The Bitter Bite

[Alydia Ettermire]

Closed

Winter comes late to the plains, but it is brutal.

Air from Berevar, colder than despair, roared over Salvar, ripped over the Dagger Peaks, and then slammed down on Raiaera with all the loving affection of a boar bear among a rival’s cubs. Knife’s Edge always had snow more than a month before Eluriand, but when mid-winter hit, everyone’s lungs burned with the cold. That the Raiaerans had enough poise to hide their discomfort from the rest of the world engendered rumors that they were immune to it, or that the weather was mild.

Alydia Ettermire, only a few thousand years removed from her fairer kin, knew better. Instead of her usual catsuit, so tight it could almost be a second skin, she wore thick, dense cotton. Interwoven through it were copper wires that connected to a switch and a power cell. When activated, it flooded the garment with a little heat. Her sturdy vlince coat was buttoned and tied as tightly as it could be, her boots and gloves were of Berevan manufacture, and the sharply-pointed tips of her ears were tucked into her hat. The winter wind’s bitter bite ripped indifferently through all her preparations. She might as well have been standing naked on the snow-blown landscape.

Eluriand.

Bright blue eyes scanned the cracked and abandoned buildings. They were even more worn now than they had been just a couple of short years before, when the Necromancer was bearing down on the Elven lands with his full wrath and avarice. Very few ventured this far into Raiaera anymore. For the most part, only the desperate or foolish attempted the trek. Without exception, only the exceedingly hardy or the exceedingly cunning survived.

Scarlet rippled and cracked in the wind, her trademark coat marking her position as clearly as a flag to anyone who might have been in the area. Outside Eluriand’s crumbling walls, Alydia wasn’t worried about any wayward undead; they were frozen until spring’s thaw. Nor was she worried about any animals; the ones native to the plains had the good sense to curl up in the warmest nooks they could find. Perhaps other adventurers were desperate or foolhardy enough to walk Raiaera in this weather, where eyelashes turned to icicles, but that was unlikely. Even adventurers liked their creature comforts.

That was why Alydia had chosen winter’s darkest depths. There were clues in Eluriand, sure as Raiaerans loved starlight. There were clues to the Corruption’s nature, clues to how it could be destroyed, clues to heal what had been hurt. In the mad dash to escape with the survivors, in the hectic turmoil of the intervening years, there had been no opportunity to return and research. With Istien claimed by forces unknown, few found the former capital worth the effort. They just didn’t understand.

All knowledge does not come from books. Many Raiaerans had forgotten or never learned that simple fact. Some things - good and bad - had to be breathed, touched, tasted, or immersed in to grasp their subtleties and their parts in the bigger picture. Any little Alerian sewer-rat knew that. Any first-year beat detective in a minor kyorl knew that. Academia was a wonderful thing, but it was not the only thing.

Thin shoulders shivered at another vicious gust, and the thief flipped the switch on her wrist for another few seconds of precious warmth. She had come from the south, walking her lonely way to her destination, but she had announced her intentions months in advance. The sect of Bladesingers and researchers dedicated to curing Raiaera permitted her to walk their land with only a minimum of official harassment, so long as she was properly escorted. She was a thief known for stealing improbable items of unknowable value - including, rumor had it, Istien itself.

Alydia wondered who they would send this time. Her old friend Hyanda? Gruff but good-natured Glorfindel? A Bladesinger whom she had never met? The one-time detective hoped not. She was here to work, and a new Bladesinger was always a delicate dance. Many of them refused to trust her and her intentions, and she had to be wary of each and every move. A wrong tilt of the hat or a poorly-timed word in her native tongue could wreck days of good impressions and she’d have to start all over again, at best.

Hands rubbed together inside thick gloves. Whoever came, the Alerian hoped he or she did so quickly. At least once we’re in the city, we will be free of the worst of this wind.

