(Year 997, 16th of Full Inji, 10:33PM)

It was strange to suddenly realize how alone I was in the forest. Not alone alone, though, not with all these elves around me (one less elf now, I supposed), and especially when at least one of them seemed to be my ally.

No, I was alone in a way that was more like I was... helpless. I did literally have help, probably, from the elf woman, but even if she weren't distracted by the corpse of one of her friends...

I was in unfamiliar territory. I was basically defenseless, although the ability to spew fire from my hands probably counted for something. Other than this elf, I only had Shimmer to watch my back, and Shimmer... well, Shimmer wasn't really the type to do things. It was the dark of night, too, and whoever or whatever had killed this elf, it could've been looking at me at that exact moment. If it weren't caught in the moonlight, I would have no way of knowing.

The way the elf woman was looking around with one hand on her sword, seemingly trying to watch all around us as best as she could, she seemed to be just as worried about our disadvantages as I was. "Stay close to me," she whispered. "I will not have you dying today, not while you are under my watch."

The elf woman raised one hand to her lips and whistled, loudly, although I couldn't tell why. The distance between us was small, though, so I closed it quickly, running to her side. I wanted to ask what we could do, but... at this point, I wasn't sure she would have an answer for me. The best I could do, I decided...

Well, no. That gave me a choice to make.

I could, after all, just run for my life again. Whatever had killed that elf, it hadn't started with me, so it might only care about the elves. If I ran off, it might just leave me alone and keep focusing.

That was a lot of 'might', though. A decided maybe. Even then, if I ran off and that were true, I'd be leaving this woman to fight the danger and maybe die, after she'd helped me.

Come to think of it -

My thinking was interrupted by a loud thump. A sound I recognized... after all, it hadn't been long since I heard it last. I jumped at the sound, bumping into the elf woman, but she was so tense that I barely seemed to shake her. Our heads turned, and of course, there it was - another body, fallen from the trees. Another of my kidnappers... another of this woman's friends.

That sealed the deal for me. If running was an option, I didn't want to take it. This woman had helped me, and now she and her friends were in danger. If there was anything I could do to help them, I owed that to her, at least.

The elf woman seemed to expect that of me at this point, whispering, "Watch my back." I obliged without complaint. She whistled again, the same high noise as before (and even louder, I thought), but I still couldn't tell why, since nothing seemed to be happening. Was she trying to signal someone? Her friends?

If the other elves weren't responding...

That was when the next body fell. It was getting to be a familiar sound, now, so neither of us were startled... although it maybe wasn't a good thing, on reflection, to be unfazed by a corpse.

The drop of another body sent my mind racing, though, and brought another idea to my mind. While the elf woman charged forward to check which of her comrades had fallen this time, I whispered "SHIMMER" hoarsely, trying not to be heard by anything other than my unusual companion.

Shimmer floated into view and I asked, "You said before that something was 'wrong'. What was wrong??"

I looked back over to the elf woman, seeing her crouched down over the third body, and Shimmer whispered, "I sensed... power. Significant power, with killing intent behind it. You must watch yourself, Aedan."

As usual, Shimmer had found the least helpful way to be helpful to me. If she was concerned with power, that probably meant it was the power of a Path, but that didn't give me any idea what to do about it. If I was right about that, Shimmer was right that the person killing the elves (I could at least say, based on this new information, that we were probably up against a person) was dangerous, but I didn't have any more options than I did before. I could either watch the elf woman's back with what little power I had (the power to spray a bit of fire from my hands), or I could... Run...

But.

If I ran, I realized, that didn't mean I needed to run alone.

I made my way to the elf woman's side as fast as I could and started tugging on her sleeve, trying to distract her from... well, from mourning her fallen friend.

I would feel like a jerk about that at some point.

I did get her attention, though, so I took the opportunity to say, "Okay, listen, I - I know that you probably don't want to leave right now. You want to fight the thing that killed your friends, b-but you can't fight what you can't see, and you're not fighting it right now, so you probably can't see it any better than I can. If you want to live, our best chance is to run. If we run together, we can cover each other, and maybe we'll get away alive. We can think about anything else once we're out of danger, right?"

The elf woman just stared at me, taking a deep breath in and a deep breath out. A part of me felt like we didn't really have time for that, but then she opened her mouth to speak -

And with a harder thwack than the rest, another body fell from the trees to land on the ground. That made four deaths, by my count, but one special thing about this kill was obvious, even from the distance:

Where the other elves' corpses had been lightly streaked with blood, oozing slowly from different gashes in their bodies, this body was absolutely covered in blood... flowing freely from the gaping neck wound where its head had once been connected.

