You

Victory… was the second worst thing to ever happen to you. Many millennia have passed since your ultimate victory against the forces of ‘good’, as they had so named themselves.

Every army which rose against you had been left broken and bloodied by your unrivalled magics, indomitable strength and colossal fury. Every trick, every scheme and every treachery levied against you had been foiled by your superior intellect and cunning foresight. Every hero and champion sent by the kings, queens and gods to sway or destroy you had been humiliated and shattered against your ice-cold heart and unstoppable will.

You stood at the top of the world; every corner of every continent held within your iron grasp by the loyal legions that looked to you as their dark god. Every last inkling of rebellion stamped out to the last.

And you were satisfied, content in your ultimate power.

For a time.

As one of the ageless elves, you were spared from the cruel tyranny that time wrought on the bodies of the lesser races, on men and dwarves and all the other pitiful ilk that roamed the lands which now belonged solely to you.

The first few centuries or so, you were content to rule over your grovelling subjects. Entertained by the endless cutthroat nature of the hierarchy you had built in your legions as they sought to appease you. Their backstabbing and scheming staved off the boredom.

For a time.

But when you saw a thousand such schemes, you had seen them all. The unimaginative orcs that made up the majority of your forces bored you the quickest. But even those of your kin which had remained by your side since the start had worn on you until they were little better than the orcs in your mind.

Always squabbling, never satisfied yet never brave or powerful enough to give you any meaningful challenge.

The rebellions and riots from the enslaved races of the world kept you busy for longer, but as the centuries passed and turned into millennia and the status quo was enforced time and again they became lesser and lesser until they petered out entirely.

Even the gods, who had opposed you almost from the very beginning, began to weaken and collapse into non-existence as their worship was outlawed under pain of torture and death, and then eventually forgotten entirely.

Ultimate victory, by every possible metric you could label, was yours. It would continue to be yours until the end of time. So complete was your success, that there truly was no hope left for the world to throw off your yolk. The goal you had set out all those years ago to achieve was done.

And yet the pain and the rage that consumed your soul refused to depart.

It should have gone away; it should have been enough. But it wasn’t, the entire world wasn’t enough to quench the scathing fire that burned your heart every microsecond of every day of your timeless existence.

This revelation served only to grow your fury to fresh heights, and so you released your anger on the only force that could offer even a modicum of resistance; your own legions.

You held nothing back, for it was not your way to do things in half measures. But you gave your generals a chance with an ultimatum, to rally their strength and their armies lest they fail to put up any sport at all.

But as you crushed them beneath mace and magic, you learned they weren’t half the challenge the forces of light had been. Without you to prop them up they were disorganised, uncooperative and unimaginative. Those that didn’t scatter to the winds in terror, that was.

They were weak, and all they knew how to do was grovel and backstab and crush forces far weaker than they.

It disgusted you, that such beings had labelled themselves as betters to those you defeated oh so long ago. What revolted you more was knowing that these were supposedly the greatest of your minions, and that they were found lacking made you question your own abilities.

For surely they were only a reflection of the hand which had forged them?

That question brought you such inner turmoil, stoking your rage to even greater heights as you questioned yourself for the first time in thousands of years and didn’t like the answers such queries brought.

So you turned your wrath to what remained; the slave races and those that yet lived of your traitorous kin. Other than a rare few brave souls who stood up to you without hope of victory, most scattered and ran without even token resistance.

It was like crushing ants; disgustingly, pathetically easy.

Your choler petered out soon enough, to be replaced by a bone-deep weariness that shook you to your core. For the first time in your entire life, you were threatened by the call of the eternal dream which inevitably claimed all of your people who lived long enough.

There was nothing left to destroy, nothing to distract you from your pain. And yet it remained, as sharp and cutting as ever.

Were… were you wrong? You recalled one of the god’s champions, his name forgotten but his words having stuck with you long since his bones had turned to dust.

‘I know the source of your suffering, and all the rage and hate will not fill the hole they left behind, it will only make the pain you carry worse.’

They had been his last words, chained as he was in your dungeons. You hadn’t cared to hear any more of such drivel from him and had taken his tongue. Though his suffering continued for long afterwards.

With no one left to blame, and no one worth hating, you can no longer hide from the truth. He had been right, that forgotten hero, for his words had undeniably come true.

You look around at the barren landscape which surrounds you, blackened and smoking from the fallout of your ruinous magics. Not so much as an insect drew breath from horizon to horizon. You were completely and utterly alone; the only person left to blame was yourself.

Perhaps… perhaps it had all been for nothing after all.

You fall to your knees, throw off the black mithril gauntlets of your armour and grasp a fistful of ash. You let it slowly pour back to the ground through your fingers as you feel your entire existence crumbling around you.

What was the point of it all? Of the destruction, the hate, the killing? Nothing had brought them back. You had merely desired to see your pain reflected in the eyes of every living being on this despicable world.

You see now your folly. You fought only to distract yourself from the pain, running from it like a scared little youngling. There was no true end goal, no peace at the end of the war, no future to be won.

You say you achieved victory, but have nought to show for it but the ashes in your hand.

What left is there for you to do then? Does a future free from pain even exist? Would you take it even if you knew how to achieve it?

You spent thousands of years hating this world, could you discard that so easily?

You do not know the answers, but you do know that you won’t give up. Failure has never been an option for you, and though you finally see that all your struggles have been in vain, that is not enough to break your will.

If that champion had been right all along, what else had he and his allies been right about? You hesitate to claim they had known better in anything, they had lost after all, but you find all your beliefs thrown into doubt.

Perhaps then you should at least… consider the possibility that you could learn something from them.

The only problem being, of course, that civilization as you knew it has long since been obliterated. Most of those that survived your wrath live on only in pathetic tribal communities, too trivial and tedious to stamp out, with barely even an inkling of the heights their races had once achieved.

