29. All Great Things
Chapter 29
All Great Things
12 th Day of the Blood Moon
Elkenrim – Winter, Year 3081 After Doom
The fog spread for miles in all directions, swallowing hills and trees and streams, like a great beast of the gods. It moved with an unnatural creep, tendrils of grey snaking across the ground. Eltoar had never seen anything of its like until the Battle of the Three Sisters. It rose hundreds of feet from the ground, crashing against an invisible ceiling as though hemmed in by a sheet of glass.
In the days since his return to Elkenrim, he and Voranur had tracked the fog’s movement from dragonback while the armies had dispatched scouts along the adjacent hillsides to watch for any advance elven forces. Lyina had not been happy to hear she would be kept from the fight to come, but her mood had shifted when she’d realised she was being sent to intercept Irulaian and Dravír off the Antiquar coast. Neither Draleid nor dragon had been present at the Three Sisters when Pellenor and Meranta had fallen, but that mattered little to Lyina. Vengeance was vengeance, and she would have hers. But she was unpredictable at present, and Eltoar needed predictable in the defence of Elkenrim.
Rise.
At Eltoar’s thought, Helios angled his wings, and the great dragon swept upwards, the force pulling at Eltoar’s shoulders, the wind whistling through the slits in his helmet.
The sun was already half-sunken over the mountains in the west as Helios ascended, the light of the Blood Moon tinting the landscape in a deep red. The soft glow of hundreds of lanterns spread across Elkenrim’s twin walls, and more again illuminated the staked trench that had been dug around the city’s perimeter.
The elven army would be at the gates by the time night had fully taken hold. But what Eltoar still couldn’t understand was why. Something didn’t sit right with him. Honour and glory were one thing, but neither Vandrien nor Salara were fools. The Lorian armies gathered at Elkenrim contained two and a half thousand Battlemages between them, augmented by the Blood Moon. That force was bolstered by another hundred thousand trained soldiers if the garrison and the reinforcements from Catagan and Merchant’s Reach were included. Even with their dragons, any elven victory would be a pyrrhic one.
The thought led Eltoar to only two possible conclusions. Either Vandrien and Salara had lost their minds, or there was something he didn’t know. The latter was far more likely.
He had known the force shown at the Three Sisters was but a fraction of the elven power. But how large truly was their host? A hundred thousand? Two? Three? If that were the case, Elkenrim’s defenders would need the blessings of every god to prevail.
There was always the possibility that the eight dragons he’d counted at Darnírin’s Hill were not the entirety of those kept hidden all these years. Though that was less likely. If that number were much larger, the elves would not be hiding in the fog.
Eltoar filled his lungs as Helios banked left and swerved towards the city, Seleraine swooping from above to hold level at Helios’s right wing.
“What do you think?” Voranur called from his soulkin’s back, threads of Air carrying his voice.
“That there is something we are missing.”
“Agreed.”
“Make for the city.”
Night had descended by the time the wall of fog stopped moving a hundred or so feet beyond the trench that ringed Elkenrim’s outer wall. Even the light from the many lanterns at the trench’s edge failed to pierce the opaque grey.
Eltoar clasped his hands behind his back, looking on from the battlements as a number of elves in gold and red stepped from the fog and marched to the trench. One drove a banner into the ground. The golden stag of Lunithír, illuminated by lanternlight, rippled in the night’s breeze.
“I don’t see Vandrien.” Voranur rested his hand on the pommel of his sword.
“Nor Salara,” Eltoar responded.
“How can you see that far?” Argil Ford was the commander of Elkenrim’s city guard, a short man with a wiry frame and hair brown as bark. He was a dour and cantankerous man.
As though answering Argil’s question, Helios unleashed an enormous roar, matched by Seleraine as both dragons dropped low over the city and swept a gust in their wake, leaving cloaks and banners flapping and dust spiralling.
Cheers and roars erupted, and all along the walls grew a cacophony of sound as the city’s defenders threw their fists in the air, clapped their gauntlets against their breastplates, and knocked wood against stone. All one hundred thousand were within the walls. Just short of eight thousand manned the outer wall, six thousand more at the inner. The rest stood by for replenishment or were arranged across chokepoints throughout the city. Plans had already been put in place for if, and when, the elves broke through the various sections of Elkenrim’s defences.
With Helios’s roar, Eltoar felt no need to answer Argil’s question. Instead, he continued to observe through the dragon’s eyes.
