Chapter 103 - The Farm in Irttat
Chapter 103: Tower of Crows 11
The woman opened the door. The outside of it was already soaked through with rain, damp to the touch the moment her hand brushed against it.
Violet stood outside, drenched from head to toe. She wore a cloak much like Lucita's and carried a heavy sword in one hand, still sheathed. Yet her gaze was sharper than any blade, fixed squarely on the woman's face.
As though sensing the weight of Violet's gaze, the woman hesitated for a moment, though nothing showed on her face. She spoke in her hoarse voice: "One of your own kind?"
Coming face to face with this countenance, Violet was startled. She tightened her grip on the hilt of her sword, looking at the black cloth binding the woman's eyes and the missing ear, and her voice came out as though dipped in ice: "Your eyes... your ear. Where did you lose them?"
The woman went still for a moment.
She had no eyes. She could not see the form of the person before her. She had not expected that the first question out of this visitor's mouth would be this one, and a bitter ache rose in her throat; she found herself almost believing the claim that they shared the same root.
"It's all in the past now." She gave a self-deprecating smile. "More than ten years ago. Lost in the city of Soris, back when it was still under Eaton's rule."
Violet barely managed to swallow her breath.
She had heard that after the fall of old Eaton, the new rulers of Kenting and Spring had continued many of Eaton's reforms, determined to usher in a new age of civilization. And so the trade in elven gems had been outlawed. The hunting of elves had come to an end.
Since arriving in Viktori, she and Delphine had searched the entire royal capital, including the palace itself, and had indeed found no trace of imprisoned elves.
For a moment, she wondered whether there was somewhere she had failed to search…
She loosened her grip on the sword slightly, glanced past the woman into the space behind her, and felt her heart sink: "Is my friend not here?"
A bell of alarm rang sharply within the woman: "What friend?"
"Hasn't anyone come here? Not long ago, in fact." Violet's tone carried unmistakable weight.
A quarter of an hour earlier, at number 21 Briar Street, the sudden downpour had battered the autumn roses to the ground.
A bone-crow with one blood-red eye, carrying a silver cufflink in its beak, had landed on Violet's windowsill through the rain.
That cufflink was one she and Lucita had chosen together at the tailor's when ordering their cloaks. A simple five-pointed star had been engraved at its center, fastened to their cloaks.
She took the cufflink, and it suddenly spoke in Lucita's low voice: "Southeast of the city, in Detice Forest, there's a tower. I think I've found one of your people... and the situation doesn't look good."
So Violet had followed the bone-crow here, passing through what felt like a tangible seam between worlds, arriving before this very tower — only to find no trace of Lucita.
The elf before her shook her head calmly: "I haven't seen anyone. You are my first visitor today."
Violet's brow furrowed. She looked around.
All around stood dense, black, leafless trees. Amid the thunder and pouring rain, only the bone-crows, utterly indifferent to the storm, remained perched upon the branches, their crimson eyes unsettling in the darkness.
Any other sound, she suspected, would be drowned out beneath this overwhelming rain.
She turned her attention back to the woman before her. She was undeniably one of her own people. Yet an elf, one of life's most blessed children, living within such a deathly realm among dead trees and skeletal crows…there had to be something strange behind it.
Violet studied the elf's expression carefully and said: "Meeting a fellow countrywoman so far from home... won't you invite me inside for a while?"
The elf paused, then stepped aside: "Please."
"I haven't yet asked your name?"
***
In the instant she fell into the lake, an overwhelming pain of corrosion swept across every inch of Lucita's skin.
This was not water. It was something far too thick and dense — a liquefied "cause of death."
At the bottom of that lake was carved an enormous, intricate magic circle, glowing faintly within the thick blackness of death. Lucita's unconscious face was lit by that dim glow, like a leaf about to fall, like grass on the edge of frost.
A vast dreamscape closed around her — the memory of the lake itself.
An elf was born in a familiar valley.
Lucita recognized this valley. It sat at the border between the Peace Forest and the Dexi Grasslands. Long ago, it had been an elven settlement. When Lucita had left Irttat, many abandoned houses still stood there, their owners long gone.
In the spring valley, tender yellow water-lilies and windflowers bloomed by the stream's edge. Wild morning glories climbed the cliff face, and a few mischievous elves had built their houses right into the rock.
A small elf had grown up in this valley, learning to hunt rabbits at a young age, and her skill at weaving flower crowns was the best among her companions.
Out among the hills and fields, a friend ran toward her with an armful of flowers, laughing, calling out her name: "Tatiana—"
***
"Tatiana." Amid the crackling of the fire, the woman answered her own name. "And you?"
"I'm Violet."
Tatiana was somewhat surprised, the name reminded her of the famous last monarch. "A king's name. Your mother must have had high hopes for you."
Violet neither confirmed nor denied this, and shifted the conversation: "You look very aged. Are you suffering from some illness?"
Tatiana fell back on her old story, putting on a sorrowful air: "Yes, I am indeed ill. It's all in the past now."
She had expected that answer to end the conversation. Instead, Violet seemed utterly incapable of taking the hint: "The past? What happened in the past, to bring you to this state?"
Tatiana nearly choked.
***
Tatiana had grown up.
