Eirlathion’s POV

 

The life of an elf is long, and their perspective is wide. Eirlathion had lived for a millennium in this world, he had seen even more than the typical elf. As a people, they preferred their lives to be slow. It was for the humans who lived much shorter lives to have many stressful events happening one after another. The elven psyche simply wasn’t built to be able to handle rapid change.

 

In less than a season, within the space that the human calendars would call a “month,” everything had changed. No, things had been accelerating ever since the Heaven’s Fall happened, but it was in this past very short period of time that things had begun to move especially fast. Perhaps it was good that the 11 new great faeries had been added to the fey court, it was only those fresh human memories that would allow for the kind of quick action necessary to counter the threat of the Heaven’s Scar, but the impact from such a sudden move was clear. Change that was this fast, it was tearing the villages apart.

 

Perhaps they were in a particularly bad situation here. They had gotten a pretty good thing going with the girls. Eirlathion was under no illusion he was successfully managing to completely hide their status as grey elves from the people of the village. However, there seemed to be a silent agreement that developed that so long as he continued to provide the plausible deniability that allowed them to ignore the issue, they would just go ahead and pretend they didn’t suspect anything. Despite the harsh tradition toward grey elves, nobody liked the idea of killing children. At the very least, the girls would be allowed to grow till they could survive on their own and then exiled from the village.

 

It was the fey court’s reaction to the Heaven’s Scar that made this entire delicate system come crumbling down. Simply by bringing in an entire large group of outsiders, this greatly increases the chances that something will go wrong. An outsider would not understand the silent unspoken agreement everyone had arrived at. They would not have the same compassion of familiarity that had established the agreement in the first place. However, things only grew worse because of the inclusion of the fey dragon.

 

If it were only the outsiders, they would have to go through the proper order of talking to the magus and the elder before anything could be done, and there would be time to convince them and slowly make them understand. However, with the fey dragon, they were able to take rapid action that upset everything the elven way of life stood for, not even giving him a chance to make his case.

 

That was the situation that lead here, tensions throughout the village were incredibly high before this incident. Things were all changing so fast. The people were stressed between the threat of attack and the sudden rapid changes going on in the village. Under these conditions, a dryad awoke in response to the actions taken by the dragon, and they were mad.

 

Eirlathion could only imagine what was happening outside right now. To think this was a situation where there would be no deaths would the the wishful thinking of the young who are ignorant to how dangerous these levels of stress could be. Eirlathion could not think of any situation where tensions in an elven village had ever been higher, but he had known things to go very bad with far less. Worst case, they could easily have wound up in a situation where the natives of this village had gone to all out war against the outsiders.

 

It was ridiculous. The fear of being attacked seemed to be causing more damage than an attack itself would do. What would it say if this village was wiped out at the hands of the villagers themselves instead of the tainted ones they feared so much?

 

Dryad had set this in motion on purpose. Eirlathion was certain of it. A tree spirit normally would not be able to understand the delicate state the villager’s psyches would be in at this time, but Dryad had just been subject to a large amount of memories and information from countless sources. Eirlathion knew he could make no assumptions about Dryad based on what he previously knew about Nymph, nor about any other typical tree spirit. And, there was something about Dryad’s tone and demeanor that just told him they had to be aware of just how easy it would be to set them at each other’s throats.

 

Hiding from the idea was not going to buy him anything. Eirlathion knew his conjecture had to be true. Even so, he could not face Dryad head on right now, and he could not cope with this sudden change. Of all the changes that were on this long list of events, having Dryad turn out to be such a monster was easily the most personal of all of them. Right now, everything he knew and loved was being destroyed at the will of the spirit of his own house, and there was not a single thing he could do to stop it.

 

Eirlathion looked up across the room. There, sitting on the bed, his apprentice Túeth cradled the limp body of her comatose daughter. That woman had been afraid to even look at that child up until just earlier today. What a cruel irony that it is only after loosing her that she realizes how much she cares. Eirlathion had known she harbored some kind of maternal love for her daughters deep down, but fear had always won out over it. Now, even if the queen could heal that child, it was already too late for Túeth to love her daughter.

