It may have been quite a long time since I’d been in open, pitched combat against this many monsters…

  But thankfully, my instincts hadn’t dulled with time.

  The brilliantly burning blade of rainbow fire extending from my staff scythed through monsters like a hot knife through butter. As I’d learned, the preeminent racial Skill of the Precursors was something meant for the slaying of gods, not regular monsters. And when it encountered the pseudo-flesh of the myriad Aetherial beasts of Vereden…

  They didn’t stand a chance.

  I must have cut down nearly fifteen of the mini-horde assaulting the Dwarven woodcutters' camp before the rest of my forces crashed into the back line of them. Shouts and screams of challenge rang through the air as the combined soldiers of the expedition began to hack and slash through tough hide and rough fur. The horde met them with screeches and howls of their own, and outright clawed at each other to reach my warriors. Wisps of Miasma drifted up into the air, winding its way through leaves greyed by the light of the Skyfall, while dozens and dozens of Monster Cores fell to the forest floor below. Their weak light barely shone through the decaying Fall foliage, and their presence only made footing more treacherous under the stomping, grinding, embattled feet.

  Luckily, this was something you could train Classers for. After all, all of us eventually reached a point where you had to grow used to essentially fighting over a bed of marbles.

  While my soldiers drew the attention of the horde’s bulk, I was busy with something else. Every methodical step I took as my blade of hardened flame sliced through monsters with every swing had a purpose.

  I wanted to get inside the barrier of the Dwarven wards. Even through their dim, glowing curtain, I could see that they were still fighting in there. I’m not sure they had even realized anyone had come to save them, from how desperate they were.

  And they were desperate. Even through my battle focus, I could tell that they were losing against the few monsters that had managed to push their way through the wards. These were simple crafts and tradesmen. They weren’t warriors. Their axes had been sharpened to hew wood, not flesh. Their bows were meant to pierce the supple hide of the stag, not the hardened Aetherial pseudo-flesh of a monster. Yes, they were Veredenese, and thus had some experience dealing with monsters…

  But there was a far cry from being shepherded by a village guardian to slay carefully restrained monsters, to pitched battle with them. Grimly, my Core Lattice, who was keeping an eye on the Dwarves while I focused on the battle, informed me that the claws of a mutated warg had just cut down another of their defenders.

  Alright, that was enough.

  I activated Might of the Wyrdwood at a comfortable fifteen percent, and immediately, my strength and speed, even in my full transformed state, skyrocketed. As ghostly crimson thorns began to surround my scaled limbs, slowing slithering across them in a distinctly serpentine manner, I gripped the butt of my staff with both hands, crouched…

  And spun in a wide circle around myself, blade first.

  At least a dozen monsters immediately perished at the edge of The Scintillant Blade. I felt a few more weakly try and claw at the scales of my transformed self, but it was for naught.

  I had pumped my wings and shot into the small open space, just below the canopy of tall trees above. I wasn’t intending to fly for long, though. Once oriented, I immediately angled myself into a dive, aimed straight at the Dwarven ward dome below. I sailed over the small sea of monsters under my enlarged form, trailing my still burning blade behind me as I did, as if I were a reptilian comet, soaring through the air in search of prey. In moments, I had passed through the dome, and I shifted my wings slightly, aiming for one monster in particular. I didn’t slow my progress at all, and moments before impact, I flipped myself in mid air and folded my wings, streaking down clawed feet first…

  And crashed down onto the back of a particularly large Warg. Not quite a Prime, I noted coldly, the pseudo-spine of the monster cracking from the force of my dive. But only just. He had likely been the leader of this little horde.

  Dead now, though, and reduced to little more than wisps of foul smoke and a shiny bauble.

  I didn’t waste time, and with a few quick strokes of my blade-staff, ended the handful of monsters threatening the woodcutters. When I was done, I spared a glance at the Dwarven survivors, to find each and every one of them gawking at me. I read amazement on the faces of a small few of them, but by and large, the reactions I was seeing weren’t relief at the save.

  It was fear at the sight of something far more monstrous than the simple mutated animals that had been trying to gore them.