But there were enough of them running around to avoid extinction, most of the different races anyway. Like cockroaches, they managed to survive even the calamities you have brought upon the world.

Give them enough time and they will multiply like rabbits. Soon enough they’d plague every corner of the world once again, of that you have little doubt.

You suspect some of your traitorous kin yet live on somewhere, in some form of civilization, hidden from your gaze. But you have suspected that for a long time.

Despite everything, you never could bring yourself to seek out and exterminate the last of your own people and culture.

You can admit now that it was fear which stayed your hand. Fear that you would spend eternity alone with nought but the lesser races which were little better than animals.

Fear, and just maybe a note of sentiment.

Deciding upon a path forward, you flex your magical muscles and raise a mausoleum of dark stone from the earth. A simple bit of geomancy, at least for you, that should hold firm against the ravages of time. You telekinetically engrave enchantments into the stone, muttering all the while, to make it nigh indestructible.

You are a patient elf, or at least you have always considered yourself as such, but you are certain you would go insane waiting for the lesser races to rebuild themselves, if you do not succumb to the eternal dream in the meantime.

So you have decided to take something of a shortcut.

Entering the mausoleum, you raise a coffin of stone and inscribe on its surface the necessary runes for suspended animation. A famously unreliable piece of magic, due to the long time frames involved along with weathering and earthquakes and such.

You are doubtful it will last the full ten thousand years you have programmed it to. Obviously you would not be able to repair or check up on the enchantment when inside, but you find you don’t really care whether you wake up in a thousand or a hundred thousand years.

Checking over your work just once, satisfied, you doff your armour and lay down in the hard stone coffin. Not one to delay, you immediately close shut the lid and complete the enchantment circuit, activating the suspended animation.

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You

You wake up.

Conscious thought returns slowly to you, but you become aware that your stasis has ended. It is strange, you did not so much as dream and yet the weight of time remains upon your psyche.

You feel the years but not the experience. Upon reflection, it only makes sense. You long since reached beyond mortal perceptions, and you can sense that piece of you which kept track of the years in rebellion against your own magics.

For the first time in… as long as you can remember, you feel almost calm. As though that piece, which returns to you now, achieved a measure of serenity during its long vigil.

The humans, useless mongrels that they were, once had a saying; ‘time heals all wounds.’ Your people knew this to be false. When an existence could stretch on into eternity, clinging on to that pain could be the only thing to keep one sane. Of course, humans were like flies, their lives short and fleeting. Perhaps for them, the knowledge of their quickly approaching ends would drown out the pains of their past.

All the same, against your better judgment, that piece of you finds truth in the words. Perhaps the scale of time required was simply far greater for you immortal elves.

You lay there, thinking about this.

In your latter years, all you really did was think. Often for years or decades at a time as you thoughtlessly and methodically crushed what remained with nary a fraction of your full attention, not unlike an automaton.

A particularly interesting conundrum was the height of entertainment when there were no more armies or heroes or villains which required even a modicum of effort to obliterate.

What you are not used to, however, is distraction from your pondering. You have long since learnt to filter out the screaming and begging. Even before you slew them all, your servants would not have dared interrupt you with their yapping except with the direst of news. Even the wildlife knew better, your emotions imprinting on the world around you, your will absolute and impossible to ignore for even the most miserable of existences.

Entombed in darkness, you hear dull, mundane mutterings from beyond the stone which envelops you. Were you a lesser creature, no audible sound would have penetrated your handiwork, but your ears could pick up the footfalls of an Ash mouse from beyond the horizon if you so desired. And the rest of the world was suitably silent.

You almost wave your hand and eliminate the offending being without investigating, but you pause halfway through the motion. You are curious what awaits beyond, an emotion you have not felt in millennia.

Your ponderances can wait, you will not forget and you have an eternity to consider them. Who knows how long this fleeting emotion will last?

With a mere thought, the lid to your stone coffin disappears. It is no cheap illusion or dissolution cantrip, it was made from your magic and can be unmade with equal ease.

The mutterings stop, an unintelligible, graceless tongue which grated on your ears, and so you are glad of it.

You place a hand on the lid of your self-made sarcophagus. Magic could have levitated you out, a mere triviality to your limitless ability. But you have grown used to limits, self-imposed as they had been in order to make those last battles even remotely interesting.

With a silent exertion, you pull yourself up to a sitting position. You blink, mildly confused, for this was not the mausoleum as you had built it.

Geometrically perfect stone has been replaced by mere brick and mortar, albeit subtly inscribed with primitive rune work for longevity. You sense the wards layered on and around the construction in the same way a dragon, at least before their extinction, might sense the cobwebs in their lair.

Inconsequential, but impossible to miss.

You are in a… museum? You note the other ‘exhibits’, artefacts from times well after your own encased in imbued glass. Plaques written in an ugly script no doubt describe their insignificance, and your pale lips turn up into a snarl.

Only humans, far before they had met their rightful fate under your boot, had ever bothered with such trivialities.

With a single cursory glance, you take all this in, as well as the four humans standing suitably awed beside your coffin. You raise an eyebrow in slight amusement as you notice the crimson stanchions surrounding the raised platform upon which your coffin lies.

It is this mild distraction that prevents you from unmaking them immediately for the simple crime of existing.

One of the taller ones, a male you think offhandedly, is dressed differently from the others. His robes are a smooth sapphire, decorated with silver studs that glint like stars. You see the threads patterned into runic whorls that possess a degree of arcane resonance, and you feel a note of disgust that such a creature could pretend to be of a station above that of the pigs which dress themselves in mud.

He speaks to you, his grating, graceless tongue almost provoking you once more into annihilating the lot of them. But in the process of considering it, you realise that in doing so you will simply be treading the same path as before.

