Hey, Girge! I'm actually quite honoured I get to write this one-shot for you. I don't know if you remember, but I published a fic known as A Lost Soul's Tale a couple of years ago. I got to admit that your review inspired me quite a bit to improve my writing up to this point. With this Secret Santa, I wish to also thank you for your review and interest in my old work. I would've most likely not found the drive to keep writing like I am doing now if I hadn't seen good constructive reviews in my work like yours.
I hope you had a Merry Christmas and I wish you the best for this 2019.
~Luna
Hamel was a town of snow when winter came to cover it with its blanket of frost and murmurs of wind that brought a frozen smell of salt from the ocean. The capital would have been only a city hidden in white if the small orbs of El did not shine with all kinds of colours over the alleys, its streets and boulevards. The lights also hung by some windows, forming a spider's web where the centre lead to the Plaza, where the lights glittered like orbs over the fountain.
The circle of warm yellow light that hung above the old elven statues by a stable levitation spell formed a halo of light over the structure; shedding a heavenly aura that made the statues stick out by an almost holy presence.
Elesis was familiar with the mood set by the season and liked to wander through the stone-paved streets, mixing her steps with countless others in the snow. It was the sixteenth day of December and the festivities for the Winter Solstice were only five days away. The usual street lights had been replaced with small blue shards that emulated the glow of the water El over the streets, giving the ancient walkways their old mystical glow, from the time before humans took over the town.
The commander stopped and looked over the bridge that tied the Resiam district to the rest of Hamel, wondering if she had the time to indulge her curiosity about the old cradle of the elven civilization that built Hamel from the ground up. She remembered that kind of elves from Velder, how they burnt the town with the Kenaz and other demons. The memory of her brother being cornered by those creatures was stronger than the history of a town she was not even born in.
She let out a long breath before noticing that the snow had stopped to fall over her shoulders, although it still poured peacefully all around her. Elesis turned around to see Penensio with a wooden umbrella in his hands. The man was taller than most, certainly quite taller than her, and he only had to tilt slightly the umbrella in his hand to cover them both from the snowflakes that did not seem to stop.
"Good to see you, Penensio." the young commander said, like one would greet a friend.
The golden-eyed knight nodded and answered that he was pleasantly surprised to see her walk around this quiet neighborhood, seldom requiring the presence of any Red Knights.
Elesis nodded and looked at her woolen mittens. She would have shaken his hand, but her gloves were soaked by melting snow and her fingers were freezing already. Her red eyes glanced for a nearby shop, but at the boundary of these two districts, only private homes stood all around the bridge. A wooden path was lit like the statues.
It was both the path back to the cradle of Hamel as well as the best place to celebrate the Solstice festival in its full glory. At least, that was what Sasha and Chung had told her the last time the King of Hamel had called her to attend to a noblewoman's wedding.
Yet, she had never set foot into that part of Hamel, having only known old myths about the elves, mostly as tales to scare bad kids. But perhaps, there was some truth to them…She had certainly seen the cruelty of those elves in Velder.
"You can find some good restaurants in Resiam, ma'am. To warm you up."
"You've been there, Penensio?" she asked, her tone was torn by mere curiousness and a very badly hidden apprehension.
"Well, yes." Penensio replied matter-of-factly, and quickly recognized the woman's apprehension.
"It's not a town of monsters, commander Elesis." he assured. "They're not cannibalistic warriors and they don't practice necromancy either."
"But they're dark elves. The same kind I fought in Velder."
Penensio put a hand over the commander's shoulders, understanding that despite her strong will, she could not hide all of her scars nor all of her fears forever.
"Prince Chung, the High Priestess and I have visited the town many times. Even on our own. Unarmed. The dark elves that live in Resiam are not like those you saw in Velder."
The Squad Leader began to explain to his commander that the elves of Resiam had lived there almost since the beginning of all civilizations in Elrios. He added that the last time the elves had fought, it had been at the side of the Red Knights; their combined power pushed back the demons that menaced their land for the third time throughout their long history.
Elesis seemed to ponder whether to turn back to Hamel's own commercial district, or to go into the elven town who was perhaps nearer. A windy chill made the snow stick to her eyebrows and brought another wave of burning cold to her fingertips. She would not make it to Hamel's heart like this without losing a few fingers to frostbite, and so she was left with only one option in her hands.
"Fine. Chung has told me a bit about the place, so it shouldn't be something I can't handle."
The Grand Master nodded, as if to convince herself of what she had said and began to walk towards the familiar bridge she would cross for the first time today.
Just a few steps before the bridge she stopped herself. What if those elves only spoke elven? Or what if the party was so grand that she got lost and, of course, she didn't know the elven language besides the few words Rena had taught to those interested. Knowing how to say sword, delicious, hello and good night wouldn't get her far.
