Chapter 68: Book 2 chapter 15: Far reaching influence.

Eirlathion’s POV

Eirlathion rubbed his chin where his wound had just healed. Sagel had finally found them some berries and they stopped to pick some. It had not been a deep or severe wound, just one enchanted berry was enough to fully heal him. The spell, however, had enchanted nearly half the berries laid out in the pile in front of him.

He looked over to the boys as he considered what to do with the remainder. It wasn’t just the healing effect that the berries gained, they also became an extremely sustaining source of food for those who needed to eat. At this time, those two were about the only ones in the group who needed to eat at all, the spirit energy they were generating was so great that it served to completely remove that need for the rest of them. Really, giving them to the boys might be a very good use of the remainder. It would save on the preserved food they had brought along for them just in case. At the same time though, it would also be good to keep some in case of future injuries.

Well, so long as they could find more berries, he could always cast the enchantment again. As such, these are likely the more plentiful food source, and they take up less space. Perhaps looking at it the other way around was good too. If something happened and they needed to run, the food they had brought along was one of the most likely things to be left behind. From that view, it would be better to work through that food first.

Eirlathion shook his head at himself. When viewed like this, it seemed quite clear that the latter choice was the better one. However, there was one critical flaw in this thinking, one missing element that made the former the undeniably correct choice. They simply had no way to store the berries. As things stood, if he did not keep them in his hand they would simply be rolling all over the floor of the wagon and eventually get crushed.

He sighed at himself and held out his hand filled with the berries to the boys. “Here, go ahead.” He told them. They looked a bit at his chin and then back to the berries. They had just seen him enchanting them obviously, so understandably they seemed a bit nervous about the idea of taking them. “It’s fine, they will keep you feeling full longer.” He said, and then tried to think of how to say that in their language. (Uhh… not b-bad. Feel… long hunger not.)

Gaerien giggled at him. He was sure he hadn’t said that well at all, and it seemed he had only managed to confuse the boys.

“Ahh.. I understand.” Rolwen responded in Elven, giving him a teasing smile as he took a berry and ate it. Soon, Levin followed his example and joined in.

Well then, that’s one issue fully resolved, now they were going to have to think of the next big issue on the list. It was about a three day journey to the Heaven’s Scar on foot. The wagon would slow their pace a bit, but not by too much. It would likely be best to assume a 4 day journey. This would mean they were going to have to figure out their sleeping situation.

With how dense the spirit energy was getting, it should be theoretically possible to keep traveling through the night. However, most of the more powerful demons, especially those of anthropomorphic forms such as the tainted elves who were far more cunning, tended to be out during the night as well. Not to mention, they would be blind at night while the threats were said to be able to see in the darkness as though it was daylight.

Even if sleep was not an issue, there was just too much risk involved in traveling at night. At the same time though, they also couldn’t be stationary at night. That would just be begging for an attack. No, they were going to have to start thinking about finding shelter.

It would be draining, but Eirlathion’s mastery over the green word was likely to a point he could make a normal tree act like a spirit inhabited Lakira tree. They could just leave the wagon outside. Really, the only trick would be finding a tree that’s large enough. It wasn’t common for a tree to grow as wide at the base as lakira trees do. Perhaps they would just have to be cramped in with each other for a while, but really there was a serious question as to whether they would even have enough space to lie down.

“Hey!” Eirlathion heard a very deep resonating voice from outside. It was the voice of Sagal’s current enlarged bovine form. With such a large body and large vocal chords, every word he said in that form practically boomed.

Upon hearing that voice, Eirlathion came to the front of the wagon. “Hey, you called?”

“What do you make of that?” Sagal said, slowing his steps significantly as he gestured with his large head. Eirlathion looked where he was indicating and he could immediately tell what the concern was.

“Those trees?” He asked to confirm. It was clear enough those trees had to be the issue Sagal was bringing up. They were the only really weird thing around in immediate view. No matter what way he cut it, they looked strange. It was as though three trees had all fused together. It was not uncommon to see things like this, one or two trees that grew into each other due to their bases being so close, but there was something that didn’t quite look natural about this.

Sagal approached closer to the trees, and then before the wagon had fully lost momentum he just fluidly allowed his body to melt out of the wagon’s yoke and became a wolf, a smaller quadruped in other words, and simply continued walking at a quickened pace without having ever lost a step from his Ox form.