[Siegfried]

The High Elf Capitol, Eluriand, a place lost to the ruin of war and scarcely traversed by the living. Many secrets of their people still lie within the ash and rubble of its once beautiful streets. Now, the blight consumed the ornate Elven architecture of stone and magic. The city was dark, and the buildings quiet. The gibbering ghouls and undead which trudged its wastes stood motionless, succumbed to the deep frosts of Berevar's winter gales. Even in its quiet slumber, only the determined, the desperate, or the foolish risked entering the gates.

Siegfried did not know which of the three he was. In fact, he may even be all of them.

He was determined to follow the command of his Bladesinger brethren for this escort detail. He was desperate to learn more about Xem'Zund's remnant blight and how -if- there was a way to cleanse it. Lastly, he was a fool to accept and more so to go it alone, accompanied only by a stranger.

However, in the time he traveled by horseback, the thought of another who shared his curiosity enlightened him. Perhaps he would meet a future comrade to brave the darkness which washed over Raiaera. At the very least, he would have the opportunity to sift the remains without scrutiny. That was the true purpose to this accepted venture.

His steed, property of the Bienost Guard, stopped several hundred yards from city's edge. Even the seasoned animal felt the thick evils which emanated from the hollow ground. Though the Bladesinger tried to coax the animal, it only kicked, whinnied, and stomped in place with eyes wide. The elf dismounted with no options but to continue on foot. With much protest from his travelling companion, Siegfried anchored the reigns to a blackened oak beside the main road. Restricting the beast only served to stir it more.

"Easy!" the Bladsinger sternly, yet softly commanded. "Easy..."

He removed a winter glove and placed his warm, bare hand upon its head between panicked eyes.

"Calm yourself. There is no danger." The steed slowed his struggle.

"Easy. Wait here until we are done." The Elven Crusader stroked at the horse's snout. By now, it had gained back its nerves, save for quick, deep breaths.

"Good. I won't be long," Siegfried assured. The beast nickered in response.

He made his way around the animal and removed his personal effects from the saddlebags including the written missive to meet a woman with a red hat. He strapped on what he could and tucked the papers inside his uniform. Before he made for the city, he offered a reassuring pat to his companion then put his gloves bank onto chilled fingers.

As he trekked the remainder on foot, the northern winds swept across the porcelain plains. Chill danced through his locks of dark hair and nipped at nose, ears, and lips. Ever since the blight, winters grew more and more harsh in each passing year. His woolen under attire usually staved the cold, but this time it struggled to contain the warmth. His horse had provided heat up until now but without him, the Bladesinger wished to be out of the wind.

As more rubble and winter foliage was put behind him, the High Elf noticed a figure as he approached. The closer it got, the more he confirmed this person to be his target. The red had was easily visible, but once he discerned her dark Aleran skin, a lump swelled in his throat. Siegfried hated the racial divide between the elves almost as much as the blight itself. In these dark times, old grudges had no place. This Bladesinger understood that. Others were not so easy to give up their senseless hate.

"Hello!" the elf called out with a wave. "Would you happen to be Miss Ettermire?"

She responded, but the words were lost in the wind. Siegfried closed the remaining open ground between the two. Alydia's lustrous black hair and contrasting blue eyes became strikingly noticeable. Her otherwise unimpressed expression indicated an indifference toward her guest. Was it his race? No, most of his Bladesinger brethren were of the High lineage. Perhaps she expected another?

"I am Siegfried Alfheim, the Bladesinger posted to you." He placed one hand on the hilt of his blade, the other in a fist over his chest, and bowed. "It is a pleasure."

He rose to meet her with a stern expression and two vibrant hazel eyes.

"Before we continue, I want to make something very clear. I am not the type to squabble over grudges of old. One's actions decide a person's worth, not their past or the color of their skin. I will treat you with the respect of any other. All I ask is the same in kind. Is that agreeable?" Siegfried assumed his usual formal posture and extended to her an open palm.

