[The Twining] 33. Enigma (Patreon)

[ Sorry for the lack of updates, been busy and sick. RIP. Trying my best. Thanks to everyone for your patience. Hope my stories deserve it! ]

When they returned to the rear gates of the city, Allezin felt his composure crumbling. He knew this disaster wasn’t his fault. He’d done his best against a force his people had no chance of defeating without outside help.

Eldrassin wasn’t a large kingdom. It was thin and long, a barrier between harsh Dray and the fertile lands beyond. Shevenar had existed from the beginning, its location strategically placed near the mountains that led into Dray and the southern passage that allowed access to the highlands of Erakai, which in turn looped up to the high seat of the elves in Onyssia.

And now look at it—smoking and smoldering, its people broken and scattered.

Allezin had never wanted the responsibility of Shevenar on his shoulders. Unfortunately, it had needed a tier three to preside over it, and the queen had personally asked Allezin to temporarily step in until someone else could be found.

It had been an unfair agreement with no obvious end date. Mage or cultivator, both took hundreds of years to cross over the tier two hump. Moreover, what was to keep them in Eldrassin once they advanced? There were always abundant opportunities for a tier three anywhere within the elven lands. Probably anywhere in the world, if someone had an adventurous spirit.

But Lumina had asked him, and he knew better than to argue with a tier four mage. And more importantly, he had owed her.

From the survivors sheltering with the queen, Druinala, Talis, and five others at the peak of tier one had returned with Allezin to Shevenar. Two of the tier ones were the parents of the girl whom Lumina Eldrassin possessed. They lacked combat experience, but they refused to stay behind.

With luck, their lack of experience wouldn’t be a hindrance. The drayavin should have already been largely driven out by Shevenar’s guard. That, and called away by orders to retreat.

Allezin placed his helmet back on to hide his expression. “Comb through and look for survivors, evacuating any who are still sheltering in place. Tell them to go to the rear gate. Assist them if they can’t move on their own. Spread the word to anyone you see, especially any town guards you find.” He spoke in common since everyone could understand it. The one pure elf, the mage Druinala, couldn’t speak common well, but at least understood more than she spoke.

Few humans were fluent in elvish tongues, but Isen’s lack of any elvish whatsoever was bizarre. Anyone who had spent even a few days in the elven lands should know some dialectic variation of the words for “thank you” or “hello.”

Isen was just generally a massive enigma. Most obviously, he was a barely teenaged human and a tier two cultivator, and one of his eyes was… strange. Ringed by gold.

Less obvious at a glance, the teen was dauntless, willing to interrupt a fight between cultivators a stage higher than his own. He could move about in the dark as well as any pure elf or monster. Most significantly, his first instinct upon seeing the corpse of a tier three was to drink its blood.

Civilians never needed to drink the blood of monsters. For the vast majority of the population at tier one, tier two monster blood could only improve the natural recovery rate of injuries. It simply wasn’t as valuable as other monster components, like hide, bone, and sinew, and was typically left unharvested, especially since it carried impurities that could affect advancement and potentially shorten one’s lifespan.

Tier three monster blood had much more potent healing properties, but the same principles applied. Such monsters didn’t usually die in towns, but in remote climes, and their titanic size—and propensity to attract other monsters, as well as rot—forced harvesters to take only the most valuable parts. And the hunters themselves were typically tier threes, who, like Allezin, didn’t benefit much from imbibing blood of the same rank.

Allezin couldn’t fault Isen for partaking of the serpent. Tier three blood was relatively pure compared to tier twos, so it’s not like he was crippling his cultivation. From a utilitarian perspective, it was the right choice.

But it was just… very strange. Normal boys didn’t do that. But Isen very clearly wasn’t just a normal boy.

His absurd story about the queen had turned out to be true. It had seemed so ludicrous that Allezin almost hadn’t followed Isen to the rear gate. But upon seeing the serpent’s corpse, he’d immediately recognized traces of her starfire. And when he finally found the escaped elves in the cave and the girl had been waiting for him, he was finally convinced. Lumina Eldrassin’s spirit had, by some profound, inexplicable, unprecedented miracle, been drawn into the body of a young half-elf, a girl who couldn’t be older than ten.

Allezin wasn’t young and inexperienced—he had seen a lot.

When the Firemaster’s entourage appeared on horseback the previous afternoon with a torch carrying the queen’s flame—the fire from her own cremation—he had been surprised by the news. The capital hadn’t even thought to send a message through the communication relay. Longevity made a hell out of bureaucracy, and everything moved slow as molasses—but really? Neglecting to send word that the queen had died?

But even then... he hadn’t been shocked. Just numb. And while the invasion from Dray was sudden and unprovoked, Allezin was no stranger to the carnage. Before most that lived today were born, Dray used to be far more aggressive, and the death toll of its raids far higher.

