Prologue
A sound of an arrow flying through the air is the last thing Elenera heard before the sudden searing pain burst in her chest, running from the back of her body and without even looking down; she knows she’ll find a head of blood-covered arrow half-protruding from her upper body. Her entire body bends with the force of impact and a drop of tear runs down her cheek while she’s in the air. The entire world stop and all range of emotions explode within her. The pain, the regrets, the fading ecstasy and the rush of combat…
…then, silence.
Origin of the Witch: The Red Fortress
Chapter I : Pelegas, the Prodigy.
In the ages past, a war erupted between two opposing factions of magic-users. The Circle of Thorns and the Magisterium of Summoners. The Circle consisted of druids and are in favourable position as the old and powerful organizations being supported by the Elven Dynasty while the Magisterium is relatively new.
It was barely a war when the Circle’s sentinels keep pushing deeper into the Golden desert, homeland of the Magisterium. The sand people, like their kin at the Elemental court, decided not to interfere and offered no resistance or support while the army of drenched walking treants and exhausted elves march through their land. Other magical factions such as the Church of Light, The Runemasters and The Followers of Entropy had all stay on the side while some smaller factions like the Witchdoctors or the Shape-shifters might had as much as opinions.
Even being far from the source of their powers, the druids managed to keep winning against all kind of demonic summons the magisters could call forth and in a few months, the druids stood before the Red Fortress, heart of the Magisterium.
Unfortunately, fate played another card and the druids found themselves fighting for their lives when summoners and their creatures weren't the only ones standing high on the wall.
The undead.
Skeletons and half rotten bodies were shuffling among the summoners and human wizards, shooting down volley of arrows after their masters’ magical bolts. Their numbers were not great enough to outnumber the army of elves and druid but the morale of the invaders dropped in a significant fashion.
The elves have always been terrified of the undead. The idea of being forced back from the afterlife is more disturbing to them than the idea of being controlled. They even formed a special regiment of sentinels, The Blackwatchers, to guard over their major graveyards and the Necropolis, a vast catacomb underground where the put the Archlich Igzisgul inside, waiting for him to rise again and put him back under before he start raising their ancestors. Nobody knows why the Archlich keeps coming back every few centuries, nobody knows how to destroy this Lich completely like other Liches either.
The druids came to a conclusion that the human can’t possibly decide to employ necromancy purely because they’re cornered. A more sinister force must have been at play. An investigation was needed and only a half-human female elf, Elenera, is brave or crazy enough to sneak into the Fortress.
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“By the First winter’s moon! Are those...?”
“Yes, Lady Elenera. Those are reanimated bodies.” A heavily armoured figure grunts in reply, holding his tower shield against volley of arrows that fell from the top of the crimson-coloured wall.
A brown-haired female elf in a short, flexible-looking ranger armour leaps from her burnt-treant cover closer to the armoured figure and under his shield.
“Never thought they’d go so far as necromancy.” Elenera replies.
She should not have been surprised. Humans have always been as impulsive as they’re creative, especially in such situation. Although, not a very positive creativity she’s fighting against right now.
“They’re just humans, Lady Elenera. What did you expect from them?” The armoured figure muffles under his mouth guard without even realizing that the famous ranger close to him is a half-human elf.
Elenera ignores the veiled insult and narrows her eyes, employing her eagle eye gift and confirming the source of these arrows raining around. Barely wearing any armour and pieces of skin hanging around exposed area, these archers are definitely undead.
The Red Fortress lies in the most strategically defensive position in the entire eastern part of the continent. Carved out of the Red Mountain range that separate the land and the vast ocean, the fortress face-out to its invaders and belonged to the sand people for centuries before the Elemental War broke out. The water elements slaughtered an entire population of the fortress before leaving it abandoned.
She shakes the uneasiness from her body with the thought of her mission and finds the lowest window on the wall. In a quick calculated decision, Elenera rushes toward the wall, making her way across the battlefield by tackling, sliding under soldiers and jumping on shields, shoulders and heads.
The elven warriors, seeing someone brave enough to head toward the wall, without hesitation, charges forward in a roaring wave alongside the ranger.
