Lithoniel

The night was black and cold, an icy breeze fueling the embers of the waning campfires for one last time before smothering them for good. It was like a signal for those big lizards, the salamanders, to give voice to their grievances. All of them started wailing as they felt the bite of the wind lashing on their scaled skin like a merciless whip. They were far from home, used to live deep underground in their warm tunnels and yet, though the molten lava of the boiling vulcanos wasn't far in the north, they were freezing. They couldn't cope with the sudden drop in temperature, and they weren't the only ones.

The elves on the lookout shivered, crossing their arms over their chest as they tried to stay warm, but they could do nothing when the danger came from above in the form of a deceptively thin layer of white. It was the first snow, prelude of the winter to come. Overall, It was a bad night for the sentries, but it was perfect for Rolim and Lithoniel.

No one was looking at them when they approached the palisade, crawling in the mud - that grayish sludge that forms when white snow and black ashes mix - until they reached the east side of the wall. No one heard them when they took out their grappling hooks and threw them, the metal tips plunging deeply on the logs; but above all, no one discovered them when they heaved up, climbing the rope and reached the top of the wall.

The palisade wasn't tall, barely over nine feet, but from the start, it had been built to keep the beasts outside, not other elves. After all, who would be so dumb to sneak inside the biggest camp the elves had built in recent years? Two people, apparently.

Rolim was the first to get off the wall, landing perfectly as he jumped down, his foot steady and strong. Lithoniel came right after, using wisdom and skill rather than strength to cushion the fall and roll on her shoulder when she touched ground.

The encampment was quiet, and the few elves on guard duty weren't patrolling but desperately trying to rekindle the burned-out campfires. They weren't having much success, but it didn't matter. For Lithoniel and Rolim was better that way, as the light of the torches were like beacons, turning the guards into stationary targets, easy to avoid in the pitch black darkness. Everything was going well, except for one thing: they had no idea where the prisoners could be.

We should split up. Lithoniel gestured in that sign language the elves perfected in the last thousand years.

That's a bad idea. Rolim replied, on his face that disapproving frown she had come to know so well.

We don't have time to waste! She said, glancing around her as she searched for potential threats.

There's only two of us. He reminded her. Even if we split it's still like looking for a needle in a haystack.

All the more reason...

Think, Lithoniel! Where do you think they would put them?

Lithoniel frowned before looking around her. Most of the encampment was in the dark, the tents so close to each other they formed a tight cluster, except for that empty space at the center of the encampment. There was just a tent there, a single pavilion much bigger than the others. She squinted her eyes, an idea beginning to take shape in her mind.

I think they are there. She gestured, pointing in that direction.

Rolim followed her finger and frowned.

Why?

There are six encampments here. Six tribes. She reminded him. Prisoners are spoils of war, a sign of prestige. Probably they decided to keep them there to avoid infighting.

She gestured, well aware she had no way to prove her theory.

That could be their command center. Rolim argued. There could be dozens of them inside.

Maybe. Lithoniel shrugged. But...what other choices do we have?

Rolim thought a bit about it before giving her a stiff nod. Lithoniel sighed with relief. She made a step forward, heading in the pavilion's direction when Rolim grabbed her arm.

She looked down at his hands and blinked at him. In response to it, Rolim pointed at himself.

I'll go first.

Lithoniel rolled her eyes. She still had to get used to him acting protective, the big caveman defending his woman, but it wasn't a bad feeling. Aside from the wind piercing through them as tiny daggers, the walk was unexpectedly uneventful, though still nerve-cracking. They were halfway to their destination and Lithoniel was starting to believe everything would go as planned when something unexpected occurred.

The weather suddenly grew worse. The wind started blowing and howling in their ears, turning the snow falling from the sky in a whirlwind of ice, more similar to hail than snow. The encampment was starting to look like a grave, quiet and dark, the amount of snow quickly piling up and entombing the elves in their tents.