If you are to receive answers to your questions, your choices must be different.

You must be different.

So instead you simply tear all the meagre knowledge from his mind. Once, doing so would have left the being as even more of a mewling, incoherent savage than they already were. As it was, you have since perfected most aspects of your magic, and the creature does not even notice the intrusion.

You filter through its scant thoughts in less than a second, pulling forth its language that you might comprehend its words. There is much else to learn from it, you recognise bitterly that it holds a modicum of value, but still, you discard all but that.

One does not maintain their sanity after millennia by infecting their thoughts with those of others on a whim. And when any and all knowledge to be gained was tainted with emotion and bias, especially from that of a human, it was better to be ignorant.

Only when necessary do you stoop to such methods, and even still it brings an instant of nausea to your stomach before you banish such weakness with a twitch of restorative magic.

“It… it cannot be!” the figure had said, the awe obvious and expected. But the total lack of fear was… unusual. It is a novelty after so long to be spoken to so lightly, especially by a member of that hateful race.

It is that novelty which makes you take a closer look at the group. Standing up in your self-made tomb to glare down upon them. Two others are also males and devoid of magics, bearing primitive steel weaponry and armour. There is a total lack of comprehension in their gazes, a dullness that was to be expected with humanity.

The final figure is smaller, indicative of youth for most races. A female, you suspect, but you find sex much harder to distinguish in human young.

But there is something…

A wave of vile disgust rips through you, a more visceral reaction than you have had to anything in centuries. It is no human that stands before you, as you had initially surmised, but an abomination. A stain on existence which you had never thought possible.

Certainly, the dwarves would stoop so low as to mingle with the filth of humanity, but one of your own kin? No greater crime could there be, and no greater punishment than that which you will levy against the perpetrator, kin or not.

You almost unmake it there and then. A mercy on the poor thing, for the void of death would surely be kinder than such an abominable existence.

But again you hesitate. The same old, pitiful weakness rearing its head. So few of your kin remained before and reproduction was an eternal challenge, the price for such longevity.

There is no telling how many yet live, but there is at least a piece of them here before you. You are not beyond blaming a thing for its own existence, humanity will forever bear that crime, but gazing down at the youngling as its wide, emerald-tinted eyes stare back, you find no malice in your heart for it as an individual.

Even though it is a half-breed, you were part of the first generation so it inevitably shares some of your father's blood, or at least that of one of his brothers and sisters. That buys it the chance to prove its right to exist.

Ignoring the mewling animals surrounding it, you ask it in the mother tongue. “Name thyself, kin of my kin.”

Ah, but of course, she does not speak it. She looks up at you uncomprehendingly.

The blue-clad human grows excitable, you hear one syllable of a mockery of your language and with a snap of your fingers he is silenced, his lips sealed until you deem it otherwise.

“What is your name, child?” you try again in the mongrel tongue, not even trying to keep the sneer of disdain from your face. Long has it been since you suffered any consequences for openly displaying your emotions, it is others that must fear doing so around you.

She shakes slightly, recognising to an extent the power you wield and growing fearful. But she does not turn away as many greater beings have done beneath your gaze.

“Inalia,” she answers, her voice defiant and strong despite her obvious nervousness.

Good. You have long since grown tired of snivelling supplicants. Perhaps she may prove herself after all.

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Inalia

Inalia doesn’t know what she had been thinking.

Ok, that was a lie. She knows exactly what she’d been thinking, she just isn’t sure how she hadn’t expected it to go terribly wrong.

The Grand Museum of Athaca was full of old and wondrous artefacts and, as a particularly curious child, she’d spent many an hour with her face up against the charmed glass in awe.

But everybody knew, or so they said, that there was more to it. A private, back-room display for investors and nobles to enjoy the exhibits long before they opened to the general public. One which Inalia had frequently dreamed of but never so much as seen the door of.

It had been a dare. A stupid, irrelevant comment from her friend Joan that had lit the fires of her curiosity. A rumour of something truly ancient being uncovered and secretly transported into the city, which alone would not have been enough to sway her.

No, it had been the insinuation from Joan that, should it exist, Inalia would never be able to see it.

Now, in fairness to Inalia, there was precedence to suggest it wouldn’t merely be an exercise in futility. Eleven though she may be, light-footedness and sleight of hand had always come naturally to her. Not once had she ever lost a game of hide and seek, even against the wily street rats of the orphanage down the road.

Some minor breaking and entering in the past had given her a wealth of experience in such things, or so she had believed. Arrogance though it may have been, it wasn’t entirely unfounded.

Even then, she’d planned it meticulously. As much as she’d hated it, in order to guarantee even an inkling of success she’d had to be patient, a feat her mother would have been equal parts proud and horrified with.

Using the free public entrance hours she’d scouted out the possible entrances to this super-secret-exhibit, drawn up routes, and even made a schedule of the security guards.

Yet, obviously, it hadn’t been enough. Sure, she’d been dead on the money with the door she’d chosen, and her street-rat friend Kelski’s lockpicking technique had worked like a charm, but it’d only gone downhill from there.

She’d set off some sort of silent alarm that sent the guards chasing after her and, rather foolishly in hindsight, had chosen to ignore it and continue to seek her prize instead of just making a break for it.

But, in one definition of the word, she had been successful in the end. Laying eyes on that stone sarcophagus, it's every inch chiselled with what must be magical runes, had taken her breath away.

Then the two pairs of arms of the uniformed security were trying to drag her away. Flanked by no less than the furious museum curator in his bedclothes, she’d kicked and cursed as she tried fruitlessly to wriggle free.

Her stomach had dropped into a deep, dark pit and she’d begun to comprehend the scale of trouble she’d just got herself in. Her mother was going to kill her.

