There was an awkward silence after the revelation. There were a thousand thoughts running through Raorka's mind but Lucerne was the one more heavily affected.
"An...elf?" She almost whispered and reached out her hand as if she wanted to touch Artemis' ears, drawing them back at the last moment.
Artemis solemnly nodded. "I have been in hiding in this Kingdom for the last thousand years. As you probably know us elves naturally have long lives, so we do not have any need for researching magik to make ourselves immortal. Because we are not immortal in the first place."
"Do any other people know?" Lucerne asked, her voice still a whisper.
"Of course not. In many ways being a Witch is safer than being an elf here." Artemis said ruefully.
"Why?" Raorka asked confused. Since being a Witch was akin to being an enemy of the Crown, wasn't it worse than being a member of an ancient race?
Artemis regarded him with her blue eyes, and once more Raorka felt as if he had made a mistake. It seemed he had asked something which was supposed to be common knowledge among people of this world. Thankfully Lucerne was still too much in a daze to notice.
"The Golden Kingdom of Chrysafenios was our home before the Great War. So naturally we were on opposite sides. And this Kingdom has never forgiven us for it." Artemis answered eventually.
"The punishment for being a Witch is simply being thrown into a prison." She continued. "The punishment for being an elf however is torture and execution."
"Not all citizens share that view." Lucerne said, her voice much softer. It seemed she was more favorable towards elves than Witches.
"That may be. But what the citizens think matters not young Lucerne. What matters is what the Mayor thinks, and I have no doubt that if he ever found out, he would indeed send me directly to the Capital for execution."
"Why trust us?" Raorka asked wonderingly.
Artemis looked at him. "I don't know. I may have lived a thousand years, but I don't always make the right choice. Something compeeled me to share this information with you, and I decided to follow it.
Elves are creatures of passion you know. We follow our hearts more than our brains. We don't calculate or theorize much, we just do what we feel like doing. Which is why I suppose we were at odds with this Kingdom where everything is done in an extremely orderly fashion."
"That explains the dome then." Lucerne said quietly.
Raorka looked at her in confusion. Artemis noticed this look and sighed.
"So you haven't told her yet have you Raorka?" She asked gently.
"Told me what?" Now it was Lucerne's turn to be confused.
Artemis didn't say anything but gestured at Raorka to explain. Raorka looked at Artemis' eyes and he knew. The elf was aware of his true identity and where he had come from. He then looked at Lucerne.
Can I trust these two?
Immediately he felt a bit ashamed of thinking like this. Here was Artemis who had decided to trust them with a secret big enough to put her life at jeopardy, and here he was struggling to return the favor.
"I am not from this world." He said eventually, keeping his head down expecting a shriek or scream or something.
Instead Lucerne just said, "Ah, an Otherworlder."
Raorka looked up at her in surprise himself. "You are not shocked?"
Lucerne shrugged. "To be honest I suspected you may be an Otherworlder. You seemed to have too little knowledge about this world, let alone this Kingdom to be from here. And given you are looking for your mother and father...."
"You have a term for people like me?"
"We have a prophecy for you. For all three of you." Artemis said.
Raorka fell silent. This was certainly not the reaction he had expected. He was expecting shock, maybe even revulsion. But what he got was anticipation.
He looked at Lucerne, who was smiling encouragingly at him.
"Don't worry Raorka, we won't see you as a monster because you are not from here." She said and winked at him.
Raorka felt himself blushing, and he quickly looked down to hide the moisture in his eyes. Without realising it, he was living under a blanket of fear. What if he were ostracized, imprisoned, maybe even executed for not being from this world? With a single conversation though Artemis and Lucerne had given him a sense of belonging.
Once he felt his eyes were dry he looked up.
"Thank you." He said, looking at both of them with gratitude.
Now it was Lucerne's time to blush and look away. Artemis simply smiled and nodded at him.
"Well I guess it is time to tell you about the Dome and how it cracked." She said.
"I am sorry, it may seem obvious to Lucerne but since I am not from this world, I want to know what she meant when she said that you being an elf explained the dome." Raorka asked.
"It's quite simple really. The general assumption is that the dome was created to mimic the Capital. That is not true. The dome was not created above Temuril. In fact, the town was created below the dome."
There was silence as Raorka digested this fact.
"You mean.....that the dome existed before Temuril?"
"Indeed, the dome above Temuril existed since I came here, a thousand years ago. The town itself however was created a mere five hundred years back. The dome therefore predates the town by five hundred years."
"And what does that have to do with you being an elf?"
