Page 27 of The Truth

“To stand alone,” Alvira whispered as she approached the horse. “To stand with the weight of the world. Where all would think you strong and weak, both. None to lift you up, yet shadows aplenty to tear you down.”

She reached out and stroked the horse’s muzzle, receiving a warm nicker in response as she recited the poem. “The willow that watches, that keeps the storm from the starling’s back. The rain, the gale, the brutal crack. Of lightning that tears the bark and burns the hearth, yet the willow cannot scream. For its task is simple, solitary, and true. The willow bears the pain, bears the pain in place of you.”

Alvira leaned her head against the mare’s neck, stroking her hand through its soft hair as Vyldrar’s warmth seeped into her mind. Poetry had been her valúr. She was not an elf. It was not required. But it was something she found great solace in. To create before you can destroy.

“Who left you here alone?” she whispered, something in her heart weeping. Not for the mare, nor for the dead and dying, but for herself.

Vyldrar rumbled in her mind.

“Never alone,” Alvira whispered. “My light. Draleid n’aldryr.”

“Help.”

Alvira lifted her head from the mare’s neck at the sound of the call. She looked around at the tents and the flickering torches, not a soul in sight.

She moved to the nearest tent and opened the flap, a wave of heat, burnt flesh, and brimlock sap punching her. Within, bodies lay splayed out on cots and blankets, bandages and buckets of bloody water filling every open space.

One of the Healers who had made it from the city stood amidst the sea of death, a bandage wrapped around the left side of his head, covering an ear and eye.

“Archon? Is all well?”

Alvira nodded and stepped back out into the twilight air. She ran her hand through her hair and tilted her head towards the sky, then gave a short, painful laugh. Hearing voices in her dreams was one thing, hearing them in the waking world was a whole other.

“I need to sleep,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “I need to sleep.”

“Help.”

The voice sent a shiver through her. That had not been a figment of her imagination or a ghost of past choices.

“Hello?” She called out in a hushed voice, still unsure as to whether or not she was simply going mad. She opened herself to the Spark and pushed out thin threads of Air, feeling for vibrations.

“Please…” The voice called again, weak and faint. “Help.”

The sound of the voice rippled up through the threads, and Alvira looked towards a copse of trees slightly downhill from where she stood. She held onto the Spark and broke into a sprint. “Where are you?”

“Here!” The voice held a little more strength. “Please. Please help!”

Alvira bolted down the hillside and into the copse, brittle branches and leaves snapping beneath her.

Another call rang out, and she found the source near a rise in the land.

An elf sat with his back to the trunk of a tree, his face and clothes coated in enough blood to swim in. His right hand was wrapped in layers of cloth, and the left side of his face looked as though he’d been attacked by a rabid hound.

“I’m here. I’m here.” Alvira dropped to her knees beside the elf, fully opening herself to the Spark and pulling on threads of all the elemental strands. She knew little of healing, but she would do what she could.

“No,” the elf said, slapping away Alvira’s hand.

“You’re badly wounded,” Alvira said, keeping her tone calm. “If I do nothing, you won’t make it. Speak to me. My name is Alvira, what is yours?”

The elf shook his head, eyelids heavy.

Alvira reached down and pulled back some of the layers of cloth around the elf’s arm, earning a shriek of pain as the elf’s eyes snapped open wide. Beneath the cloth, his arm was little more than bone and chunks of raw, discoloured flesh.

“Not me,” the elf’s voice shivered, his skin suddenly pale as ice. “My… my son… my son.”

“Where is he?”

The elf looked to his left, deeper into the copse, the trees still blocking out most of the emerging morning light.