Chapter 57: Book 2 Ch 7 (Part 1): Cold hatred.

Eirlathion’s POV

fury

Dryad continued to not let him out through the night. Since Sagel was upstairs, he had Dryad bring Túeth’s bed down for him to use. She did not seem interested in using it herself. She spent the night in the same bed with the children.

Eirlation had slept very poorly. He had no idea what was actually going on outside. The walls were thick enough that sound was not able to get through. However, Eirlathion did not need to hear it in order to know. Dryad’s wrath over Aerien had gone much farther than he had ever dreamed possible. It was not like he didn’t understand why they were angry, but he knew that anything that was taking this long was definitely going way too far.

He felt himself growing afraid. All of this change that was happening. Tomorrow when he woke up, he was certain this would no longer be a place he could stay. Dryad and Nymph were not the same tree spirit, no matter how much Dryad still thought of him as their master. This dryad was a monster. Eirlathion began wondering in the night if it might be possible to reason with this monster, but his fear kept him from even trying. It was all just... too horrible.

This fear quickly turned to guilt. If he could convince Dryad to stop whatever was happening, perhaps it could end before more people got swept up. This fear was for personal reasons. He had lived for more than 1,000 years. He ought to have it in him to shove some interfering emotions aside. However, he was too afraid to prove to himself just how completely everything he knew had been turned upside down. His tree spirit had become an extremely malicious dryad. If he were to talk to that dryad and find the same poisoned callousness for the lives of others that he has glimpsed as they told him to go inside, it would confirm that his entire life at this point had been effectively destroyed.

As the fear and guilt mixed together, it made it even harder for him to confront Dryad. If he did it now, then why couldn’t he do it earlier? If he did it earlier, he could potentially have saved lives. If he acted now, he would have to admit his guilt in not acting sooner and allowing those people to die. Eirlathion had always thought of himself as a strong figure, one of the most respected people in the village. His word had weight. He was given power, and he thought his years had given him wisdom and strength. This moment in time was rapidly proving to him just how wrong all of that was.

-

Eirlathion found himself waking up in the morning drenched in his own sweat. His legs were curled up to his chest in a fetal position. It had been a tough night. He was aware of a soft green glow near him, and he turned to see Dryad sneering down at him. This rocked Eirlatihon to the core. What had happened to Dryad over the night? They seemed to still at least be a little helpful with him yesterday, telling him all that stuff about Aerien and such. They had shown him something of a kind face still at that time. Something had changed, even more than it already had.

“Hmm... I’m disappointed master.” Dryad said with a look of disdain. “I thought you would have been stronger. I think it’s time for you to go outside and see what has been happening over the night.”

Eirlathion was stunned, and a knot of sickening dread that surpassed even what he felt yesterday when he saw that dragon in front of his house gripped his insides as though trying to compress his stomach and all his other abdominal organs into a small ball. What was it that changed so much about Nymph upon becoming a dryad? Was it all of this knowledge from outside the world? In front of those judgemental eyes, Eirlathion in his thousand years of age was feeling like a mere child who had done something very wrong and earned his parents’ disapproval.

He was no fool. He knew exactly what Dryad was going to bring him to see. They were going to destroy the last illusion he had that he would preserve any bit of his former life after this. Eirlathion knew that he could not put this off. A refusal or hesitation to move now would only lower him farther in Dryad’s eyes. For some inexplicable reason, he actually found that meant something to him. Once again, the vision of himself as a child in front of the disapproving parent solidified in his mind. 

He stood up from the bed like a man being taken to the gallows. His rich green colored robes smelled of his sweat, and still felt very freshly damp. As soon as he was standing, the wall next to the bed opened up and he was faced with an expectant glare. He would not have the chance to fix anything about his shameful condition.

The passage behind him closed as soon as he stepped through, but the stairway and the hall below were still lit with a soft green glow. The passage was unusually wide, enough for two adults to stand shoulder to shoulder comfortably, and Dryad’s projection was standing right next to him with an expression that seemed to have softened significantly from what he saw upon waking up. So, it looks like this will be a lot more than just a march to his fate. He was going to be lectured to first.

“So, master.” Dryad began talking as he had expected. “There is something I would like to get your opinion on. What exactly do you think about humans?”

“What!?” Eirlathion responds. Where had this question even come from!?

“I got quite a few memories from Aerien yesterday. I’ve already told you this. Her previous life was spent on a world in which there were no fey, and humans were the only sentient race in the world. I have learned a great deal about the potential of humans from Aerien, both the goods and also the terrible evils that they are capable of. It has given me a great deal to think about, and I wanted to get master’s opinion about humans.”

This was... is Dryad seriously trying to strike up a philosophical discussion at a time like this? The dread inside of him did not subside, but somehow Eirlathion felt his heart lighten at the idea. If Dryad was having thoughts like these, perhaps the worst case he had imagined last night was not what actually happened. As for the question...

“Well, I suppose we all came from humans at some point.” Eirlathion begins talking as he walks down the stairs carefully. “I just have a hard time seeing much good out of them. They have no respect for the lives of others, they seem to be more interested in killing each other than trying to help each other survive.”

“Hmm...” Dryad responds. There is something about that response that sends a chill down his spine as he recalls the worst case scenario that kept him up all of last night.

“Dryad, I didn’t want to ask about this yesterday, but...”

“I know.” Dryad cuts him off. “That’s... the reason why I’m so disappointed in you now. Even that answer you just gave did not even deviate in the slightest from what I had predicted you might say. I was hoping you might surprise me, but... I guess the world as it is just can’t stand up to where Aerien and the others spent their last lives.”

