No sooner had the Elf spoken did the Mages move. A few of them reached down--very gingerly as if they were afraid their hands might burn to ash the moment they touched him--to help the man who had come from the statue. Asiah avoided his eyes as two Mages caged her in, one on each side, and gripped her by the elbows to ensure she wouldn't run off.
"How dare you?" Kavaris narrowed his eyes at the two Mages gripping her before he turned his gaze to the Elf, who wore a look that was mostly unbothered save for the clear annoyance brewing in her eyes. "Call your men off."
She fixed the godchild with those glistening blue eyes that shone unnaturally in the dark. "I will do no such thing. You are both to come to Magdellanis and see the Head."
"I know the Head personally," said Kavaris. "Do you think he--"
"Not he, sir. She. Centuries have passed, and the Head you knew has died and passed his seat to his daughter."
A flicker of surprise touched Kavaris's face. Even as she was annoyed with him for his spell being released before she could be caught, she pitied him. When he had been turned into marble, the world had been a much different place, if the stories were anything to go by. The gods roamed the lands freely in those days. Children of gods weren't anything new, they were quite common according to the myths, but they were all reviled all the same, treated as if they, too, were gods.
How surprised must he be--how surprised he would soon be--to discover that the world is no longer that way. The gods have abandoned the people, and the last of the demi-gods passed away nearly three hundred years ago, defending Magdellanis's borders in the war against King Calamar. She pitied him that the world that he had returned to was not the world he knew.
"Regardless of how things may be, I am the son of Kasari, the goddess of the sun and a direct descendant of Magdellana, She Who Created All. I'm weakened now but when my strength returns, neither you nor your Mages would do well to have incurred my ire. Call your men off from my wife. Ariadne has always been just. She will follow you of her own accord."
The Elf looked turned her shrewd gaze to Asiah and after a while, Asiah averted her eyes. The slit pupils unnerved her so. She wanted to tell him that she was not Ariadne. That she was very much not just and very much not trustworthy. She wanted to tell him that she had come here to steal from him and that she would have robbed the resting place of his dear Ariadne and that the only thing that had stopped her was the fear of being cursed. She wanted to tell him that the only reason she hadn't run and left him before the Mages got there was because she had been to startled to move, and the only reason she hadn't shaken them off now was because knew she could never leave here alive if she did. Surrendering now was her only option. It didn't take very much for a Mage to kill an ordinary person. A few whispered words in the old tongue for some and a simple concentration of their mana for the more powerful ones.
She said none of those things, though. She stared hard at the grass and noticed there were flowers there that hadn't bloomed before. Eliacras to be more specific. Flowers that could only be grown in the presence of a divine being. A lot of Magdellana's temples had patches of eliacras they took special care in preserving since they were so rare, but this was her first time seeing them in person. The soft petals gleamed, reflecting the moon's glow so that they shone in the dark. It was like fragments of moonlight had fallen and embedded themselves into the flowers. She stared at them, awestruck.
One of the Mages next to her cleared his throat and shifted on his feet. Ah, right. Kavaris had threatened them should they not let her walk of her own accord. So caught up in the eliacras' beauty, she had forgotten all about it.
"What would you have us do, Lady Maaleshiira?"
The woman turned her gaze skyward. She tapped her foot rapidly against the grass. Her hands were at her hip and she drummed her fingers against it. After a moment, she took a deep breath and looked back at Asiah.
"You may walk without being escorted but make no sudden moves. I'm not in the best of moods tonight, and I just may turn you into a pile of ash and flame where you stand."
Kavaris gave the Elven woman a look that seemed to dare her to try doing such a thing, but the woman pulled out an object at her hip. It was circular shaped and made of some of the highest quality Dwarven steel Asiah had ever seen. Designs of leaves and roses had been carved into the steel with an expert hand. She flipped it open and stared at it before flipping it closed and returning it to its spot."I'd like to be in Magdellanis before the first moon leaves the sky. Let's get a move on."
For all her griping and complaining--and gods did she ever gripe and complain--the Elven woman was quite adept at ordering the Mages around and getting things in order. In nearly no time at all, she had organized for a magic carriage and enough horses for the Mages who would be riding with them to Magdellanis, Eldyngrove's capital city.
Kavaris was loaded onto the carriage and only once he'd complained about Asiah not being with him and how much he'd make them all suffer if his "wife" couldn't ride with him, did the Elf roll her eyes and just wave Asiah forward. She didn't seem too worried that Asiah might try to harm Kavaris while he was weak. Perhaps she sensed that Asiah wouldn't or perhaps the Elf knew that, with that overwhelming strength she possessed, she could stop Asiah before things got out of hand.