It was a large reason why the kingdom of Eldrassin was dominated by half elves: The population was far more replenishable.

But bringing a queen—or really any person—back from the dead was a matter that truly shocked him. And from the way that the queen sometimes looked at the boy, Allezin had the strongest suspicion that Isen was more involved than he let on.

For now, Allezin had to put his burning need to know on hold and prioritize the rescue effort. He split everyone into groups: Isen, Druinala, and the queen, because the trio was essentially inseparable; Talis and the possessed girl’s parents; and the three strongest tier ones together. That just left Allezin alone.

Under the foreboding sky, Allezin swept through the settlement, telling every guard and civilian he came across to meet at the rear gate. He moved faster and faster, trying to find a dwindling number of people. Every now and then, he found a drayavin hiding in an abandoned building, probably obeying orders to shelter in place until the way out became clear.

Allezin was never unnecessarily cruel to them—they were just tools, and a full rank lower than himself. It felt like bullying the weak. But there was only one fate that awaited invaders of his town.

These aren’t your people, he reminded himself. You were just sworn to protect them. Somehow, that made his failure worse.

That was when he ran into Druinala, the blue-green flame flickering over her shoulder. A quick glance revealed that Isen and the queen were missing. “Where are the others?”

She pointed to the three-story building that she was leaning against. It was mostly intact, though the front door was hanging at an angle, the hinges broken. “They’re looting.”

Allezin blinked. “Looting?”

“To face what is to come, they need proper vestments,” she said. “Armor.” She shook her head. “Shoes.”

He stared at the building, then back at Druinala. Now was as good a time as any to gather more information. “When did you meet Isen?”

“Less than a day ago,” she replied, her green eyes iridescent in the moonlight.

Allezin frowned. “I thought he’d come with your caravan.”

“He did, but he only joined the caravan this past afternoon.”

Allezin was glad for the helmet masking his face. “Really?”

She chuckled, though her gaze was piercing. “Does Isen unnerve you?”

“He is a mystery,” Allezin answered. “I’m a naturally curious person.”

“Then I’ll tell you what I’ve observed. He is stronger than he should be.”

Allezin waited, but she didn’t say anything else. He laughed. “That’s it? That’s what you’ve observed?”

She shrugged. “Anything I’ve discovered in a few hours you’ll learn for yourself on the way to Eldrassin. Form your own opinions.”

He couldn’t argue the point. “Your caravan isn’t from Eldrassin,” he stated, changing the subject. None of the caravan survivors had shown the appropriate level of deference to the queen. Perhaps they simply didn’t believe that she was the queen, but he felt that their impertinence stemmed from something more basic.

She gave him a sly smile. “We’re from Onyssia.”

Allezin raised an eyebrow, not that she could see it, and switched to speaking Onyssian. “Whereabouts?”

Her smile widened. “Shor Mei. Are you Onyssian?”

“I’m not really from anywhere. I’ve spent a decent amount of time in Onyssia, but it’s been too long since I’ve been to the Viridian Jewel,” he said, using the colloquial moniker for Shor Mei. “What were you transporting?”

“I don’t know—not my business.” She pointed a finger at Allezin’s limp arm. “Will you recover naturally from that?”

He grunted. He’d only need to seek out a healer if the arm was severed. “Yeah, but it might take a few days.”

She nodded and turned her head, looking out into the moonlit streets. Her gaze took on a faraway quality, as though seeing somewhere else, far from here. Suddenly, she narrowed her eyes and strung her bow, shooting off an arrow. Allezin turned fast enough to see it plunge into the eye of a drayavin that had been poking out of a sewer grate.

His lips quirked into a grin. It was uncommon to find a mage who fought like a cultivator.

When Druinala turned back to the head guard, he was already gone.

***

Isen’s breath nearly caught in his throat when he stepped into the shop filled with displays of leather and light chain mail on wooden mannequins. On the floor lay a lizard-like drayavin and two people, all glassy-eyed and unmoving. The elves—a man and woman, ostensibly a husband and wife—both wore the wares of their shop, fine leather armor that now bore long scratches. The armor seemed to have held up, however, since the couple seemed to have only died by wounds to the throat, where their armor had a gap for mobility. They lay in large pools of blood that had soaked into a thin rug and seeped into the grooves of the wooden floorboards.

The husband had a short sword that he still gripped even in death, while the woman’s axe lay by her twisted leg.

The possessed girl was with him, her mien unaffected by the dreadful scene. She walked around the blood puddle and pulled a leather vest off a mannequin. “Cut this down to fit me,” she commanded mentally.

The vest was meant for an adult male body. Even though it had a series of adjustable straps, Isen found the girl’s command a bit ridiculous. “Let’s first see if there are more options in the back.”

