Cuffed with magic-blocking bracers, Elara was escorted on foot through the Glade, surrounded by armed and armored humans. Their weaponry was devastating, not magical in nature yet powerful enough to rip through the thick and protective underbrush of the ancient forest. Even if the humans possessed means to stop her from using the magic imbedded in her nature, printed on her very skin, she could still feel the heartbeats of the Glade. Weakened, mourning, fading. One of the mother trees were dying.
Elves are usually peaceful creatures who keep to themselves, and the few times they are called to war they wage it over centuries spanning man’s lifetime many times over. But the humans… were different. One man’s life a blink in the vast wheel of time, a mere grain in the never-ending hourglass. Perhaps this was why they acted in raw brutality with little regard for consequences and for no-one but themselves.
Looking ahead and with a straight face, she would not give her captors the satisfaction of seeing her quiver in fear. Yet fear snaked its way through her, slithering into her very being with poisonous tendrils. ’Endure,’ her father had said when he left her behind. ’Bend. But do not break.’
The King and Queen of the Glades had made it out safely, their spy within the humans’ ranks had given him time to prepare and stage a successful coup for the humans. But the tradeoff was to leave his only child, Elara, behind. Elves live for a very long time, and as such, they carry few offspring. A couple would be lucky if the Glades blessed them with only one. He had grabbed her head and leaned his forehead against hers, knowing this could go wrong in so many ways. ’Survive’.