  Ah. That’s right.

  These days, I wasn’t very used to interacting with the general public. Especially not during a battle. I’d spent the last…who knows how long, surrounded by soldiers, Classers, and students of the Academy. When around people like that, who were solely dedicated to the advancement of their Status and their skill in Mystic Arts, saw something like my transformed state, they didn’t react with fear. Instead, the reactions I typically got were appreciation for such a powerful, complete transformation Skill. Or, in some cases, even jealousy.

  I cleared my throat, causing more than a few of the Dwarves to jump at the sound, and spoke in the altered timber of my transformed state. “Don’t worry,” I said, doing my best to sound comforting, with a voice akin to a rumbling, screeching growl. “We’re here…to…help?”

  I trailed off, because I had spotted something…strange. Lurking near the back of the pack of Dwarves before me was someone out of place. At first, I had just taken them for another one of the defenders, although a bit of an odd one. They were dressing from head to toe in a dark green, hooded cloak that concealed their body from my assessing gaze. They were…a bit tall for a Dwarf, but not overly so. I had seen other Dwarves in the past who could match them in height, if only barely. Not the least of which was my still missing best friend, Azarus.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Only…

  Three things stood out to my sharp eyes. The first was that they were a bit thin, compared to the rest of Dwarvenkind. Most of them were very stocky, even the women, with thick barrel bodies and wide shoulders. The second was the presence of the weapon clutched in their right hand. They had tried to conceal it from my sight when they noticed my gaze fall on them, but I’d seen it nonetheless. That was not a simple hunting bow. To me, it looked like an expertly crafted recurve, carved from strangely young-looking green wood. It was subtle, but I could feel the enchantments upon the weapon even from where I stood, too.

  The last thing that stood out, though?

  Was the presence of two, pointed protrusions under their hood, right at ear height, tenting the green fabric in place.

  My eyes narrowed, and as the battle outside the barrier began to draw to a close, I fixed my gaze on the stranger. Then, very pointedly, I lifted my still burning sword-staff and pointed it, blade first, at what I suspected…

  Might just be an Elf.

  “Identify yourself,” I said flatly, injecting a growl into my voice.

  By the words of the ‘good’ Captain Bronzle, the mad Elves under the thrall of the equally Mad God had unified and allied themselves with the Principality. The fact I might have just found one of them in a random woodcutters camp wasn’t…terribly out of my expectations. It was believable that there were Elven elements that might have been embedded into Dwarven settlements, even if it was a stretch that they might have been here.

  Stranger things had happened, though.

  The point was, though, that any Elf I found…

  Was my enemy.

  They froze in place, from where they had been attempting to slip away from the group. Though I couldn’t see their eyes under the murk of their hood, I knew they had to be fixed upon the burning tip of my blade. Still, they didn’t speak, nor did they shift from their frozen position.

  I set my shoulders and took a single step forward. The Dwarves around us scattered out of the path of my sword-staff and didn’t intervene as I advanced on the stranger in their midst. I only stopped when the point of my blade lay only inches away from the hood of their cloak. They were lucky that the coruscating flames of my Skill didn’t actually produce any heat.

  But the light it cast dispelled all doubt. That was definitely an Elven face, under that hood. A woman, and young at that, strangely fair despite the dirt smudging her cheeks. But…there was something strange about them, to me. My experiences with the feral Elves spiritually conquered by the Mad God had taught me that all of them possessed the same animalistic amber colored eyes.

  But this girl’s irises were a chillingly familiar emerald green. When a single strand of blonde hair slipped out of her hood to hang over her face, I was hit with an extremely intense feeling of vertigo. All I could do was stare at the young Elven woman in shock, as I felt my grip on Vis Maledicta Exactoris slip, and I shrank back down to my human form.

  For a moment…for a moment I thought I was staring at Aveline. But…no, my daughter was hundreds and hundreds of miles away from here, safely within the war wards within Blutstein.

  And then my focus slipped when I heard a cheering sound erupt from behind me. I instinctively jerked my head around to find the forces I had led here to save the Dwarven woodcutters, celebrating their victory over the horde. Of said monsters, the only trace left of them was faint swirls of Miasma and the glittering of countless Cores in the underbrush.