And then… and then the lid to the sarcophagus that easily weighed several tonnes disappears without so much as a pop, and an impossibly pale hand reaches out and grasps the lip.

With an inhumanly smooth movement, a figure sits up from within, and Inalia watches with her mouth open wide in shock. An emotion that is shared equally with the curator, although the security guards maintain a modicum more composure.

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Draping, dense locks of snow-white hair frame a face of sharp, angular beauty. Piercing, almost glowing, crimson eyes flick around the room with an expressionless glare, and, perhaps most strikingly of all, the sharpened points of his ears pierce through the pale curtain of his hair and reach almost to the back of his head.

An elf. A real, breathing, moving elf. Sure, he isn’t exactly the friendly, smiley, tree-loving being depicted in the stories and murals. And his form doesn’t provoke a sense of warmth and comfort and belonging but instead biting cold and bitter emptiness. But still. An elf!

Inalia hadn’t honestly believed they even existed, not any more at least. No one did except a very small and ridiculed portion of the population and children! They were like… like dragons, or the tooth fairy or Mother Nox.

Fairy tales and bedtime stories.

And one of them just woke up from an ancient, dusty stone coffin and is now standing up looking like he’d just tasted something supremely sour after the curator had expressed his awed disbelief.

His attire is plain, in the sense that the ocean surface or a clear sky is plain. Simple dark robes which seem to absorb the light and heat and life around him, unadorned but with a depth and presence to them that no mundane clothing could replicate. They cling to his wrists and fall loosely below his waist; with a high collar that reveals almost nothing of his figure below his chin.

Meeting his gaze, Inalia feels as though she is staring into two raging stars, it burns to stare directly yet they captivate her and draw her in all the same.

Then he speaks. The most melodious, song-like language exits his lips, a sentence like the finest of poems yet not one she could even begin to understand.

She hears the curator let out an odd choking sound from behind her and then the elf’s face twists, malice and disgust becoming clear as day.

Features that seem built for smiles and laughter make the vile emotion that much more suffocating, and Inalia feels her curiosity and awe giving way before a tide of terror. All the positive emotion draining out of her as though his scowl just pulled the plug that had been holding it in.

“What is your name, child?” he asks, this time in Torish. There is a sort of faux gentleness to his tone, a softness lined with jagged, sharp edges that does little to put her at ease.

But this is an actual, real-life elf and by the gods she can’t find it within herself to look away even as she feels herself shaking like a leaf.

“Inalia,” she answers with greater strength than she feels.

The elf appears neither pleased nor displeased at this, his face shifting not even the tiniest amount in reaction.

“Umm… what’s yours?” Inalia asks after a moment of awkward, and terrifying, silence.

The elf’s face slowly moves from looking down his nose at Inalia to facing her directly. Raising an eyebrow, he opens his mouth to answer then pauses. His amused expression turns into a frown. Several heartbeats pass and it softens into a look that Inalia might even call serene.

“You may call me Vindaruil, of the First Court of Orur-Silgoth. To which court do you belong, youngling Inalia?” the elf asks, his words unhurried, each enunciated with an otherworldly accent unlike she has ever heard.

“Like… like my last name?” she stutters out, her will to maintain eye contact wilting like a flower under the solstice sun.

Vindaruil’s eyes close in the way her mother's often do when Inalia has done something particularly infuriating. Of course, her mother doesn’t have untold magical elf powers and scary clothes so the effect isn’t quite the same.

“No,” he says with resounding menace. “Do you know nought of your lineage, child?

It takes a moment for Inalia to remember what that word meant. “I know my mum?” She answers though it sounds far more like a question, even to her own ears.

The elf nods to himself slowly, taking his time to reply, unafraid of the long silence that the museum employees seem unwilling to break.

Inalia once more feels the weight of his attention upon her, like a physical mass pushing on her shoulders and making her want to bow her head, though she resists.

“You will take me to this ‘mum’ of yours.” Vindaruil commands, his tone no more harsh than before but with a finality to his words that made it clear he was not asking.

“But…” Inalia begins, glancing back at the three men to find all of them locked still in their own bodies, only their eyes still flicking about in panic.

Her stare meets that of the curator, a portly older gentleman who had sounded kind enough on the tours she had taken with her mother in days past. She sees the terror in his eyes, and though a small voice tells her not to look a gift horse in the mouth, she turns back to the elf.

“You are going to let them go, aren’t you mister Vindaruil?”

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You

You do not know why you told the girl your first, true name rather than that by which you have been known far longer. Perhaps it was the weight that title held. To take up its mantle once more would be to tread the same path twice, but that is not why you are here.

Long has it been since you discarded the name Vindaruil of the First Court of Orur-Silgoth and admitting openly, although only to those who would not comprehend the gravity of such a thing, that it is who you are once more is… oddly freeing.

It reminds you of a time when you did not hate all that you laid eyes upon. When vengeance was not the totality of your being.

But your capacity for love and warmth died with that name, and though you may have reclaimed it, ultimately it does not change who you are. What was done to you and what you have done in turn remain sewn into the great tapestry of time, and not even your prodigious power can unravel that.

You have certainly tried.

Although, perhaps, it may serve as a reminder of your current goals. You know yourself well enough and have since learnt to be honest enough, to admit that your anger and hatred occasionally take hold of you in leave of your senses. It is your hope that the name ‘Vindaruil’ will ground you in such times.

At least until you have your answers, and inevitably discover you were right all along. But you have begun this… search, and so you will see it through to the end.

No stone will be left unturned, it is not as though you are in any rush. You conquered the world once before, doing so again now would only be easier.

But it does occur to you that you don’t really know where to start. It was all well and good placing yourself in stasis, but no one was there waiting for you with all the answers when you awoke.

Perhaps… perhaps you should simply ask?

