A wearily grey figure moved through the forest.
With several centuries of life, Jaal was the eldest of the elves.
"The young will always be impetuous..." -with a bitter smile, the old elven muttered to himself.
After several centuries in which the elves had depended entirely on his wisdom, Jaal realized that their existence was becoming a hindrance to the growth of new generations.
If everything continued in this way, then when the virtues called him to reunite again with his ancestors between plants and wind, how would the elves develop without his presence?
With this regret in mind, Jaal began to pretend that his mind was losing lucidity.
Although in the beginning the old man's plan caused many problems for his people, in time bold and wise leaders emerged.
Under the tired and attentive gaze of the old elve, several generations passed. Each new generation of leaders, though with problems that were simple for him to solve, in their own way these leaders were able to move their people forward.
All this changed about four decades ago, when the number of goblins in the Dark Forest began to grow alarmingly. At that time Jaal struggled between continuing to pretend and letting the leaders of that time solve the problem, or intervening for the safety of his people.
Fearing that the elves would once again become dependent on him, Jaal chose to leave the problem to the then generation.
In the end the leaders of the time, reaped by pride and jealousy, they ignored the warnings of a talented hunter, Nitel Sprout of Sun, and they allowed the number of goblins to increase with impunity.
The consequences of this were the near annihilation of the Vieri, and with it the total loss of the military strength of the Grey Elves.
As Jaal struggled to stop pretending and help his people to recover, a new hope emerged.
From among the common elven, a talented and intelligent young girl began to climb among the Lori, so Jaal decided to continue pretending, to give allow that new talent to grew. That young girl was Erabel Retoño de Sol, daughter of the Nitel, whose warnings the Vieri ignored.
As Jaal had hoped, it was just matter of time before Erabel became the leader of the Lori.
To Jaal´s tranquility, Erabel was intelligent and her peculiar curiosity allowed her to acquire wisdom more easily than others. In addition, her charisma was so great as to initiate a change among the young women elves. Many were the women who, in the face of the decline of their people, left their homes and began to plow the fields, join the Lori or even join to the new Forest Guard.
However, as if the five virtues put to test the old elf again, a new situation arose.
In the beginning, Jaal chose again to let the young people deal with the current situation.
As the old man expected, Erabel had the best focus on the current crisis, but it seemed too soon for her to take on the role of great leader of the elves.
Even if she was talented, Erabel's vision was still limited by that curse that had afflicted her people since the remote times of the Golden Elves, the excessive racial pride.
"I guess before I left it in the hands of the young, I should have done something about their pride first..." -the old man shook his head lightly with bitterness. Excessive pride had also been one of the causes of the tragedy four decades ago.
Faced with the choices of fighting humans or abandoning the forest that the current leaders were proposing, Jaal finally abandoned his act. He would not make the same mistake again as he did four decades ago.
"When was the last time I left the village? Mmm... it must have been that time I went to dialogue with that young dragon... yes, that was almost five hundred years ago... *SIGH* These young's, what do they think language is for?" -Jaal continued to be incapable of understanding because the young people always ignored the simplest option, dialogue.
Looking at the forest around him as he walked slowly north, the old man began to remember many of his experiences, many of the problems he had had to face to ensure the survival of his people.
"I hope these tired bones don't turn to dust before making one last effort..." -the old man could feel it; his body was reaching the limit.
Normally the life of an elf did not exceed four hundred years. This was not due to the passing of time, but to various causes such as illness and, of course, conflict.
As for Jaal, the present generations of elves could only speculate that the one they saw as a senile old man was about four hundred years old.
Listening to these speculations, old Jaal could laugh unconcernedly as he continued to pretend to be a senile old man. The great truth was, Jaal Leaf of Autumn was a child when the grey elves came to the Dark Forest seeking refuge once, when in their former home, the Great Forest, many of the gray elven chose to abandon their old customs and establish the Elfic Kingdom of Grandeza. An event that occurred during the era that humans called 'The Age of Heroes', almost a thousand years ago.