[Alydia Ettermire]

It was not the Bladesinger’s voice Alydia listened to during his initial approach. It was his body language. From a distance, his hair marked him as a stranger. Alydia instinctively steeled herself for the inevitable sword to her throat, the suspicious glare, the biting words. Another bitter winter day, another delicate Serenti two-step to convince another unfriendly Bladesinger that she still had no intention of harming his homeland.

This routine begins to grow old. My next impossible heist needs to be elven racism… I wonder if I can get the High Graf and the Lady in the same room at the same time.

She turned to him as he closed in, body straight and feet shoulder width apart. In this powdery morass, his armor would drag him down; mobility was her advantage. Every Bladesinger the thief had ever met had slashed first and spoken after. It was the hate carefully cultivated from childhood, the training drilled into them from the second they began to pursue the military mantle of a Raiaeran defender. She could no more blame them for it than she could a frightened dog for biting an intruding hand.

That didn’t mean she was happy to keep risking her life on needless introductions.

Siegfried’s formal, courteous greeting elicited surprise, then relief. Rare was the Raiaeran who could set aside old animosities- indeed, a researcher with whom she worked closely would have treated her with arrogant contempt in the days before the Necromancer. Now he was almost openly hostile.

Different people react in different ways to the same wound.

She smiled when he finished speaking, extending her hand to shake his. “Alydia Ettermire del Ettermire,” she responded in her usual silky purr. “I find neither sense nor reason in the old disputes between the monarchy and the High Bards. Would I be here if I did?” She let the question hang, rhetorical, only for a second before turning to the tall, crumbling wall in front of them. “Come, cousin. Let us leave the open ground.”

Light feet picked an easy path over the squeaky snow, followed closely by heavy boots that crunched through layers of ice. Solid stone greeted the frost-nipped travelers, cold and foreboding as the gates to the Valshath d’Isto. “There is a gate,” Siegfried called to her over the wind. “Not two hundred yards east.” There was no way for them to scale these walls, nor promise the ancient, badly-damaged architecture would support their weight.

Alydia turned to the shiny knight with a smug smirk. “What need have we for that?” A gloved hand pressed against icy stone, shadow flickered around her fingers, and a man-sized hole appeared in front of her. She took a step back and to the side, motioning to her assigned protector. “After you.”

The Skyknight looked at his temporary ward, then into the war-ravaged city. He drew his sword defensively and strode through the opening.

The wind’s predatory howl died to a plaintive whine the instant Alydia sealed the breach behind them. Once-graceful spires erupted from the ground around them like broken skeletal fingers clawing from the grave to destroy the little ants crawling into their necropolis. The view, gray and bleak as the veil of death, stretched on as far as either pair of eyes could see. Aside from the two elves, nothing stirred in Eluriand to indicate that anything was living or had ever lived within its confines. Suddenly the cold on the plains was less cruel than the truth of the city.

Alydia walked past Siegfried as he sheathed his sword. “Long have I wished to walk openly in the shadow of these walls. But not like this.” A foggy breath streamed from her lips, flowing away with the same ephemeralness as the Eluriand of the past. “The first time I came, weavers turned silk thread into brocade just over there, and a little beyond that curve was a restaurant. The bread was hot out of the oven and covered in honey… nearly edible.”

The thief stepped out from the seclusion of the alley and into the open street. Emotion clogged her sinuses and throat for a moment - an empty feeling at her side where a dead man ought have been, sorrow for the widow and orphans who felt his loss far more acutely than she ever could, rage for the tens of thousands of lives needlessly destroyed in the Necromancer’s genocide.

“The last time I was here was early winter, several years ago. The air was thick with harpies, undead thronged so thick that they crushed each other. In all of Eluriand, there were thirty survivors. Most fled ahead of the horde, of course, but there were a few hundred stubborn, desperate, or foolish. We lost a third of them on the way back to Nenaebreth. I don’t know how many of the remainder still live.”

A mild breeze rustled her coat, and she looked at the golden-eyed Bladesinger. “Your last days here were unpleasant as well, weren’t they?”