of his reoccurring lucid dream, but resentful at being woken up none the less.

Kelim had woken up a grouchy Elf who despised people demanding wishes from him.

That was Kelim's third mistake.

Kelim stared up at Quaraun, reflecting about Ghirardelli's account of wishes granted and pondered if he should request the pink robed wizard to grant his wish, or should he turn around and run?

Quaraun grumbled and sputtered Thullid swears under his breath as he remained in the entrance, blood dripping from his hand, glaring down at the green-winged Pixie.

The Moon Elves had perished three centuries ago, Quaraun being the last, and with them, their ancient Elven language had died out with them. All Elves were rare these days, and the Moon Elf language had been considered of as a dead language even when there were still Moon Elves alive.

Quaraun had had to learn the many various languages of the Humans, the lesser Elf races, and other nonElven races in order to communicate with them. There was no one who could speak his native tongue.

The Moon Elf language was as dead as Latin, which was why the poor Moon Elf had picked up the unhealthy habit of speaking to himself in order to keep from forgetting how to speak his native tongue.

Unfortunately for Quaraun, what he did not recognize is that he long ago had ceased speaking the ancient Moon Elf language and was, in fact, speaking the Thullid language to himself most days.

The Thullid language was not an Earth language. Being aliens from a distance galaxy, the Thullid ship crash landed on Earth centuries ago. The Thullid language comprised of mostly ‘L's, ‘T's, ‘X's, and ‘I's and little else. It's slithering hissing words sounded very snake-like.

The language was spoken quick, intermingled with screams, and shrieks. The shrieks and screams were actual words, but to Humans sounded like mindless screaming and shrieking.

Quaraun, dressing as he dressed, talking as he talked, in his eye-popping pink beaded Samite silk gowns, pacing in circles, screaming and squawking to himself in a dialect that sounded nothing like a language at all, terrified most individuals.

Kelim was terrified right now. Because Quaraun was right now, snarling to himself, in a hissing snake-like accent that frightened the little Pixie who stood trembling before him.

Quaraun rarely spoke to anyone, as he was usually too busy having conversations with himself to notice there was anyone around to talk to. More often than not, Quaraun had bitter arguments with a map that he spent an inordinate amount of time yelling at.

Quaraun had fallen asleep while having the most delightful conversation with the Swamp Hag's severed head before the knock on the door interrupted him.

He did not like being disturbed.

Kelim had interrupted him.

He immediately decided he did not like Kelim.

Quaraun hated Kelim, for no reason, other than Kelim had knocked on the door and woken him up.

Quaraun was out of Green Fairy Wine. He would rather sleep if he had no Green Fairy Wine to drown his depression in. Kelim had woken him up, so he concluded he hated Kelim and stood in the doorway contemplating if he should cut off the Pixie's head now or after he had heard what the Pixie had to say.

Most people who came across Quaraun, dressed as he dressed and chatting to himself in the Thullid language, heard nothing but a lot of wild rambling gibberish that sounded nothing like any Earth language they had ever encountered, so most people took Quaraun for a psychotically deranged, gibbering idiot and was very careful to avoid him.

Few realized Quaraun was no longer an Elf at all, but was in fact a Thullid.

Quaraun was a Thullid Spawnling.

The Thullid had killed the Elf.

That's what Thullid do.

They kill Elves and then take over their bodies.

Even their closest friends won't know they're dead.

The Thullid larvae hollow out their skulls and live inside the Elf's head, fusing their tentacles to the nerves.

Quaraun's icy white blue eyes were cold.

Distant.

Empty.

Completely devoid of any emotion.

They were not the kind eyes of an Elf, but the empty emotionless eyes of a Thullid.

Quaraun was not an Elf, not anymore.

Quaraun the Elf was dead.

He'd been dead a long time.

A Thullid had taken up residence in his body.

Possessing him.

Infesting him.

Infecting him.

When Quaraun was just 3 years old, and eventually devouring his brain and replacing it with its own brain.

Quaraun the Elf had perished centuries ago, at the young age of only 9 years old. All that remained was the hollow husk reanimated by the tiny pink jellyfish living in the dead Elf's hallowed out, brainless skull.

The Sacred Pink JellyFish had eaten Quaraun's brain, and like a hermit crab, was residing in his empty skull.

Looking into Quaraun's emotionless dead eyes, Kelim knew something was definitely mentally wrong with him.

His eyes looked like those of a squid.

The wall eyed fishy glaze of his eyes, terrified Kelim.

Quaraun was nothing but the long dead corpse of an Elf whose carcass had become the home of an alien sea creature.

Quaraun had become someone else.

He had turned into a Thullid.

Had he known he was facing a Thullid, Kelim would have shuddered to think of the horrible agony Quaraun had suffered through upon his death to be captured by a Thullid, to have it hold him down and drill a hole into the back of his head, then implant a larva into his brain. The weeks and months of agony that followed as the larvae fed off the poor Elf's brain, while rooting its spidering tentacles throughout his body, replacing his nerves with its own, hollowing out his muscles and refilling them with its own.

