2 - The Hunt
Tariel
Once he was a reasonable distance from the village, he allowed himself to slow to a comfortable trot, letting his mind wander back to the inn. What a night.
No, scratch that: what a journey.
He had a vague idea of the tense situation between Caelendor and Morgraves—he knew that Morgraves was struggling to recover from the damage the dragons had inflicted long ago.
Tariel hadn’t been born during the Great War, but he vaguely remembered the tedious history lessons he’d been forced to sit through as a young elf.
He also knew that Caelendor wasn’t making much of an effort to help Morgraves—but why would it?
Their lands were dead and desolate. The land beneath their feet was scorched, and greenery was scarce.
What did these lands have to offer the elves, whose realms were brimming with abundance?
Nothing. That was all Morgraves had to offer.
Their army was vicious, and their loyalty wavering.
Despite the Alliance of the Four, the kingdoms no longer traded as they once did.
You didn’t have to be very old to know that.
In fact, you only had to see how the poor elf had to procure his artifacts and books: the black market, traveling merchants, vagabonds…
A long sigh escaped his lips, which were beginning to tremble. The nights were cold in Morgraves—he had quickly realized that, and this night was no exception.
The elf set up camp in a sorry excuse of a forest, eager to remain hidden within nature rather than expose himself on the plains.
The ground was hard and cracked, and the trees were weakened—dry and brittle, but not quite dead.
The grass might just as well have been straw, so dry was it.
Its stiffness felt almost like tiny needles pricking Tariel’s clothes as he sat down on the ground with a grace that fatigue had robbed him of.
No sooner had he sat down than he traded his horse for his precious familiar, which materialized in a flash before him.
“Brynjar…”
A faint, trembling breath escaped the mage’s lips as his arms closed around the golem in an almost desperate embrace. His vision was blurred by the moisture of his tears, which threatened to roll down his cheeks… But his pride compelled him to swallow them back.
Perhaps the evening weighed on him more than he was willing to admit, but Brynjar was used to the elf’s emotions. After all, the two of them had always been…
Tariel then stepped back sharply, smoothing his hair—which was barely tangled despite his chaotic gallop—and now scrutinized his familiar with his gaze. The golem looked at him with concern before offering what amounted to a reassuring smile.
“I’m fine, Master. I appreciate your concern but see for yourself. I’m unharmed,” the golem said in his deep voice, his tone soft.
“I wasn’t worried—you’re imagining things…!”
With that, the forest fell silent. Quickly, the two beings set up camp in the dark forest. Tariel sat by the meager campfire, his gaze lost in the dancing flames while his heart still pounded rapidly, the memory of the altercation at the inn still fresh in his mind.
He had never thought that a simple quarrel with a bunch of unintelligent brutes could jeopardize Brynjar’s safety… He still didn’t know what the blue-eyed man could have done to him, and it haunted him.
The protective magic he had woven around their camp offered an illusion of safety, but Tariel couldn’t help but feel a sense of unease. He was under the impression a threat was lurking in the shadows of the forest, biding its time to strike.
Despite his exhaustion, Tariel found himself unable to close his eyes. Every time he tried to drift off to sleep, his mind was flooded with worries. Why had he agreed to this? How could he seriously think he could survive comfortably outside the elven cities?
By the Stars, what was I thinking?!
A long sigh made his thin lips tremble. No, he definitely wouldn’t be able to get a wink of sleep tonight.
He might as well make this sleepless night productive.
Tariel slipped a delicate hand into his travel bag and pulled out his new grimoire—a book with pages still blank that he had begun filling in during his journey.
Documenting his travels kept him occupied at night, and once he returned to Caelendor, he would simply have to duplicate his notes using magic to sell the book as a travel bestiary.
The city’s scholars would be clamoring for the details of his discoveries. Hmm, yes… he couldn’t resist the idea of gaining more recognition: Grand Mage Tariel Elenion, Dragon Tamer, does you the honor of sharing the knowledge he has accumulated during his epic journey!
A smile stretched across his lips. So far, he had encountered a host of fascinating creatures along the way, but tonight, he chose to focus his attention on Brynjar.