The grown Tatiana could not only hunt deer, but bears as well, and had even ventured with friends to the Sword mountain range beyond the free city-states of the west, escaping a wolf pack's siege unscathed alongside her companions, earning unrivaled renown for a time.
The elders were proud of her, and also worried about her recklessness.
The free city-states, after all, were home not only to free and settled human residents, but also to traveling merchants dealing in shady business from across the continent. People who were far more knowledgeable, and far more greedy.
Tatiana, back then, had trusted in her own outstanding strength, and felt no fear.
She not only made frequent trips to the Sword range to hunt for wolf pelts, but also called her friends together, pulled up their hoods to hide their ears, and went drinking and boasting at the taverns of the free city-states.
Until the day heavy snow sealed the mountains. They turned back before reaching the foot of the Sword range, and went into a quiet, near-deserted tavern for a drink — and that drink had been laced.
They stumbled out of the tavern in a daze, believing themselves merely drunk, only to be ambushed by a group of waiting humans at the edge of town.
The elves of the valley experienced, for the first time, the cruelty of the world, and the lesson was a devastating one.
A lesson like that, one only ever learns once in a lifetime.
Lucita watched helplessly as an arrow pierced clean through an elf's chest. She rushed forward to help, but her hand passed straight through the elf's body.
The elves had resisted too fiercely, and to be safe, the humans began to kill.
An elf had died.
She lowered her eyes, and the swirling snow passed through her hand.
This was a dream. A dream she could not control.
***
"As you can see," Tatiana said, finding pretense no longer sustainable, telling a story half-true, half-false: "What else could it be? I was sold into a marquis's dungeon in Eaton, and tormented to this state."
When Violet had no interest in reading someone's face, she seemed to possess a natural talent for ignoring it entirely. Her eyes, hawk-sharp, stayed locked on Tatiana, her words showing no consideration whatsoever: "What kind of torment changes an elf's very nature of life, leaving you aged like this and still alive?"
Tatiana seemed to have genuinely run out of patience: "Are all elves these days this rude? This is my private business. I don't wish to speak of it further. You are not welcome here. Please leave."
"My apologies for the intrusion, truly." Violet seemed to have glued herself to her chair, not moving an inch. Her mouth offered an apology, but her expression didn't shift at all, still watching Tatiana's every move. "I won't bring it up again. Let's talk about something else."
The words came out as though it were simply natural. Tatiana, long unaccustomed to dealing with others, found herself momentarily at a loss for a response, though she did sense the less-than-friendly firmness in Violet's manner.
The moment she fell silent, the air between them grew tense.
Blind as she was, Tatiana failed to notice that, since stepping through the door, Violet's hand had never once left the hilt of her sword.
***
The scene rippled outward like water, settling on the unconscious faces of Tatiana and her companions.
Elves possessed remarkably strong self-healing abilities. Apart from the one who had died instantly, pierced through the heart by a single arrow, the others — even gravely wounded, unconscious for the entire journey — still clung stubbornly to life, their wounds even showing signs of beginning to heal.
The traders cared nothing for any of that. As long as they remained alive enough to be sold, that was all that mattered. Dead eyes fetched no price.
And of course, once they were sold off one by one to different buyers, whether they lived or died was no longer the traders' concern at all.
A brief flash of white crossed her vision, along with the blurred face of an unfamiliar human fastening a gold collar-clasp.
That winter, it must have been especially cold. After many days of exhausting travel, the northern winter was still falling in snow.
Then her vision went completely dark.
There was no day or night in the dungeon, only a dim candle burning year-round. The elf lived there, fed three meals a day like livestock, her body recovering quickly.
Fragments of human conversation occasionally drifted past her ears — she must be kept well, the quality of the eyes is what matters most. She was a rare "fine good," comparable to the elven crown worn upon the king's head.
Ah, yes — this marquis held her lands east of Starland, near the border of Kenting.
***
"Something else," Violet said casually. "Don't you want to ask about the Esti mountain range?"
Tatiana fell silent for a breath. "Could you tell me about my homeland?"
"The Sacred Lake has returned." Violet watched her expression, testing the words.
Unexpectedly, Tatiana showed little reaction at all. With an unreadable tone, neither sorrow nor joy, she repeated the question: "The Sacred Lake?"
"Yes. If you could go back, the Sacred Lake could heal your wounds, you would be able to see again." Violet said with deliberate weight. "Come to think of it, as an elf, your organs were taken by humans. Surely that should be something that could regenerate, with some effort."
"Why hasn't it?"
There it is.
Tatiana thought to herself that this person calling herself Violet was, in all likelihood, genuinely an elf.
Though it was deeply surprising for an elf to appear on this continent at all, she clearly knew elven matters inside and out, and had come here specifically searching for that "friend" from Irttat.
Having recovered from the initial shock of seeing the wretched state of her own kind, she would no doubt begin to notice further inconsistencies.
But none of this was something Tatiana could explain to her.
A crack of thunder sounded outside the window.
Tatiana's voice stayed calm, though it carried a dark undertone against the backdrop of the rainy night and the firelight. She said what seemed to be a final word of warning: "Though I don't know how you got in here, your friend is not here. Go look for her elsewhere."
"This is not a place you should be. It's time for you to leave, Violet."
Violet's hand stayed on the hilt of her sword, and she did not move an inch.
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