No, absolutely not. You do not ‘ask’, you demand and you are never denied. But even you must recognise that to do so would be… unproductive, given your current goals. You have not forgotten the twisting ways of court when every honied word was part of some greater intrigue to draw out truths and opinions that could not politely be asked about, you merely set them aside when you had the strength to ignore them.

But your strength will not serve you here, and so you must adopt the old methods. A false agenda then, a classic tool of obscuration that even the younglings knew of to hide their true ambitions. And you know the perfect one, indeed it has fallen straight into your path. You would suspect the hand of fate in such a meeting, except for the fact you cast off the chains it held over you long ago.

You merely desire to seek out your kin, starting with the parent of this half-breed, this is what you will present to the world. An elf out of his time, in a strange land and surrounded by the unfamiliar. Like all great deceptions, it holds no small amount of truth.

How could you not wonder what has become of your people? Already you grow concerned based on what lies before you. Such would never have been allowed in times long past.

“You will take me to this ‘mother’ of yours.” You tell the child, the mother of which is almost certainly the human parent given the failings in the girl's education.

“But… you are going to let them go, aren’t you mister Vindaruil?” she asks after a display of empathy towards the humans that is revolting. It is only to be expected, you think after a moment, she is stained by their blood after all.

You scowl as you look over the three suspended in your telekinetic grasp. Their intentions had screamed out to you of their imminent intervention after the shock had worn off, and so you had taken steps to stop such foolishness in its tracks.

It would be the simplest matter to snap their necks, not even the minor cantrips on the elders’ robes offered any protection from your most basic of abilities.

But then that would cause more of the vermin to come swarming and harassing you, which you would inevitably lose patience with and revert to your old ways. It is better, you think sourly, to leave them be and save yourself the hassle.

“Very well,” you mutter with disdain. With a wave of your hand, they collapse into unconsciousness, free from your grasp.

Inalia lets out an undignified shriek as they all drop to the ground, and you grow weary of her lack of propriety. Half-breed or not, she should conduct herself in the manner befitting of the greater part of her blood.

“Silence, child. They yet live.” You scold the girl, and all of a sudden you are reminded of her.

You halt those memories before they can surface, unwilling to inflict them upon yourself even now. Once you would have drowned yourself in fury to obscure them, but you have achieved such great control over your own mind that it is no longer necessary.

That isn’t to say it no longer happens all the same, but for now you find that you retain your relative calm.

“Oh,” she begins, shivering as though she had just stepped into a blizzard, “that’s… good.”

Inalia stares down at the three humans, frozen for a time by the sight. You dislike repeating yourself, and so you wait for her to do as you told. Soon enough she seems to overcome her shock, shaking her head of it she looks back up at you.

“Err… right. Follow me?” Her uncertainty irritates you, but it is easier to be forgiving of an ignorant youngling and so you let it go. For now.

She walks off slowly, her ungainly gait only slightly more refined than that of the humans. You follow at a step behind, gliding along the marble floor bare-footed with not so much as a whisper. The girl keeps looking back and acting surprised to see you so close.

Strangely, you observe her fear fading somewhat, replaced instead by a nervous sort of energy that you cannot place. You pass through a frustratingly cramped doorway, which causes you to lower your head to avoid scraping the tips of your ears against the frame, and into a much grander chamber with far more numerous, and mundane, exhibits to which you pay as much attention as those before. That is to say, none at all.

By then the girl seems on the verge of bursting, until she apparently can no longer hold it in and a flood of words comes pouring out of her mouth.

“Are you really an elf? Why were you in the coffin? How are you even alive? How long were you in there? What was it like back then? Have you ever seen a dragon? Why do you want to see my mum?” she says, one word tumbling over and merging into the next.

You get the sense, however, that it is the last question on which her concerns lie, the others driven merely by curiosity.

Silently amused that she even gave voice to such queries at all, you decide to humour her to an extent. “I wish to see your mother because I am curious. I will answer but one more of your questions, child. Choose wisely, then spare me any further prattle.”

Inalia smiles brightly, squealing in excitement that was entirely unbecoming of her situation, apparently accepting your initial claim as truth. Which, in fairness, it ultimately was. Of course, she was hardly aware of just who she walked alongside, but you would have thought your presence was enough to intimidate even an ignorant little girl into silence.

“Ok…ok… let me think.” She says, her eyes scrunching in concentration as you approach what you assume to be the primary entrance to this pathetic collection of baubles and nick-nacks.

Though you gave no qualifier that you would speak truthfully, you would indeed answer any question she thought of. A chance the scholars of this time would no doubt kill for, and it was granted to a mere child. The thought of their anguish if they learned of it warms your cold heart for but a moment.

“Why do you feel so sad?” her sincere words bring you to a standstill, and she continues on for a pace before realising you have stopped.

The question brings a frown to your brow, and an odd, aching feeling in your chest. Not often are you surprised, but the insightful little half-breed has managed just that.

“Before I answer that question, Inalia, I will ask one of you. Why do you think I feel ‘sad’?” you respond, still reeling from her query.

“Um… its just… you feel… cold? But it's not just cold, it's like… the warmth is missing, like it should be there but it isn’t. Like… like when Grandad died and everybody was sad. Sorry, it's silly…” she stutters out, attempting to describe something which words could not begin to explain. You know the feeling well.

“Grief. That is what you feel, child. I am grieving that which I lost long ago. As to why you feel it, the emotions of the fair folk have a tendency to manifest as physical phenomena.” You explain, fighting against another surge of memories. Twice now this half-breed has tested your control, and you find yourself tiring of it.

“Cool. So…” she begins, but you silence her with a sharp look that holds only an inkling of the rage that constantly simmers just below the surface of your thoughts.

The rest of the walk out of the museum is blissfully silent, barring Inalia’s clumsy footsteps. You can hear the low din of civilization beyond its walls, a thousand thousand heartbeats in exhausting proximity.

