Tasya smiled to herself, not bothering to hide her joy as she walked through the great gates of Tal Dorei and into the greatest Elven city in Elarathien. Home.

How many years had it been since she’d seen these familiar and imposing sights, how many decades? The guard towers, magically carved from the same blue stone as the thick walls, stretching out and away from the main gates and fading into the thick old growth of the Dorei Forest. The road beneath her feet was the same bright blue and it shone where her feet touched it, welcoming her home. The two great trees, Gil Garian and Gil Gaviel, stood strong and proud just inside the gates. Broad staircases circled their trunks all the way to their dense crowns, and smaller, slighter walkways connected these with other trees that stood within the walls.

Elarathien was an Elven city, after all. The walls were the newest addition to the capitol, put in place centuries ago to protect the inhabitants from the Blightweavers. Everything else hadn’t looked like it had been changed since, well...

Curious, Tasya opened her Tome to pull up her stats. Pale letters and runes overlaid her surroundings and she scanned them quickly. Ninety eight years since she’d last been in the city. She mentally broadcast a command and the runes shifted, showing her a brief overview of her stats, her open quests in this zone, how long they’d been open.

She sighed. Ninety eight years wasn’t enough to forget the one quest she’d been trying to avoid ever since she’d received it. There was a little glowing star, right in the middle of the city. The palace. He would be waiting there for her, Tasya was sure. Smiling and waiting, all these years later.

Her delight at being home subsided with the weight of her memories. Her guilt. That quest wasn’t why she was here now, but the elves had long memories. Ninety eight years was nothing to the oldest (and nosiest, she privately thought) citizens of the city. They would remember her.

This homecoming may not be as joyous as she hoped.

And yet…

Something had brought her here. Pushed past the long decades of paralysis that kept her from passing through the gates of Elarathien and guided her to this path. This had happened before, of course. When she’d chosen her first Class it had felt that way, like fate, like destiny. Her Specialization had been different, but that was something she didn’t like to think about.

But this felt somehow different. Before, it had been like stepping into a cool stream of water. A push at her ankles, refreshing and invigorating, whenever she was going in the right direction. This felt much deeper, and darker, somehow. It wasn’t like being guided by a playful stream but being pulled forward, forced to march with a wicked claw hooked beneath her breastbone.

Still, she followed it anyhow. That was how the world worked. When you were called, you answered. When you were guided, you followed. Sometimes those urges became official quests, adventures to mark on your mental maps with real, concrete steps and rewards.

This didn’t feel like a quest. But it did feel important. And that was enough for her. It was a large part of who she was.

It was enough, apparently, to bring her back to a place that she’d never expected to return. She couldn’t help but break into another wide smile as she walked through the tree-lined stone path, which became more and more studded with moss as it became absorbed by the forest. As was custom she’d removed her shoes upon entering the city. The stones were warm, the moss was cool. Even though this place had many bad memories, it was still her home.

She stopped at the first of the two giant trees, Gil Garian, and laid her palm upon the wooden railing formed from the ancient tree. It was smooth from the touch of a million hands. Tasya started to climb.

Elves have a long, storied, and complicated relationship with trees that is poorly understood by most other races. As well, in fact, by most elves.

They say that in the ancient days, the days of Becoming, elves and trees were one. The oldest texts that survive and speak of those days are fragmented and contradictory. Did elves grow from the ground, like saplings? Did they split off from the trees like buds? Did the trees create them from magic? Were the trees once magical beings themselves, and the elves were created to be their caretakers?

The very oldest of the elves are still far, far too young to know with any certainty what happened all those thousands of years ago. Many have theories, and evidence, but no firm consensus.

In any case, the oldest, most venerated trees are still called Martari, or earth-mothers. There are nine left. However many there were at the beginning, the dawn of the elves, is unknown. Each central elven city has a Martari tree at its center.

The Martari at the center of Elarathien was Tasya’s hometree. She’d been born there, oh - she pulled up her Tome again - two hundred and nineteen years ago. Tasya frowned a little at that number. Had it been so long? She would be expected to come home, soon. Not like this, not for a brief visit, but permanently. Soon she would be too old for this ridiculous adventuring and she would come home to resume her obligations.

Tasya snorted out loud at the thought. That wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. She loved the freedom that adventure brought her. And yet…

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

There was a pull, as she passed through the years. As she watched the human world grow and change, as she watched friends grow old and die. There was an urge that she belonged here. With her people.

For the most part Tasya was able to ignore the little voice telling her to go home.

But then she’d had that dream… powerful, portentous, and then the pull of an entirely different sort started to yank at her bones. It was so strange - that dream had been so vivid, dark and devastating, and then faded, as all dreams had, when she woke up.

She’d gotten the feeling that she needed to return home. Usually that meant she’d been granted a quest. Tasya had lived long enough to know that not all quests came from an important looking figure in grand robes, or were faithfully inscribed into your mental journal to revisit the particulars.

