The dizziness I was struck with gradually abated. I didn't really know what had happened to make me feel this disoriented.
In fact, my recollection of the last few... days? Anyway, the last few hours at least were everything but clear for some reason.
There were so many questions in my head, that I simply didn't know where to start disentangling this mess.
Next I knew, there was something relatively big squirming between my hands. Wet and mouldy, probablz rotting away just as the hardly bearable smell suggested.
Murmuring something about a naughty youth, I forced my heavy eyelids open. There I saw what gave me this much discomfort.
No fine thufts, no lovely tail, no twitching ears, for Pete's sake. But an especially dirty specimen of true swamp dwellers.
A girl the Great Consciousness promptly introduced. Yet I wasn't interested at all in her story. What I was trying to find an answer to was but one obvious question.
Why was she in my arms? "Where are you, mate?" I muttered softly, which was answered promptly by a fusillade of shrieks and cries.
Did they come from... within the messy ball of boney flesh and brittle scales with a frail tail? Had that creature eaten the youth, perhaps?
Luckily, it was just an instance of overthinking, for the dirty thing literally unwrapped in front of me, forcefully landing on her back with all four raised in a submissive posture I knew only from the most scared of domesticated dogs.
I didn't think much of it either. On her mess of a rug barely obscuring her bloodied chest lay the youth, the distilled tranquiliser of my turbulent essence!
But why would I even think like that...? "Thoth...," that came from behind me. A direction I didn't care about since the evident discomfort thw youth was projecting at me was just in front of me.
She might have even learned that crawling through dirt would hardly end well? I could only hope for such a necessary realisation.
From my inventory, I took her favourite baby bottle containing the last bits of Cow God Milk Sovereign Gardener had access to.
Yet she didn't calm down immediately. I had to gently hold her in both hands, nuzzling her trembling head and snarling a song.
My tone-deaf homage of her importance to me that might as well wake up the whole forest in bitter protest, calmed her down enough to start sucking on the bottle. In slow motion.
As if she had to constantly think if that was the correct thing to do. It pained me. My essence grew turbulent as a consequence.
Yet I still couldn't remove my hands from the youth. Whenever I moved by just an inch, she started wailing bitterly, relinquishing even the bottle.
What dastardly thing had happened to her?! I could only guess how much shit she had to go through to end up with that kind of a haulier of bacteria, viruses, illnesses and curses.
The dirty creature had her tail wrapped around mine, otherwise, I'd have already kicked her away. Yet as I had no way of imagining what the abrupt motion would do to the youth, I endured.
"...what have you—" "Shut. The. Fuck. Up." She didn't react to my mad snarl. If anything, the youth was only snuggling up closer to me, her tail wagging like a windmill.
From distant memories, I knew that catfolk generally expressed indescribable unease with that gesture, which made me only soften up.
"Ask yourself how to survive this mess. No need to bother me. It's over. And I'm so fucking done with your haughty bunch of fatuous pointy-eared toddlers."
Their race's widespread regression from high elves to common elves with but a sliver of the noble bloodline made me wonder if the brain had inflated disproportionally.
With the Great Tree almost felled, the purity of their already lacking bloodline had taken a nosedive. Not that they seemed to have realised as much.
"Thoth! You, cough, cough..." "Zip it!" My tail kicked the nearest guard who was unlucky to come too close.
If they step nearer by just one frigging atom, I might as well blast them all over yonder. "You disgust me, Elfriede.
I won't say a thing about dispersing your decisional power and authority in equal measures. It cannot pass you lose control."
After a short break, I added sarcastically, "why else would you be required to steer that sinking ship if not by hurling commands? Go die somewhere if you don't like the idea.
You won't be alone there for long anyway." The rugged breathing behind me quickened. Still, I couldn't care less about the dangerous state she'd put herself in.
An immortal's promise was closely bound to their state of being. Break that, and the body won't seem this immortal any longer.
"Is this your first time experiencing backlash? Sorry about that then. Become a repeat offender and the burden lessens. Relax, you're on the right track..."
The sarcasm in my voice didn't lessen one bit. On the contrary, it increased just as much as the yelling behind me did, the anxious calls for close kin.
Devastation had come to the royal city. My name might not be Spice, but I had no need for his divinity to get a first idea about how many must've passed away.
That held true even in the face of this nagging realisation that the one responsible for their plight happened to be good ol' me.
After taking a deep breath, I owed up to my instincts. Something ridiculous had happened, so I was required to take my leave.
Plus, the youth needed someplace safe and without excitement. ...as did I? This was hard to tell with my memories in disarray.
However, if I was reduced to such a strange state, it would be best to check on... I couldn't help but curse in the Language of Old, making the nearest bunch of pseudo-high-elves spit out a mouthful of blood. The contract! ...well, no matter.
"Thoth!" The enraged, bitter shriek literally tore through the skies behind my back. "Elfriede. I hereby prohibit you from mentioning my name." I should think about the contract later.
"Sure, you won't like the repercussions, so think carefully about what your next course of action should look like." That settled it.
I was done with this place. Verily so. And disappointed too. Therefore, I wrapped my tail around the dirty creature posing as a mudman, secured the youth, and was gone soon after.
Back to Aethernum. Back to the only place I was apparently allowed to call home. Every other place seemed better in regards to the festering hole Elfriede sat upon.
I was so done with her, so damn done!!! I... was suffering from myriad emotions along the way I couldn't make heads nor tail of. I might really be under the weather...