"All elves have an artistic creation - a culmination of their lives work, of their passion you may say. Most of them take a large part of their lives, centuries to perfect it, to imbue it with magik and once it is complete to appreciate it throughout their lives. In our language we call it Faux Eternalis - eternal beauty.
The Dome of Temuril is my creation. It is my magnum opus, it is the structure that I have imbued with my magik, and it is the structure that I will appreciate throughout my remaining life.
So you see, it's not like I am trapped in this forest, or I am a prisoner in this forest. I am here because I can't - won't - leave behind the dome."
Raorka had never seen Artemis this impassioned. The Faux Eternalis of hers indeed seemed like something the elves greatly cared about. And the little Raorka had seen or rather noticed of the dome was indeed impressive. The intricate carvings, the flawless design, the graceful arch, it was clear that all of it was a product of immense love and labor. And now he knew whose.
"How did it crack?" He asked quietly, realizing that the cracking of such a structure must be especially painful for Artemis.
Sure enough she bowed her head somberly before replying.
"It broke due to my carelessness."
"What do you mean?"
"Since you are new to this world, you are perhaps not aware of the Dragons are you Raorka?"
"I have heard of dragons."
"But do you know anything about them?"
Raorka shook his head.
Artemis nodded as if she had expected this response and then began in her teacher tone:
"Long long ago, thousands of years before even my birth, mankind was still just a speck of dust, scrounging about in what little communities they could manage. There were only two kingdoms at the time - The Kingdom of Dragons and the Kingdom of Elves.
Our legends don't speak much of this time, not how long ago it started nor how the general populace lived. Of course your people don't even have records extending this far. However there is one event of note, spoken about in every legend, elves' and man's.
The Annihilation War.
It was a brutal war between the Dragons and the Elves. There is not much information left about why the war started. In fact much of the history of the world before this war is erased. We only know the end result.
The destruction of both the kingdoms. The almost complete annihilation of both races. And the rise of human kingdoms."
Here there was such a mournful expression on Artemis' face that Raorka was almost moved to tears himself.
After a pause she continued, "That was long but all of that was to say that elves and dragons have an enmity that goes back generations. We have it in our blood to fight against each other. If an elf and a dragon meet even today, the encounter wouldn't end peacefully.
And there's a major dragon close by."
Almost on cue the roar of Old Gotuj pierced through. Artemis looked towards the forest and Raorka could clearly see the distate, the hate in her face.
"Forty years back, I fought against that detestable dragon. Of course I was complacent. Fighting a dragon is a terrifying prospect for even the best of combatants, and I am not the best combatant by a long shot. I was grievously injured and that's what caused the crack in the dome. The dome is sustained by my magik, and at that time my magik was completely focused on protecting me, ensuring I survive. In fact I would probably not even survive if it were not for a kind hearted healer who saved me." Here Artemis looked meaningfully at Lucerne who just stared questioningly back.
Realizing that she did not understand who she meant, Artemis looked a bit disappointed as she asked, "Did your mother not tell you?"
Lucerne shook her head confused.
"It was your grandmother who saved me Lucerne. Without her, I would not exist."
This was evidently quite a big news to Lucerne, who looked at her in shock.
"What? My mother knows this?"
"Of course. She is one of the few people who know the truth about why the dome cracked."
Something. Something about that unnerved Raorka. He didn't know what, he was still in the dark, but he felt that the answer he was looking for was close by.
"How was the dome fixed in the end?" He asked, desperate to find out what it was that had triggered this feeling in him.
"I did. I was the only one who could. It was my Faux Eternalis after all."
"Why after so long?"
Artemis shrugged. She almost seemed a little embarassed. "I told you, elves are a passionate folk. One of the things we hate the most is to lose. Twenty-six years is long in human terms, but for us it is just as long as a few months."
Raorka still looked at her in confusion and she sighed.
"I was sulking." She said finally.
Despite the seriousness of the situation, both Raorka and Lucerne burst out laughing at this confession and Artemis looked indignantly at them both.
"Really, I don't see what's so funny about all this." She scoffed.
"Why did you decide to stop sulking, Ms Elf?" Lucerne asked mockingly.
"Well I'll have you know it was your mother who convinced me to stop sulking." Artemis said.
Suddenly Raorka stopped laughing.
"It was Lumina who convinced you to fix the dome?" He asked, standing up.
"Y-yes it was." Artemis was taken aback by the intensity of the question.
No, no it couldn't be...
The thought which had come for a moment in Raorka's head was too horrible, too unfathomable, too cruel to be true.
"Are you alright?" Lucerne asked in some concern seeing the look on Raorka's face.
Raorka looked at her and nodded, still in a daze. If what he thought was true then.....
The entire town of Temuril was in grave, grave danger.