One more thing stood out to me about this corpse, though, as the elf woman rushed toward it and I followed slowly behind: A piece of metal on the corpse's chest, not covered in enough blood to keep it from shining in the moonlight. The elf woman had probably figured out what this meant immediately, but I realized with a jump that this meant the headless body was the corpse of the elves' leader.

That got my brain working again, and I looked around at the other bodies. There were three elves in this group that I could recognize at all. The elves' leader was one of them, with his badge and all, and looking at the other corpses, I realized that I couldn't recognize any of them. The elf woman who'd offered to help me was another that I could recognize, and she was right in front of me. That only left one more, and if he wasn't among the dead...

That was when, with one more thump, the final elf made himself known. He dropped to the forest floor under his own control, landing on one foot and one knee. In one hand, he held a bloody sword, which I could see was stained red... and in the other, he held the severed head of his group's leader, which I watched him toss forward in the elf woman's direction.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

As the head rolled to a stop by her feet, the elf woman spoke, her voice quivering. "No. No, it wouldn't be... it couldn't be..."

The other elf clicked their tongue, then spoke clearly in the only other voice I recognized, "And yet it is, Lya. And yet, I am." Then the speaker, the killer, rose to his feet. The moonlight caught his face, finally revealing him to be Faen. My bad feelings about him had been right, apparently. Really, they'd been beyond right.

Faen was covered in blood, but unless my eyes were missing any wounds, none of the blood seemed to be his own. He stood tall, but with a bit of a... it wasn't a stumble if he was standing, not really. He was leaning back and forward from one side to another, like he was falling asleep and losing his balance - or maybe, I decided, like he was full of energy he couldn't quite contain. The look in his eyes seemed to point in that direction - Faen's eyes looked focused, maybe even a bit joyful - the word 'vibrant' came to mind, I'd seen that in a book somewhere. "Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed", my Dad might've said.

Faen took one step forward, and immediately the elf woman - Lya, apparently - flinched into action. Not rushing forward to attack him, I realized... but to put herself between Faen and me, as incredible as that was in this situation.

Faen seemed to think that was incredible too, and it stopped him in his tracks. "...Really? You find this important, Lya? Despite what you see before you?"

'This', as far as I could tell, had to mean me.

Lya stood her ground, hand finally going to her sword. "I find this important - find him important - because of what I see before me."

Faen shook his head, a faint smile on his lips. "You see before you a killer, who has taken the lives of your comrades, and you would throw yourself on his sword... for a human?"

Lya's sword began to slip out of its sheath. "I see before me a man who killed his own comrades, not just mine. How could you, Faen? Why would you?"

Faen clicked his tongue again, disapproving, and took another step forward. "I suppose we can address that, but really, I'm still stuck on the matter of the boy. I did hear you making your offer, you know. I had my reasons, as you can imagine, but you... What would you possibly gain from releasing this... child?"

The way he said that word... child... Faen clearly thought I was much more than that. He had said, earlier, that we were 'alike' in some way, and Shimmer had sensed a power that must've been from a Path...

Faen knew exactly what was wrong with me, didn't he? If that were true, though... how could he?

Lya, her weapon fully drawn, interrupted my thoughts by standing up to Faen. "To protect a child is a matter of honour and deceny, as you ought to understand, but I would expect no better from-"

That was where Faen cut her off. "A child! We continue to speak as though he is merely a child, when you very well ought to realize that he is more, Lya." Apparently, he wasn't satisfied to leave this unsaid. "You don't even know what you're protecting, Lya, and if you did, you would know that the whelp deserves no protecting at all! And this, for no more reason than - what, doing a favour for some human?"

Lya stood firm, sword still at the ready. "What I do know, Faen, is that you must have succumbed to some madness if you would butcher our comrades like this. Nothing you say can be trusted."

I heard a rumbling noise, and realized it was Faen growling at Lya. "You would call me mad? Madness is giving a grace to humans that they would never willingly return. Madness is willingly allowing humans to partake of the bounty of the forest, let alone serving it up to them on a gods-damned crystalline platter! Madness is sweating for the settlers, bleeding for them, sacrificing for them like we would sacrifice for our own, when their ancestors took so much from ours and they still take today, giving nothing in return!"