Lithoniel and Rolim looked worried, glancing at the skies with increasing agitation. It risked turning into a full snowstorm. They had been extremely careful so far, taking the less traveled routes and thinking ten times before taking any step, but they couldn't do that anymore. Rolim turned to look at her, the worry in his face swiftly replaced by resolution when he stared at her face. There was no need for words. They both knew what they had to do. They had to run. And that's exactly what they did.

They ran over the snow, relying on their sense to avoid the patrols, using the tents as cover until they reached the center of the encampment. But even then, they didn't stop, they ran faster and faster, madly dashing until they reached the pavilion. Only then they slowed down.

Maybe they were just lucky, skilled, or a bit of both, but no one saw them.

Lithoniel's heart was still thumping when she took a peek inside. There were two "rooms", so to say. The outer one seemed like some sort of guard post, and though she wasn't able to discern clearly what lay beyond that leather curtain separating it from the inner room, she saw something. Ebonwood bars.

We are in the right place. She gestured to Rolim.

Guards?

Lithoniel squinted her eyes, risking to take another glimpse inside. Then she raised two fingers. There were just two guards, and one of them was sleeping, the back of his head leaning against the tent and a woolen blanket wrapped around his body. Lithoniel hesitated a little before taking out her dagger.

Are you sure you're up for this? Rolim gestured.

I am.

Rolim raised an eyebrow at that. The hand holding the dagger was shaking. Lithoniel tightened her grip on the handle.

You don't need to do it. Rolim gestured. He looked worried.

You can't deal with them both. She answered.

Rolim narrowed his eyes.

Maybe you can. She amended. But it's safer this way.

He still didn't seem convinced, but Lithoniel had no intention to give him the chance to refuse.

I'll take the one sleeping.

However, before she could move, Rolim sneaked up behind the one who was awake, locked his arm around his neck and squeezed. The guard grabbed his arm, clawing at Rolim as he tried to get free, but there were very few elves who could compete with him in a contest of strength.

He became weaker and weaker, and was about to lose consciousness when Lithoniel sneaked up on the other guard. She lifted the dagger, the blade coming closer and closer to his face before stopping, just a few inches away from his neck. She bit her lips, trying to finish the job, plunge that metal tip in his throat, but she couldn't.

That's when she heard it, a sound coming from behind her. It was a strangulated noise, the guard's last wheeze before death. The sleeping elf woke up immediately. Then he stood up, his foggy eyes widening when he saw the dagger in Lithoniel's hands.

"Alarm...!" He started shouting, so Lithoniel did the only thing she could do; she covered his mouth with her hand and...slit his throat.

The guard gurgled, a gush of warm blood spilling over her hand, burning it like fire. It was just an impression, of course, maybe a manifestation of the guilt she was feeling, but as she kept her hand on his mouth preventing him from speaking, that hot liquid kept flowing out. She had seen a lot of blood in her life, got injured more times than she could remember, but that seemed different: brighter, almost translucent. Unreal.

"Let go." Rolim whispered some seconds later when the guard stopped moving. She blinked, realizing she was still holding him. When Lithoniel removed her hand, Rolim put him down very carefully. He glanced back at the tent's entrance and only when he was sure no one heard them he turned to Lithoniel.

"Don't look at him."

"You shouldn't talk. They could hear us." She replied, absentminded. Her mind was still a bit foggy, her shoulders trembling.

"You weren't watching me." He replied. "I tried to shake you, but you didn't budge."

Lithoniel didn't answer. She kept wringing her hands and staring at the blood on them.

"They had to die, Lithoniel." He said, and she finally looked up at him.

"I know" She answered, but her voice was flat.

"You shouldn't have insisted." He muttered under his breath. "You weren't ready for that."

"What?"

"Nothing. The guard had a key." He said, showing it to her. "Let's get our people out of here." His words stirred her up, reminded her of their purpose.

They moved deeper into the pavilion, but what waited for them there was something they would have never expected. It was the smell what they felt at first; the stench of sweat, dry blood, and rotten flesh. Then they saw what lay inside the room and bleached. There was a big wooden table on their left, and over it, an entire set of knives, bloodied and serrated. However what they found on the right side of the room was even worse. It was a chair, layered with spikes on every surface, and just past it, a breaking wheel.

