Godsforsaken

Chapter 8: Elven Forest

It had certainly been the most bizarre journey we'd ever embarked on.

Traveling to fight Dark Lords was generally seen as something of a pilgrimage, usually done on foot, both to assure the people that the gods were looking out for them by sending Chosen Ones and so that the Chosen One and their companions could right wrongs they found on the way to their destination and grow stronger through them.

Travel in the kingdom usually involved caravans, coaches and just good old-fashioned horse riding.

But thanks to the royal family we'd found out about another way of travel. The royal family would send for a messenger from wherever a delegation needed to go and then a cleric would use the Homeward miracle to immediately transport the entire delegation to that messenger's home. It was a method of travel that basically required a network of messengers spanning an entire kingdom but if such infrastructure was in place it made travel quick and easy. And so the royal family had invested heavily into just such infrastructure.

However, the royal family had no messengers in the Wood Elf territory. While their territory was technically within the borders of the kingdom they were entirely self-governed and didn't even have outposts of the royal guard connecting them to the rest of the kingdom. I didn't think to ask why that was the case until much later, but essentially while the royal family had united most of the tiny fiefdoms that had been there before by fire and sword, not all places had truly been conquered.

For example, the arrangement they had with the southeastern city, Sparta, was essentially a truce and a trade agreement. They had been able to fight back against the royal family but they hadn't been able to beat them. Cowed by the power of Anna's ancestors they had agreed to be part of the kingdom, but with special rights and privileges. They were allowed to govern themselves, they offered tribute rather than taxes (an entirely semantic difference) and their warriors could be hired by the kingdom as mercenaries when needed.

The Wood Elves of the Silvermoon clan had been a bit of a different story, though. They had resisted the royal family's attempts to unify the lands by holing up in their forest and driving out any who entered it and they had kept it up until the royal family had simply decided to ignore them. Once all the lands surrounding their forest had been conquered the royal family had made the elves choose between becoming a self-governed part of the kingdom or having their entire forest burned down around them. They had chosen to be subjugated and paid their taxes while trying to have as little to do with the kingdom as possible. But the agreement guaranteed safe travel for diplomatic delegations coming to talk to them.

Anyway, thanks to these unique circumstances our way of traveling to the elves had been a little unconventional.

First we'd waited for a messenger to arrive, not from the Wood Elves but from the town closest to the forest. Alisha had used her Homeward miracle to transport us directly there and from there on we'd had to walk, which meant it still took us a day to even reach the forest and then several days of traveling through the forest before we found even the faintest signs of the elves.

And by signs I mean we found signs that people of some kind had hunted deer with bows. It took us another two days to actually get our first glimpse of the elves. Alisha had been getting annoyed about it. Everyone in our group could tell we were being shadowed but despite their chief's daughter being with us they didn't show themselves for another two days. It got so bad that we set up overlapping guard shifts so that nobody would ever be awake on their own. After the mystic fruits we'd eaten none of us needed all that much sleep anymore so that kind of sleep pattern wasn't as grueling as it would have been for normal people.

And then, finally, after six full days of trudging through the forest we finally found the Wood Elves. Alisha had assured us we would be reaching the village in the afternoon and we had already resigned ourselves to the fact that we would have to wait until then before we could dispense with this farce, but then, around noon, we were accosted by a guard unit two dozen elves strong, decked out in full combat gear.

The group consisted of twenty-two women and two men, though it was hard to tell at first given that all the elves wore their hair long and the men looked almost as effeminate as the women. It was really the armor that gave it away.

All of them wore scale mail, armor made of tiny overlapping scales of metal that was excellent at warding off slashing and piercing weapons but that provided little defense from blunt impact. Or it would have, but I felt the thrum of enchantments coming from this group and I was almost certain their armor was enchanted to soften blows. The other advantages of scale armor were that it was fairly light, at least when compared to plate, and that it was relatively easy to move in. Well-made scale armor was actually slightly more flexible than leather armor. It made it easier for the wearer to move but it also emphasized the wearer's figure a bit, which made it easy to tell which of the elves did and didn't have breasts. Though, to be fair, elven women tended to be lithe and slender, so none of them were as well-endowed as Yume. Some approached Selene's curves, though.