Elenera, still rushing her way toward the wall, barely notices arrows making its way through the elf she was talking to this morning beside her. All she could hear is the sound of her beating heart. She merges completely with the battle and only knows that her destination is dead ahead. The world slows down in her perspective and she is aware of everything that is happening even though she chooses to ignore most of it. She tilts her right shoulder backward to avoid a fiery magic bolt that proceeds to hit another elf in his ankle behind her. Her shoulder-plate protected her from the burning trail and in a split second, Elenera unconsciously lungs forward and rolls to avoid a horizontal array of arrows. She leaps up with such acrobatic skill and reflex that even most elves would find amazing and lands on the wall not too high from the ground.
She turns around and the reality of the situation overcomes her battle-rush as the only one who made it to the wall. The rest of the front line elves and treants slowly making their way backward from the wall and none seem to realize that one elf made it through the no man’s land of the battlefield.
Once again, she shakes the uneasiness and feeling of guilt, that so many fell beside her, with the thought of her mission and focus on the window above. Ascending up the red wall with her bare hands, she keeps breathing sighs of relief that no one on the top of the wall is aware of her.
She has never been so determined in her mission like this. Elenera smirks to herself with the thought of how up until yesterday, she was whole-heartedly against this entire march to uproot summoning magic. Maybe, it’s her rebellious human blood in her veins that disagree with the elders and their old ways or maybe, having travelled around for so long, she’s fond of freedom more than most elves would ever be and this laws against somebody’s way of life is just oppression in her opinion.
It’s actually justifiable that the human summoners would be so desperate to call upon even forbidden classes of demons like the Praefectus-class or even the soul-possessing Haerus-class. However, necromancy is a whole new level of evil.
This morning, she was called in by the Circle’s elders from her self-imposed scout duty along with other rangers. The rangers covering the northern part of the fortress caught glimpse of robed human caravan, entering the Red Fortress through a secret passage several days before the siege. They proceeded to collapse the cave after but the observing rangers confirmed that they saw a black decorative coffin being smuggled in along with other objects in the caravan.
The Circle believes that this sudden uses of necromancy mark an unusually malicious change of war effort and something sinister is brewing inside the fortress. One of the elders even remarks that there could be a lich inside that black coffin.
Elenera grabs onto a protruded stone above the window and finds it barred with iron bars.
‘Must be a prison.’ She thought to herself while covering her lower body with her cloak before she conjures up an ice dagger. In two swift slice, a bar of iron parts from both of its base, top and bottom. Quickly grab the falling bar, Elenera swings her body, foot first into the gap she cut open and lands in a dark and muddy room. Judging from the dense smell, the room must be pretty small and definitely a prison.
The half-elf ranger finds herself turning to a corner with instinct the moment she heard a small gasp and before she could even see clearly, the ice dagger in her hand is now travelling toward the source of the voice.
The ice dagger melts mid-air and splash on the face of the mysterious figure in the dark that had enough time to only cover his face with both hands. When he let down his hands to see clearly, a small dagger lands its cold-steel top on the skin of his neck in with a sound of the blade cutting through the air. He let out another gasp and traces his eyes along the blade and the arm that hold it toward a face of the blade’s owner, staring intently at him. A drop of blood slowly drips from the point his neck touches the steel and down the dagger onto the ground.
Elenera could easily kill this person in one twist of her wrist but she isn’t. She stopped herself from slitting his throat once she realized what this person did.
He dissolved the magic that hold her conjured ice dagger without using any magic. It doesn’t matter if he silently casted the spell, she should have felt the magic. She’s half-elf and that should make her affinity to magic greater than average human and she’s a ranger. Her senses are highly trained.
She cautiously casts a small ball of light on her left hand and raises it to shine the entire room while still keeping the dagger pointed at this person’s neck.
The dim light shows a male blond-haired human at the end of her dagger and he looks too young to be a guard. He’s in the magisterium apprentice clothing that are ragged and dirty and the look on his face is more shocked than terrified.
“Who.. Who are you and what are you doing in here?” uttered the human.
Really? There’s a war outside the window and she just broke in here. It’s usually not that hard to guess. Elenera ignores the human and looks around the room for any more surprises.
“Hey! I asked you a question and I demand an answer right now!” The human raises his voice at the half-elf.
She presses her dagger on his neck a little more and turns to him, frowning.
“You demand? You magisters might have forgotten that sharp thing on your neck means you’re in no position to demand anything.” She smirks at him while examining the human.
The human is unusually young with short blonde hair and side fringes, green eyes and a faded bruise on his left cheek. He must be no older than 25 years old and with his clothing, a magister apprentice for sure.
