“And Vespa’riel, who—wait, where’d she go?” Amma looked around and then found the shorter elf hiding behind her. “Oh, here, Vespa’riel is their archivist, and she’s actually familiar with that Lux Codex book, so I secured her as our escort, and you can ask her any questions about it on the way.”
Damien stared at her dumbly for a moment then screwed up his face. “You negotiated forthat? Why?”
“I thought you would be pleased.” Her heart sank a little.
“No, I…I am, I just don’t understand—nevermind. What are our obligations in all of this?”
“All we have to do is enter into a sacred pact to never reveal the secrets of the Gloomweald,” she said with a heaviness to suggest they should act as though that were a much bigger burden than it was, then she took a breath and told him quickly, “and also you gotta teach them how to be scary.”
“I mustwhat?”
“Oh, I dunno.” Amma shrugged, looking up at the branches overhead. “I thought maybe acting lessons or something? Because you’re so—” And then, at a loss, she just mimed claws and growled at him.
Damien raised a thin brow. “Amma, my father is a demon, not a thespian. And I’m—”
“Formidable and frightening and worthy of treating like a threat,” she said with emphasis that didn’t betray which parts she actually believed. “This is their home, and this is the only way they know how to protect it. They’re having trouble with the crown and the Holy Knights of Osurehm, and—”
“The Knights?” Damien looked over Amma’s shoulder where Vespa’riel was still cowering. “They’re bothering you?”
When the small elf had gathered herself together to explain, in a stutter and with Amma’s interjections, Damien warmed enough to the idea.
He met with the elves who headed up the illusions in the center of a clearing to look over the tricks they had up their silky, billowing sleeves. Largely they relied on the specter theatrics, much less impressive in the light, and some elemental arcana to shake the ground, make the trees look as if they were bleeding, and a wind that howled like a crying baby or an old woman dependent on the temperature. These were all fine and well, but Damien insisted they needed some kind of force to get their point across.
The elves were against it, and there was bickering. Amma watched from the edge of the clearing beside Kaz and the knoggelvi who had been very happily munching on a sweet, hardened tree sap thanks to their new penchant for sugar. Damien grew frustrated quickly, but he would cast a glance at Amma, take a breath, and then begin again from a new perspective.
They had those crossbows, perhaps consider flaming bolts? Oh, no, they said, half of the crossbows didn’t even work properly anyway, and fire wasn’t ideal when the forest was dry in the winter. Then spears—a different tip was necessary and one that could deliver a poison that paralyzed for which he could give them a recipe, but they were dubious of how that might affect the earth if spilled. Damien even suggested they consider weaponless combat with their long reaches and superior height, but attempts at getting them to do pull-ups on a tree limb to improve their strength proved fruitless. Damien tried to show them, but even the largest elves just hung there beside him and began to whine. Amma didn’t mind watching Damien demonstrate though, disappointed when he gave up on that specifically.
Eventually Damien seemed to grow tired of arguing, and stalked up to Amma. “They are hopeless. If we cannot leave here until they are self sufficient, then you may as well pick out a tree to take up residence in for the rest of eternity.”
She gave him the most sympathetic look she could. “They’re just different. Come on, let’s try thinking outside the crate.” She walked back to the center of the clearing with him where Lora’iel and a few other elves were standing and looking frustrated. “How can we play to their strengths?”
Damien matched the elves’ sour mood, taking a long, glowering look around the camp at the outskirts of the clearing. It was adorned with flowering plants, the archways of every entrance into the massive quoteria trees intricately carved, and he straightened with an idea. Damien reached into his hip pouch, and for a moment Amma feared he was going to use the Scroll of the Army of the Undead, but instead he pulled out a small, wooden box. Inside, there was a mound of red clay that he dumped out into his hand. “Listen, if you refuse to use force, I’ve something that can do it for you, in a way. Who amongst you is your most artistic?”
Lora’iel called over an elf who had been perched on a rock, barefoot, whittling a hunk of dead wood. He came over, long hair in many braids coiled around his head and dotted with flowers. Damien set the clay into his hand. “This is Skrimger’s Amorphous Earthen Illusion. It will take some tactile skill as well as arcana to operate, but it may serve your people best. Imagine a beast that could protect your land, and form it out of this.”
Amma stood close and watched the elf work the clay. In just a few moments it took on a shape she knew, if she wasn’t personally familiar with.
“Well, that will certainly work,” said Damien, taking the still-pliable figurine back. “Now, listen.” He lowered his voice and spoke sibilant words directly to it. A black haze came up around the clay from his palm, enveloping it and then shooting upward for the sky. The trees at the edges of the clearing bent away, wind swept down on them all, and in a flash, a beast was hovering overhead, massive, scaled, and winged.
“Dragon!” cried an elf, and the assembled scattered, shrieking as they sprinted for the trees, but Damien simply stood beneath it, and though Amma started, she remained staring upward at its belly, wings flapping and disrupting the leaves, knocking one branch down and banging into a trunk. The last few spikes on the end of its tail flattened with the impact as if they were soft, and then bounced back.
“Not bad at all,” he said, but when he glanced back down, the two were alone. “Oh, infernal darkness, really?” Damien brought his other hand down onto the clay figure, and the creature above them was squashed into nothingness simultaneously. “Come on, now,” he called, “it’s gone you great, lumbering infants!”
Lora’iel crept out first from behind a brambly bush. “I knew it,” he laughed nervously. “I just…was that Chthonic you used to animate the illusion?”
Damien tipped the mound of clay back into the box. “Yes. I’ll write the words down for you. It should be simple for your more skilled magic users, the arcana is in the clay mostly. They will need to work in tandem with the artistic one, wherever he ran off to.” He was, in fact, hiding behind the most skilled magic user who was hiding behind a rock that was safely nestled behind another tree.
“You are suggesting we actually use infernal arcana?”
The disgust in the elf’s voice visibly put Damien off, but the blood mage just crossed his arms.
“These are the tools of The One True Darkness.”
Damien faltered. “The One True What Now?”
Lora’iel glanced at his companions who gave only wary looks and scratched at their skin like they could feel the discomfort in his words. “Darkness,” the elf repeated. “It has been prophesied. We see it in the stars, feel it in the trees, hear it on the very whispers of the wind.”
“The wind whispers it but is that vague about its name?” Damien frowned. “Perhaps you are translating incorrectly? Ask it to speak up next time.”