After he had approached closer to the trees, Sagal turned into his natural form and Eirlathion could see his base pale pigmentless skin for a moment before the blue color he seemed to prefer washed over his features. Eirlathion collected his staff just in case and then jumped down to follow Sagel as he seemed to be walking around the trees and looking at the ground.

“This is not natural,” Sagal said as Eirlathion caught up with him and stood at his side. The changeling gestured toward where he was looking. A large section of the ground had clearly been disturbed, and the pattern was pretty clear. It looked as though a tree had been completely uprooted from that spot. Not only that, the disturbed soil was very fresh, it did not look like it had even rained once since the tree had been uprooted. What’s more, there were also very clear signs of something very heavy having passed over the surface between that location and the merged trees.

“I do not smell signs of any kind of anthromorph near here recently.” Sagel said.

“Does that include satyrs?” Eirlathion asked. Satyrs were said to be the supreme masters of the green word, second only to dryads. A satyr could have easily done this, and they would also not smell like your typical far less hairy anthromorph.

“Satyrs are one of the first thing I suspected, but no, I don’t smell anything like a goat either.” Sagel denied the possibility.

This was definitely weird, but if they had ruled out all the other possibilities then there was one last thing that struck him as what might have happened. Eirlathion got a bad feeling. “Alright, I’m opening it.” He said and placed his hand on the side of the tree as he began pushing his mana and a larger than normal amount of spirit energy into the tree. Sagel got into a guarded position, ready to pounce at a moment’s notice, and his eyes seemed to glow for a moment as he must have adjusted them to become more light sensitive.

The tree opened far more easily than Eirlathion had expected. He knew his power had increased by cultivating near the boys, but this actually felt every bit as easy as if this was an actual lakira tree. Eirlathion had a dark expression on his face at this. This only served to reinforce his suspicions.

Sagel carefully eyed the interior as it began to light up with a soft green glow. As Sagel seemed to relax his guard, Eirlathion stepped inside. It was not especially spacious inside, but it was just big enough to accommodate them for the night. The first thing that he noticed upon entering was that there were four mats that seemed to be made of some kind of woven grass lined up side by side, and at the head of three of them were a piece of canvas that seemed to be wrapped around something in a shape that seemed to make for an excellent pillow. As for the fourth mat, there were two things on it that removed all doubt as to who had made this place.

The fourth mat also had one of those pillows on it, but it was shaped differently. Instead of being at the head of the mat, it was lined up on the side of it, and it was also very long and extended the entire length of the mat making it rather clear it was meant for multiple people who were very small in size to sleep side by side. And, placed right in the middle of this mat was a white dress in the exact style of the one he had once made for Aerien.

“Che!” Eirlathion tisked. “Well, I’ve figured out who made this place now!” He said bitterly. Sagel followed him in and looked around the room.

“Hmm… I agree. That’s pretty impressive, I realized that dryad’s power was high when I saw the size their tree grew to, but to think their territory extended out this far. We are an entire day’s travel away from the village.

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Eirlathion let out a sigh, prompting Sagel to give him a strange look. “What!?” He asked.

“Look, I realize you still feel betrayed over what happened at the village, but…”

“I know! There is no sense letting emotion cause me to spurn a safe place to rest in an area as dangerous as this. It’s just… I’m going to go get Túeth and the kids.” As he was on his way out, he felt his shoulder grabbed by Sagel, causing him to look back. It was hard to read the face of a changeling in his natural form, but Eirlathion got something of a sense he was struggling with how to say something difficult as he gazed at him with those large black eyes.

“Look,” he finally said, “you may find this hard to believe, but your dryad was actually rather merciful compared to what could have happened. If they were a normal dryad, every single man, woman, and child would have been personally strangled by vines or beaten to death by trees. Even if they didn’t, then... well, the queen has a duty to keep the dryads appeased, and in service to that she likely would not have stopped with just Cundo village, the village that had sent their support would have been targeted as well. Their methods... although cruel, the way they were done was likely the way that would keep the loss of life to a minimum.”

Eirlathion breathed a sigh at Sagel’s speech. “I know.” He said darkly. “I know! I know all about how cruel and selfish the spirits are! I just... I was an idiot and thought Nymph was different. I’m mad at myself more than anything. As soon as they became a dryad, that...” He let out another sigh. “What Dryad said to me, it was almost as if they were saying the entire madness that took place last night was some twisted kind of test, and that I had failed that test. They were looking for me to stand up to them and call them out, and they said something that implied that if I had then they might have stopped what was happening before the death toll got as high as it did.”

