Yelora

It looked like a child at first—a pale, sad-eyed child of Elvish descent. But upon closer look, you saw that the eyes were a little too large, a little too wet, a little too hungry. The skin was too gray, too loose, too rough. The nails weren’t normal at all—black and curved like an animal’s. The feet were lumpy and oversized. The teeth—Sprites, the teeth! Jagged and sharp and crammed into its fish-like mouth. Well, they had pulled it from the water, hadn’t they?

But Elf-children came from the water, too. Yelora had seen perfect, beautiful Elven babies, always girls, lifted shiny and naked from the magical waters of Creation Falls.

But this thing...

A collective gasp rolled through the crowd like a tide. The sand dug into Yelora’s cheek as she watched with resignation, still pinned face-down on the gritty road.

“Cover it!” That was Sochee’s voice—choked and desperate. “Cover the cage!”

But the old woman didn’t. Sly and fearless after having survived so many rotations even as a delicate Imperial, she leaned in close to its blinking, yellow eyes.

“I wouldn’t get too close,” Yelora warned half-heartedly. It was too late for caring. The Imperials had seen it. Now the Elementals would know. Their chance of getting help from the Alchemist was trickling away to nothing.

Sochee was crying, and Yelora’s heart squeezed. She wished she could tell her everything—that Fara hadn’t had a choice, that the Elf Queendom was on the brink of falling, and turning to darkness was their only hope of saving it, but it had all gone wrong. She wanted Sochee to know that they hadn’t done this to the child on purpose, and that it wasn’t Yelora’s fault. But Yelora wasn’t even sure she believed it. She was the queen now. Everything that happened was her fault.

Should the sun choose not to rise in the tapestry of the sky, the darkness will gleefully gather the stray threads.

Those were the old queen’s words, and Yelora felt the truth of them as clearly as she felt the rumbling of the ground, soft at first, like bare skin under a lover’s fingertips. The telling bones the fortune-teller had tossed trembled with the shuddering ground, then leapt, one by one, on top of one another to create a familiar form. Two stacks of two for the legs, two thicker ones balanced on top for the torso, the longest two creating a parallel line of outstretched arms, and a final one for the head.

She closed her eyes and braced herself.

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The tiny bone figure fell away as a living volcano of dirt and sand rose beneath it. The ground heaved and cracked, lifting and tossing Yelora and freeing her from the Imperial pinning her down. The carriage turned on its side and split like a melon. Ronith and Sochee whisked her to safety as the Imperials ran away or were sucked down and buried alive in the shifting terrain. When the quake settled, a looming, man-shaped behemoth made of stone and dirt towered over them. Its great earthen head blotted out the moon. Its eyes were chips of ice.

“Queen of the Elves, what profanity is this?” the Elemental roared.

Yelora’s chest rattled with every echoing word. She blinked up at the monster, fighting to stay conscious through the pain in her shoulder and ribs. At the edge of her vision, she saw Ronith throw her cape over the cage.

“Where is the abomination?” the Elemental repeated.

“It escaped,” she gasped. The Elementals were simple, but their connection to Terris made them difficult to fool. She had to keep her mind strong, even through the pain. Ronith and Sochee, too. Ronith, she wasn’t worried about, but Sochee was reeling from having seen the creature. Even now it was clear in her tear-streaked face and fast breathing.

Yelora lifted a weak hand. You must control your feelings, she signed.

“M’lady.” Sochee choked on the word. “What happened to that child?”

Yelora’s eyelids flickered. The pain in her shoulder, in her side was too much, but they must not fail in their mission. “Only the Alchemist... can help us.” Everything was blurring. The wailing of the injured Imperials. The broken carriage under whose wreckage they crouched. The Elemental’s girth blocking out the night sky. Yelora could not even see the stars. The beautiful stars...

“It is still here,” the Elemental growled. “We sense its corruption.”

The behemoth peered downward, searching out the creature, which was now keening and crying in its cage. It would not be long now. The Elemental would discover it and crush it to death with a boulder-sized fist. And then it would turn on the Elves, because they had brought it into this world. These great embodiments of Terris would not allow the planet to be tarnished by evil. That was their purpose. That’s why the pact had been made—the Elementals had trusted the wise and ancient Elves. But when it became clear the Elf Queendom was dying, they’d had no choice but to break that trust, and the land was not forgiving.

Yelora’s head fell back. Her ribs were broken. Her wound was bleeding too much. The Riverstone in her crown was as dull as a broken shell. She reached for her staff in Ronith’s hand. The Dark Elf’s hair was loose in the night, her yellow eyes wide.

“Run for the trees,” Yelora managed to say. “Take the child with you.”

“No!” Sochee cried. “We won’t leave you.”

“You must. I’ll defend you.” But all three saw how the staff shook in her hand.

“We’ll never make it,” Ronith said softly, and Yelora knew she was right.

Above them, the Elemental shifted like a great planet in the heavens, searching. Yelora felt rather than saw the moment it spotted the cage under Ronith’s cloak. A jolt of numbing electricity surged through her from the ground beneath.

It was over. They had failed. With a roar, the Elemental lifted its boulder-sized fist, and the stars outlined it, gently, beautifully. Yelora closed her eyes and waited for her reign to end.