More importantly, the women had short skirts worked into the armor, which the men lacked.

“Lady Alisha," one of the two male elves said as the entire unit leveled their spears at us. “We're so glad to see you safe.”

“What is the meaning of this?" Alisha asked, shoving past us.

“We have come to save you from these foul humans," the man said as though it was the most natural thing in the world. “Isn't that why you lured them into our forest? So we could take you from their clutches?”

Alisha was fuming. “How dare you? These are my treasured companions!”

“They've brainwashed the young lady!" one of the female elves called from the back and the entire group was getting more belligerent by the moment.

“Now now," I said, deciding to step in. “Nobody has brainwashed any—”

“He's the one the chief warned us about!" another elf called. “The one who abducted and violated the young lady!”

I blinked. What the fuck was going on here?

Alisha stomped her foot and a whirlwind of air magic exploded out from her, blowing everyone back a step. When she was sure she had everyone's attention she pulled the Fairy Quartz necklace off her neck and held it up high. “How DARE you say such things about my honored husband?” And then she spoke more words, words in a language I'd never heard from her before. Later I would learn that this was the ancient language of the followers of the Tuatha Dé Danann, so old that Alisha didn't even use it in her miracles. That, thankfully, made them all look at her in shock.

I couldn't help but worry that she'd made things worse for us in the long run by declaring me her husband when we technically weren't married yet, but at least they were finally listening.

“Lady Alisha," the head guardsman said, “I apologize, but your father has given explicit instructions that we are to arrest this man immediately.”

Alisha glared at him and pronounced each word carefully. “You. Will. Do. No. Such. Thing. Angus.”

The guardsman, apparently named Angus, told her: “I don't mean to insult you, Lady Alisha, but your father insisted. My hands are tied.”

“Look guys, I guess there's been a misunderstanding," I began, stepping forward and immediately there were half a dozen spears pointed at my face.

I felt my eye twitch. I hated petty authoritarians and the sight of those spears in my face made me want to punch something. This kind of behavior was exactly why I hated so many of the gods.

I was about to do something I knew I'd regret in short order when I felt Anna's hand on my shoulder. “My name is Annabella Zafira Trismegistus, Third Princess of the royal family," she said, her voice loud and clear. “I am here on a diplomatic mission and these four serve as my escort. Put those spears away or I will be forced to count this as an aggression towards the crown.”

The hostile glares shifted from me to her.

“We're not scared of the royal family," one very stupid elf said from the back row.

The royal family could raze this entire forest to the ground if they so chose. Gods above, if Anna's mom was even half as powerful as I suspected then the woman could just summon a giant crystal lens and then have a dozen light mages cast spells through it, burning the forest to the ground the same way a child with a magnifying glass might burn ants.

So I couldn't suppress a snort in time and the glares shifted back to me.

“So," I said once I was sure every one of the elves was focused on me. “Are you sure you want to violate the princess' diplomatic immunity or will you just tuck your tails between your legs and bring us to your chief?”

Angus, the leader of the guard unit stepped up close. He was much closer to us than the other guards but at least his spear was still pointed at the sky rather than at my face. “Chief Silvermoon ordered us to arrest you. So that's what we'll do.”

I shrugged. “Your highness?" I asked. “Permission to show them the folly of violating your diplomatic immunity?”

“Granted," Anna said.

I stepped forward and pulled out Helios Edge, the legendary blade I'd taken from Yume's Chosen One after Yume had satisfied her desire for revenge against him. It used to bear a different name, one I would never use out of disrespect for its former wielder, may his punishment in Tartarus be cruel.

Helios Edge was a simple gladius, a leaf-shaped blade with a short handle, with no guard to protect the wielder's hands. It was a weapon made for offense, not defense. In the hands of a skilled wielder it was a devastating weapon, both because of its sharpness and durability and because of its fire enchantment, which wreathed the blade in flame when it was swung with force and sent out lances of fire when thrust.