Eight elves stood before the trench, unmoving, their gazes fixed on the city as the golden stag banner flapped before them. Even with Helios’s sight, it was impossible to make out their faces through their helms. But he would have known Vandrien or Salara anywhere. They were either not at Elkenrim at all, or they lingered within the fog. Neither option made sense.
Another roar thundered in the night, followed by a second and a third. The fog whirled and twisted, bursting outwards as three enormous shapes erupted from within its bounds.
The cheering on the walls stopped.
All three dragons bolted upwards like streaks of lightning, twisting about each other and weaving through the low bank of clouds that had drifted in. One had scales of deep crimson – the dragon from the Three Sisters. The second was Andrax, yellow scales and pale pink wings marking him. But it was the third creature that held Eltoar’s attention.
The Blood Moon’s light glinted on the golden scales that adorned Vyrmír’s chest and snout. The dragon was almost twice as large as the others, his powerful wings blotting out the moon’s light.
“So you are here,” Eltoar whispered to himself. In the back of his mind, he could feel Helios soaring on a current of air, twisting as he tried to get a better look at the three dragons and their Draleid.
Three rows of armoured elves with long glaives stepped from the fog, moving in perfect time. They stopped with a snap of their boots and drove the butts of their glaives into the ground, still as statues.
“Commander Ford. Assemble a guard of ten and send word to the commanders of the armies. It is time.”
“So be it.” Argil turned but then hesitated a moment. “What are the chances we live to see tomorrow?”
Eltoar looked back at the man, then at the faces of those around him. The mood was dark, their expressions grim. He could feel the fear in their hearts. These men and women were good soldiers, but they had never faced elves on the field of battle. That might have been a good thing, if they had not heard tales of the devastation along the Lightning Coast or of the Battle of the Three Sisters.
He’d heard the stories spreading through the ranks. As far as many of the Lorians were concerned, the elven army was a host of demons sent from the void to rip the living world to pieces. Eltoar felt no need to correct them. That was how war functioned. Or at least, that was how a soul survived war. You turned your enemy into monsters. Monsters were easier to kill – not in the physical sense but in the sense of the soul. Fewer sleepless nights were born from the deaths of monsters. But it was Eltoar’s intention to show these men and women that monsters could bleed.
“Focus on today, Commander. I’ll see what I can do about tomorrow.”
The portcullis squeaked and groaned as it opened, aged iron that was long past needing oiling. Soldiers marched, carrying a large wooden bridge on their shoulders, their backs straight and expressions sombre.
Eltoar, Voranur, and the army commanders followed in the bridge’s wake. Not one of them spoke. There was nothing to be said. Eltoar had already explained the elven tradition of Narvírinín – ‘the meeting of commanders’ – before a battle. He had explained Alvadr?, and he had explained that there would be no slow, long siege. Elves did not lay siege in that way. There was no honour in watching your enemies starve and wither. Battle was meant to be quick and savage, not slow and fumbling.
The men lowered their bridge, setting it in place across the trench, then bowed their heads as Eltoar and the others passed.
The crunch of dirt beneath Eltoar’s boots was all he could hear after he stepped from the bridge, his gaze fixed on the flapping banner of the golden stag, the banner of his home.
Had he never heard the Calling, never been bound to Helios, he may well have been standing on the other side of this battle, garbed in the same gilded plate his mother had once worn. That was lifetimes ago though, and the choices had been entirely out of his control.
He remembered what Alvira had once told him long ago, after his sister had fallen in the war between Lunithír and Kavathíl, and he had not been there to die by her side. “Every soul has a thousand lives not lived, born of a thousand choices not made and a thousand paths not walked, Eltoar. We must not dwell on those other lives. They are ghosts, and if we let them, they will haunt us. Look forward. There are more choices to make, more paths to walk, more life to live.”
Eltoar’s jaw clenched reflexively at the memory, a wave of sorrow and regret bleeding into his mind from Helios’s.
If only we’d walked the same path. I miss you.
Eltoar stopped within ten feet of the banner and the eight elves who stood about it. For a brief moment, the wind was the only voice that spoke, crimson cloaks and tabards flapping. The rows of elves behind the banner stood still and rigid.
“Eltoar Daethana.” One of the elves by the banner stepped forwards, pauldrons ornamented with charging stags, a blazing sun on his breastplate. The cloth on his armour was white as opposed to the usual crimson of Lunithír. “I had hoped it would be you.”
“I’m afraid I do not know you as well as you do me.”
