Sabeau had stabbed Lyrek in the back, ending his centuries of life, and cutting off his leadership and wisdom. He looked around the battlefield, trying to determine if he’d been caught. Around him were the faces that he’d grown up with. Members of the community he’d lived in for his entire life. Had they seen him assassinate the chief of their little village?
Some of the elves looked at him with what he thought were accusing glances. Everyone was carrying a weapon, and if they suspected his crime, they would land on him and exact a much-deserved vengeance. He couldn’t risk it, he would leave. The entirety of the Elf Nation was on the march, off to overthrow their masters; and he was going to run.
The battle was well and truly joined, elves were dying by the dozens and the hundreds, and the Inoans, whose land this was, were perishing in ever greater numbers. He knew nothing about this land, but the fighting was southward, so North it was. He jogged because everyone was moving fast. When he’d cleared the zone where the portals were unloading his people into this land of light and fresh air, he settled to a walk and continued walking for several weeks.
There was a voice in his head, a somehow familiar voice that gently guided him. Eventually, he found himself near the border of Warfield, the home of the Mavit Tomar. He could see the giant wall that separated the plains of Pyrros from the lands controlled by the goat men of the north. Before he could get too close, armed soldiers were sent out to meet him. He had no plausible explanation for coming so close to their lands; so, he was promptly taken into custody. After enduring verbal attacks and physical abuses, he found his way to the royal estate. He was threatened with being dragged before the Tsarina, but instead, found himself on his knees before the Tsarevna.
Verdana looked at the elf. She’d never seen an elf, or even heard about their kind. He wasn’t human, she hated the humans, but he was very similar to them. Same lack of fur, no tail like a civilized person would have. She was ready to have him either dispatched or thrown in a cell and forgotten about, but she remembered the voice in the depths of her mind. A voice that, despite how quiet it seemed, projected great power. She had chalked it up to imagination, hallucination, or perhaps even the beginning of madness. Some of her distant ancestors had suffered from various mental afflictions. In the presence of this person, this ‘elf’, she could now hear the voices more clearly, louder. They urged her to… follow him.
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“What do you want here? Why do you tempt fate and travel to the empire of the Mavit Tomar?” she asked, looking down at the pitiable creature.
“I felt an urge, a compulsion to travel here. The voice that speaks to me, also speaks to you princess,” he said calmly. “There is a place of power, here in this very structure. Deep in the bowels of the land, beneath the lowest dungeon. The voice tells me, no… commands me to take you there.”
She thought about this long and hard. She believed every word he said, because it rang true in her like a harp coming perfectly in tune. She knew from the outset that she had no choice but to follow this lost soul, but she was not about to let him know how agreeable the quest was to her.
“You’re telling me that you’re insane. Even within the walls of my castle, why should I follow you anywhere?”
“Follow me… or don’t. I may not be insane now, but the demands of the being that guided me here will not be denied. If I’m not allowed to complete my mission, I fear I’ll be reduced to a babbling idiot. I do not want that fate.”
“It’s a slow day, I suppose I can humor you. Let me have my honor guard assembled…”
“No, my lady!” Sabeau pleaded. He was tall and lean like all elves, his skin mottled white like his hair, bleached of any vibrancy. Despite this, his features were noble and less horrible than that of the humans. “We must go alone, you and I. Keep my chains on, carry your knives. I am no danger to you. She insists that I bring you to her, that no one else must hear what she has to say.”
They made their way through long hallways, down stairs, up ramps, through discreet doors, and when they were deeper than Verdana had ever imagined, they came to a doorway. Nondescript, but somehow Sabeau knew that they had arrived.
“She tells me that this is a weak spot, a vergence of her world and this one.” He knocked on the door, then stepped back and waited. The door dissolved and they were staring into infinite darkness.
“You have done well my slave. You need serve me no further,” said the booming voice. Sabeau’s face looked calm, serene. Suddenly, his whole body tightened, and he clutched his chest. A second later, he lay dead, face first on the floor.
“Tsarevna Verdana Dren,” the voice was like acid poured over ice. “Listen closely, child. You are my creature now.”