Part Three (Final)

Voices began anew from outside the cabin, causing Edwin to start. Creeping over to the window nearest to him, he peered out, scanning the murkiness of the night that seemed to last forever. In the distance, he made out a twin pair of lights weaving between the trees, moving closer and closer towards the cabin. As they neared, Edwin espied a band of people, the lights cast by burning torches that two of them carried. There were six in total; four men and a woman. All were armed and garbed in preparation for a fight save for one of the men, who held one of the torches. The last of them he could barely see. They seemed to cringe away from the light so that it never graced their person, though they seemed to stand taller than the rest of the group, even the men.

As the retinue drew closer still Edwin came to recognise two of the men. The first was the unarmed man. His face was like that of a weasel, thin whiskers protruding from his upper lip and his hair dishevelled. His clothes fared no better, grubby and looked to be in dire need of a wash. He was a man Edwin knew from the village, often seen at the inn with a tankard of ale in his hand and a haughty look in his eye. The other person he knew was all too memorable.

“This is the place?” Edwin heard the emotionless eyed man ask. His hood was pulled back and in the light of the torch, Edwin clearly made out Ferric’s killer, casting an eye over the seemingly abandoned cabin. His hair was dark and his facial features shrewd, a coarse stubble covering his jawline. His eyebrows were slanted making it seem as though they were furrowed. This was as far as Edwin could tell that the man showed any emotion, for his eyes betrayed nothing and his voice less still. It was calmly bland of sentiment, but seemed to carry with it the hint of an accent similar to those hailing from Mnevis and had a weight of its own that made Edwin shiver despite himself.

“Should be,” said the weasel-faced man, using his sleeve to wipe his nose. Even his shrill voice seemed to impress how rodent-like he was. “If 'n you’re lookin’ for a house in the middle o’ the woods, this be the only place.” Then, as an afterthought, he added, “Well, this and the place that that ranger owns.”

“No,” said the other man slowly. Edwin watched hatefully as two of the man’s companions smirked at each other behind the weasel’s back. “No, we are not looking for… him. You have our thanks for your cooperation. Your sacrifice will not go in vain.”

“Sacrifice?” The weasely man frowned, and turned in time to see the emotionless man draw a finger across his neck before a blade descended.

As his body crumpled to the ground, the other man strode forwards. Edwin made to back away from the window, but stopped as the man came to a halt several yards from the house. He watched him rummage inside the recesses of his cloak and procure an object from the folds. Raising it out in front of him, Edwin saw it clearly; it was roughly spherical, seeming at first to be some sort of stone, only transparent so that he could see swirling shapes and eddies moving within. Even as he began to wonder what this object was, the man muttered something under his breath, too inaudible for Edwin to hear, and without warning the rock shone brightly, illuminating the surrounding trees and figures in a flash of white so bright it hurt to look.

Toppling backwards in shock and pain, Edwin did his best to blink away the spots in his vision and wait for his eyes to adjust to the darkness once more. Had he just witnessed maegic? But that was impossible. Maegic didn’t exist. Did it?

A commotion outside disturbed his thoughts. The people were shouting again, only this time they sounded fearful. Peering out the window again, he saw two of them were kneeling over the form of one of their fellows, unmoving, whose body had been impaled by a twin set of arrows. The emotionless man stared carefully into the darkness, his face still impassive, and the final person still stood on the edge of the shadows, observing the commotion with an eerie calmness about them.

Edwin’s confusion was soon put to rest as a new figure descended into the fray. They seemed to materialise out of thin air; a living shadow of the unnatural forest. They stood graceful and tall, poised with bow, at the ready in preparation for attack and swathed in a cloak-like shroud of leaves. Their green eyes pierced the darkness as acutely as any arrow. Edwin could only gawk in amazement as he realised who this individual was. An elf! An elf had come to stop the bad men!

Before they could react the elf had released another arrow. It cut through the air and skewered another through the neck, rendering them lifeless. As the other fumbled with their sword, the elf closed the distance between the two and dispatched them with several jabs from a pair of knives before they could even whimper.

The emotionless man watched this ruthlessness unflinchingly. He stood composed, his own sword at the ready. It was a cruel thing, serrated and sharp, with clear sign of use, battered as it was. The elf circled him, shouting something in a language Edwin did not understand too fast for him to hear. The man seemed to understand however, for he smiled emptily and charged forward baldly.

It was a grim dance. The man was taller, wider and far burlier than his diminutive opponent but the elf made up for it with their dexterity, ducking under blows and sidestepping slashes that would otherwise end their life, returning their own cuts and lunges when they were able. However it seemed that the adversaries were evenly matched, neither able to strike the other, and Edwin watched avidly at this dance of death they wove.

Minutes seemed to pass, and the boy saw a trickle of sweat across the man’s brow. Parrying a cut made at his ribs he took a step back from the elf, apparently seeking reprieve, to which the elf responded savagely. They feinted, bounding forwards and driving their knives towards the man’s throat, before curling round to his side and driving a dagger upwards towards the man’s exposed armpit. The man doggedly attempted to evade but was a beat too late, the blade cutting him beneath his left shoulder blade, the elven steel shearing through the ringmail like it was nothing more than silk.