The elf removed his helmet and held it into the crook of his arm. “Better?”
“Olmaír Moridain…” So many faces Eltoar thought were lost had resurfaced these past months. And of them all, Olmaír’s was the least welcome. Eltoar dipped his head, bowed at the waist, and pressed a fist to his breastplate. “Alaith anar, Aeldral.”
Well met, Elderblade.
“Stand straight, traitor. And take the sound of Enkaran from your lips. Speak the tongue of your chosen people, for you have lost the right to ours.”
Eltoar straightened, clutching his pommel so tightly he could feel the steel pressing into the bones of his hand.
“Bloodshed cannot be avoided this night, nor any night until the empire is ash. I offer you the right of Alvadr?. Should you accept, I will see that a shard of your broken honour will be reclaimed as you die. The people of this city will be spared, but they will be chained and collared as ours were in the northern mines.”
“And if it is your blood that feeds the earth when our blades part?”
“Then my army will lay down its steel and you can stand by and watch as more of your kind are placed in chains. I’m sure that would delight you.”
“You should reject the offer, my lord.” Denmar Roy, commander of the Twenty-Third Army, leaned into Eltoar. His breath smelled of garlic and onions. “Let them beat themselves against our walls. There is no need to risk your life when the advantage is ours.”
Voranur stepped forwards before Eltoar could speak. “I will accept the right of Alvadr?.”
A smirk crept onto Olmaír Moridain’s lips. “It was not offered to you.”
“That is not our way,” Voranur said.
Olmaír’s smirk widened, and he tilted his head as he stepped closer. “ Our way? You are not one of us, Voranur. You are a stain on the Evalien. You are without honour. By rights I need not offer Alvadr? at all. And if you speak again, I will cut you from groin to navel and your dragon will weep over your corpse.”
“How dare you.” Voranur made to close to the distance between them, but Eltoar rested a hand on his shoulder.
Eltoar shook his head, then looked to Olmaír. “Tell me, where is your queen? Does she not have the honour to face me herself?”
“Honour? Queen Vandrien takes shits with more honour than you. She need not waste her time on your blood. Enough talk. Eltoar Daethana, I offer you the right of Alvadr?. Do you accept?”
Eltoar pulled his and Helios’s minds together. Fear and fury pushed to the fore. Memories flowed from the dragon’s mind to Eltoar’s. Memories of watching Olmaír spar, of watching him carve through Uraks, elves, humans, Jotnar, and dwarves alike. Olmaír the Bloody. Olmaír the Undying. The Dread Reaper of Caelduin.
I must show them that monsters bleed.
In the sky above, Helios roared in defiance.
Have you no faith in me? Eltoar thought the words with a smile on his face. And Helios sent him memories of the day the obsidian black egg had hatched and the tiny dragon had crawled free. He had been so small he’d fit in Eltoar’s palm. One of the smallest hatchlings Eltoar had ever seen. Along with the memory came feelings of trust, honour, love. But all the while, the fear permeated everything, accompanied by a sense of helplessness.
I do not sense this is the day I die. But if it is , we have lived a long life, my friend.
Eltoar stepped forwards. “I accept.”
Olmaír inclined his head, then replaced his helmet. “There is some honour left in those bones then.”
Voranur grasped Eltoar’s forearm. “Makri alaith, akar. Draleid n’aldryr.”
Fight well, brother. Dragonbound by fire.
“Rakina nai dauva,” Eltoar whispered back. He looked to Argil Ford. “Commander, return to the city. If I die here, the armies are to yield. There will be no bloodshed. You’ve heard what happened to the eastern cities, and I would rather Elkenrim not be added to that list. But if the vows of the Alvadr? are broken, there will be no mercy. And if I should emerge victorious, we will need a place to hold our captives.”
The man’s tongue twisted in his mouth, and he turned his bottom lip inward. “How do we know they will hold to their end of the bargain?”
“Do as you are instructed, Commander.”
Eltoar held Argil’s gaze until the man finally gave a short nod and turned, ordering his ten guardsmen with him.
The elves spread in a large semi-circle, Olmaír Moridain taking position at its centre.
Voranur instructed the commanders to do the same, and Eltoar stepped out to meet Olmaír. He slid his sword from its scabbard, the rasp ringing out.
He loosened and tightened his grip on the hilt, subconsciously feeling the weapon’s weight. Of course he’d owned the blade for centuries. He knew its weight intimately, knew its balance and curve. Eltoar let out a short laugh.