Eirlathion didn’t even know how to respond to such a statement. They were comparing this world to another that he had never known. Another world that, somehow, they claim was better. This would normally be a matter he might want to get more details on, but the circumstances of the situation really didn’t allow for that.

“Dryad, you’re starting to really scare me.” Eirlathion said in a weak voice, stopping at the bottom of the stairs.

“Alright then, I will ask another question. What do you think of yourself after everything that has happened so far?”

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Eirlathion’s finger nails dug into his palms in a pair of white-knuckled tight fists. He took a deep breath and supported himself with his back against the wall as his head tilted down, no longer looking at Dryad’s projection. “I.. I’m far more weak than I once thought myself. I.. all of the learning I’ve done, all of the years I lived, it did nothing to prepare me for a situation where the skills I had perfected over my life had really mattered. I.. I couldn’t protect the girls like I thought I could, and then...”

“Go on...” Dryad coaxed him.

“Dryad! Please tell me! What did you do last night!”

“Nothing, except save a few children.” They said with a sickening smirk that said far more than that had happened. “Well, you know that much is not true, I’m sure. Tell me, how many of the people of this village do you suppose think the same way you do about humans? Well, last night, I showed them that they are ultimately no different from the humans they all look down on with contempt. All I told them was that I would leave the judgement on whether or not someone was guilty of creating yesterday’s situation with Everon. Honestly, I had absolutely no plans to act after they had made their judgement. I would let any judgement and punishment they decided on stand, and call it enough. Do you know what the result was?”

Eirlathion felt the strength go out of him. It was hard to see under the soft green light let off by Dryad’s projection, but his face was completely pale, and he was now leaning very heavily on the wall. His hands were no longer in fists. He had his palms flat up against the wall just to support himself.

“They killed each other.”

He heard his own words coming back to him. His complaint about how horrible humans were to one another. Considering the direction the conversation had been going, it was probably something that didn’t even need to be said. But, Dryad had said it anyway, driving the message in on their point about elves being no different from humans. This cruel statement wasn’t just a concept though. Every single person out there was someone Eirlathion had known personally. He didn’t know every name the way Calanor did, but he had seen their faces and listened to the troubles of 300 elves ever since this village was founded.

Eirlathion had personally planted every single lakira tree that made up this grove 700 years ago. Once word began to spread that a new grove of trees that elves could make their homes in began to circulate, people gradually began to trickle in. He had seen this community rise up from nothing but a clearing the humans had abandoned to the hoards of their own far more brutal variants on the tainted demons. The forest did not extend this far south at that time. It was all a field. It was by his efforts that it began to expand.

Now, all of the people he had known, his efforts over these hundreds of years, in a single night it had all come to pieces. He did not interact that closely, but, he knew every face. He occasionally had to ask for some names, but he had witnessed every birth as this village grew. He had not seen every child’s first steps as they grew, but he had still been here and supported this village every single step of the way since the very first tree, the one he was living in right now, was planted.

“How many.” Eirlathion croaked, asking for the number that had died.

“Among the adults, 77.” Dryad says. “Calanor and his group managed to round up 18, including themselves. Not counting them, there are 27 who are still alive from the other village that came to help us, and 32 from this one.”

Eirlathion’s head snapped straight up. Initially when he heard the number 77, he thought Dryad was talking about those who had died. They meant 77 survivors!? No! That was just too horrible. It was already bad when he thought it was 77 dead, but if that number counted the survivors, then... that meant the actual number of dead was into several hundred.

Several hundred elves... for such a long lived, low birth rate race as the elves, that number was absolutely devastating. It was not like the humans that could just replenish their numbers in a few decades, each woman producing dozens of children. For elves, a woman would be lucky to have three or four children during her entire lifetime, and every single birth was precious. To loose elves in the hundreds, and... at the hands of other elves too!

“At the start, they seemed to be trying to do as I said, determining the guilty and then, on their own initiative, they added a punishment to it. After a while though, the people of this village turned on the ones from outside, and then the two groups were fighting against one another in a small war within the confines of the walls you and the other mages put up.”

“They have not even declared peace or any sort of truce or cease-fire yet.” Dryad continues. “They just became too tired and scared to risk exposing themselves, and their numbers got small enough that all the survivors could huddle together on two different sides of the village. Well then, if you feel like you want to redeem yourself at all for the weakness you have shown so far, how about you go out and try to act as an intermediary to end this?”

Author's note

Hello everyone, back after the 4th of July break. As you can see from the title, this one is posted in two parts. As you might have noticed if you paid close attention, this chapter is also a little short. (It would be a very long chapter if both parts were combined though.)

Anyway, what wound up happening is that the second half of this wound up going in directions that I, at the time I wrote it, thought might be taking the graphic imagry up to levels that were too disturbing. However, the "test group" (AKA the subscribers) tell me that it's no where near as disturbing to them as I imagined it might be.

Well, one way or another, while I was writing this I decided to divide it into two parts and make the second part with the disturbing imagry such that it could be safely skipped by people who didn't want to read about too much graphic descriptions of gore as I described the aftermath. It was apparently unneeded from what I'm told, but I still released them in two parts originally and combining them now would mean eating up an advanced chapter for the subscribers. So, I'm still releasing it in 2 parts here as well.

Subscribers' quote of the chapter

"Oh the carnage! This is indeed a very bad fate. I don't know if I still like this dryad or not..."

-Lantisl

"The dryad is trying to prove a point to old gramps ether and toughen him up a bit, awhile at the same time testing all the new knowledge gained from earth to learn if works on elves as much as earth humans. After all the info from earth has nothing about fey other than random folk lore."

-Roy

Yaaaay! Opposing opinions about Dryad! Mission complete!

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