The poor Elf had suffered in agony for years while the creature slowly took over his body and learned to replicate his words and actions.

In all the Realms there was no death more horrific or more feared, then to die by Thullid infestation. Quaraun the Elf, only Quaraun the Thullid, meaning the real Quaraun had suffered in agony, alone, with no one there to comfort him. The real Elf had died such a horrendous death.

Quaraun looked like an Elf, he outer body had been born an Elf, but it was the Jellyfish living in his brain, that is who Quaraun was now.

It was for this reason that Quaraun could often be seen, talking to himself, in a language that was filled with squishy, fish-like shrieks and screams that made little sense to the people who met him.

Quaraun spoke in 84 common languages. Quaraun, being the highly educated High Elf that he was, spoke most of the known languages of the region, and thus immediately shifted his own speech to match whatever language was being spoken to him. His ability to speak most every language could sometimes make talking to him difficult as he could, and often did, change languages mid-sentence and rarely realized he was doing it.

Most of his conversation was thus a strange blend of his own native Moon Elf, mixed with Thullid in a bizarre language Quaraun had unknowingly created for himself in his last two hundred years of hermit like solitude.

Kelim, unable to speak either Moon Elf and Thullid, could not pick up on this difficult self-language Quaraun had made for himself, which annoyed the Moon Elf, forcing him to speak the Pixie's language, which pissed him off.

But none of this mattered right now, for Kelim was unaware he was addressing a Thullid.

In Kelim's mind, this was an Elf. A Moon Elf.

A pale skinned Moon Elf with long, silken, bum length white hair.

A Moon Elf with large, brilliant icy pale blue eyes.

A Moon Elf dressed head to toe in eye popping bubblegum pink samite silk robes.

A Moon Elf with elaborately embroidered and beaded designs of hearts, roses, flowers, and jellyfish all over his furisode kimono and corseted gown.

A Moon Elf who right now stood in the doorway staring down at Kelim.

A Moon Elf with opaline skin which glimmered in pale evening light, shimmering in the moonlight.

After his initial Thullid muttering to himself as he opened the door, the pink-clad Elf said nothing more and stood silently staring down at Kelim.

Kelim wasn't sure who he was addressing. He had come here looking for an evil male Necromancer.

But this was. . . he wasn't sure. He thought he might be staring into the cold dead eyes of a female prostitute instead.

"Uhm. . . my name is Kelim?" It came out as a question, more than a statement.

The thin albino Moon Elf just stared down at him and said nothing, which was making Kelim nervous.

"I'm a Toadstool Pixie."

"I can see that."

The Elf sounded bored.

Or tired.

Or maybe both.

Kelim was taken back slightly by the Elf's voice. It was the deep, velvety voice of a male, but he could have sworn the Elf standing before him was a female.

It looked like a woman.

Dressed like a woman.

The tightly corseted pink dress, with long flowing furisode sleeves. That was was women's dress.

The Elf's eyes were kholed with black, lips painted blood red, and fingertips glistening with pink jewel encrusted gold claw tips. Fresh blood dripped from the tips.

Sparkling pink and green watermelon faceted gemstones glittered from the many rings pierced through the Elf's foot long pointed ears.

A couple more jewelled rings were pierced through the side of his nose and glistening silver chains draped from the rings in his nose to the rings in his ears. Many dainty charms of silver, decorated with more tourmalines, hung from the chains connecting his nose rings to his ear rings. His long, silken white hair hung down to below his waist.

If Kelim had met this pink gowned, bejewelled Elf on the streets, he would have sworn she, er, he, was a prostitute.

"Uhm. . .I. . .I'm looking for the wizard called Quaraun."

"Well, you've found him."

"Are you Quaraun?"

"I am he," said the Moon Elf, as he stretched one arm out straight and leaned on the door frame, showing he was unconcerned by either who or what Kelim was, and barring the entrance to his home at the same time. He slowly began drumming his long, thin fingers on the door. He left bloody fingerprints on the wood as he did.

Kelim couldn't help but notice the Necromancer had multiple large, sparkling diamond and sapphire rings on every single finger.

No.

They were not rings.

It was jewel encrusted gold armour.

But it wasn't the rings Kelim was focusing on.

It was the blood.

Blood was trickling down the Elf's hand. Down his wrist. Into his sleeve. Blood spatter was sprayed across several parts of the dress, and the hems were soaked heavily with more blood. The Elf's skirts left bloody streaks and swirls on the ground as the hems swept the floor.

"I'm sorry. . .you look. . .uhm. . .I thought you were a. . . Are you a man?"

"I'm an Elf."

"Are you a male Elf?"

"If you mean, was I born with a cock and balls between my legs, yes."

"You look like a. . ."

"How I choose to dress, whether it matches the gender I was born as or not, quite frankly doesn't concern you, now does it?"

Kelim looked down at his feet and began twiddling his thumbs. Talking to strangers made him nervous.

People with any authority made him nervous.

Wizards made him nervous.

Elves made him nervous.

He was just now realizing that effeminate men in pink sequined dresses with lots of feminine jewellery made him nervous.