You open the locked doors with a wave of your hand, the sloppy wards unfolding with contemptuous ease. Revealed before you is a long staircase down into a distinctly human city cast in moonlight. You could always tell them apart from those of the other races because of their uniquely foul stench.

Death and decay mingled with waste and bodily fluids.

Once again you feel the urge to raze it to the ground for the crime of offending your nostrils, but it is not the worst of its kind you have experienced and you push down the instinct.

“Umm… sorry for speaking again, Mister Vindaruil, but aren’t you going to… err, put up a hood or something?” she asks nervously, cowed by your last glare though evidently not enough.

“And why would I do that?” you ask with disdain as you gaze over the settlement and towards the vast ocean which stretches to the horizon.

Interesting. Your mausoleum had not been erected near a coast.

“Well, don’t you want to hide your ears? People don’t think elves exist, and I was thinking about it, because I know you do now, and it must be because you hide, right?” she continues, once more muttering in an undignified manner that is barely comprehensible.

“Is that why you hide yours?” you respond, a question that has been on your mind since you first realised what she was.

Never have you met her like before, so you know not how long her ears would grow but you suspect they would be longer than the stubby ears of regular humans. The girl’s long, fuzzy, straw-blonde hair would do an adequate job of obscuring any perceived abnormality from the narrow-minded beasts surrounding her.

It was Inalia’s turn to be taken aback. “What?”

Realization dawns upon you. Not only does the girl not understand her lineage, but she is not even aware she is more than the spawn of her lesser parent. This only serves to stoke your fury at whichever of your kin spawned her and then abandoned her to the filth and scum without even the knowledge of who she was.

It was… unnatural. Even by your sensibilities, there are many things your kind held sacred that not even you would desecrate so totally. More and more your concerns for what has become of your people grow, so much that you even regret for but a moment leaving them alive only for them to fall to such depravity.

You are not so far gone, however, that the hypocrisy of that thought is not lost on you.

“You are a half-breed, Inalia the Courtless. Though one part of you is human, the other is elven. I sensed it almost immediately.” You tell her in no uncertain terms.

Before you even finish she is shaking her head in denial. “No. No that doesn’t make any sense. Look!”

She then tucks back her hair, revealing two perfectly rounded ears. Your eyes widen in surprise, then narrow in suspicion. Looking closer, you notice the subtle hint of magic surrounding her, a true masterwork unlike the sloppy imitations of the humans. It would have evaded your senses entirely had you not had cause to look.

Some kind of physical illusion, a form of living transfiguration, woven into her very being to dampen her elven features, making her appear more human. It did nothing, however, to dim the connection you feel to her blood, so it would never fool an elf. A work to hide her amidst the lesser races then, but why?

On the one hand, it discredits the theory that her father, whoever he was, had just abandoned her without a second thought. But on the other, it leaves you with no credible explanation behind the girl’s upbringing, and this troubles you.

Troubles you, and excites you, for how long has it been since you uncovered a genuine mystery?

“Interesting,” you simply state. “I am not wrong, child, you are of elven blood. Perhaps your mother has some insight that will prove enlightening.”

You gaze once more over the miserable excuse for a settlement and consider that, though you are loathe to hide what you are instead of displaying it proudly as you should, maybe you don’t need the hassle of gawping imbeciles trying your patience.

With a thought, your robes extend to provide a deep hood which you lift up to obscure your more obviously inhuman features.

Inalia is still grappling with the revelation of her true parentage, but you feel strangely invested in obtaining the answers to this conundrum and so decide you will not be waiting for the girl to snap out of it on her own.

Taking the first step down, you say without turning your head “Lead on, child, lest I resort to going door to door to seek your mother.”

This pierces through her shock and she practically sprints ahead of you, a fierce conviction burning in her eyes and posture that rivals your own desire for answers.

“Hurry up!” she shouts after you, urgency in her tone.

You resent that a child dares command you to action, but you once chased an Ulurian djinn across its own desert and caught it within three nights, so keeping up with the half-breed is no great exertion.

Besides, the sooner you are out of the filthy streets the better.

----------------------------------------

Endrea

Endrea sits upon the old rocking chair in the small living room of her home and awaits with growing worry, and frustration, for her rebellious daughter to return from her most recent adventure.

She is debating to herself how harsh the punishment should be this time. On the one hand, this is her most egregious escapade yet and a blatant disregard for her rules, but on the other Endrea doesn’t want to push her daughter away such that she feels the need to escape and run wild.

Endrea knows well enough the urge, it doesn’t feel all that long ago since she was in her daughters shoes and it was her mother and sister that were pulling their hair out over her antics. Father had always seemed calmly confident that she would return safe and sound.

Sighing deeply to herself, she wishes her mother was still around such that she could express her apologies for putting her through such torment. She misses her, now more than ever.

Maybe she will only ground Inalia for a week then. Maybe just a few days. Or is that her just being soft?

She growls, why did parenting have to be so hard? Not for the first time she curses Lithandar and his absence. He’d know what to do, she is sure of it.

As she is caught up in old memories she almost misses the sound of the door latch gently opening.

Putting on her best ‘angry mother’ face, she stills her rocking and crosses her arms in preparation for her daughter slinking sheepishly in.

“Inalia Serendia Ulnorin! What time do you call this…” her stern tone petered out as the door swung upon, revealing not only her daughter but a tall, cloaked figure standing ominously behind her.

“Mum!... Mum!... You’ll… never… guess… what happened!” her daughter exclaims excitedly between breaths as she runs in, apparently unconcerned with the stranger she has arrived with.

Endrea quickly stands up and places herself between her daughter and the stranger. Looking down at Inalia with a sickly sweet smile that promises a fierce discussion about the topic later, she says “Inalia dear, aren’t you going to introduce us?”

