Kashur

He really was an idiot, trying to save Elves from an Elemental. The Alchemist had tasked him with finding out the creature’s purpose, not a rescue mission.

“Wait! He’s a wizard!” the dark one chastised her companion. She turned to Kashur. “We seek the Alchemist.” Her eyes were like a cat’s.

“Then you’re in luck!”

The Elf in his arms stirred, looking up at him bleary-eyed. “You’re the Alchemist?”

Kashur ducked as the wood heaved and splintered over their heads, then gave the girl in his arms his winningest smile. “At your service!” It was close enough to the truth. He was the Alchemist’s right-hand man, and he was here on the Alchemist’s business. The rest was semantics, which they could sort out later, when they weren’t in mortal danger. No way out but through. “Shall we go?”

A small clearing lay between their sprawling shelter of branches and the woods where he’d left Northwind. He’d need a distraction if he hoped to get the Elves and himself across it to safety.

Reaching up with his Summoning power, Kashur tugged on the essence of the Elemental, like fingers pulling on spider threads. White ghostly strands formed opposite the monster. The strands wove together, creating a copy of the Elemental in perfect mirror-image of the true one. Just as imposing. Just as angry. Just as deadly. The Specter roared at the Elemental and charged.

“That should keep him busy for a few minutes,” Kashur said. “Follow me.”

The two Elementals pounded on one another in a furious, tree-felling fracas as Kashur led the Elves into the clearing, bending low to drag a bare hand along the sparse grasses (not an easy thing to do with an injured Elf slung over his shoulder). The tender blades surged upwards, growing tall as corn stalks and providing extra cover for the threesome and their horses as they fled for the treeline.

“Summoner!”

It was terrifying to hear his name spoken with such fury by so powerful a being. The monster glared through its enemy’s spectral form as the threads thinned and wafted away to nothingness.

Well, that hadn’t lasted nearly long enough. “Run!” Kashur cried. He reached out again and felt the Imperial camp nearby. Summoning a handful of dragoons, he sent those after the Elemental. The Dark Elf swung her cage out of the way and pointed a staff at the beast, sending a surge of lightning into its shimmering eyes. The Elemental slowed, but did not stop.

“There’s a portal in the old mill!” Kashur shouted as the Elemental barreled into the woods, just on their heels, snapping tree trunks and spooking the Elves’ horses.

“Put her on my horse,” the brown-haired Elf demanded, calming her protesting mare.

But there was no time. He veered right as the others went left to dodge a crashing pine. The Elven girl on his shoulder grunted as he stumbled over a tangle of exposed roots. He’d almost dropped her. He’d have to be more careful—one hand was still gloveless. If he touched her...

The trees grew thicker as he pushed deeper into the wood, the Elemental trailing after the other two Elves. At least they had their horses. He zigzagged through the woods until he found Nightwind. Kashur whispered small comforts to the horse as he lay the Elf over the saddle as gently as possible, one-handed. Then he slipped his glove back on and mounted, sparing a glance at the raging Elemental, still visible through the treetops. If it was still this angry, that probably meant the others had gotten away.

Cradling the girl against him, he rode as fast as he dared through the woods. He didn’t look behind him where more sounds of snapping trees and crashing boulders punctuated the night. Instead he looked ahead to the orange moon, hanging like a dwarves’ lantern in the sky.

The Elven girl stirred against him, her metal crown raking across his chin. Why was she wearing a crown? This wasn’t the Elf Queen. He’d met Fara several times in the years since he’d joined the Wizards. Perhaps this had something to do with why the Elementals were so angry.

Cerulean light peeked from the cracks in the mill’s siding, as if the old building were stuffed with lightning. Kashur guided Northwind inside, stopping him just at the bright threshold of the portal’s blue eye. They would wait here for her friends. She stirred again, and this time Kashur allowed her head to fall away from him, lolling in the crook of his arm. Her face was pale in the blue reflected light, lips parted. It surprised him to see how much she was bleeding. Could Elves die as easily as Imperials when wounded?

Her eyes fluttered open and fixed on him. Relief flooded over her delicate features, then the pain took over. She moaned.

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“Shh,” Kashur whispered, the same way he did to his horse. “That’s an ugly wound.”

“Where are the others?”

“They’re coming.” He laid a gloved hand heavily on her shoulder. “Be still and let me heal you.”

“Alchemist, you must hear me.”

Kashur started to correct his early mis-speak, to tell her that, no, he was not actually the Alchemist, but something stopped him. Mol Morin had sent him here to find out why the Elementals were agitated, but the creature hadn’t divulged anything. And here were three Elves, one of them wearing the queen’s crown who was definitely not the queen. He would be a fool to bring them to the doorstep of the Wizards’ Lair without at least trying to glean what they were up to.

