image [https://i.imgur.com/RSZxlFm.jpeg]

The elf's hair was long and silver. He had the sleek, pointed ears that were well-known to his race, and he was dressed simply, as if he was on a hunt or a scout.

"I'm from Hilaboreas," Jason said. "I wandered into this wood to look at what crashed. Forgive my trespass."

The elf shook his head with a smirk. "This isn't my wood," he said. "Now sit down and shut up."

Jason looked at the elf closer. He didn't appear to have any of the Ilfaros clan markings, which were worn universally as amulets or markings on the leathers that they wore. This meant that his elf was likely a rogue, or a scout, or a vagabond of some kind, which made him much more dangerous. There was no treaty that kept this elf from killing Jason right then and there, which would've held back an Ilfaros elf, who normally roamed in this forest. Maybe, just maybe, he knew the laws of the Bionomnos at least, which laid out how prisoners and captives of other races should be kept without torture and without death.

Strangely, this elf had a flicker of fear in his eyes as he moved about, as if he was being stalked, too.

Jason saw this as his chance to reason with the elf.

"I'm here to look at what crashed," Jason repeated. "You see that? Behind us there? It's a steel ship, from the skies. Have you seen anything like it before?"

"I saw the light flash," the elf said. "I was wandering through this wasteland, this muddy hellhole you call your kingdom, when it lit up the sky. I'm sure I saw it first. Much before you." The elf chuckled to himself and smiled smugly. "Are you going to tell your tyrant what you've seen?"

"Even if I did," Jason said. "I don't think he'd believe me. I'd be the laughingstock. Do you believe now? Did you before?"

"Believe in what?"

"The sky people, " Jason said. "It must be from them."

"It doesn't matter what I believe," the elf said. "I only live for my mission, I only live to serve my queen."

The elf paused for a moment and looked Jason up and down, as if to study him before making a decision. Jason stood with a blank stare, not giving anything away, but there was a palpable fear that could be sensed from his rapid heart beat, the sweat collecting on the tip of his nose, and the twitch in his eye. There was no stoic pose that could conceal his fear.

"I'm going to put down my bow," the elf said. "I have an elvish dagger tucked here in my belt. I'm going to take that out, approach you, and check you for weapons. If you do anything funny, I'll slit your throat like I would a doe felled in the winter's snow by an arrow, and let you bleed out next to this burning junk here. Do you understand?"

Jason tried to swallow, but his throat was dry as sand. He nodded his head. "I understand," Jason said. "I have no weapons. I didn't think elves would be around these parts."

"Shut your mouth," the elf said. "No more words."

The elf lowered his bow and slung it across his back in one move, then in the next he showed his dagger, which was a khalas, the elven short sword. It was made of elven steel, one of the strongest alloys in Lokar. It was stained dirty and stained red. The elf was instructed to never clean this weapon, as the blood of its victims gave its potency and power, and thankfully this khalas was clean. The elves were a noble race with a high culture, great poetry and song, craftsmanship that put humans to shame, but they were anything but peaceful. They thrived on violence, but only when deemed necessary. They recognized innocence in the world, unlike the Morlogian races - the orcs, goblins, trolls - who would pillage and plunder a human village for afternoon fun.

Jason's heartbeat settled to a normal rhythm and his brow stopped flooding his face with sweat. He wasn't sure what this elf wanted, but he knew that if he wanted him dead, it would've happened already. The elf patted Jason down, checked his pockets, ran his hands down the inner seam of his linen trousers, dug into his leather coat, but found no weapons. In a way, Jason was glad that he forgot his dagger at home. He was lucky, because if had a weapon now, he'd surely be dead.

The elf pushed Jason back against the hard trunk an evergreen and pulled out a hank of hemp rope. He grabbed hold of Jason's wrists and wrapped a knot around them with the rough hemp fiber, biting the skin with a precision that spoke to the elf's skill with knots. A few tight loops, cinched enough to erase any thought of escape in Jason's mind, yet not enough to break his skin unless he resisted. The elf wasn't done. He finished by looping one last knot around the evergreen's trunk and through the labyrinth of rope that secured Jason's limbs. There was no escaping now.

"I'm going to keep you right here," the elf said. He delighted in his work, admiring the knots that elegantly bound Jason in his helpless state. "That burning junk might have something useful, I don't know yet. If you try anything, if by some fluke you escape my perfect knots, I will hunt you down and kill you. Do you understand?"

Jason nodded his head without saying a word. The elf turned his back to Jason, latched to the evergreen, and cautiously walked towards the ship's burning wreckage. Bits and pieces of the ship scattered around the trees, and besides the main bulk of it, they weren't on fire. The elf went around carefully examining each piece of the wreckage, and after about twenty minutes, he came back to check on Jason, who was still tied up in that helpless position where he was before.

