Ain: The Rising

[Kalika84]

Karesh was completely taken unawares, one minute she was upright and talking to her Queen, the next an unbearably heavy weight literally dropped on her smashing her to the ground. She didnt even have time to scream.

Thorne was instantly in action with a roar he launched himself towards where she lay and thankfully the males pulled the weight off her fast enough for him not to attack it. His tail was lashing furiously behind him he was so angry and scared for her. Karesh? KARESH! are you alright? Can you get up? please tell me you are okay...The last was murmured in his little kitten voice, full of worry that he could not do anything to aid her.

Karesh groggily sat up one hand to her head and blinked a few times before, with as much dignity as possible, getting to her feet. She remembered the scream that sounded at the same moment she was struck and realised it was the Queen. Quickly looking at hr and doing a mental sweep she ascertained there was no damage to her Soveriegn, simply shock at what had happened.

Shaking her head slightly to aid with the clearing of it she responded to Thorne, It is okay kitten. I am fine. Need not worry. Reaching down, not very far as his size had increased and his head was now slightly higher than her waist, she rubbed his ears and neck. Looking at the men now holding what had hit her she realized with a jolt that it was the elf!

Hearing her Queens strident request for information she turned quickly to give it. "My Queen, this is that Elf I spoke to you of, that can hide himself so well not even I or Thorne can pin point his exact location. he will be invaluable to us if we can get him to fight for us." Turning she looked at the Men holding him.

"Take him to my tent. Bring fresh bandages, water and food." Watching them just stand there gaping at her, she narrowed her eyes at them. "I did mean now gentlemen."

Turning back to her Queen she said, "If it pleases your Majesty, I will bathe and heal his wounds, and try to glean what little I can about him then bring him back for an audience with you...when he is not so offensive, both in sight and....scent." The last word was uttered with a cute wrinkle of her nose.

 

[Wolfsister]

Lisika stared at Karesh. Things were moving way too fast for the young woman to comprehend. Her mouth was agape in a very unlady like manner and she did not fully realise how much of an idiot she looked.

Karesh's words reached her ears and she nodded quickly, "Yes yes go, tend to him."

Then she turned to the rest of the men and placed a hand on her forehead, "You must forgive me but I do not feel very well. Continue your talk."

She turned to the councillor, "Brief me when you're done."

After she left he turned to Cormac, "If you don't mind me asking, what exactly are you warriors capable of?"

 

[rengadeirishman]

"How do you mean?" he asked, unsure how to answer.

 

[Wolfsister]

"I mean, how are you trained? What weapons can you use, what tactics do you use. How you kill, if you kill, what code of honours you have. We know little of your people, excuse our ignorance, but if we mean to take Ain back for our queen, then we must know ourselves as well as our enemies."

It seemed that the man was more than the political dog currying for favour. He might even know what he was talking about.

 

[Jedi_Khan]

The Elf Dreams

There was Darkness, yet there was also Light. There had to be Light or else how could the elf see that he was floating in a sea of Darkness? But where was the Light coming from? He looked all around him and saw only Darkness. Then he looked at himself. He was the source of light; his body still retained its normal form, it was just luminous, the glow rising only a short distance before diffusing into the Darkness.

Time had no meaning as the elf floated in the Darkness. A second was as long as an eternity and an eternity was as long as a second. Yet the elf had a sense of the passage of time; it felt as if he had been floating for an eternity when the Darkness changed. It ceased to be.

As the Darkness retreated, it was replaced by color, predominantly green and brown, with other colors mixed in for good measure. The color was random, having no distinct pattern or form. But as the elf watched, the colors began to shift, slowly revealing a sight that only birds ever enjoy: the view of a thick expanse of forest from above.

The elf didn’t have long to enjoy the view, as his point of view quickly changed from that of the birds to his own on the ground. He immediately recognized his surrounds. He was home, back in his village in Mori. To the untrained eye, the elf was simply standing in a forest, so well was the village hidden, but the elf knew that he was indeed standing outside the door to his home.

But something was different about the village; it didn’t look the same as it had when had last saw it. The village wasn’t burned out, having just been ransacked by the Talarines; there weren’t bodies on the ground. No, what he was seeing was the village as it had been before the Talarines arrived, when the village was still safe and hidden.

A voice called out, one that the elf recognized. He turned and found himself looking at his own back. But the voice hadn’t been his; it hadn’t even been male. He stepped to the side to see a beautiful Mori elf-woman come out the door of his home; in her hands she held the elf’s pack.

The elf’s copy took the pack from the woman and slung it on his back, making sure the cloak he always wore covered it. Then he and the woman exchanged some words, but they were muffled and indistinct. Then the elf realized that what he was watching were his memories, but for some reason he couldn’t remember the woman’s name nor the words that they had exchanged. He watched as the woman and his copy embraced; at that time, he noticed a glint of metal on the woman’s finger: a ring. The elf looked at his own hand and saw an identical ring on his finger; he then realized who the woman was: his fiancée, although her name still eluded him.

When the elf looked up again he found that the scene had changed. He was now some distance from the village, apparently at the border of the Mori Elves land. The elf looked around and found the memory of himself sitting up in a tree, overlooking a small clearing in the trees. The elf in the tree seemed to on the alert for something, constantly scanning the opposite tree line. It quickly became apparent that it wasn’t necessary to be so alert, as loud noises reached the ears of the elf. A large group of creatures was approaching, making no attempt at stealth.

The real elf’s stomach sank as he recognized the sounds he was hearing: the Talarines were coming. Sure enough, out of the trees came a very large group of the brutes, so many that they stretched from one end of the clearing to the other and beyond. If the elf’s memory served him right, this was the main body of the Talarine army as they moved to a new location to pillage and burn.