Sometimes, it felt a lot more like fate.

The great bridges were mostly empty, giving them a strange deserted look. It was peaceful enough, of course. The breeze waved the branches of the trees, the unique susurration of the leaves sounding like a lullaby in a daydream. The sun made its way through these waving shadows in beautiful golden dapples.

The few elves around looked at her curiously, then went back to their business. Most folken, human and elven and dwemer alike, opted to turn off their visual overlay systems, preferring different lives. Many elven scholars eschewed terms like skills and stats, while there were fervent debates among philosophers as to the true nature of quests, not to mention the Tome. These were no different. Most would be blind to the information that Tasya could see floating over every living thing she looked at.

If she’d run into someone before, names floated in those soft white runes. If not, it would most likely be something generic, like ‘Dwemer ‘Smith” or “Human Conjurer”.

But the elves who looked at her and then ignored her were lacking that extra sense. All they saw was an elf, tall, for a woman, in a long fluttering serape that reached to her thighs. Her hair was pale, bleached, and too short for fashion. Most would assume that she was some kind of laborer, possibly an adventurer, but most likely some kind of courier. Couriers were usually nothing more than low level adventurers who had done one too many fetch quests and ended up doing it for a living. It wasn’t a bad living, but it left couriers stuck between two worlds.

They wouldn’t - couldn’t - see the ghostly runes that were floating above Tasya’s head as she walked briskly through the thin morning traffic, making her way toward the Martari.

Tasya Batroi

Ghostwalker

Even if they could see those words, the majority wouldn’t understand their significance. Her powers were unusual, to say the least. Regular folken would assume that she had some kind of specialized class, shrug their mental shoulders, and forget it immediately.

That was the best possible outcome.

She ignored the few elves that were standing and walking on the bridges between the trees. Tasya didn’t need to watch for the reactions of others, to see if they knew what she was. If someone recognized her, she would know it.

It made her wonder all over again what force it was that had dragged her back to this place. Something terribly powerful, to overcome all of her reservations about ever returning to Elarathien.

Tasya shuddered. A bumbler ran over my grave, she thought, and she shuddered again.

The palace was at the very heart of the great forest, and the further Tasya walked, the more she felt uneasy. Now that she was closer to the palace something seemed terribly wrong. That pull in her chest, that not-quite-a-quest, had started to tug and yank unpleasantly. It felt like a cold hand pulling at her lungs from the inside.

It pulled her toward the palace. She’d not wanted to head directly there. Actually, she’d hoped to keep a low profile here. But now that she was closer to the source of the pull, it became harder and harder to ignore. She pulled up her Tome again and again, looking for the source of this effect, and found nothing at all to explain what might be happening to her. Every status effect she’d ever experienced could be analyzed, but this was new and it frightened her a little.

She tried to stop, to at least pause and see if she could figure out what was happening. But when she stopped moving there was a terrible pain behind her eyes, and her feet started moving forward again, almost of their own volition.

Thank goodness the walkways were close to deserted, or else she would have appeared as a madwoman.

Actually, why were the walkways deserted? It was a beautiful morning. Gorgeous, in fact. The fragrant breeze brought the smell of flowers and thick, rich soil. The branches creaked, low and steady, the bass line to the high whisper of the fluttering leaves. It was a day as fine as any that she’d lived through in her years on Somme.

So why did she feel so uneasy? Like there were shadows gathering at the edges of her vision, like reality was growing thin?

Tasya ignored it. She had to. Even if this wasn’t a traditional quest, even if there was nothing wrong with her that she could read in the runes of her Tome, it was clearly something important. And Tasya Batroi did not argue with the hand of Fate.

Her vision blurred and cleared as she walked steadily forward. Dark patches solidified out of gray haze, blinding her; then they subsided. She kept her hand trailing along the thin wooden handrail, hoping that she wouldn’t blunder into anyone standing in front of her. But when her vision cleared again she saw that there was no one. The forest was unnaturally still and quiet. Even the breeze had died, and the soft whisper of the leaves was silenced.

That’s when Tasya started to be truly afraid for the first time.

This was outside of her experience. This wasn’t just a quest. This wasn’t a diversion from her responsibilities. And yes, she’d faced true hardships before, faced death - and worse! - and always came out on top. This was something else.

She stopped there, blinking away the dark spots from her vision. Her hand gripped the railing tightly, the wood cool and reassuring beneath her hand.

She closed her eyes and listened to the strange absence of sound of the forest, breathing deep of the still summer air.

“I am Tasya Bartoi,” she whispered. “I have walked many Paths before this. Whichever of you Divines who have set me upon this Path, guide me, as you have guided me through darkness before.”

Tasya opened her eyes. In front of her she could see the edges of something dark and supernatural, spinning through the air like a cyclone. It was centered over the palace.

She broke into a run.