“I would hear what you have to say,” he said stiffly. It wasn’t a mis-speak. Not technically.

The portal’s unnatural light turned the Elf’s pupils into pinpricks. Her irises glowed turquoise in the unnatural light. “We have need of your help, Alchemist. Queen Fara has retired and left the Elf Queendom in my hands.” The words came fast and shallow, like her breaths under his healing hand. “Elven magic has been failing for some time, and we have been unable to reproduce. Queen Fara, in an attempt to circumvent the problem, broke our pact with the Elementals and used the dark power. It was... a mistake.”

The Elven girl hiccupped, or perhaps it was a small sob, before the words continued quickly, desperately from her mouth. Kashur’s stomach lurched. He had the information he had come for: the Queen had retired, passing her crown on to this new queen; she had summoned the dark powers, angering the Elementals; the Elves were coming to the Alchemist for help.

The rest of her words were not meant for him. They were outside of his role as Summoner. These things were deeper, more dangerous. Kashur should stop her, tell her she could deliver her story to the true Alchemist once her friends had arrived. At the very least he should try not to listen.

But he didn’t stop her. And he did not try not to listen.

He let the new queen spill the Elves’ secrets to him, one by one.

She spoke of a waterfall and sacred pool deep in the forests where Terris itself birthed the Elven folk. The queen would bare her arms and plunge them deep into the cold waters, pulling a slippery Elven baby from its depths. But for several rotations, the queen had reached down into Creation Falls and pulled up nothing. Over and over again. The Elves had prayed to the sprites, had pleaded with the trees, had carried out their rituals to the water and the land and the green, growing things. And still nothing.

And so Queen Fara, in desperation, had ventured deep into the swamp at the edge of the Elven forest. She had uttered the secret words that one queen whispers to the next and obtained the key to the secret vault. Once she had the key, she had opened the secret vault. It was not underground, where a Dwarf might tunnel into it, but in a part of nature so precious and hidden that none who weren’t of Elven blood even knew it existed. She took a fragment of the dark magic that was stored there for safekeeping—a piece no bigger than a mote of dust. She carried it to Creation Falls and dropped it in.

That year, an Elven baby was born. The Elves rejoiced, not knowing what she had done, for she could never tell them. The Elementals had trusted the storing of the dark magic to the wise and ancient Elves. It was a way to keep Terris and all those who dwelt in her safe and healthy. But Queen Fara had broken that trust, endangering them all.

Kashur swallowed hard as the new elf queen paused in her storytelling to guide his gloved hand from her now-healed shoulder to the broken ribs on her right side. He thought again how he should stop her. These secrets weren’t meant for his ears. But he did not stop her. He let her go on.

“The baby was not normal. It had been conceived with dark magic, and therefore darkness lived inside it. Not a lot, mind you. Not enough to make it evil. But enough to make it... different. And then more rotations passed with no Elf babies, but Queen Fara did not go back to the vault. Then there came a sickness, and an accident, and many Elves died. And Queen Fara worried that while the populations of the other peoples of Terris were growing, ours was dwindling, and we would not be safe, and so, with a heavy heart, she went again to the vault. But this would be the last time, she said, because using the dark magic had poisoned her. And so, she would use it one more time, and then she would pass the crown to me until the poison took her. But this last child...” She shuddered in his arms and her voice dropped to a raspy whisper. “What she pulled from the waters, Alchemist, wasn’t an Elf at all. It was something else. Something hungry.”

Now he wished more than ever that he’d made her stop. Hoofbeats sounded on the packed ground. The two Elves arrived on their white horses. Kashur’s eye immediately went to the curtained cage.

Something hungry.

The brown-haired elf brought her horse up close and examined her friend with a relieved smile. The Elf Queen was sitting up on her own now, tired, but no longer in danger. “Thank you for your help,” the friend said to Kashur.

He gave her a stiff nod.

“Do you still have it?” The Elf Queen asked, and the cat-eyed Elf lifted the covered cage.

“It is unharmed, my lady.”

“Good.” The Elf Queen’s back was to Kashur as they shared the saddle. “I’ve told the Alchemist everything. Now surely he can help us.”

“Follow me.” Kashur winced as he turned Nightwind into the great blue eye of the portal, feeling like a cheap magician rather than a Summoner of the Arcane Sect. A second later the smell of pine woods and night air was replaced by the scent of dampness and minerals. They were no longer at the old mill off Ambush Pass. They were in the stone courtyard of the Wizards’ Lair. Mol Morin stood before them in his dress robes, dark hands clasped before him, a small smile pinned to his lips.

Kashur looked away guiltily as his mentor spoke.

“Welcome, Elven guests. I am Mol Morin, the Alchemist.”