"Tell me your name," the elf said. "Tell me where you're from, and what you're really doing here."

"I'm Jason. I told you, I followed the light, and came to see this crash."

The elf huffed. "Answer my other questions, Jason. Tell me where you're from. I need to know if I can let you go back or not."

"Yeah whatever you say," Jason said. "I'm from the kingdom just southeast of here, Hilaboreas. I live with my mother, just the two of us, in a cottage. We're citizens, but not of the castle, and live by farming apples and odd jobs."

"Your father?" the elf asked.

Jason paused. He didn't know how much he should share about his father. Mercenaries had a reputation with the other races, especially elves, as being antagonistic and untrustworthy. "He died in an accident when I was eight years old. His name was Hector. He was a farmer, and fell from the barn roof during a rainstorm."

It was a stupid, pathetic lie, and Jason could see that the elf wasn't buying it. He could also tell that it didn't matter. Whatever fate this elf had in for Jason was going forward no matter how he answered these questions.

"You made a stupid mistake," the elf said. "Coming this far into the forest alone and without a weapon. Are you normally this dumb, or was this a fluke? Or the third option. Is this a trap? What am I to think, after all. A purple flash in the sky. Surely your tyrant's guards would come soon after. Are you a scout? Tell me the truth now, forget what you've lied about already. The truth is what elves respect the most."

Jason gulped down his fear and it churned in his guts. His face flushed red, embarrassed by getting caught out with his dumb, simple lies. "I'm no scout. I came alone. I can promise you that."

The elf leaned forward, facing Jason eye to eye now. There was enough light from the burning ship behind them where he could get a good look at Jason and what secrets he was holding back. He squinted and looked his helpless human captive straight into his soul. The elves were skilled at reading a human, much like reading a book. Humans were horrible at hiding their lies and their motives.

"I'll let you live, if you give me advice," the elf said. "And if you tell the truth, I'll tell you who I am, and why I'm here."

"Anything you ask," Jason said.

"Hmm, right," the elf said. "My name is Rudra, I come from an elven clan far to the west, in the mountains at the edge of the Gobula Desert. I'm looking for my queen. She's been captured."

"And what do you need from me?"

"Tell me the best way into your tyrant's castle," Rudra said. "Its weakness, how many guards he has."

"It's guarded well," Jason said. "Tyrant Rayos stays at the center, in a type of keep. There are many walls and fortifications between the outside and him, and each is guarded heavily."

Rudra was silent. He reached into his knapsack and pulled out a rough looking dagger. It was human, not elven. "Fair then, this is what we'll do," Rudra said. "You see this dagger? It's a throwaway. I found it on the banks of the Fox River, by some abandoned human camp. Maybe a fisher or trapper left it, who knows."

The dagger looked to be made from Hilaboreas steel. Two white feathers were tied to its handle.

"This is your lifeline," Rudra said. "I'm going to set it by the tree over there, far enough away that you can't reach it. At the same time, it will be close enough for you to see it. I'll leave your life in the hands of the fates. If the fates favor you, the dagger will be yours, and you can cut yourself free, or maybe even defend yourself from whatever comes tonight."

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With that, Rudra turned his back on Jason, leaving him stranded there, tied and bound to the evergreen trunk, with the hunter's dagger just out reach. Rudra didn't give two damns about what happened to Jason. The elf checked to make sure he had all of his belongings, mounted his white horse, which had been waiting silently in the forest's shadows, and rode off to the south, disappearing into the dark wood.

Jason was alone now. Or so he thought. The night was somehow getting darker, as the fire from the crash site burned out and the stars flickered in the sky. Even if Jason could grab that dagger, cut himself free, and get back to tell his people what he had seen, they wouldn't believe him. Sky people? Impossible, not without proof. And what of the Tyrant Rayos? There wasn't a chance in hell that he would entertain the silly story of a farm boy, of a ship from the stars that crashed in the forest.

But if he could get them to believe him, if he could convince them to come out and take a look at what he saw with his owns, this ship burning up in flames, it could be the thing that Jason had been looking for his entire life. Proof of the sky people. It would vindicate his father's stories, passed to him by the hushed whispers of wandering merchants.

None of that mattered at this point, because if Jason couldn't get free, it wouldn't be long before the creatures of the night would come out. It could be a goblin, or something far worse. Maybe a troll. Or a wandering orc. Or even the direwolves.

There was a reason why people didn't go to the forest alone, and only fools went without weapons. Jason was both, even with that dagger just out of reach.