Using a fine charcoal pencil, the elf began to refine his drawing of the little golem.
He took care to sketch the details of the moss covering the golem’s stony face, lingering on the way it clumped beneath his chin, giving him the curious illusion of a beard.
Tariel found this particularly adorable—though he would have preferred to cut off his own tongue rather than admit it out loud in front of his companion.
On the other side of the hearth, the little stone creature sat motionless, its eyes closed.
It was meditating. Brynjar would sometimes spend long hours like this, silent and rooted to the ground.
Under normal circumstances, Tariel could vaguely sense, through their bond, how the familiar absorbed the magic of the surrounding nature to nourish itself.
But here, in the lifeless, scorched landscape of Morgraves, the elf suspected that the golem must be struggling to draw even the slightest bit of energy from this barren land.
To tell the truth, he didn’t know for sure, and this persistent uncertainty annoyed him.
Tariel was being followed.
“Brynjar, I admit I may tend to overreact, but I’m certain we’re being followed,” insisted the elf, glancing over his shoulder as he sat perched on his horse.
It had been four days since the small group had left the shabby village near the elven border.
With each passing day, Tariel found it harder and harder to ignore the distance stretching between his destination, Drakensyl, and his home in Mistvale.
If it were just a case of homesickness to brush off, the elf probably wouldn’t have been so paranoid, but…
For two nights now, he’d been hearing the strangest noises.
Distant whistles, the howls of wolves… and everyone knew there were no longer any wild wolves in Morgraves—the kingdom’s desolation had driven most of its wildlife to flee toward Caelendor and Veylaris.
Sometimes, Tariel could have sworn he heard laughter…
Of course, the elf and his familiars weren’t the only travelers passing through Morgraves; they encountered plenty of merchants and mercenaries on the roads.
Morgraves was a necessary stop in Ennevia for anyone traveling overland to Veylaris, and Tariel could have done without the insults and hostile glances hurled his way at every opportunity.
“My Master, I think the lack of sleep is playing tricks on you,” Brynjar finally replied. Tariel rolled his eyes—sleep, as if.
With a long sigh, the white-haired elf looked up, gazing at the horizon. In the distance, the royal family’s castle loomed through the dust, dark and foreboding, surrounded by barren, desolate lands. The ramparts, adorned with sharp spikes, rose toward the sky: tall, imposing… deadly.
Goosebumps broke out on the elf’s neck.
“Let’s leave the roads,” he announced suddenly, gripping his reins more firmly to veer off the trails and head toward the forests of dry, somber-colored pine trees.
His instinct, though rarely vocal, told him to stay away from the ramparts. He could feel it in his gut: dark magic oozed from between the bricks, even from such a distance, rotten and charred like the lands ruled by its occupants.
Cassian
He had missed the thrill of the hunt.
Shapeshifting dragons were civilized beings, so much so that they could be mistaken for humans—Cassian’s identity as a mercenary was proof of that. But… they were still half-beast. His instincts, though less primitive than those of other dragons, remained wild at their core.
These instincts, coupled with his target’s elven nature, awakened feelings buried long ago. Something ugly, vicious…
His desire for revenge.
And today, it seemed within reach, in the form of a naive and capricious elf who was currently leaving the trails to venture deeper into the forest. An elf who, for the past few days, had been traveling south. Toward Veylaris.
Toward Drakensyl.
“I don’t think he’d make a good slave,” Cyrus observed. “He’s too…”
“Delicate?” Cassian blurted out.
Cyrus paused, casting a skeptical glance at the older man. “Skinny,” he finally replied, raising a thick red eyebrow, as if Cassian had just said something absurd.
Perhaps he had.
The band of mercenaries had been following the elf for three days now, some on foot, others on horseback…
Cassian had chosen to walk; his excitement at the prospect of capturing the elf—the keeper of the Elven Crystal—was making him nervous, and what better way to burn off some energy than a good walk?
“We should sell him to a brothel in Veylaris,” suggested Erkan, another wolf shifter, with a snicker. “Put him in a dress, and you could almost mistake him for a chick.”