 

It would be easy for Eirlathion to feel some kind of bitterness toward Túeth and those children. Aerien, the comatose child herself who was hovering between life and death, played a big role in what had happened with Dryad after all. That was not appropriate at all in this situation though. Eirlathion had just found out from Dryad that Aerien managed to retain all her memories from her previous life, but even with that the infant almost certainly did not understand what she was doing when she caused this.

 

In addition to Aerien not being at fault, Túeth has suffered far worse than Eirlathion already, and the weight of what’s happening now in this village will only serve to reopen those still fairly fresh wounds in her psyche. Eirlathion was nearly a millenium older than this young woman, it would have to be him who swallows his pain for her sake. In all likelihood, her and those girls would be all he had left.

 

Anger and bitterness, he had learned over his long life, were things that would only get in the way. If his old and comfortable life was currently in the active process of being destroyed, he could not afford to cut off the best option he had at a new life out of his negative emotions, justifiable as they may be.

 

He considered the scene of Túeth once again. She had barely even nodded when he entered the room before staring with her blank expression back at her comatose daughter. She had pulled the human boys, Rolwen and Levin, to her on both sides in order to have them both very close to Aerien. Meanwhile, Aerien’s sister Gaerien had crawled up into their mother’s lap and had a hand placed on her sister’s shoulder. The infant’s face seemed to express what he could only presume was concern for her comatose twin.

 

It was a mother surrounded on all sides by infants and toddlers. Eirlathion did not know very much about children of that age, but going by what he had seen the few times he went to the nursery tree after those girls had just been born he would presume that, were those children normal, there is no way they would all be sitting so still and complying with Túeth so easily for Aerien’s sake.

 

Up until now, Eirlathion had based what was “normal” on what he saw those two boys doing, presuming that Aerien was the only abnormal one in the group. However, from what Dryad had just told him, all four of those children had retained their memories from their previous lives. That would mean those boys, who would likely not be able to sit still if they were normal, were entirely willing to sit as near as possible to her because they understood it was the best way to keep their friend alive. Meanwhile, Gaerien who was casting her concerned eyes on her sister also understood the full reality of what was happening right now, at least so far as Aerien is concerned.

 

Those children being fully aware of just how dire Aerien’s situation is brought a whole new set of issues into all of this. Well, those issues could likely be put off simply by not telling them that he knows. They have grown used to the idea of the adults not being aware after all. He would have to ask Dryad if they had said anything to the children about telling him. That would probably be for the best, and he would also wait on the matter of telling Túeth. There were enough problems going around right now, he did not need to deal with the strain that would come from opening up to them about this issue.

 

-

 

Calanor’s POV

 

After having been urged by Master Sainel, the group of low grade mages and apprentices along with a vanguard of five hunters made their way toward a far corner of the village. At this distance, the horrible sounds of the angry mob grew softer. Occasionally a scream would come out as accusations were shouted and someone else would plead for their life. The amount of time between the accusation and the beating seemed to be growing shorter as the mob grew angrier and more vicious.

 

Calanor kept his eyes out for anyone roaming around this far from the chaos. If they were still fortunate enough to be spared from what was going on, he would usher them into their little group. Eventually, they had around 20 in their number by the time they reached the corner of the wall. They had no confidence they would be allowed to climb this wall, but so long as the spirit of Eirlathion’s house did not decide to take a more active role they ought to be able to at least protect themselves out here.

 

It seemed Master Sainel had a more effective idea than just fighting off attackers with their backs to a corner though. She was actively looking up from one tree to another. “Ok,” she said, “you four create a wall from that tree to that tree, I’ll be working over here!”

 

The trees she had indicated were one that was in front of their little group, and a pair of trees that were both part of the two adjoining outer walls that made up this corner. The three trees were in almost a straight line. If the three trees were linked by vines, it would make a right triangle shaped space for them with the outer wall, and for the people inside it would look perfectly natural that this might have been part of the wall all along.

 

Calanor could see now why Sainel had chosen this particular corner. Indeed, if they were to create walls here then it would look as though they had always been part of the outer wall. The people in the village had seen the walls go up, so there is the chance someone might notice. However, given the state of chaos people were in right now, the chances of them noticing were small and their fear of climbing the walls would be high.

