“You’ve absolutely wrecked rare, hexabian silk, that’s what’s going on,” the elf mumbled.
Damien took a step closer. The elf’s face still glowed somehow, and their limbs did as well, but it had become much fainter in the firelight, and there were boundaries about his eyes and lips—actual eyes and lips, not hollow pits—where the glow abruptly stopped.
Tapered and long, everything about an elf’s body was pointed. They were even rarer than humans up in Aszath Koth, and it was much more likely to meet a halfbreed anywhere in the realm than a true elf, but these had to be full-blooded, so tall and thin. Elves kept largely to themselves or traveled in a group with others, often as their token elemental magic-wielder. Unlike humans, nearly all elves had a penchant for magic, born with certain abilities blessed by their god, but they were not terribly keen to travel beyond the forests they typically called home. Never had Damien seen so many in one place.
He glanced at the lot of them, the circle they had made shifting into more of a crescent, no longer standing menacingly but leaning against trees or upon one another, hips jutted out, sighing, rolling eyes. It was an odd sight to be sure.
“I can barely believe this, Lora’iel!” said the elf standing beside the one who was still babying his robe. “Now we are failing to run off but two humans and their pet goblin?”
Lora’iel clicked his tongue. “Well, I didn’t expect them to be so…disgusting.” He held out the silk to show the drying spatter of blood.
Damien groaned. “That was meant to banish you, but clearly you aren’t haunting this place, you’re just living here.”
“And that’s all we want to do! Unmolested and alone!” The one who had berated Lora’iel turned on him, an anger flaring up in her eyes. She looked strikingly similar to the other, both with tapered jaws and delicate features, but was notably angrier. She took a step toward him, one long finger and a spindly wrist pointing out of a gossamer, bell sleeve. “But then you and your ilk come into these hallowed woods, and you slaughter rabbits, and you set bushes ablaze!” She had come right up to him and pressed the tip of her finger to his chest.
Damien was a tall man, but this elf, despite her frailness, was standing just to his own height. He could have taken her wrist and bent it back with the simplest crack, but that seemed terribly unfair, even with her slight features knitted so irately.
“Oh, no, the bunny.” Amma clasped her hands beside Damien. “We’re so sorry, we didn’t know he was yours.”
“That creature belonged to no one but Dil’wator’wovl!” she snapped.
The woman had invoked the name of one of the few gods Damien was familiar with, if only because he was named exceptionally strangely, which was really saying something for gods. Elves tended to make their homes in the uncharted, forested places and could journey freely between them through magic, so Dil’wator’wovl was appropriate, but the god was also purported to have pointed ears, and the funny name probably gave them a sense of kinship.
Nearly two heads taller than Amma, the angriest elf turned to her and bore down. “And now you will pay with your own lives!”
Damien had his dagger under the elven woman’s chin before she could make another move, her frailness be damned. She froze when she felt the blade, light eyes flicking to him in the dark.
“Cora’endei,” called Lora’iel, “we need not resort to violence.”
“Why not?” she asked, voice a harsh whisper, “that is all they know themselves.”
“It is not our way.” Lora’iel waved a hand, going to Damien, and to his complete and utter surprise, actually placed it on his arm. The touch was so light, he barely felt it, no threat behind it.
Damien edged Amma a step back from both elves and lowered his dagger halfway. He could call up a spell and set the area aflame, send blades at the lot of them, even summon a beast to do the work for him, but though their numbers were vast and he was hesitant to relax his guard, none of that seemed necessary.
“Is this fairyheart?” Amma’s voice was quiet as she reached out to the woman who had threatened her life, pointing to her arm and how it glowed.
Cora’endei’s lips twitched, the anger on them subsiding slightly. “That is the common name for the fungi, yes. How are you familiar?” A thin trail of silvery blood wept from where Damien’s blade had been, though he thought he hadn’t pressed hard enough to pierce her.
Amma glanced at the others. “A friend of mine. She’s half…elven,” she said carefully. “She brought some to me once. They’re beautiful, and I could never forget how they glowed when we shut ourselves up in a closet with them. Tasted really terrible though.”
At that Cora’endei’s lips twitched again. “Your friend tricked you. All elves know fairyheart is too bitter to be palatable.”
“Yeah, and it makes the inside of your mouth light up for a couple days and gets you in a lot of trouble for not being presentable.” Amma glanced at Damien then back to the elves. “But you’re using it to cover your bodies and pretend to be ghosts?”
“We are ghosts!” one of the elves from the crowd called out.
“I think they’ve figured it out,” Lora’iel called back with a sigh, crossing thin arms and head lolling on a wisp of a neck.
“Well, what do we do with them then?” Cora’endei huffed, holding her chin up a bit higher and not bothering to wipe away the trickle of blood.
“You don’tdoanything with us,” Damien told them, resheathing his dagger. “We will continue on our way, unbothered, and be on the other side of the wood in a day’s time.”
“And we won’t eat any more of your rabbits or squirrels or anything,” Amma added. “Promise.”
At this, a number of them looked uneasy, and Lora’iel put up a hand. “Oh, no, no, we can’t allow that.”
Damien cocked his head, half a smirk crawling up his face as he gazed over the impossibly thin limbs of the elves, the way they held themselves so casually, unprepared, and how simple it had been to draw blood, even accidentally, on their most brazen member. “I doubt very much it is up to you. We’ll be on our way now.”