“It is good you find humour at the end, Oathbreaker.” Olmaír flourished his blade, the steel catching the pale pink light of the moon. All elves of Lunithír knew the name of that blade: Galbarak. Vengeance. It was a weapon of the Second Age – the Age of Honour – passed down through the blood of Moridain for over a thousand years. That sword had crowned kings, ended bloodlines, and finished wars. It was a legend unto itself. “I will not make this quick.”
In truth, Eltoar had laughed because for the first time in a long time, he was nervous. Had this moment come fifty years earlier, that might not have been the case. But now… There was a new hatchling and too many things left unfinished, too many questions left unanswered. He was needed in this world, or, if he was being honest, he needed to be in this world.
That was not the only reason for his apprehension. To say Eltoar and Olmaír had not always seen eye-to-eye would be a grave understatement. And yet, to slay one of his people’s greatest legends was not something Eltoar desired. If he lost, he would be dead and Helios would be alone. If he won, he would be despised by every elf beneath the Lunithíran banner until the breaking of time – more so than he already was. Neither was a particularly desirable outcome, but he knew which one he preferred.
Eltoar focused on his breathing, feeling his lungs swell. He glanced towards the city, where the lanterns lit the walls like stars in the sky. Above, he felt Helios soaring lower, staying as close as he could. Lastly, Eltoar looked towards the elves arranged around him and those who stood in the rows before the fog. Once, they had cheered his name, and now they would cheer his death. The thought was a sobering one.
Every soul has a thousand lives unlived.
Olmaír took the first step, holding his blade low, the tip hovering just above the dirt. He moved around Eltoar, tilting his head, watching.
Eltoar did the same, and the pair circled each other slowly. After a few moments, Olmaír stopped and shifted his stance into Howling Wolf. The elf was a master of many forms, but it was upon svidarya that his legend was built.
“Dauva alaith.” Eltoar pressed the guard of his sword against his breastplate, bowing slightly.
Die well.
He set his feet, gripped his blade, and sank into Swooping Hawk.
Olmaír stared back at him. “Dauva irilka.”
Die slow.
The elf surged forwards, twisting right, then left, adjusting his blade with every movement.
Eltoar fell into Tenp i’il Uê. Stone in the Water . A movement of his own making.
Olmaír’s first strike came in hard and fast to Eltoar’s right hip. Eltoar dropped and took the blow on the edge of his blade, the steel ringing out. He twisted at the hip, then swept Olmaír’s sword upwards, swinging his left hand onto the pommel and stabbing at Olmaír’s head as though he held a spear.
The elf snapped his neck back, avoiding the steel by a finger’s width. He came at Eltoar with four quick strikes, one to the right hip, then to the left, a third to the right shin, and then a fourth that scraped upwards along his breastplate through the black flame emblazoned on the white steel.
Eltoar staggered back, his heart punching his ribs.
Olmaír came at him again. Every step the elf took was purposeful, each twist of his wrist and bend of his knee existing with perfect reason. For every blow he blocked or parried or turned aside, he struck two more. Were it not for Eltoar’s plate, he would have been opened four times already.
A flicker of worry bled into him from Helios, but he pushed it away. I need your rage, not your fear.
A roar thundered overhead, and for an instant Eltoar saw with both Helios’s eyes and his own as the dragon plummeted towards the ground. Two of the elven dragons followed, unleashing sharp screeches, but Helios ignored them as an eagle would a fly and alighted over the trench, the ground shaking beneath his weight.
All those in the circle, elves and humans alike, staggered as the enormous dragon loomed over them, the smell of burning embers wafting from his jaws.
The two elven dragons were not far behind. They landed on the other side of the ring, deep growls in their throats. Their frills were standing on end, Draleid seated at the napes of their necks.
“Enough games,” Olmaír said, looking from Helios back to Eltoar. The elf charged once more with a flurry of strikes, each quick as lightning, each strong as a hammer.
Eltoar took the last strike at his head, redirected it with a swift snap of his wrists, then slammed his pommel into the cheek of Olmaír’s helmet. Blood sprayed, and the elf staggered backwards. Eltoar pressed, swinging for Olmaír’s neck, but even stunned the elf turned away three successive blows. The fourth strike, a stab through Olmaír’s guard, sliced open the golden mail that protected the outside of his knee, biting into flesh. Olmaír dropped, letting out a grunt, but lunged forwards as soon as his knee touched the dirt.