Eirlathion put his hand on the wall to support himself, leaning heavily on his staff with the other. He was shaking visibly. He took a deep breath to try and get ahold of himself. “Heh, it seems even I wound up being a target of Dryad’s cruelty last night. I am really not certain what I feel more betrayed over.”

“Hmm...” Sagel responded. He remained silent for some time.

“Right, I think I’m Ok now. I should go get the others.”

“Eirlathion.” Sagel called him back. He turned to look the changeling man in the face as he fixed him with those large completely black ovoid eyes. He took a deep breath. “This world is not something that is such a simple thing. Sometimes, you need to be cruel to be kind, and in order to protect the ones you love you must do things that will make you be seen as the very incarnation of evil by others.”

“Is that one of the lessons that human society has taught you?” Eirlathion bit back.

“That is something I have seen first hand. It goes for this country every bit as much as any other. A fey’s life is just slower than that of a human, and so it is much easier to forget this truth of the world. I will have you know, we are seen as a very cruel and frightening race by those humans.”

Eirlathion wanted to object to what Sagel had just said, but then he recalled the looks Aerien and the boys had always been giving him. It was difficult to deny. After all, didn’t they steal children from the humans? They had their reasons, and they did not treat the humans they took with cruelty, but wouldn’t any elf be furious if someone stole their child?

He did not say a word in response. He just left the small house and went back to the wagon. “It’s safe.” He said with a bitter tone as he looked across to Túeth. “It looks like Dryad has power out this far, they prepared this place as a temporary rest house for us.”After delivering this news, he sat down in his spot in the wagon as he tried to sort out his thoughts on this issue.

Sagel had not said anything he didn’t know or couldn’t have figured out on his own, but it had stirred up a lot of dark things inside him that he had never dealt with before. This he had lied to himself about for a long time. A foolish man may be able to completely excuse these things, but Eirlathion was no fool. For him, these were things that were just too difficult to think about. It was just the way things were done.

They kidnapped human children because they needed them to survive, and besides, humans treated their own children with cruelty anyway. They were only saving them from their suffering at their parent’s hands. But wasn’t that just an excuse? They killed the grey elves because they attracted the dark elves, but Dryad had put the lie to that superstition just this morning. There were just too many things he had accepted as normal and tried to never think about before, and now they were all coming up to haunt him at once due to Dryad’s actions last night.

And besides, cruel to be kind? That was just another excuse that rang hollow to his ears. No, the scary thing about it was that, in the specific case of Dryad, he actually could see that excuse applying to the situation. In this specific case, it may really be right, but it was all other possible cases where it just did not seem to measure up. Weren’t all the things they were doing until now things that excuse could have applied to as well? But in the case of all these other things his own race was implicated in, that did not seem like an excuse that really measured up to the situation.

There must be other ways. Couldn’t elves and humans just live together? No, that was impossible. Sagel had just said the reason. The fey were viewed as a frightening and cruel people by the humans. So, if the humans saw a fey, wouldn’t they just want to drive them out or kill them if they tried to approach in peace? There did not seem to be any good solution to this situation. Why did things have to be so complicated. Was continuing the cruelty really the only way?

“M... Master, is something wrong?” Túeth’s concerned voice snapped him out of the thoughts that were consuming him.

Eirlathion let out a sigh and looked over at her. She had Levin and Aerien in her arms, Levin helping to secure the child laying limply against her. She had kept growing over the course of the day, it was already clear she was the same size as the boy who was trying to help hold her. It was quite clear it was an awkward position for him.

“Hmm... I have a lot on my mind lately.” He told her, “It is not something to get into now. I have to sort my thoughts out on this a little more.”

She did not seem to know how to respond to that. After a brief silence between the two she looked up to him again. “I.. I am not sure how to handle Gaerien. She still won’t let me even touch her.” Eirlathion looked over to Rolwen and Gaerien and considered this issue. Well, he knew those two better than the girl’s mother did, as sad as that may seem. Maybe he could figure something out.

“You go on ahead, let me deal with the other two.”

Subscribers' quotes of the chapter

"Yay stand your ground girl. It's the only chance you'll get cuz when Aerien comes back she's bigger than you!"

-meowingLexi

"it will make a funny image little sis holding big sis like a doll =P"

-Roy

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