Inalia, however, seems frustratingly ignorant of her not-so-subtle admonishment. Likely wilfully so, if she knows her daughter as well as she thinks she does. That girl can be a right menace sometimes.

“Right!... This is… this is…Vin… Vinda…” she begins, crouching over with her hands on her knees as she recovers from her exertions.

The stranger evidently is not happy to wait for the girl to compose herself, and flings off his hood with a single, fluid gesture. “I am Vindaruil of the First Court of Orur-Silgoth.”

Endrea’s breath catches in her throat. For the briefest of moments, before the figure had spoken, she had thought it was her Lithandar. But no, though the man before her is obviously an elf that is where the similarities ended. Rather than a golden blonde, this figure’s hair is snow-white, his skin not tanned but sickly pale. And the eyes… the eyes are not the warm, welcoming emerald of her lover but a harsh, fierce ruby.

Who is this? Why has he come? Could it be…? But no… no that isn’t supposed to be for years! She was supposed to still have time!

“You will not take her!” Endrea exclaims fiercely towards the much taller elf.

For his part, this… Vindaruil, simply cocks his head in an expression of confusion and… fascination? “I have no desire to take from you your child, and had I then I would not require your permission.”

“Then… then why are you here?! Has something happened?! Is Lithandar in trouble!?” she responds, more nervous than she had been but a moment before.

“Lithandar… I do not recognise the name. I am certain that if you were to allow your child to explain then you would be enlightened to the situation.” Comes the unimpressed reply from the sickly elf.

Endrea finally looks down to the girl who had since caught her breath and is now tugging furiously at her mothers dress trying to get her attention. “Well, Inalia?”

“So, Joan dared me that I couldn’t see the super-secret displays at the museum, which really isn’t my fault because she knows how much I like cool old stuff and it wasn’t fair because she’d heard this rumour and…” the words come tumbling out, devoid of direction.

“Inalia, you didn’t!” Endrea expresses her outrage, interrupting her daughter and seemingly putting her back on track.

“Anyway, I got in and I found it! I did! It was super cool and I planned it out and Kelski taught me to pick locks and I did loads of work for it. And then this really old coffin-thingy with, like, runes and stuff opened up by itself and he stepped out. And he’s, like, a real elf. A really real elf! But then…” her daughter pauses, a rarity in her rants, and looks up at Endrea with a face that is almost serious.

“But then he said he wanted to speak to you and that… and that I was part-elf or something. I told him that couldn’t be true because of my ears but he said it was and I don’t know anymore. Is it true mum? Is it?” There is a mix of excitement and betrayal on Inalia’s face that Endrea isn’t entirely certain could combine in a less… energetic child.

Endrea sighs, cursing whichever god has seen fit to play this particular prank on her. She didn’t expect to have this conversation with her daughter for a long, long time.

“Yes. Yes, it's true, Inalia dear. Your dad is an elf, and a bit of you is too.” She says solemnly.

Inalia’s face lights up with joy, only to fall back into a frown but a moment later. “But… but why wouldn’t you tell me?”

Squatting down to eye-level with her daughter, Endrea looks Inalia in her wide pupils. “I’m sorry my little songbird. I… I wanted to. We both did, but they said… they said it was too dangerous. Some people, bad people, would go looking for you if they knew who you were. So they hid you, from everyone, and your dad had to go too. We thought… we thought it would be easier if you didn’t know either.”

She sees the beginnings of tears in her daughter’s eyes and pulls her into an embrace before they can emerge, stroking her hair as she hugs her back.

It is only after a minute or so that she looks up and sees the still figure of the mysterious elf standing just beyond the threshold.

Flushing with something approaching embarrassment, not that she regrets hugging her daughter, Endrea clears her throat. “You can come in. Could you close the door behind you?”

He does so as Endrea breaks off the embrace with her daughter and stands back up, brushing some of the creases from her dress as Inalia remains by her side.

“I am Endrea, of the Court of Bail-Shan. I welcome you into my hearth, kin of my heart.”

----------------------------------------

You

Her words freeze you to the ground, and whatever you had intended to say flees from your mind. It is not that she knows your customs, though they have evidently changed somewhat over the years, but her announcement of a court.

The only possible way you can think of for a lesser being to proclaim themselves as belonging to a court in elven custom, without being dishonest as you sense she is not, is through marriage.

Of course, it is entirely possible she was just mistaken, an ignorant woman claiming that which she does not understand under some misguided attempt at hospitality.

But then your eyes land on her daughter, the half-breed, and everything clicks into place with a mental thunderclap.

The child’s father, presumably this ‘Lithandar’ hadn’t spawned a half-breed in some sick perversion of nature. The unlucky fool had actually found his soul-bond in a human, making Inalia a natural consequence of their union.

Marriage for an elf was not merely a cultural or political phenomena, but a natural one. In the lore of your people is said every soul is born as a pair, twins separated by the physical world yet inevitably pulled together through the weight of their connection. It is not a choice one makes, but a fact of their existence that encountering the soul to which they are bonded results in a depth and breadth of love only matched by that between parent and child. There is no ceremony, under elven tradition when that bond is consummated the pair is considered married under the same court.

But one only ever has a single soul to which they are bonded, it is a life-long union. Not death, not the eternal dream, not anything can break it. Elves simply are not intimate outside of it unless they force themselves, or are forced in turn. It just doesn’t happen. And so the thought of an elf going outside of this bond and willingly conceiving a child had disgusted you, a true perversion.

Never had you thought it possible that an elf could find their bond in one of the lesser races. Grudgingly you admit that they do possess souls, so it is not totally unfeasible. But the mere thought is so… undeniably tragic.