He crashed into Eltoar, sending them both toppling to the ground. Eltoar scrambled for purchase, then hauled himself upright, watching as Olmaír did the same.
His instinct was to reach for the Spark, to pull on threads of Air and drag the breath from Olmaír’s lungs. But there would be no honour in that, and the elves would not obey the agreement that had been made. The Spark could never be used in Alvadr?.
Olmaír reached up and touched the dent on the right cheek of his helmet, then undid the strap and tossed the helmet to the ground. He drew slow, steady breaths as he stared at Eltoar, beads of sweat rolling down his skin.
With his free hand, Eltoar did the same, dropping his helmet at his feet. He rolled his neck around and was rewarded by a series of cracks .
Olmaír spat a mixture of saliva and blood into the dirt, shifted into Striking Dragon, then lunged.
The first swing came in high to Eltoar’s left. Steel crashed against steel, and Eltoar was spinning past, blocking a second strike to his hip.
He saw an opening and lunged, shifting the tide of the duel and sending Olmaír on the defensive. Olmaír deflected Eltoar’s stab, but Eltoar pushed forwards through the elf’s guard. He grabbed Olmaír’s sword arm with his free hand, then hooked his sword hand behind the elf’s head and dragged it down onto his rising knee. A crunch sounded, and blood spurted over the dirt as Olmaír staggered backwards.
Eltoar swung his blade in a downward arc, angling to split Olmaír’s skull through his temple and cheek, but the elf launched himself forwards, crashing into Eltoar’s chest and sending them both to the ground once more. Eltoar gasped, the impact hammering into his back and knocking the air from his lungs.
A fist slammed into his face and his head bounced off the dirt, a blinding light bursting across his eyes. A second fist crashed into his cheek from the other side.
Blood coated Eltoar’s tongue as Olmaír’s steel gauntlets smashed into his face again and again. With each blow, Eltoar’s consciousness flickered, his vision blurring.
In the back of his mind, he felt Helios roaring, felt the dragon’s rage burning like the sun.
No. Even as Eltoar thought the word, another punch bounced his head against the earth with a crunch that let him know a bone had broken.
Helios roared back in defiance, and through his blurred vision Eltoar could see his soulkin and the other two dragons looming over him and Olmaír. Helios would burn every elf in Epheria alive before he’d let Eltoar die.
Another fist rained down, but this time, Eltoar twisted his neck to the right and Olmaír’s armoured hand collided with the earth. Eltoar reached up, wrapped his two hands around Olmaír’s neck, then pulled the elf’s face into his pauldron with every drop of strength he had.
Blood sprayed over Eltoar’s cheek as the steel crushed Olmaír’s nose and burst his lip. The elf didn’t let go however, and the pair grappled in the dirt, smashing pieces from each other. Bloody and sweat-soaked, they knelt in the dirt, staring into each other’s eyes, both dragging in ragged breaths.
Without taking his gaze from Eltoar, Olmaír slowly lifted himself to his feet and allowed Eltoar to do the same. The elf nodded toward Eltoar’s blade, which lay on a small patch of grass to Eltoar’s right, then moved to snatch up his own.
Eltoar grunted as he picked up his sword, tasting blood in his mouth, his nose broken and blocked. He turned to face Olmaír.
The Dread Reaper of Caelduin smiled back at Eltoar, blood trickling from his torn lips and rolling over his chin, his left eye already black and bruised. He dropped into Howling Wolf, Vengeance gripped in his fists. The elf spat blood into the dirt, then cracked his neck. This had gone on long enough. The next time their blades clashed, one of them would lie dead in the dirt. “Heraya tael du ia’sine ael, Eltoar Daethana. Du katiran val haydria.”
Heraya take you into her arms, Eltoar Daethana. You fought with honour.
“Ar du, Aeldral.”
And you, Elderblade.
With one last long breath between them, Eltoar and Olmaír collided in a flurry of steel.
Eltoar turned a strike left with his blade and grabbed Olmaír’s left hand, pulling it away from the hilt of his sword, then smashed his forehead into the elf’s already-broken nose.
Olmaír staggered backwards, and Eltoar twisted, flipped his sword into reverse, grabbed the hilt with both hands, and drove the blade back. Even exhausted, Olmaír managed to palm the steel away and swing with a single-handed strike of Vengeance that skittered off Eltoar’s pauldron.
Eltoar pressed forwards, attempting to catch Olmaír off balance, but the elf caught Eltoar’s swing with his vambrace, and a searing, sharp pain erupted just below Eltoar’s ribs.