A thunderous burst of raucous laughter erupted among the group, prompting Cassian to smile wryly.
“Trying to tell us something, Erkan?” taunted a mercenary.
“The sun’s gone to your head,” added another, slapping him on the back.
“Nah, he’s too skinny. The kid’s got no curves—nothing to grab onto,” argued another.
Cassian remained silent—he was used to hearing his companions’ crude banter. The elf’s scent was still fresh, a mixture of honey and old leather. A fragrance that reminded him of something dangerous…
Home.
“What do you think, Cassian?” Cyrus’s voice brought him back to the present.
What did he think?
“This elf possesses powerful magic. Can’t you feel it? We’d get much more by selling him for his magic than for his body.”
A pensive silence fell over the group before one of them exclaimed:
“That’s exactly why Cassian is our leader!”
“Yeah, he’s got some serious brains!”
“Why didn’t we think of that?!”
Cassian sighed, shaking his head slightly, a faint smile playing on his lips. What a bunch of clueless idiots.
The sun was slowly sinking below the horizon, and the elf had set up camp below, in the dense forest.
What a fool, he thought. Doesn’t this wretch have any survival instinct at all?
It didn’t take a genius to realize that the elf had never been targeted.
That he’d never had to take cover in the wilderness or sleep with one eye open.
True, the longer the mercenaries followed him, the more he seemed to look over his shoulder…
but that was apparently not enough, since he was now asleep on a makeshift mattress, by a fire that cast a beam of light into the darkness of the forest.
The ambush unfolded with almost disconcerting ease. No screams, no clashing blades, no devastating magic… Cassian glided between the dry pine trees like a silent shadow, his footsteps muffled by the carpet of dead pine needles. But as he crossed the edge of the camp, he froze.
On the other side of the dying embers, the little stone golem was not asleep: Brynjar’s eyes were wide open, two shards of blue rock staring straight into his own.
He did not move. He made no attempt to alert his master or raise his stone fists.
He simply stared at him, with an intensity so heavy and ancient that Cassian’s instincts suddenly awoke, screaming of danger.
That golem…
There was something deeply unsettling about the creature’s silence, as if it were gauging the mercenary’s soul… as if it knew.
Holding the golem’s unsettling gaze, Cassian approached the elf. With slow, meticulous movements, he began to bind the elf’s wrists. The moment his fingers brushed against the sleeping figure, an invisible jolt shot up his arms.
The crystal.
He was holding it.
He had finally laid hands on the bearer of the Elven Crystal.
Inside his own chest, the Philosopher’s Stone stirred, trying to resonate, to commune with the pure magic emanating from the elf.
It was an intoxicating sensation, a buzz of pure power.
At last. This was his opportunity, the spark needed to rekindle the flame of his people and recreate the dragons.
Behind him, the rest of the troupe stormed into the camp without the slightest regard for decorum.
The mercenaries settled around the fire, rummaging through the saddlebags, grabbing the blankets, and dividing up the rest of the elf’s provisions.
Despite the racket made by these clumsy brutes and Erkan’s stifled laughter, Tariel didn’t budge an inch.
Cassian frowned, observing the prisoner’s peaceful face. It was a sleep far too deep, almost unnatural. A mage of his caliber should have woken at the slightest misstep.
The dragon glanced sideways at Brynjar, but he was no longer there. Did the golem have a role to play in this? Had it deliberately plunged its master into this lethargy? With a long sigh, Cassian decided not to look for an explanation as long as the situation worked in his favor.
Not this time. Not when I’m so close to my goal.
Little by little, night reclaimed its hold. The mercenaries eventually dozed off one by one, overcome by the exhaustion of the hunt, leaving the decaying pine forest to sink into a leaden silence.
Cassian, however, was not sleeping. Sitting off to the side, he lay on his back, his hands behind his head. Through the bare canopy and the skeletal branches of the trees, he stared at the night sky—the stars shone, cold and indifferent.
Is the sky over Drakensyl just as dark tonight? he wondered, a familiar bitterness tightening his throat. Centuries have passed, and I have forgotten the brilliance of the stars as they watched over my kingdom.