"What in the nine hells' crooked name did pass through your mind when voicing out the order?" I stared blankly at the space in front, not at all reconciled with reality.
There on the wooden chair that had just grown out of thin air sat a beauty. Be it expression, posture, finesse or aura, mine couldn't hold a candle against hers.
But that was beside the point. It hurt, but ultimately the observation had no further meaning than germinating the seeds of greed... and envy.
However, at the same time, that person single-handedly buried all my hopes with her mere presence.
"Great Prophet, we acted upon self-defence. Your people were mercilessly culled, I—" She snipped impatiently with her slender fingers, her brows furrowing even further.
On that fair face, a thunderstorm was brewing. Which led me to darkly wonder if I might get burned too. I wasn't alone with these thoughts, for Avelyn too wasn't as easygoing as she hoped to seem.
The most relaxed of all of us was Eldacar, the sole elder sporting this flirtatious smile all day long. Just... how could Avelyn have fallen in love with such a creep?
The answer eluded me to this day. "Do you know what happened?" The Great Prophet in the meantime didn't care about my straying thoughts, putting Duwende increasingly in distress.
"Why it happened?" Besides some gnashing teeth, there was no answer. "Who the one responsible is? Anything?"
In a burst of injured self-esteem and abrupt indignation, Elder Duwende countered her accusations. "A scout has been there." Before he was interrupted and corrected.
"A scout now locked away in prison. I'm lost in cultivation, Elder, I'm not dead. Nor am I a wooden log!" Or he tried to, which didn't end up nearly as positive as he might've wished.
"Whatever happens in this realm, I usually gain knowledge within days." Her hazelnut eyes suddenly burned in anger, radiating power that might as well have been described as a container of the sun.
"So if everything is under control, if the so-called enemy is but a mere firefly, if there is nothing to worry about... why have my inquiries backfired?!"
Collectively, we missed a breath. Or two. Then the realisation of our plight hit me hard, my face blanching and fingers nervously trembling in the air.
The Great Prophet had been... warded off? But that was an impossibility in itself since the frontlines were far away and the Just Federation had no reason to stray off the path this far.
As much as it hurt to admit, we high elves had truly become a dissipating shadow of our former proud selves.
Essentially, our strategic importance was steadily declining with each passing generation. We all knew that. These fine folk wouldn't bother us ever.
So... the Great Prophet's questions were truly worth pondering over. "Great Prophet, you cannot judge this operation from merely such a limited angle."
Elder Duwende was really talking back, opting to unsee his ally's undisguised warning glances now that the latter couldn't sport these flirtatious glances any longer.
He'd smelled the smoke, yet knew of no escape hatch! "Poor, poor creature..." I heard myself mutter. "He'll find back soon." Avelyn answered that rather defensively. And firmly so too.
"Quite smitten, aren't we? Though the flame has cooled down." I got no response in return. She preferred upholding that blank expression she always chose when being unsure of herself.
A point of note, that was, to find political use at a later time. Provided the Great Prophet didn't dismiss us all in her anger.
While she technically had no such power... the fist of the mightiest wasn't so easily talked back to. Which Elder Duwende seemed to have forgotten in his endless foolishness.
"It is our pride that gets trampled below the stink feet of a daemon. The people cannot sleep with such shame burdening us all!"
"Indeed," the Great Prophet chuckled darkly, "such pride is all doomed to backfire." "Pardon? What is your point? I—"
Bang! I found that the door was kicked open with much greater urgency than last time, almost breaking the hinges. The elf literally shooting into the conference room didn't bother with any form of formality.
But once I heard what he had to say, there was no excuse too strange to pardon the poor sod getting on Elder Duwende's bad side, and from the consequences that brought along.
"They've perished. Their lifebuds are no more!" "Who! Speak clearly, scribe." "It is what you have in mind."
Instead, the Great Prophet answered, helping the elf get rid of the pressure Elder Duwende had exerted over him and guiding him out with the help of the evermoving roots.
"This!" I had him seldom seen this flustered. Even Elder Duwende didn't dare throw her words back, possibly because he already knew deep down what this was all about.
It surely wasn't out of respect. In any case, it was his most prized grandchild that led the troops. Or better, *had* led the troops... "A mere daemon... a mere—"
"That's why I asked you! Have you truly checked all the facts? The short answer, you haven't." He seemed to have aged for many years within mere seconds.
Weakly, Elder Duwende opened his mouth as if to refute, but it no longer came to that. Bump. Bump... Bump! Bump!! Bump!!!
The treehouse was shaking, the distress in the ancient wood evident. Closing my eyes, I extended my senses in a certain direction.
There, I felt it too. A slew of deadly mana walking. A cluster of menace with mass so great it levelled everything in its path.
Possibly inadvertently too, but the mere fact it so did, counted. The sound, the vibration, the intention... I took a deep breath.
Childhood memories from ages past were flooding my mind. Nightmares I believed locked away, far, far away.
Then I sighed. Opening my eyes I noted the others weren't looking any better than me. For we all recognised this kind of footsteps.
They were warstomps. From a creature now out for our blood. Piecing together what I'd just uncovered, I simply had to ask this one question:
"In what way does this resemble a daemon?" The looks I garnered were betraying the sole answer. In no fucking way. That was when I definitively knew we screwed up.