For the first time in many, many centuries you feel a flicker of empathy for this ‘Lithandar’. To bond with something so fleeting, to know you will lose it in but the blink of an eye…

You know the pain of losing that bond, it did not stop you separating many others in your rage, but to not even have the hope of sharing your life with them? For it to be doomed from the very beginning?

Which is worse? To have that hope torn from one's grasp and shattered, or to never have had it in the first place? It Is a question to which you have no answer, and for once have no desire to seek it.

You look upon Inalia with fresh eyes. You do not know how long the half-breed will live, but you suddenly hope for her father’s sake that she inherits his longevity and not her mother's.

So too do you know the pain of losing a daughter.

Nought, not even the soul bond, is more sacred in your culture than a child. You have so few, and their youth so relatively fleeting, that even in the heights of your wild fury you never personally slew one.

An elven child, that is. You did not spare the same considerations for the lesser races. They bred like vermin anyway.

“My heart is welcome, thine peace will be kept, heart of my kin.” You respond, roughly translating the correct response into the inelegant tongue you are forced to converse in.

It occurs to you there is still a piece missing from this puzzle. Why would the girl’s father not be with them? You know that were your places swapped, and you had so little time with your bond, then you would not leave her mother's side for a moment.

“What danger do you speak of?” you ask as you glance around the pathetically humble hovel that this woman called a home. Your ears nearly scrape the boards of the roof, its cramp confines only but a fraction of the size of the modest, by your standards, mausoleum you had constructed for yourself.

Endrea took in a deep breath, glancing down at her daughter who seemed equally invested in the answer. She levels you with a frustrated glare, and you sense this was not a truth she would have quickly informed her daughter of, but was now left with no choice.

“There is a… prophecy, that is what they told me. They said it involves Inalia and…” she looked down at the girl, hesitating as she continued, “and someone very dangerous who also knows about it, and will still at nothing to get to her.”

You resist rolling your eyes. Prophecies. The arrogant meddling of deities that believed themselves the ultimate power in the universe, convinced that the winds of fate were theirs to control. You proved to the gods of your time that such control was brittle and easily broken. It seems whatever new gods have popped up in their absence have yet to learn that lesson.

“And she is safer here, in this… place, ignorant, than amongst her people?” you query with a raised eyebrow.

The woman scoffs in something approaching frustrated amusement, as though you had plucked the thought right out of her head. “So they said. They did not deign to explain why.”

“No,” you mutter with wry amusement at being on the wrong end of your people's mysterious ways for the first time in a long time, “I suppose they wouldn’t.”

Endrea shakes her head all of sudden, as though throwing off some cognitive dissonance. “I’m sorry, Vindaruil was it? What exactly are you doing here?”

Ah, you were wondering how long it would take her to ask that. You suspect your nature imparted a degree of familiarity and trust at first glance that was entirely undeserved. You know better than anyone that your people's reputation as peaceful and trustworthy was a mere fabrication.

“I find myself out of my time and place. I had not observed a half-breed before, and so my curiosity led me here. That is now sated, and so my path leads me onwards to my people. We are notoriously difficult to find, as I am sure you are aware, and you appear to have had dealings with them. I had hoped you may point me in the correct direction.” You explain, only partially dishonest.

For an elf of your pedigree, following the call of the blood would be no great challenge. You pause on that thought, perhaps then that is why the child was hidden? The danger came from another of your kin?

You think about it, accept it as probable truth, and then put the matter to bed. In all honesty, you do not really care about the machinations of your kin now that the mystery has been solved. Let them plot and fight and chase prophecies, like all such things they only bore you. Your interest lies now on something of far greater importance.

Sighing once more, Endrea looks at you with a sad expression. “I wish I could, but I was given no clue to their whereabouts. Not even a way to speak to my Lithandar. All I know is that they are to find us when Inalia comes of age.”

“Ah. Then that is no worry. I shall simply wait.” The girl was, what? A decade or so old? Elf children mature in around five decades, so she couldn’t be far off. Such timescales were inconsequential for a patient elf.

Endrea splutters, “What? But? You can’t…”

“Oh please, mum! Please can he stay!” Inalia pleads, jumping up and down and tugging on her mother's arm.

Her mother looks down on her with a frown. “Inalia, we can’t even stay. If it is known that an elf was seen in Athaca then it isn’t safe here anymore.”

She pauses, then turns back to you. “Were you seen?”

Those three at the museum had definitely seen you. You could have wiped their memories, but you had thought it a waste of effort. You still could, if you desired it, they were likely still unconscious and rushing there and back would be no challenge, albeit somewhat undignified. But on second thought, it was for the best.

If Inalia was some sort of prophesied hero then she sounded exactly like the sort of person who would have the answers you seek, or would acquire them in the future, so you plan to stick around anyway. You’d rather not have to spend years of your life hiding in the stench of a human city, however.

You incline your head in the affirmative.

The human woman lets out a groan of frustration and looks almost ready to pull her hair out. “Inalia, go pack your things. We’re going to go visit Auntie Jemma.”

The girl squeals in excitement and shoots out of the room, thumping up the stairs at an impressive speed.

“And you!” Endrea does her best to level you with a fierce glare, but withers beneath your sight in turn. You have stared down dragons and demons older than civilization, even a determined mother was nought in comparison.

“You can come,” she sighs, resigned, but then holds up a stern finger, “but you have to blend in, I won’t let you endanger my daughter a second time!”

You weigh the cons of hiding your true self amongst the dregs of sentience, even the thought of pretending to be one of them nearly makes you retch, against the benefits of potentially finding your answers.

But in all honesty, you maintain your pride now mostly out of habit. When the entire world was nought but ash sliding between your fingers, any concern you had for how you are perceived, or how you perceived yourself, disappeared into the wind with it.

It is an indignity you can bear; you decide after a moment of pondering.

“So be it.”