Quaraun the Insane was all the above.

Quaraun was making Kelim more nervous than he'd ever been before.

He couldn't think when he was nervous.

Kelim didn't know what to say next.

He really hadn't thought this part through.

It had taken all the courage he could muster just to walk out into the enchanted forest in the first place. He'd almost turned back several times while going through the frozen swamp.

And now here he was at the front door of a strange transvestite Necromancer Elf who was probably far more dangerous than Finderu the Masked.

Kelim felt faint.

Masked frightened Kelim.

This wizard did not wear a mask like Finderu, but he might as well have.

Quaraun perked up his ear to listen, waiting for Kelim to say something. His thin, pointed foot long ears twitched, nervously causing the chains connected back to his nose to shake and tinkle.

The ears mesmerized Kelim.

And the rings.

And the chains.

And the charms.

Quaraun had 24 earrings in each ear.

And 3 nose rings, 1 in the centre, and one on each side.

Each ring in his ear had a tiny linked, delicate chain in it. Each chain connected back to one ring in his nose.

Every few links of the chain had tiny pink watermelon tourmaline crystal point hanging from it.

Kelim knew very little of Quaraun and was unaware that Quaraun was a priest and wore the very distinctive robes and jewellery as part of his religion.

Kelim remembered the old Swamp Hag, Ghirardelli, saying though born in Quebec, Persian priests raised Quaraun in the marshlands of Iraq. Quaraun was the only Elf member of his religion. And was one of only two Di'Jinn priests still alive.

The Di'Jinn were all dead, save Quaraun and ZooLock.

Kelim heard Ghirardelli say these things, but had not paid attention. He, like so many others in The Godforsaken City, had turned a blind eye to Ghirardelli's pleadings. A deaf ear to Ghirardelli's warnings.

Ghirardelli was just the crazy old witch from the swamps.

No one listed to her.

As Quaraun had predicted, three years earlier, no one believed her story of having met The Pink Necromancer. Nor had anyone believed her warnings that a Thullid invasion was upon them, because the Sacred Pink Jelly Fish walked among them.

No.

Like every one else in The Godforsaken City, Kelim had walked passed Ghirardelli, as she stood on the curb, screaming and wailing the terrors of brains sucked out and eaten by jellyfish.

And so Kelim was unprepared for his own meeting with the self-same Thullid infested Elf, whom Ghirardelli had meet three autumn's ago, during the The Great Gale of 1846. All Kelim knew was that standing before him was an Elf that looked to be a Muslim woman, but whom Kelim had been told was a male wizard, and Kelim stood very confounded and confused, and wasn't certain what to say or how to address the pink robed Elf.

The glittering chains and charms and crystals hanging from the 48 earrings and connecting back to his nose were what was troubling Kelim the most, for he could not see hardly any of Quaraun's face.

Quaraun was said to be beautiful. More beautiful than any other being ever born. And while it definitely appeared that man behind the veils and jewels was exotically beautiful, all Kelim could really see what his nose and his eyes. Kelim wondered if the rumours of Quaraun's beauty were in fact inspired by the mystery of his mostly hidden face.

Quaraun's long ears make it difficult for him to wear the hijab style, veiling properly. Thus why he wore this elaborate network of rings and chains, as a way to keep his face covered.

The jewellery acted as a veil, exactly as Quaraun intended it to do. Ghirardelli had not mentioned the chain veiling covering Quaraun's face, because he had not been wearing it the night she had met him.

Most of Quaraun's face was obscured from view by of this massive network of jewellery. The chains act like veiling, with only his eyes and lips visible. The action of his abnormally long ears constantly moving with his emotions caused the crystal points and chains to make tinkling sounds every time moved his ears even the slightest bit.

Kelim continued to gawk, awestruck, jaw dropped at the Elf's outlandish eye popping pink, jewel encrusted female outfit, and it was annoying Quaraun.

Quaraun was very shy, extremely introverted, kept to himself, lived as a hermit, did not like attention, and was easily made upset by people staring at him.

Kelim was staring at him.

Kelim was staring at Quaraun for a very long time.

The awkward silence, combined with Kelim's stare, was unnerving Quaraun.

He felt the desire to pull out his dagger and rip the Pixie's throat out.

Quaraun did not like the Pixie.

It was staring at him too much, for too long.

It made Quaraun uncomfortable.

He did not like it.

Finally, seeing that Kelim was making no move to speak, Quaraun broke the silence.

"What do you want?" the Moon Elf demanded, sounding a more than a little hostile.

Kelim looked up at the tall, cross-dressed Elf.

Quaraun wasn't tall.

In fact, he was short.

But Kelim was shorter and Quaraun seemed taller than he was, by the way he carried himself.

Quaraun lowered his eyebrows, into a guarded expression which said to Kelim, "You better have had a damned good reason for disturbing me. I have business to attend to and you are wasting my time."

The Elf was clearly was growing impatient, and his icy blue eyes were cold and staring and served as a sufficient warning to scare Kelim into losing whatever courage he had mustered up on his way getting here.