  While I had been preoccupied with this strange Elf, they had triumphed without me.

  I sighed and released my hold on my other Active Skills. As the ghost thorns of Might of the Wyrdwood and the fiery sword of The Scintillant Blade faded away, I turned back to face the Elf I’d been holding hostage.

  I was somehow unsurprised that the very Dwarves I had come to save were now rallying around her. A few of the women were clutching the arms of the teenage Dwarf closely, while I was subjected to their glares. A handful of the men, however, had stepped in front of the girl protectively. They, too, were brandishing weapons, as if I were a monster to defend the weak from.

  Which, to be fair…

  I had just been an eight-foot-tall tall scaled bat-man only a few seconds ago.

  “Whoever ye are,” The lead Dwarf, an older male with long, greying hair and a bare face that denoted him as a commoner, said defiantly. “We don’t want no trouble, now! J-Just get along, and leave us be!”

  I think some of my subordinates, who had been approaching the confrontation in the aftermath of the battle, didn’t much care for his tone. “Excuse me?” Gustave said in a particularly offended tone. He crossed his arms over his chest as dozens of expedition members crowded behind me. “We just saved your miserable lives, and this is how you repay us?”

  On one hand, I was a bit gratified by the agreeing murmurs I heard behind my back. But on the other hand…

  “This isn’t productive,” Maria said sharply, stepping forward and reestablishing discipline. The murmurs from my soldiers immediately ceased, but the Captain of my Stewards had already dismissed them. Instead, she was frowning at the Dwarves who had arrayed themselves against us. “What seems to be the problem, goodman…?”

  “…Vallejo,” The aged Dwarf said roughly. “And there ain’t gonna be a problem, as long as yer monster man there don’t threaten our tree-gel no more.”

  Tree-gel? I wanted to laugh at that, as Maria mouthed the words to herself in visible confusion.

  But I didn’t. Instead, I was too busy staring into the eyes of the teenage Elven girl over the heads of the Dwarves in front of her.

  As I watched, I swear I saw a spark of recognition appear in those hauntingly familiar orbs.

  And then she spoke. “Wait,” The young Elf woman said, in an incredibly surprising deep voice. It was strangely rough, as if this were the first time she had spoken in her life. She stepped forward, against the protestations of the Dwarves who had been protecting her only moments before. She lifted one arm and pointed at me sharply. “You…I. Know, you. You,” She said, then directing her finger to point towards her own chest. “Know, me. Seen, me.”

  All heads in the Dwarven clearing immediately swiveled towards me. I really didn’t appreciate the mix of suspicion and accusation I saw in those gazes.

  I held up my hands defensively. “I’ve never seen this girl in my life!” I nearly shouted. “I’ve only ever met one Elf that didn’t want to kill me and gnaw on my bones, and this girl!” I jabbed a finger at her. “Is not over two and a half thousand years old!”

  Now the looks I was getting were distinctly confused, and I didn’t blame them.

  That was a really specific, almost impossibly long time for someone to live on Vereden.

  Then, the girl spoke again, and what she said sent shockwaves of realization up and down my spine. “No,” She shook her head. “Not Elder. But, same village. Me-I from Ealáindeall.”

  My jaw dropped, then.

  That…that was the name of Alveron’s Elven haven on the other half of the continent. The place where he had gathered all of the other Elves he had freed from his insane grandfather’s grasp.

  The girl nodded at the visible shock on my face. “Yes, you saw. When you leave, you see me. Stand next to Elder. Me, Kierla,” ‘Kierla’ said, thumping her chest with one fist proudly. “Scout for Elder. You…Hart?”

  I lowered the finger that I had forgotten was still pointing at the girl. I…think I remember what she was talking about? My Core Lattice helpfully pulled up the memory of my departure from Sancthaven. I…do remember seeing a smaller female form standing at the side of Alveron, as the two of them watched us leave.

  Huh.

  Hadn’t I…just been thinking about Alveron, and what he would think of all this going on with his people?

  Perhaps I would find out, before long…