The elf stepped back nimbly from the man, circling him carefully as a wolf might circle an injured doe; a fitting paradigm of the hunter turned prey. The elf spoke again, gibberish to Edwin’s ears, their voice low and filled with contempt. The man said and showed nothing, his face more a mask than flesh and bone. There was no pain there; no anger or panic. He merely flourished his blade in preparation for the inevitable dance to come again. The elf laughed derisively before leaping forwards to begin the fight anew.

The dark figure twitched. Edwin had been so focused on the fight he had almost forgotten they were there. It seemed to happen in slow motion. The figure’s arm seemed to spasm slightly and in that moment a pillar of fire, roaring and howling like a tornado, erupted between the man and the elf, spiralling upwards where it disappeared into nothingness in the canopy far above. Reeling back, the elf flicked a cautionary glance towards the other individual in time to see an arcing blade of flame rushing towards them. Cartwheeling nimbly to the side and out of the way, they sprinted, to Edwin’s horror, towards the house he was hiding in. Even as they did this, a wall of flame sprang up behind them. Roaring, the conflagration rolled forwards towards the elf, following them like a tidal wave, but with a lithe bound, the elf leapt to the roof of the house and disappeared once more into the night, melding into the darkness, leaving the inferno to crash instead against the house itself – the house in which Edwin hid.

Edwin heard an impossibly loud scream as the flaming wall smashed against the cabin, causing the entire building to rock and Edwin to stumble and fall. The building was soon completely ablaze, the flames devouring the aged and crumbling cabin almost instantaneously. Gasping in surprise and panic Edwin scrambled to his feet and ran towards the door, only to have his way barred by a smouldering beam that came crashing down in front of it. The flames writhed eagerly over the old timbers of the house, licking the floor and ceiling like hungry tongues, consuming it quicker than he would have thought possible, as though they were guided by some kind of maegic. But of course, he knew maegic wasn’t real.

Wasn’t it?

“Elven filth!” Edwin heard a feminine voice from outside screech. Their voice seemed to make the very building quake and shudder in response to their evident fury. “Wretched, deficit, inbred filth! You and your kind are a plague on this forest – on this world! Damn, you! Damn you and your kind to the nether! Elven filth!”

Frantically, Edwin ran towards one of the windows intending to crawl out of it, but the flames beat him back, rearing up like a snake in front of him. The blazes were everywhere, making the room unbelievably hot and causing his eyes to sting and cough after cough to rack his body. Wheezing, he collapsed to the floor, his vison beginning to blur and his chest to burn as though the flames themselves were inside him, burning him from the inside out.

“The focal point.” Another voice, emotionless. The sounds from outside became ever dimmer and ever distant to Edwin as his life drained out of him, yet still he managed to hear. “Is it lost?”

“Yes,” came the snarling response. “In my own hubris, I destroyed it. I did not think the elf would be imbecilic enough to leap over the house. Doting, tree-worshipping fools! Damn them! Damn them all!” Their voice lowered to a growl. “And you! Your inept swordplay would have lost you your head had I not intervened. No, do not excuse yourself. It is no matter. Just see to it I do not regret my decision or I will finish what the elf scum started.” There was a moment of quiet in which all that was heard was the roar of flames. “We would do well not to linger lest the elf brings its allies to fall on us. We press on.”

“Very well.” A pause. “What of the boy?”

The other person seemed to consider the question, and Edwin dared hope.

“What about the boy?” the other voice hissed, low and full of malice. “Leave this place to burn and him to his fate. We are done here.”

Tears streaked down his face. He was going to die. He would never see his mother, his sister, his home or his father. He would never see his friends or Oswyn the blacksmith or anyone ever again. With a crushing realisation, he understood that it was not the fear of death that scared him. Rather, the fact that he was going to die here, alone, with no one to help him. That as his skin slowly blistered from the heat and his life ebbed out of him he would die truly and utterly alone.

And then, on the edge of his hearing, song infused with the roaring of flames.

He felt a brushing sensation against his face, tilting his chin so that he faced upwards. Opening his eyes, he stared blearily at a figure that knelt over him, a figure that looked oddly like his mother. Except that her eyes were like rich quartz and her flesh a pale pink as though it had never been touched by the sun, so unlike his mother’s. And she did not speak, but Edwin heard her, whispering a song in his ear that gave him a strength he thought had been lost to him. As his strength returned to him, he saw how beautiful she was, the bright flames licking against her, but never touching or burning the fabric of her clothes, so impossibly white. She only gazed calmly, kindly down at him. Entranced, he dimly remembered the stories the children used to tell of a spirit that haunted the house and that would steal your soul if she caught you. And as he remembered this the beautiful woman smiled, revealing terrifying needle-like teeth even as her eyes rolled back into her head and her skin began to wither and crack from age and her dark raven-like hair bleached and began to writhe and coil around him like serpents.

He tried to scream, but could not for smoke choked his lungs and flames smothered him, burning him alive, even as the sound of the woman’s cruel cackling reverberated in his ears. He was not brave. He was wrong; maegic was real and he was going to die. But he did not want to die. He wanted to go home and see his mother and sister and know that everything would be okay. But it was not to be. The woman’s embrace smothered him.

There was a flash of white light, so bright it was blinding, and an inhuman scream of ecstasy. Or was it fear? His own perhaps? He could not say. But as darkness enveloped him, Edwin saw and thought no more.