 

The only question is whether or not the dryad would allow them to do this. Well, the only way to find out was to just do it and see what happened.

 

-

 

Several hours had passed and it was getting dark. However, the shouting and the sounds of chaos had still not stopped. The shouts of “rumor spreader” had stopped long ago, and now they were replaced by shouts of “outsider” and “get them,” there was also talk of shooting and more of an organized structure to the commands being shouted. The group kept safe behind this vine wall could not see what was happening, but going by the contents of the yells they could here it was easy to guess that fists and feet had at some point been replaced with arrows and swords and that the random hunting for suspected rumor spreaders had turned into a war between the residents of the two villages.

 

Inside this cordoned off area, there were both mages, hunters, and even common villagers from both villages. As it had become increasingly clear what was going on out there, the two groups found it becoming more and more awkward to look at one another. Shame filled their faces, but thankfully there was no sign of suspicion. Having a battle break out in their safe place was the last thing they needed.

 

The greater concern was whether or not the dryad would change their mind on whether or not they would allow them to keep themselves protected like this. Fearful eyes were constantly monitoring the vine walls for any sign of movement. Calanor still did not know why the spirit of Eirlathion’s house had chosen not to protect Laeril the same way they had all the other children. This concerned him greatly. There were two possibilities, and he did not like either one of them.

 

One was that she was left for the express purpose of spurring him to action. If this was the case, the dryad had placed Laeril at a terrible risk just to save him. If that was the intention, they could have just as easily taken him with a vine as they had the children.

 

The second and far more horrible possibility was that Laeril had deliberately been passed over for saving because the dryad thought her deserving to face the possibility of death. Calanor did not think the little girl was getting in on all of the rumors, but that was a subject he had been deliberately avoiding for some time now. She was also outside of the village during the crucial time when those rumors could have reached the hunters from Master Sainel’s village. Maybe... it was possible the little girl had talked about it with some of the other children, that was why the dryad hadn’t protected her. However, since it was more or less impossible she had anything to do with the rumor reaching Everon is the reason there was no action taken against them protecting her in this way?

 

No, it was also possible the only reason the dryad hadn’t taken action against their little group hiding here was because of him. He was a good friend of Master Eirlathion. It was entirely possible than that the spirit of Master Eirlathion’s house would not take an action that had a high chance of getting him killed.

 

The worst part about this situation is that he can’t even ask about it. With tensions being how they are, merely the suggestion Laeril may have been marked would have the scene from earlier today repeating in here. The people in here may not be suspecting one another, but Calanor could already feel himself starting to suspect them. He began eyeing all of them, trying to see if they were paying any undue attention toward the little girl. Just one bad word could be all it takes to have this little group at each other’s throats. Suddenly, Calanor was regretting that he made the effort to save so many. He had only increased his potential enemies.

 

The day grew darker as the sounds of people fighting and… killing each other continued outside of their little hiding space deep into the night. Everyone back here looked rather distraught over the horror that was happening right on the other side of this wall. How could fellow elves have become so vicious to one another?

 

Obviously, nobody was really able to sleep knowing that people… friends and loved ones were dead, dying, and trying to kill each other right outside of this area. As this continued, it became increasingly clear that this was exactly what the dryad had wanted. If it was not, they would have come out and stopped this insanity by now.

 

Calanor looked over to one of the hunters from Sainel’s village. He was curled up into a fetal position, and under the light of the full moon Calanor could just barely make out a tear running down the man’s cheek. Calanor did not know this man, but it was clear he was likely mourning for someone who was still out in all of this.

 

There was not likely to be anyone who could sleep, but Calanor had decided to arrange himself next to Ceren with Laeril between the two of them. This was under the guise of comforting her, but the real reason was for her protection. If anyone decided to get any wild ideas during the night, they would be able to notice and react. It was dark now, so it’s likely that the lack of the ability to see the child would keep their minds from going to strange and troublesome places. Hopefully, this would all be over by morning.

---

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                       -Roy

 

(Yeah, that one just didn't work without all three of them.)