"Penensio...?" she risked asking as she turned back to see the man almost expecting her to call him.
"Yes, ma'am?"
"The high-ranking Knights like ourselves don't have too much work nowadays, with the festival and all..."
"That's correct, commander."
Elesis almost swore to see for a second an amused smirk on the face of his face, but the snow was forcing to look slightly down to keep her eyes open.
"So, all of this to say that it might be a good idea for me to have you as a guide to go to Resiam."
There was a brief silence that followed and Elesis quickly filled it with more of her words. "If you want to, of course. Or if you don't have other plans with your family, I know that there are the gifts and-"
The snow stopped again and Elesis looked up to see her right hand tell her that he would gladly be her guide. She couldn't help a calm smile to creep up her face and the two knights marched on to the elven town.
The bridge was guarded by two tall guards, taller than Penensio and both covered in armour that oddly resembled Chung's. Penensio gave them a small and polite nod accompanied by a hello and one of the guards began to speak to them. It was a very different speech that what Elesis had heard Rena speak.
"Trevaded and?" the guard asked.
"Ma, ach se i mâr nîn. " Penensio replied
"Ista peded edhellen?"
The guard had asked something as he glanced over to Elesis. Underneath his helmet, Elesis saw purple yes not so different from Chloe's. The teen's face was almost indiscernible underneath his heavy white armour, but, unlike Chloe's gaze, Elesis felt no hatred coming from them. It was closer to curiosity, yet it had also a drop of contempt mixed in it.
"Excuse me?" she asked.
"And there I have my answer." the man with the purple gaze replied with a sigh. He still had a way to roll the r's in the same way he did before. Even more so than the average Hamelian accent. It was closer to the singing accent that people of Horatio's generation would have.
"Answer for?"
She was confused as to what exactly the guard was expecting her to know, but it certainly did not please Penensio, who squinted at the guard.
"No need to act like that, Anuron. Some people haven't had the chance to learn the language."
Although she could tell that Penensio was trying to hide his anger, some of it slipped through his words: his tone was harsher, closer to the tone of a reproach barked to a new recruit.
The other guard looked at his colleague and shook his head in disapproval. Auron took a deep breath and apologized to her. The other guard nodded and spoke with a less heavy accent.
"I'm sorry, commander Elesis, for Auron's attitude. He's still getting the hang of our trade. I hope you enjoy your visit here. I believe I've never seen you enter before."
Auron widened his eyes at the mention of her status among the Red Knights and apologized again, this time bowing his head slightly at her. The other guard seemed to be quite older than Anuron, having an appearance of a man just a decade older than Penensio. Yet, Elesis couldn't help but notice that the guard's ears were not as long as Anuron's.
"If that's so, how did you recognize me?" she asked.
The guard, whose armour was covering his face, simply chuckled and replied that he had seen paintings of her accomplishments in the Red Knights headquarters when Resiam was in danger.
The Red Knight's commander nodded, not without a small smile in remembrance of what those paintings represented: they encapsulated the origin of her legend. She rubbed her hands together and let a short sigh warm her fingers for a brief instant. The unknown guard saw this and urged them to get some warmth inside along the pastries of the Festival.
After making a bow, the guards opened the gates to the unknown citadel.
Even if it seemed like they were entering a foreign fortress, it was still Hamel. The difference between the openness of Hamel's plazas and this first impression of Resiam was destabilizing. Elesis had to remind herself that this was no different from going from one district to the next in Hamel.
Once the guards were a dozen of steps behind the tunnel of marble, Elesis whispered to Penensio the question that was burning her lips.
"Why does your elven sounds so different from Amelia's or Rena's?"
"That's what happens when some elves are banished into another realm."
"And…that's how the dark elves ended up founding Resiam?"
"Not all the elves became dark elves. The banishment affected some of them differently than others."
Elesis squinted at him, she had never heard of that history anywhere in her lessons. Well, she never paid too much attention to them. Not when her own past had stronger ties than anything else.
"I'm impressed you know this much about history. I don't think any of my tutors has mentioned that."
"Well, commander, there are some events that go beyond the memory of mankind." he answered as the other side of the fortress came into view. It felt warmer than Velder and snow was no longer present in the streets.
Resiam was protected from the snow storm that was brewing outside by a glass dome framed by a complex web of steel. On the porches of the homes and even around on the sidewalks, dark elves with varying lengths of ear sizes were lighting candles and lamps of all shapes and sizes, sharing food among the closest neighbours. The homes of the elves elevated themselves into towers of white sometimes connected above the ground by bridges with the same colour.
"It's quite the sight, isn't it commander?"
Elesis nodded, her fears slowly melting as her fingers were unfreezing from the cold, feeling slightly numb, but with much less pain.
"Didn't they stay hidden in those tall buildings and only light up their homes like in the temple? With small El shards?"