She lowers her dagger but before the young magister could move or shift for a less tensed position, the ranger lungs her right knee forward and directly into his lower abdomen. The pain of the impact sends the young man back to the wall and slowly falls into a sitting position.
“That should keep you quiet for now. I bid you farewell, young human, for I have somewhere important I should be.” Looking down on the human, Elenera says her goodbye before pushing the door open. The door, however, isn’t budging at her push. The half-elf tries pushing again, harder, to no avail.
‘Well, this really is a prison cell.’ Elenera thinks. She’s also wondering why did she think otherwise when she should have known that this room is definitely a prison cell.
“Wha… Why didn’t… Why didn’t you.. kill me?” The mage on the floor asked, breathing heavily with pain.
“You’re too young to kill.” She replies.
“You’re going… to regret this.” The mage raises his face in respond, staring directly at the half-elf for the first time.
“Of course, I will. This is war. I regret being a part of it.” The ranger’s tone deepens with seriousness without herself noticing.
“So… why don’t you..”
“I will regret not killing you less than I will regret killing you. Call me strange but a girl gotta hold on to something to believe in during war or she loses herself in all the killings and violence.” Elenera keeps going on her speech unconsciously while she examines the lock on the prison door. The young mage listens to her words as if being charmed.
“…and I choose to believe….” She stabs her steel dagger in the key hole and twists the blade forcefully clockwise.
“…in people.”
A sound of iron breaking inside the lock startles the mage and snaps him out of his attentive trance on the half-elf’s self motto. She turns the dagger horizontally and slices through the lock to the right before parts of the keyhole drop to the floor.
“I’m going to leave the door open in case you want to sneak out or you could try warning to guard. I really don’t care.”
As Elenera carefully opens the creaky prison door, the mage utters “Wait! I’m going with you.”
She pauses, eyes widens as she turns her head to the young human in disbelief while he rises up with difficutly, leaning against the wall.
In a quick inspection, Elenera makes sure that the dim-lighted hallway is clear. She signals the mage to move out of the cell with her hand.
The human walks out of his cell with a slight limp from his abdominal pain and suddenly he found himself pinned on the wall across his cell by his supposed rescuer, the knife that was on his neck not a moment ago is now back on his neck. Not that he’s fond of being threatened by it.
“You think me stupid, human?” coldly said by the overpowering half elf. Even being only slightly taller and noticeably skinnier, Elenera is using only her left hand to pin the human up the wall, his toes float above the ground.
“Look, I know it sounds suspicious but if you’d please stop poking that blade on my neck, I’ll explain everything and if, by then, you still feel like killing me then…” the human tries to negotiate but soon realize that his sentence is going nowhere useful.
Elenera lowers her dagger slightly from its uncomfortably close proximity of the human’s neck.
“I don’t have all night. Make it quick.”
“Right. So, I assume you’re here about the lich, correct?”
“How do you…”
“Deduction. The war dragged on and I’ve never seen an elf ranger in this part before. A few days ago, a black coffin arrived, then suddenly, all my magic teachers turned out to be necromancers and you’re right in front of me here.”
“Go on.”
“That’s all I’ve got.”
The dagger goes back up close to the neck. “And why are you coming with me then, necromancer acolyte?”
“Something went terribly wrong since that coffin arrived and you may not believe me but those magisters are my people and I… ”
He pauses for a moment to catch his breath.
“…I want to save them from whatever evil magic is controlling them.”
“Corrupting.” Elenera cuts in the sentence.
“There’s no controlling against anyone’s will here. Necromancy seems like it’s giving you ultimate power over life and death. Power corrupts people, makes them delusional. Simple as that.” Elenera explains to her knife-point hostage.
“Back to the matters at hands, I still have no reason to let you follow me around.”
“You said earlier that you believe in people. I’m telling you right now, I’d help you in any way I can if you can stop all these madness.”
Elenera hesitates for a moment. She looks right at the human for the first time ever since she sneaked into his cell. For some reason, she believes him. She can’t explain this feeling, it’s almost at the instinct level. Something in her is telling her, the human’s intention is genuine to what he claims.
She lets the mage down, still inspecting him cautiously. He hit the floor and falls to knees shortly.
“Tha.. thank you.” The human looks up to the half elf and, yet again, the tip of the dagger is pointed right at his face.
“I believe you but that doesn’t mean I trust you.”