Jason strained and pulled on the rope that the elf had bound him with, but the knots were too strong. It wasn't long too before the darkness won. Night was complete and the fires petered out to a smolder. The faintest light from the wreckage faded away alongside Jason's hope.

A howl echoed to the north. It was a direwolf. These were massive beasts, twice the size of a standard horse, and they preyed on any living thing in the forest. Their coats were thick and charcoal black, with bulging red eyes that glowed even on moonless nights. Humans knew that if you heard their howl, the direwolf was onto your scent. Sometimes they hunted alongside trolls, and acted as companions to that vile race. There was a poetic line in one of the Legends that said, "A troll alongside a wolf of dire make an indomitable pair, hear their howl and despair."

That line raced through Jason's thoughts over and over again as he struggled against the hemp rope. Another howl echoed, closer now. *Hear their howl and despair*, mulled deeper in his mind. He could feel the line move through his body and gnaw at his bones.

A sliver of the moon rose up in the east. It cast just enough light through the thick evergreen and pine trees to show the dagger again. In a way this angered Jason even more. The tool of his freedom rested two arm's lengths out of reach.

Another howl. Closer again, this time from the east. It seemed to track underneath the crescent moon. There was no doubt now. The direwolves were onto his scent.

Jason clenched his fists, imagining them small as when he was a young boy. If he could will them to be small, if he mustered enough imagination, maybe he could slip out from the hemp rope bondage that the elf inflicted upon him. His fingers swelled as he tucked them into his palm. They nearly burst at the joints from the pressure. Little pops and cracks.

There were other strange sounds coming from the forest. Snapping twigs, little peels of laughter, screeching. Something out there was coming for him, but the laughter and screeches were foreign to his ear. Who knew what they could be? Human, unlikely. Orcs? Perhaps, but it was said that orcs were never known to laugh. Trolls? It would make sense alongside the howls.

Or maybe goblins. A vicious and stupid race who loved to see humans suffer. They reveled in pain and torture. Humans despised goblins, but on the whole didn't fear them, as the average human could overpower a goblin with ease - they were twice their size, after all. But in the spot that Jason was in, tied up to the tree, he'd be an easy target for their cruel antics.

Orcs didn't delight in human murder, it was just their nature to do it, like a bear kills salmon. Not to be underestimated at all, though. An orc was an efficient killer, a brutal sort of creature, who killed as an ordinary matter. They'd killed Jason's father along with the other mercenaries at the Treacher. This wasn't an uncommon interaction between humans and orcs, but nevertheless, the orcs didn't get giddy over it. They did it because that's what they did. They were the most feared of the Morlogian races for a reason. Since it was laughter in the woods, it was unlikely that they were orcs coming for him.

What about trolls? They sometimes wandered with direwolves as companions, which could explain the howling. Trolls were largely feared by humans, but they could be reasoned with. They didn't kill out of instinct like the orcs, nor out of pleasure like goblins. In this way, they were similar to humans, but they despised the Bionomnos, the sacred law that humans were bound to.

Trolls wandered the wilds of Lokar alone and solitary, never in groups, not even pairs. If they wanted to kill, they did, if they wanted to do good, then they did. Each trolls lived according to their own code, something they called Ra-Thelem, an old word from the First Aeon that meant "light of the will." Trolls were fiercely individualistic and some from their race were known to be the wisest creatures in all of Lokar, even compared to the Vampires found in the labyrinthine depths of the Guilds. If it was a troll out there laughing, then Jason hoped that it was a good one.

Another peel of laughter broke out, followed by a howl. The sounds seemed to be circling around Jason. He heard it in the east. Then twenty minutes later, somewhere to the north. Then another fifteen minutes would pass, and it was heard from the west.

Jason was getting tired. He didn't know how much longer he could stay awake. Even if he did remain vigilant, what would be the point? He couldn't fight or fend off a threat. He couldn't flee. In a way, staying awake was a torture to his mind. If he could just fall asleep, maybe he could put himself in the hands of the fates, like Rudra said, and let them take over to sort out what was to come.

Jason knew that either way, if he stayed awake or fell asleep, whatever it was that was out there, goblin or troll, would find him as a morsel on a platter tied up to this evergreen trunk. A direwolf could feast on his body. A goblin could take any cruel delight in torturing him. A troll could squish him like a bug and not think twice about it.

Another hour passed. He tracked time from the moon's slow arc across the inky night sky. Jason fought back the heaviness in his eyes, but there was no point. Eventually, he had to sleep, whether it was now or when daylight came.