This wasn't a prison, but a torture chamber.

Compared to those brutal tools, the small cage placed on the far side of the room went almost unnoticed. There were fifteen, maybe twenty people there, packed like sardines. However, many of them were on the ground, still and cold, their bodies riddled with cuts, lashes, and burn marks.

For the ancestors! What did they do to them?!

Lithoniel felt her knees buckling but forced herself to go on and look at them. Their clothes were torn, their faces vague, almost unrecognizable under that layer of dirt, but above all they were scared.

When Rolim and Lithoniel approached, no one rose to greet them. Some of them sobbed, completely terrified of their arrival, while others were apathetic, their gazes blank and dull.

"Volodar?" Rolim asked all of a sudden, looking at a small elf curled in on himself like a twisted ebonroot. "Is that you?"

Even the usually stoic Rolim looked shocked, but Lithoniel didn't blame him, she was the same.

"Volodar?" She whispered.

She knew that name, but the skilled hunter in her memory didn't match with the frail and broken old man she was seeing.

The Volodar she remembered was tall and strong, tough like ebonwood bark and very brave, though a little arrogant. However, the man in front of her eyes was small and stooped, his thick brown hair thinner and white like wool. His face was even worse; scrawny and haunted, his cheeks hollows, and his left eye empty but scarred like someone plucked it out by force and had fun doing it. He looked older, and not just of a year or two, but decades, a mere shadow of the formidable hunter she knew.

However, the real problem was that Volodar was supposedly dead. He went missing months before Lithoniel and the others left their tribe for the hunting expedition, months before everything started.

What is he doing here?

She wondered, and she wasn't the only one. Rolim squinted his eyes, looking at the other elves around Volodar, but they all refused to meet his gaze.

"R-Rolim?" Volodar croaked. "Are you real?"

"Yes, Volodar, we are real." He said to him. "Hang on, we'll let you right out." He said to the other survivors who looked at them like they were ghosts.

Lithoniel didn't know what their jailers did to them, but they seemed broken.

"We are real. We are not a figment of your imagination." She repeated, but Volodar just stared at her blankly. In the meanwhile Rolim already used the guard's key to open the cage.

"I'm Lithoniel." She tried to explain and set them at ease. "I was sent here..."

"You're...Lithoniel?" Volodar asked, his voice uncertain and weak. And no, he didn't say half-blood like he used to call her, but Lithoniel.

However, what he did afterward left her completely speechless.

"I'm sorry, Lithoniel, I'm sorry." He bowed his head, crying as he kneeled down before her. "I shouldn't have said that to the Nighstalker."

Rolim frowned.

"Nighstalker? What is he talking about?" He asked the survivors, but they were still too scared to answer him.

"Don't listen to him. It's always the same stuff." One of them answered. It was a hunter called Folas, apparently the braver among them. "He apologizes and then starts crying."

"You don't have to apologize." She said, her voice filled with pity.

She grabbed her arms and tried to drag him up, but Volodar wriggled out.

"No, no, no!" He said, furiously shaking his head. "It's my fault! My fault!"

"Calm down, Volodar!" Rolim said to him, before glancing at Lithoniel. "If he keeps shouting..."

"No! I have to apologize! I have to make amends! Lithoniel would be alive if it weren't for me!" He yelled as a raging lunatic.

"Volodar! I'm right here!" She tried to calm him down and Volodar froze, just for a second or two, then he started crying again.

"It's my fault." He softly wailed. "I shouldn't have listened to him."

Lithoniel furrowed her brow.

"Listen? Listen to who?"

"The Weaver." Volodar whispered, curling into a ball, his good eye big and scared.

"The Weaver?" She asked, glancing at Folas, but the elf was as clueless as she was.

"I don't know. He never talked about it." Folas answered.

"Volodar" She said softly. "Who is the Weaver?"

"You won't get anything out of him" Folas grumbled. "He is just rambling nonsense."