I advanced on the elf, entirely relaxed. A single mortal didn't even register as a threat anymore after what we'd endured during our time in the dungeon. I had to crush him so utterly and so quickly that none of the others would dare to attack. I needed to make an example out of him.

The real challenge would be the same one Anna had faced in her duel with Richard: Completely overpowering my opponent without actually hurting him too badly.

Before Angus even registered that our fight had begun I had already vanished, using a flash step to move faster than the eye could see.

Of course, that was a misconception. The reason it had taken me an entire day to even grasp the concept of the flash step had been because I'd been thinking of it as a movement technique when it wasn't that at all.

The flash step did not allow the user to move faster at all. Instead it used a burst of raw life force to shift one's position in space itself. It was essentially the type of teleportation really powerful space mages like the royal scribe could do, except using a different source of energy to power it. It was incredibly inefficient, too. The amount of Qi it took to use the Flash Step would have let me use a dozen or more Qi Bursts. Even worse, when moving via a Qi Dash I could use the momentum I'd gained to hit harder but the flash step didn't actually accelerate me so it couldn't do that. The flash step had a few useful properties that the Qi Dash couldn't replicate but in most situations a simple Qi Dash was far more energy-efficient. But right then I couldn't afford to work efficiently. I had to overpower my opponent as fast as I could. And thus, I used the flash step.

My vision lurched and suddenly I stood behind Angus. I grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, catching quite a bit of his long blond hair as I did, and shoved him down onto the ground, using an informal working of Qi to speed the motion up but not to the point of a Qi Burst. If I'd used a Qi Burst with that grip I would have snapped his neck, no questions asked. Instead I simply shoved him face first into the ground with one hand, pressed a knee between his shoulder blades to keep him there and then stabbed Helios Edge into the ground right beside his neck. Once I had him there I canted the blade to the side so that it loomed over his neck like a guillotine ready to fall.

All of that took a lot longer to write than it took to happen. From start to finish my little demonstration had taken maybe two seconds.

“Now will you be polite and bring us to your chief?" I asked, almost but not quite managing to keep my voice level.

In truth I wanted to breathe like a bellows. While I had managed to make the entire display look effortless the flash step had taken a lot out of me and I desperately wanted something to drink and a few moments to catch my breath. Except if I showed that kind of weakness right then the entire gaggle of guards would descend upon me, which would defeat the purpose of making an example like this in the first place.

“Yes,” Angus said, his voice barely above a whisper.

**

And that's how we found ourselves being escorted to the elven village by a group of angrily glaring guardsmen all the way to Chief Silvermoon and his wives.

I was already less than impressed with their hospitality but by the point the chief had called for them to arrest me everyone else's hackles were up as well. Yume's three fox tails were all bushy and standing up straight, her fox ears flattened against her head. Selene and Anna were scowling, but Alisha was literally shaking with anger.

Spurred on by the chief's words the guards were crowding towards me, their spears pointed at me. I was already calculating how to break as many of their spears as I could and possibly their arms before they could react when Anna stomped her foot and two sapphire wings erupted from behind her back.

She glared at the chief and said in an icy tone: “This is the second time our diplomatic immunity has been violated on your orders. If any of your guards lay so much as a finger on my companion I will personally make sure the royal guard will put your people to the sword for your impudence.”

Chief Silvermoon stood up and slammed his fists on his desk: “Diplomatic immunity does not protect this man after what he has done!" he yelled, his face going red.

As I mentioned before, I hate petty authoritarians, which was why I got along with the gods so wonderfully.

“You know," I said, “I've spent the last few hours having wild accusations hurled at me but last I checked you need some sort of evidence to arrest someone.” I smirked. “Unless, of course, you mean to tell me that the noble Wood Elves are nothing more than barbarians who throw people in cages without worrying about such petty concerns.”

The chief looked like he was about to burst a blood vessel. “How dare you?!" he bellowed. “You steal my daughter away from her husband-to-be, violate her in front of him, and then you have the nerve to come into MY home and insult me to my face?!”