He stepped lightly through the shop, opening the unlocked back room, which appeared to be a workshop outfitted with tables and different tools for cutting and working leather and metal. He walked over to the corner where there were a few stacked boxes. Each contained a different order. Some boxes were mostly empty, containing a single item like a belt, while others held multiple pieces.

The girl followed and dropped the leather jerkin on the ground, joining him in sorting the items into piles: gloves, bracers, belts, pants, vests, shoulder pads, helmets, and mail shirts.

There weren’t more than three or four in each pile, but at least they had options. The gloves were too big for the girl but fit Isen, who also matched the smallest bracers. Both were too short for the trousers, so Isen grabbed the two smallest to modify. There was only one vest, but it was small enough to be an improvement on the one from downstairs, which Isen took for himself. They skipped the shoulder pads, meant for a larger man, but found two fitting helmets. Finally, there was a single mail shirt that fit the ten-year-old’s body like a dress.

The half elf girl’s body wasn’t completely weak, having reached the beginning of the hollow formation stage, but it paled in strength compared to Isen’s tempered, hollow core physique. It was faster for him to wield the leather working knife to modify the monster hide pieces, even though his craftsmanship was shoddy. That wasn’t important when the armor just had to serve them long enough to get something better.

When he finished adjusting the bracers, the girl grabbed them and sewed them shut with monster gut sinew. The needle must have been tipped with a sharper metal than the leather working knife, for the queen plunged it through the leather without a whisper of resistance. Isen was focused on his own task, but he noticed the surety of her movements. If she used to be a fourth tier, as he suspected, it made sense that she had mastered something as basic as sewing. He wondered how old she really was.

In fifteen minutes, they finished their alterations. The leather trim on some was shoddy, but Lumina’s flawless needlework had mitigated the worst of Isen’s mishaps. When Isen moved to help equip the queen’s armor, his inexperience became obvious.

“Loop it around my waist,” Lumina explained out loud, her voice patient. “Cross the thin straps across my back like tying boot straps. Yes, like that.”

With her walking him through the process, it didn’t take long until she was fully outfitted in leather. The tier two monster material was thin but incredibly tough, which was what Isen figured made it valuable. He knew the hides didn’t normally start so thin—tier two monsters could be quite large, and their skins sometimes several inches thick—so they must have undergone significant treatment before reaching the leatherworkers. It would still restrict the girl’s movement somewhat, but she didn’t need to be particularly agile to call down pillars of molten white light.

“Do you still want the chain mail shirt?” Isen asked.

She considered for a moment, then nodded. “Most of this isn’t for me, you know. It’s for her.”

As in, the girl whose body she was borrowing. From the nervous protests of the girl’s parents, Isen knew her real name was Mira. Depending on the situation they eventually found themselves in, if someone extinguished the ember keeping Lumina Eldrassin tethered to Mira... the young tier one would find herself in the midst of deadly conflict.

As Isen draped the chain mail shirt over Mira’s head, his thoughts wandered. He was happy that Lumina had saved the town, but he didn’t know if she really should continue to possess the girl’s body. The words of Legacy had been vague regarding Lumina Eldrassin’s death, but he remembered them clearly: “A kindling spark overstepped and was devoured by a blistering inferno.”

Isen wasn’t so callous as to say that Lumina had invited her own death, but... it sounded like she wasn’t some innocent victim. Perhaps her death hadn’t been undeserved, and by bringing her back as a player in whatever game was afoot, he was only fanning the flames of conflict, inviting greater death and destruction down the line.

He just didn’t know enough about what was going on, and he didn’t think the queen would be forthcoming if he asked. Or rather, he didn’t know if he could trust whatever she told him. He didn’t think Legacy would lie to him, but Eldrassin was clearly her own person, even if she was tied to the ember and to him.

Isen cinched the chain mail close to the girl’s body with a second belt, since the first held up her too-big pants. Then it was his turn to be dressed. The queen moved swiftly, easily fitting the leather sections over his stained tunic and pants. He was ready in a fraction of the time.

They both grabbed their leather helmets and went downstairs.

Isen froze when he saw his reflection in a mirror—a proper, unmarred surface, like the kind he’d had back in the sanctum’s washroom. It was the first time he’d ever seen himself in real armor. Aside from his height, he could almost pass for an adult… save for one detail.

He burst into a fit of nearly hysteric giggles. “My shoes.”

The possessed girl flicked at her chain dress with distaste. “Or lack thereof,” she finished. Despite herself, she also let out a soft chuckle. For a second, it was almost like they were just two normal children playing dress-up.

That illusion shattered as Lumina stepped over the blood-soaked axe and bent down by the fallen woman. “Try these.”