The human mage quickly replies “That's good enough, I just want you to stop pointing the knife at me.”
“I swear to my ancestors, if you lie to me, I will personally castrate you.” She lifts the knife away from his face and turns to check the far side of the hallway.
“Now, stop acting like a panther cub and follow me closely.” Elenera paces quickly to the end of the hallway toward a big wooden door.
“Wait, this is a prison wing! There’s a…” The human’s warning is cut short when a huge battle axe breaks through the wooden door and in its downward swing, the axe lands on the brick floor, right in front of the door where Elenera was. Her reflex allows her to make a backward acrobatic jump out of the way in time.
She lands on her feet and launches herself forward in a successful reaction movement with the neck-threatening dagger in her hand. Mid-air, she jerks the dagger forward into the “head” of the huge figure, owner of the door-killing axe.
Elenera’s eyes dart to downward, instinctively, only to see a fist, throwing right at her torso.
The elf ranger is sent flying to the wall on the side, her body cracks the wall and bounces off behind the human mage, who only had time to duck out of the way.
Barely getting up, she sees her attacker. A huge skeleton-undead, pulling its battle axe out of the ground with one hand. Sharp pain surges through her chest area before her back would start aching in order of impact. Chest took a punch and back landed on the wall.
Elenera grunts with pain and looks up away from the floor again. She sees the human mage walking calmly toward the creature. Great! Looks like that mage betrayed her as expected at first. If she survives this, she’ll be busy finding a place to put that human’s personal manhood.
She smirks at the thought while still trying to fight the pain. She barely rises up and falls to lean against the wall when she sees the creature trying to hit the human mage with its axe. He dodges the blow by stepping backward a bit.
As luck would have it, that thing is a bone golem. A creature composed purely of bones and given movement by the same means with other elemental construct. A combination of elemental magic and necromancy.
“What are you doing?! That thing will kill you! Get out of there!” Elenera yelled at the human mage.
The human runs up to the bone golem and touches its chest. Miraculously, the bone golem shakes and brittles before falling down to the ground in pieces.
Again? That human dispels the magic that hold the golem together without casting a spell. Elenera frowns while still leaning agains the wall. The human runs back to her and help her sitting down on the wall.
She coughs twice before seeing that the human put his hands on her chest.
“What are you… ?!” She head butts the human right at his forehead just as he was kneeling down beside her.
“OUCH! What was that for?” The human protests, standing up and away from her a bit.
“What do you mean ’What was that for’ Have your mother never taught you to not touch that part of a female?!” Elenera yells at him before grunting from the pain of raising voice.
“Why would I want to touch …err that?!” The human lost his sentence mid-way.
Elenera stares at the human furiously. What the hell does he mean by ‘that’!?
“For your information, ‘That’…” She motions to her chest.”… was the reason her owner, namely me, received hundreds of gift from suitors last season.”
Elenera brags while the human kneels down beside her, one hand still rubbing his forehead.
“Wait! I didn’t mean that I don’t want to touch it.”
“Hah! That proves that you had intentions to touch my chest! ”
“No, I mean…”
The human rolls his eyes in disbelief. He had never been in such ridiculous situation.
“Ok, listen. I was trying to heal you.”
“Oh, you went from a prisoner necromancer-to-be to a healer now. What are you, a magic kid prodigy?” Elenera throws out another sarcasm.
“Actually, I was before they threw me in the cell.” The human replies while a glowing white aura forms around both of his hands over Elenera’s chest.
“Is that something to do with how you broke that golem by touching it?” She hasn’t forgotten how the human dispelled the bone golem without casting a spell.
“Yes. They said I have an attunement to magical bonds and I learnt how to deconstruct those bonds while I was a magisterium apprentice. I could cast spells from most schools without the magical backlash when I learnt how to fix the conflicting bonds between them in me.”
“So, they kept you in prison like an animal for experiment?”
“No no! I was thrown in the prison for questioning the use of necromancy. I just thought that it’s too much to call souls back from the death just to force them to do things.” The human explains quickly.
Elenera nods slowly while the pain is lessen by the moment with each tingling sensation from the healing aura.
“Well, that should do it. Shall we get going, elf?” The human rises up and extends his hand to Elenera, offering to help her up.
“The name is Elenera, mister prodigy.” She smiles while grabbing his hand, making jokes is what she does best apparently.
“Pelagas”
“What?”
“My name. I’m Adrianne Pelegas.”