There were a couple of hours left before dawn. The howls got closer, much louder. The laughter wasn't far now. They were cackles that rose up like mists to the top of the trees. Jason kicked and pulled as hard as he could on the rope, wiggling his fingers, trying anything he could to rip himself away from the bondage. It was useless. The elf knew how to tie a knot. There was no escape.

Jason resigned himself to death, or whatever the fates would bring. He remembered a line from the Legends, "Suffer gladly, suffer wise, for suffer knows all." Before this night, the only other time in his life that Jason had suffered was when he learned of his father's death. That devastated him as a young boy, only eight years old. He asked his mother why his father hadn't returned. She hid the truth from him for months, until the day of mourning, when the kingdom paraded the empty coffins of the mercenaries through the village and to the castle gates itself. That's when he learned that his father was never coming back. His ghost carried in that empty casket.

Would he join him now in the Beyond?

Jason stopped struggling. He stopped reaching for that dagger, which sat only two arm's lengths away. The one thing that could free him, to get him back home.

Sleep was more important now. Jason wanted to disappear. Or rather, to make this forest go away. Silence the laughter. Make the howls stop.

There was a silver lining in all this. A realization that curled Jason's lips into a grin, as his heavy eyelids closed. He knew the truth now. There were sky people. He could die complete, knowing that they were real.

It didn't matter if he died tied up to this evergreen tree. It didn't matter that he wouldn't be able to go back and convince the Tyrant Rayos, the kingdom, or Lokar that the sky people were real. Jason knew the truth now. He knew that if the sky people came once, that they would come again. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not in a year, but it would happen again, and someone like him would find them, without the same unlucky fate as he had on this night.

With that thought, Jason pressed his back against the evergreen's trunk. his body relaxed. He heard the direwolves howl, joined by the cackling in the shadows, and his eyes became heavy, very heavy with the coming sleep.

Jason entered the silence, where only dreams live.

"Wake up, wake up," a voice said. "Wake up." A weak hand pushed on Jason's chest with enough power to startle him awake. He opened his eyes and a blinding torch was in his face. He figured that he must not have been asleep for more than ten minutes.

"Wake up, wake up," the voice said again. Jason could make out that it was a young woman's voice. She spoke Glossar, the human tongue, but in a strange dialect. It was nothing that Jason had heard before, and he had heard dialects from wandering merchants and mercenaries from around the whole of Lokar.

His vision came into focus and standing before him was, in fact, a young woman. She appeared to be around his age, early twenties. She had smooth and tidy red hair, which fell neatly to her shoulders, and brilliant fiery orange eyes that glowed in the torch's light.

Jason stared into those eyes, blinking to make sure that they were the color that he saw, and not just a reflection from the flame. After a moment he realized that her eyes were definitely orange.

The young woman lifted the torch and waved it in front of Jason's face. The heat and light from the flame felt like a small sun. This wasn't a torch with ordinary fire. It was bright and white, but small and compact. It fit in the palm of her left hand with ease. Jason had seen nothing like this before.

"I'm awake," Jason said, finally. "You can move the torch away."

The young woman stepped back. Jason could get a better look at her now. Her body was mostly exposed, except for some leather and metal across her chest, bottom, shoulders and arms. She had a bag strapped to her back and a thick glass helmet. She was beautiful, her pale skin delicate like a flower in spring. But she looked a little roughed up, like she had just fell off a horse.

"Over there, over there," Jason said. He nudged his head in the direction of the elf's dagger that sat at the base of the evergreen tree. "You have to cut me loose right now. They're coming after us. Over there, the dagger. Grab it and cut me free."

The woman knelt down and picked up the dagger. She admired the smooth silver blade and the swirled ivory handle. It was expert craftsmanship. She held it in the palm of her right hand and stepped back away from Jason. "What makes you think that I trust you?" she asked. "If I cut you free, you can kill me. The only reason I woke you up is to ask what you saw."

"I say nothing until you free me," Jason said.

She didn't say a word, but just turned to walk away. She didn't make it more than a dozen steps before Jason groaned and called for her to stop.

"Wait, wait, don't leave," Jason said. "Listen. Listen to the forest. You'll hear them." It didn't take more than a minute for the howls to rise up to the crescent moon. They were followed with cackles of laughter. "It won't be long before they reach us."

"Who's they?" she asked.

"We don't want to find out," Jason said. "Look, just cut me loose. I'll answer any of your questions. I'll get you to safety. If we don't leave right now, we're both dead." He paused and looked over to the smoldering ship, then back to the young woman, who looked so foreign to Lokar. "I know you're from the stars. You're a sky person. I know it. They won't believe us, even if we showed him your ship there. You don't know how it is down here, do you? There's danger everywhere on Lokar."