"Certainly, the Mana is unusual..." -as Jaal approached further north, he felt what Erabel had described.
Soon Jaal reached a point where he was easy to detect by the human patrols guarding the edge of the forest.
"Stop right there! Who are you and what are you looking for?"
"My name is Jaal Leaf of Autumn, an old elve who wishes to chat a little with your leader."
At the old man's reply, the guards exchanged glances.
"Follow me."
Surprisingly for Jaal, it seemed that humans were waiting for him.
While guided by one of those soldiers, the old man could see with his own eyes what the unusual humans were doing at the north.
Constantly huge logs were extracted from the forest and then piled up, and there were huge mounds of beautifully polished square rocks.
Among the rock blocks, the presence of a large number of kobolds became notorious, who which were undoubtedly responsible for giving such an exquisite finish to those rocks.
To the west by the river, were notorious a large number of tents, as well as wagons and people moving from one place to another.
Among the many humans and kobolds scattered around the place, no one was loitering, each one was devoted to a task.
Jaal could not help but smile at that image, throughout his long life, he had seen countless humans, yet he did not remember seeing others more dedicated than these.
Jaal was led to the coast, where his eyes opened wide as he watched an impossible scene, about a hundred yards from the beach, the sea was being held back by an invisible force, and where the water had been expelled from, a large number of mana users seemed extract with magic a large amount of sand from the ground.
"You wait here."
Stunned by the sight of the sea being denied, Jaal could only nod in response to the soldier's words.
The old man tried to remember some similar event, but it was useless. Not even among the legends of the Golden Elves could he find anything that could even come close to what his eyes saw.
"There is no way that virtues allow the existence of a power that goes against nature..." -bitterly Jaal concluded that whatever force denied the sea in that way was beyond what the elves could understand.
After stopping at the edge of what used to be the beach, the soldier ran swiftly towards a group of mana users. After a few seconds, the same soldier returned accompanied by a group of mana users, who seemed to be escorting a small singular person.
"Are you really an elf?"
Once in front of him, a little girl with unusual silver hair and silver pupils asked Jaal that question in a certain tone of disappointment.
The old man had to make an effort equivalent to his several centuries of life to prevent surprise and consternation from clouding his mind.
"I am an elf, though as you can see, one too old."
"*SIGH* I was hoping for something more extravagant."
The little girl's face, which seemed to be made of the finest porcelain, showed an expression of disappointment at Jaal's response.
"Hohoho! I am sorry to be so disappointing, however, I must say that you have completely exceeded all my expectations."
Jaal was not joking when he said those words, after having heard everything that had happened, as well as about the actions carried out by these supposed humans, once in front of them, not only did he see broken all thoughts he had, even the through of considering these beings as human caused him conflict.
"Well, what are you looking for, old elf? As you can see, we are very busy here" -Freya did not want to waste too much time in the face of such a disappointing Elf, if she continued her efforts, probably her dear older brother would praise her.
"Hohoho! I apologize for being a nuisance, first of all, my name is Jaal Leaf of Autumn, I am one of the leaders of the elven village of Dark Forest."
"Nii-sama is surprising, it happened just as he said."
The little girl's statement fully captured Jaal's curiosity.
"I see, so that person foresaw that one of the us would come here. Certainly, he must be very wise."
"Of course, Nii-sama is wise, his intellect is completely beyond simple mortals like you."
Jaal's curiosity only increased with each word of the little one.
"I must suppose then that you are not human?"
"Of course not, I and Nii-sama are children of Eternal Winter and the Supreme God of Battle. The rest, even if they are humans, they are children´s of Alexander, they cannot be compared with the weak humans of this world."
Appealing to the little girl's pride, the old elf was getting valuable and shocking information.
Though presumptuous, that little girl did not show the slightest hint of doubt in her words and her beautiful appearance, which far surpassed that of any elf that Jaal remembered having known in all his life, gives she the absolutely right, she was definitely not an ordinary being.