magics.”
Some hours later, night fell on the ruined town. Whill walked among the many wounded within the town hall. Those with mortal wounds had been healed by the two elves, but dozens more lay on makeshift cots, bruised and bloody. Whill had been working without rest for hours, tending to the many wounded, and it frustrated him that the elves would not lend their powers of healing to these men. He had not seen Avriel or her brother in hours and assumed they must need a rest as badly as he did. They had, after all, healed more than a dozen dying men.
He exited the stuffy hall and stepped out into the cool night air. Most of the fires had burned out, but dozens of torches cut through the black night. One fire burned brighter than all the rest, to the east and a few hundred feet from the town. Hundreds of Draggard corpses were thrown unceremoniously into the great pyre; wagon after wagon carried the bloody beasts to be destroyed.
Abram and Roakore had been helping gather the human dead, but now the work was all but done. Whill walked over and took a seat on the grass next to Roakore.
The dwarf nodded at the hall. “How are they doin’?”
“As well as can be expected.”
Abram looked tired, and older than his fifty years. His clothes were blood-stained and his hands dirty, but he regarded Whill with the optimism he had always shown.
“Why is it that the elves do not heal the wounded men within the town hall? Surely it is within their abilities,” Whill said.
Abram glanced to his left. “I don’t know, Whill. Why don’t you ask them?”
He followed Abram’s gaze and saw Avriel sitting alone under the shadow of the treeline. “I think I’ll do just that,” said Whill, and he stood and made his way toward the elf maiden.
He walked at first with purpose, his steps sure, his facade stern. But the closer he got to the seated elf, the more his determination wavered. Before he knew it he was before her. She sat cross-legged, her eyes closed and her sword in both hands, the center of the blade resting upon her brow. Whill was once again struck by her great beauty. He meant to speak but again could not find his voice.
Avriel’s eyes opened with a flash and the two stared at each other for what felt to Whill like hours. Finally she spoke in Elvish, letting her blade fall to the side.
“Will you join me?”
He took up the spot next to her without a word, sitting cross-legged as she did. Her eyes traveled from his sheathed sword to his eyes and back again. She smirked. “The way you first stormed over here, I assumed you had pressing business.”
Whill was taken aback. “Um, well, yes, but…what were you doing just now?”
She eyed Whill for a moment, and the scrutiny made Whill slightly uncomfortable.
“I was just resting, a form of what you would call sleep. We elves have different ways of recuperating, as I’m sure you are aware.”
“Were you using the energy within your sword?”
She seemed to ponder this. “Not in the way you would imagine. You see, I am not injured, and so I did not call upon the stored energy of my blade. Rather I was seeing how much energy I have used in the fight and in the healing that followed.”
Whill frowned. “You were seeing how much energy is left?”
She sheathed her sword and turned slightly to regard him. “There is much you do not know, and many questions, no doubt. But for now I need to ask you a few things, if you don’t mind.”
He shrugged, wondering what in the world an elf such as Avriel would need to ask someone like himself. “Ask away.”
She took a much more serious demeanor. “Do you know what you were doing when you fought the Draggard today?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you not aware that you did not fight as a mere man-pardon the expression-but rather showed the technique of…certain elves?”
Whill was at a loss. He remembered the fighting vividly, and knew he had done quite well, but he did not know what she meant. “I do not know what you ask me.”
Avriel looked frustrated. “You are a mortal man endowed with the powers of elves. You should not have been able to use those powers until you were rightly taught. But you healed the boy on the ship, you saved the infant child from death, and you healed yourself within the dwarf mountain with your father’s sword.” She did not let her gaze waver. “Whill, did you not notice that your blade felled the Draggard a bit too easily? I watched you from afar, as did my brother. You cut through their scales as if it were cloth, does that not seem strange to you?”
Whill let his gaze fall to the ground as he contemplated her question. Now that he thought about it, he realized that he had killed the Draggard with comparative ease. He had not been afraid, as he had been on the ridge with Roakore. He had been angry, so he assumed his rage had fueled his fighting. Now he knew that had not been the case.
“So what are you sayin? That I used the energy within my father’s blade, as the elves do?”
She shook her head. “No, Whill. What you did is forbidden by the Elves of the Sun. What you did today is a practice of the Dark elves.”
He regarded Avriel with disbelief. “I couldn’t have, I-”
“With your first kill you stole the life energy of the beast before you, and the second, and so on. Each came easier; each of your enemies’ deaths gave you more strength, or rather gave your father’s blade more strength. You did not let that power lie idle-you used it, and to devastating effect. You killed well over thirty Draggard today. And still your father’s blade holds within it the life force of many of the beasts.”
Whill was at a loss. “I didn’t mean to-I didn’t want-I mean, I didn’t know. I did not consciously do the things you speak of.”
Avriel eyed him for a moment and finally smiled. “I know, Whill. But you must understand. it is the way of the Elves of the Sun only to use our own energy, or that which is rightly given. To take from another in such a way is not our practice. It is a path that can only lead to evil.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The collection of the dead continued throughout the night and into the morning. No one slept, even those who could have. For demons newly born see dreams as a playground, and with sleep can only come the remembrance of screams, blood, death.
The morning sun shed light upon a village in ruin. Every building had been burned to the ground, save the town hall. The ground was so red with blood in some places it looked as though the earth itself were bleeding. The bodies of men, women, and a few unlucky children littered the village, all covered with cloth, awaiting the pyre.
So with the rising and settling of the sun upon its midday perch came the burning of the deceased. Hagus the barkeep was among them, along with more than a hundred Eldalonian soldiers, and hundreds of villagers. The survivors-hundreds of widows and children, and a few lucky men-made a wide circle around the great pyre. Some hung their heads, while others looked to the heavens proudly. All wept. Someone in the crowd took up the Eldalonian funeral song as the flames were lit, and quickly the song was taken up by all. As the words rose to the heavens, and the voices of the many women and children grew stronger, tears found the eyes of the watching companions.