That was what it took for Lya's stance to waver. I watched the look in her eyes change - they were steely with resolve before, but now they were widening in... Surprise? Worry?

Both?

I could hear both in Lya's voice when she answered, "Then you... are a Shroud-Walker? You of all people, Faen, would embrace the Path of Evil?"

Faen snorted, and called out, "I am not Evil, no matter what the Path of Possession is called by that damnable Holy Order who occupy our lands! I am a proud elf who respects our gods-damned history, Lya. Unlike some people, I don't care how people talk about The Walkers in the Forest Shroud today. I care that when this land is free of humanity, free of their cities and their church and their sins, those who record our history will remember us as the heroes. We are the ones who doing real Good while the world calls us Evil, because we know a day will come when all elvenkind realizes that we. Were. Right!"

Driven by his anger (this seemed safe to assume, at least), Faen lashed out with his sword. Lya stepped back, batting at his blade with her own, but I could see her face shift with surprise again as her strike clanged ineffectively off a sword that followed cleanly through the air where she'd been standing a moment before, unaffected. If her response had shaken Faen at all, even slightly, he didn't show it.

Lya stood at the ready, preparing for his next attack instead of countering. This gave Faen the time to draw himself up to his full height. I could see the grin on his face now, and I could hear him sigh loudly. "By the Dominator... it feels so good to cut loose." He swept his free hand back through his hair, pulling out his ponytail and letting it all hang free. "You have no idea how annoying it is to pretend I'm still... normal, let's say. It's not hard, once you get used to it, but once you've taken as much as I have, it feels unnatural to hide what you've become."

Flatly, but with a bit of bite, Lya responded, "Those who walk the Path of Evil are known for their vanity, yes - for their compulsions to show off and self-aggrandize."

Faen began walking toward Lya, one slow step at a time. "Oh, I needn't aggrandize anything." Lya began taking slow steps back and to the side, matching Faen's pace, as Faen continued, "No exaggeration is required. This is simply who. I. Am."

On the word 'Am', Faen leapt forward, much further than I would've expected a jump to carry him - more of the strength that had been behind his sword-swing. He apparently had coordination to match, since he landed on one foot in front of Lya before she could properly react, bringing the other foot up in a twisting kick that knocked Lya to the ground with a hard whomp. When he'd leapt through the tree branches earlier, coming and going from his meeting with me... this was the same strength and coordination he'd been using then, I realized. If he'd been trying to hide it from the other elves... why show it to me? Why not pretend that he was still... normal?

The thing about us being 'alike' suddenly made sense, too, if he was a follower of the Path of Evil like Lya had said... but how did he know that I was on the Path of Consumption? Could he sense it, somehow... or had someone told him?

While I was thinking about Faen, trying to figure him out, Lya was lying down on the ground, slowly trying to roll herself over and get her breath back. I could hear her wheezing, even from several steps away... How could a kick do damage like that without sending her flying?

"Who you are," Lya wheezed, "Is a killer, Faen. A killer of comrades. A killer of elves, of good people..."

Faen crouched down in front of her, and with more bite in her voice, Lya finished her sentence. "And I will not let that stand!"

I hadn't even noticed Lya getting her hand around her sword, but suddenly it flashed up from the ground, cutting cleanly across Faen's shins. With a howl of pain, Faen stumbled, giving Lya the opportunity to roll away and get to her feet. It had seemed like Faen had knocked all the strength from her body when he smashed her to the ground - had she been faking, or just gotten a second wind?

That probably didn't matter to Lya, and as she raised her voice without looking back, I realized it probably shouldn't matter to me either. "Run, Aedan! I will hold this traitor off. You will not get a better chance to flee - take it!"

I couldn't exactly disagree with that reasoning, not when my feet were already slowly carrying me backward.

Faen growled again, an ugly look on his face. He was wobbling more now, clearly hurting, but he was still on his feet, and "Yessss... run, little Carnite. Run far away and fester like the little rot you are! And when the agents of your fool church finally catch up to you," his voice rang in my ears as I got further and further away from him, "Tell them that one day, the forests will be free again!"

He leapt at Lya with the grace and suddenness of a feral animal, and no matter what I wanted to do to help her fight him off... she was right. I had no real choice except to run.

And so my feet carried me into the darkness once again, with no direction ahead of me, but deadly certain that I needed to escape whatever was behind.