Lithoniel gave him a dirty glance, and she was about to openly rebuke him when Volodar started talking.

"He is a Harald, the Weaver of webs. He picks the strings, intertwines fates, but no one can see them. No, no, no one can!" He shook his head. "No one can escape. No one except..."

"Except?" Lithoniel asked, but Volodar was staring into the void.

"Volodar," She whispered. "Except who?"

However, Volodar already regressed to his former state.

"I'm sorry, Lithoniel, I'm sorry. It's my fault..."He started all over again.

Lithoniel sighed.

"He had been here for much longer than any of us." Folas said to them. "The things they did to him..." He shook his head, utterly terrified.

"They convinced him that everyone died during the last hunting expedition. I think he feels guilty, it was him who suggested to the Nighstalker to hunt the Zaruk. We tried to convince him, tell him Lithoniel came back alive, but he wouldn't believe us."

Rolim cleared his throat. "How many of you can't walk?"

Folos thought about it for a bit. "Five, I think."

"Four." A woman interjected.

It was Aila, a woodcarver if Lithoniel remembered correctly, as well as Folas' wife.

"Four?" Folas asked.

"Enania passed away last night." Aila whispered.

"Damn butchers! I want to..." Folas gritted his teeth.

"Now is not the time." Aila said. "We have to go back first. Think about our wounded." She easily coaxed him, playing him like a fiddle.

"Ryo and Vulre can't move." Folas announced. "Those bastards tortured them all night. They..." His voice broke down, tears pooling at the corner of his eyes.

"It's over." Aila whispered to her husband, patting his shoulder.

"You're right. It's over." The elf nodded, but his gravelly voice indicated he was from being convinced.

Lithoniel knew the man could be a potential problem, but it wasn't listening to him at the moment. There was something missing, she could feel it. She raised her hand, and everyone shut up.

What is it? Rolim gestured.

What do you hear?

Rolim looked up, staring at the top of the ceiling, but shook his head. Nothing.

Lithoniel nodded grimly. Exactly. The wind stopped blowing.

Rolim's face darkened.

"That means we don't have much time left." Rolim whispered to Lithoniel. "Without the storm covering our escape, we'll be lucky to get out of here alive." He glanced at the four elves still lying on the ground and gave her a meaningful look. "Unless we get rid of some of our burdens."

Lithoniel paled. "Rolim, you can't mean to..."

"You are the one who has to take that decision, Lithoniel, but we can't bring all of them with us, not if we want to survive."

Lithoniel saw how the others were looking at them and grabbed his arm, dragging him into the guard post.

"Rolim," She hissed. "you know I can't take that kind of decision!"

"You have to. You're in command." He reminded her.

"Yes, but..." She swallowed, looking at the dry blood on her hands, then up at Rolim's face. How can you ask me that?

That action hadn't gone unnoticed, and yet Rolim's expression didn't soften.

"Lithoniel, you can save some of them...or we can all die here." His words sounded a bit harsh, but they were pragmatic, just like the man who had said them.

Lithoniel closed her eyes, her knuckles bleaching as she tightened her fists, the expressions on her face changing quickly, a sign of the inner turmoil raging inside her. When she finally reopened her eyes, the hesitation was gone replaced by a firm resolution, and anger. So much anger.

"I can say it to them if you wan..."Rolim suggested, but Lithoniel shook her head.

"I'll do it. As you said, it's my duty." She said before walking back to the torture chamber.

All the survivors stared at her when she came back, in their faces hope and fear as they awaited her decision.

"Those who can't walk..." She said out loud, her jaw clenched tight. "have to stay here. We can't bring them with us."

She expected them to complain, to cry or plead for their companions, maybe even to insult her. However, no one did. They didn't seem surprised, but relieved. That until Lithoniel looked at them like she wanted to rip their heads off and they flinched. It was almost like she trying to find an outlet for her rage, a way to lessen her guilt. It didn't work, of course, and when she went back to the guard post she did everything she could to avoid looking at the four people they were leaving behind, the elves she'd just sentenced to die.