What the fuck was this deranged moron talking about?

I felt beyond offended at even just the suggestion of what he had accused me of but before I could lay into the bastard there was a flash of gray and green and then we all found out that while I had been livid, Alisha had been utterly incandescent at those accusations.

The butterfly wings on her back were bigger than I'd ever seen them and where they were usually ephemeral and translucent things they looked almost solid now.

Her voice reverberated with both the mana and the Qi flowing through her and she said, her words so clipped they should have been bleeding: “I have listened to this deranged nonsense long enough. Felix is my husband and he never once violated me or forced himself on me.” Then, with a contemptuous flick of her wrist, she sent out a gust of air that flung all the guards back so they were no longer crowding around me.

“He didn't?" the woman who had been hugging Alisha earlier, presumably her mother, asked.

“Who did you even hear this nonsense from?" I asked.

Chief Silvermoon still glowered at us, though he seemed at least a little cowed by his daughter's incandescent fury. “By her betrothed, of course. I gave my daughter to a powerful Chosen One so that they may sire children together. And yet instead of doing as she was told she ran off with some pathetic commoner.”

I blinked, then blinked again. Then I turned to Alisha, who was likewise blinking. As our eyes met we immediately burst into uproarious laughter, her butterfly wings dissipating as fast as she'd summoned them.

I desperately tried to suck in enough air so I could say, between fits of laughter: “Powerful Chosen One... my... my fucking ass.”

Alisha had tears running down her cheeks as she giggled out: “Weak... hahaha... pathetic com...pffft hahahaha...”

Chief Silvermoon was still frowning at us though his wives looked to be somewhere between amused and bemused.

I held a hand out to Alisha and when she took it I pulled her into me, her back against my chest.

“That powerful Chosen One you speak of?" I asked, my voice calm and serious. “He was so weak he couldn't even break the Dark Lord's armor with his legendary sword. I had to do that for him. And even then he was too weak to pierce the fucker's skin so I had to help him with that as well.”

Chief Silvermoon blinked.

“You sent me out into the world so that I would have children with a powerful warrior," Alisha said as she leaned into me a little harder. “I am in the process of doing just that. Just not quite the way you planned it out for me, father.”

The chief's mouth opened and closed and no sound came out.

“Well," the chief's black-haired wife said, smiling and clapping her hands together, “it seems we were all up in arms for no reason. All's well that ends well!”

“Nice try," Selene said coldly.

Anna nodded emphatically. “If you think you can just brush aside your chief's transgressions you're mistaken.”

The elf's jovial demeanor instantly evaporated.

To be fair it had been a pretty good gambit, trying to sweep their two violations of our diplomatic immunity under the rug while we were caught up in something else, but we wouldn't fall for that. Anna would use those in order to negotiate from a position of strength. She would be able to demand more and give less, forcing concessions out of Chief Silvermoon in exchange for forgiveness of his transgressions. Did that make our treatment worth it? No, not really. I still had some harsh words reserved for the chief. And for the bastard Chosen One who had told him that bullshit story in the first place.

Then the elf who I assumed to be Alisha's mother said: “It seems there have been quite a few misunderstandings and that there are grievances that need to be addressed. Right now everyone seems a little upset, which I hope everyone will agree makes for a terrible environment for conversation. It is almost dinner time. So I propose we find rooms for our guests, have them fed and let them rest. On the morrow we can reconvene. By then everyone should have calmed down and gathered their thoughts.” She looked at Anna and asked: “Would that be agreeable for you, your highness?”

Anna looked from the woman to the chief, who was grinding his teeth but at least was doing his best to school his face. Then she looked at Alisha and me and then to Yume and Selene, who I only just now noticed had both discreetly moved their hands to rest near their weapons.

“There is wisdom in your words," Anna told the elf. “If you are willing to house us for the night we accept your hospitality, Miss...”

The woman smiled and finally I was sure this was Alisha's mother. They had the exact same smile. “Sheila Silvermoon," she offered. “I can't wait to find out how my daughter found her way into the services of a princess.”