A bird call was just barely heard over the racket the Talarines were making; other Mori Hunters had spotted the advancing army and were signaling back to the village that unwelcome visitors were approaching. The elf echoed the call, and heard it echoed back at him. The elf in the memory didn’t know it, but the Talarine army stretched for miles across the forest floor, not in any sort of recognizable military order. It would only be a matter of time now before the Talarines stumbled upon the hidden Mori village.

The elf and his memory watched as dozens of Talarine marched past, ignorant of the elves who watched them. It seemed like almost an hour before the last Talarine walked by, and by then, both elves had a sinking feeling in his stomach. The Hunters who had watched the Talarine army pass followed in the wake of the brutes like shadows. They had heard that an unknown army had been ravaging the countryside farther south for some time now, so the Mori Elves had stepped up border security to keep an eye out for this threat. The elves placed great faith in the fact that previous armies had marched through their village before without even knowing, and they believed that would hold true for this new threat.

However, their faith and hopes were soon crushed as a horn rang out across the forest, an unknown horn, a hostile horn. It was quickly followed by a more familiar horn giving out three quick blasts, a horn call that all Mori Hunters never wished to hear: their village had been found.

Like lethal ghosts, the famed and mysterious Mori Hunters fell upon the rear of the Talarine horde, cutting down one or two of the brutes before disappearing again, only to strike again shortly afterward. The Talarines had no idea that they had walked into the home of the Mori, nor did they care. All they knew was that a settlement had been found ahead of them and that despite their fellows being cut down behind them, they were going to destroy the settlement.

The horn of the Mori Elves called out again twice more, repeating the three blasts that were a call for aid. On the third repeat, the horn was cut off in the middle of the second blast. The Hunters continued to fight viciously, showing no mercy upon the horde. Eventually they reached the village to find the brutes running amuck, loot being carried away by some while others dealt with the remains of the defending elves.

The Hunters abandoned their hit-and-hide attacks now that they were within their village; they instead came out into the open to fight the horde and try to save what they could. The Mori Hunters were not soldiers, nor could they hope to match the strength and numbers of the Talarines. They knew that they could not win, but they were determined to take as many of the savages down with them as they could.

The woman fought with whatever they could, and failing an improvised weapon, they fought with tooth and nail. They would not give in to these brutes; they would not be the victims of rape, torture, and slavery. They would rather die fighting on their feet than die on their knees. They fought so viciously that many of the Talarine decided that the elven woman were not worth the trouble, killing them on the spot rather than trying to take them alive.

The elf danced a lethal dance as he cut down any Talarine that stood between him and his home. Within minutes of returning to the village, he was in sight of his home, and outside it he saw his beloved fighting ferociously, using a carving knife to cut down any of the savages that got too close. The sight of the dangerous beauty spurred the elf to greater heights as he fought to get to her side. But it was not to be.

He watched in horror as a group of the Talarine savages closed in around his fiancée. It would be too much for her. She managed to cut down a pair of the attackers, then she locked eyes with her love. Her profound love for the elf shown through the relief at the sight of him coming to her aid. But then they widened in surprise and pain as she was struck from behind. Her life was quickly leaving her, but before it did, her eyes softened to convey one final message: “Good bye, my love.” Then she fell.

The real elf watched in mute horror as the memory of himself called out her name and tried to rush to her side, cutting blindly at the Talarine that attempted to intercept him. One Talarine got lucky was able to drive a knife into the elf’s back, the very same knife that his beloved had used to defend herself. The blow drove the elf to the ground, pain blossoming in his back. The Talarines, thinking he was done for, left him for dead and went about their business.

The real elf continued to watch in silence as the past version of himself dragged himself towards her body, clawing at the ground below him to move. A singular purpose kept the elf from being claimed by the dead; he had to get to his beloved, he had to hold her one last time. When he reached her, he found that her eyes were open, but there was no life left behind them. With one hand he closed her eyes, leaving lines of blood upon her beautiful visage. Laying his head upon her, he let his sorrow and grief overtake him, crying for his lost love until darkness took him.

The memory faded as the elf cried upon the body of his love, the Darkness returning. There was nothing more to see. The elf knew how he had survived: the pack upon his back, the very same one that his fiancée handed to him that morning, had prevented the carving knife from hitting anything vital, missing his spine by a hair-breadths and not going deep enough to hit organs.

The elf had awoken several hours later in the darkness of night to find himself laying upon the body of some woman he didn’t know and his home and village burning, the shadows cast by the flames dancing evilly as the flames themselves licked the sky. He had been terrified when he realized that he remembered how his home had come to be in such a state, but he couldn’t remember who he was.

Even after seeing the memory, the elf still didn’t know who he was, but he did remember that he had once known love.

Something began to change. What, exactly, the elf couldn’t tell; it was like walking into a room and instantly knowing that something was different. It seemed that a sense of the physical had returned, with the elf having never realized that it had left. He could feel something solid, yet not overly hard, like furs laid on the ground, against his back. He could feel something covering his body, a blanket of some sort. He felt something cool and wet pressing at his forehead, while something warm dabbed at his arm. Then he felt weight; he no longer felt as if he was floating, instead feeling as if he was indeed laying on some furs laid on the ground.

The sudden sensation of weight dragged a groan from his throat as the elf found himself returning to consciousness. His eyes were heavy as they fluttered open, revealing a multicolored blur that occasionally moved above him. He tried to move his arms, but they felt heavy; he was weak from exhaustion, hunger, and malnutrition. Having failed to move even his fingers, he blinked several times, causing the blur to resolve itself into the visage of Karesh leaning over him to tend to his wounds.

He tried to say something, but his dry throat was unwilling to produce sound. Unable to do much of anything at the moment, the elf simply laid there, devoting what energy had to regaining his strength.