The world stood still, and Eltoar’s breaths slowed. He looked down to see the hilt of Olmaír’s sword protruding from below his breastplate, its tip having torn through the mail. He pulled in a breath but found it catching in his chest.
His gaze locked with Olmaír’s, whose breaths were just as heavy as Eltoar’s, sweat, blood, and dirt coating his face.
Olmaír placed his second hand on the hilt of his blade and tried to pull it free from Eltoar’s body, but Eltoar wrapped his left hand around the hilt and held it in place.
The elf opened his mouth to speak, and Eltoar threw back his right shoulder and thrust the tip of his sword into Olmaír’s open mouth. Steel cracked teeth and sliced through flesh, then burst out the back of Olmaír’s skull, blood flowing down the blade.
Eltoar yanked his sword free, bringing chips of tooth and bone with it. Olmaír collapsed, blood pooling around him, and Eltoar stood in the open plain before the city of Elkenrim, ringed by both humans and elves, one sword gripped in his fist, the other jutting from his torso.
Fighting the urge to collapse in the dirt beside Olmaír, Eltoar pulled on threads of Air and Water, using them to contain the blood flow as he wrapped his left hand around the hilt of Olmaír’s sword and pulled it free of his body. It was only then that he allowed himself to drop to his knees beside the ruined body of a warrior who was legend even when Eltoar was but a child.
“Can you stand?” Voranur said, grasping Eltoar’s arm. “We need to get you to the Healers.”
“Help me up.”
Eltoar slid his own sword into its scabbard, then grunted as Voranur stuck his hand beneath Eltoar’s arms and lifted him to his feet. The other elves who had stepped through the fog with Olmaír hadn’t moved an inch. They all still stood in a semi-circle, their stares fixed on the corpse of Olmaír the Undying.
Eltoar limped towards the nearest, who bore the same sigil of the sun on his chest as Olmaír. “By the rights of Alvadr?, you are defeated this day. Lay down your weapons and submit or your honour be forfeit.”
A long silence was Eltoar’s answer. But then the elf before him lifted her helmet and held it under the crook of her arm as she knelt, bowing her head. “By the rights of Alvadr?, I yield this day to you, Eltoar Daethana, the Unworthy, the Black of Heart. We are yours. We trust in what is left of your honour to uphold the ways of war.”
The other six elves followed suit, each removing their helmets as they knelt, and behind them, the rows of elven warriors did the same.
“Your trust will be honoured. And I shall return Olmaír Moridain’s body to you, so that it may be properly cared for in the ways of the Evalien.”
The elf before him lifted her gaze, blue eyes staring into his. “That is truly how you see us then? Are we no longer your people? Are you no longer one of the Evalien?”
Eltoar tried to speak, but the wound in his abdomen flared, burning with pain, a blinding light flashing in his vision. In his weakened state, the drain sapped at him, the threads of Air and Water that stopped him from bleeding out waning. If he wasn’t tended to soon, he would be joining Olmaír in Heraya’s embrace.
Before he could answer, a warning from Helios flashed in his mind, and through the dragon’s eyes he watched Vyrmír burst from the wall of fog behind the elves, rising ever upwards. The dragon did not fly towards Helios and Seleraine, but instead he moved eastward, back towards Steeple. The two other dragons lifted into the air and fell into formation at Vyrmír’s wings.
“What is the meaning of this?” Eltoar snapped, Helios’s rage seeping into him as he glared at the kneeling elf.
“The great dragons were never participants in this battle. They observed only, with no intention of joining, and therefore are not bound by the laws of Alvadr?.”
Helios tore through the sky after Vyrmír, but the dragon was already too far gone. Through Helios’s eyes, Eltoar saw that it was not Salara who sat at the nape of the dragon’s neck. It was a human woman with dark hair, a rune-marked collar binding her neck.
“What in the gods is happening?” Eltoar whispered.
As Vyrmír faded into the clouds, the wall of fog dissipated, spreading over the ground and thinning. Eltoar stepped past the seven elves kneeling before him and stared out at the empty field of grass where the fog had been.
There was no army. Not even a trace.
“What games do you play?” Voranur roared, dragging the elven captain to her feet, his fingers wrapped around the arm loops in her breastplate.
A smile spread across her face, and she turned away from Voranur to stare at Eltoar. “All great things require sacrifice. Is this not true, Eltoar Daethana?”