Penensio chuckled. "That was a long time ago, commander. More than seven hundred years ago."
Elesis still could not believe her eyes at the complex beauty of the citadel of dark elves. If she had no idea that the demon invasion had destroyed the town almost in its entirety, Elesis would think that the elves had always lived a life of luxury. A luxury she felt out of place in, as if someone had dropped her into another world. It was destabilizing to see the beauty that dark elves were capable of. It was stranger than the other guard's praise.
"Let me show you the market, commander." Penensio suggested as he closed his umbrella.
"How did they reconstruct the town like this?" Elesis thought out loud, following Penensio as she let her eyes wonder around the jasmine crowns that some girls put over their heads while their mothers decorated their house's entrance with a long, hand-crafted vine adorned with the same flowers and small orbs of the same light Hamel lit its statues with.
So far, there were no signs of any statues of the priestesses, nor any mention to the El. It was quite strange to her that the elves would not celebrate the existence of gem that Rena and the rest of Elrios would gather around of. But it was perhaps the result of their banishment from the spiritual realm. It would not be strange if the elves held a grudge against those who banished them. Perhaps that would explain why Chloe attacked Velder with demon allies.
However, there were no traces of demons here. Resiam was just a town of elves and humans, coexisting as if they had done so for centuries. She could even see couples of the two species and the fruits of their union. Some of them already had lost completely the length of their ears, which would usually be the most visible proof of their elven lineage.
"The town rebuilt in same way we restored the rest of Hamel once the El Search Party drove off the demons from here."
"By controlling the Ancient Nasods?"
The brown-haired knight nodded as he took a turn left, diving into a crowded plaza where rows of the same warm light hung from invisible threads. The smell of incense, flowers and a fruity smell of sweetness mixed into a soothing perfume that made the loudness of the place a tad more welcoming for her.
Elesis walked against the tumultuous currents of the people around it, hearing both Resiarin and Hamelian around. To her left, two elven women were talking in their native tongue while, to her right, a man with tanned skin was selling baked goods, in Hamelian. A pair of round pastries were the obvious source of the sweet smell she had sensed earlier.
Penensio was getting out of sight, but her pride would not let her hand reach out like a child's. She could still see him, making his way slightly to the right. He turned around to notice that she was not with him, and he immediately stopped to look around for her. Reaching him wouldn't be too hard now.
After making her way through the mass of people going around the market, she noticed that the two people the man was selling his pastries to were none other than Sasha and Amelia. She saw Penensio and he noticed her, raising her arm above the crowd to point at the food stand she would approach. Her subordinate nodded and after a thumbs-up, Elesis went ahead to greet the two women.
"Guys! Hi!" she exclaimed as the two women were about to take a bite from their dessert.
"Commander? Fancy seeing you around." The blonde leader of the Red Knight scout division said, now more reluctant to take a bite from what she had bought. She had told Elesis that she was on a diet, after all. However, all of those who resisted the sweet blueberry Solstice pastries had no heart. Sasha took a small bite of hers, nodding at Elesis to greet her back.
"Commander Elesis, are you enjoying the festivities?" the blue-haired priestess asked once she had swallowed the first mouthful of sweetness.
It looked at first glance like a simple question, but it was not so easy to answer for the red-haired commander. It would perhaps be simpler to lie and tell the priestess that she was indeed enjoying herself, but she felt lost and confused at the centre of the peaceful hubbub that Resiam offered. The town was too jolly to bring out her fears, but she could not completely lie.
"I just got here with Penensio. So, I haven't seen much."
Amelia widened her eyes and asked her where he was, ordering another pastry just as she asked Sasha if her hair was not messy, if her clothes were not wrinkled and even if her makeup was ok.
"Yes, you look as good as always, Amelia. Although sometimes I wonder why you get so nervous. It's not like it was your first date."
Huh?
Elesis had no idea that Penensio was in a relationship, let alone with Amelia. The elven archer had always rejected any advances from other men who were clearly attracted for her looks alone.
"I know, but I can't live with the shame of-"
"Ahnyohng, Amelia."
The forest elf turned around with a smile towards Penensio, who had finally come back into Elesis' sight with a crown of flowers for Amelia. He delicately put it over her head, and she gave him the pastry she had just bought.
"Annyeong, Penensio. These are your favourites, aren't they?"
He nodded and began to eat what Amelia had offered him. For a moment, they were in a world of their own where neither Sasha nor Elesis were important. As far as she remembered, there was no rule against two soldiers of the same rank having a relationship. Knowing Penensio's diligence about his work, the Commander had no qualms about discovering their relationship.
It was still surprising to see that the Ice Queen had fallen to none other than the highest-ranking Rune Slayer. Penensio turned at the two other women and invited them to see the temple before it got crowded the day of the solstice. Elesis agreed to it and the group of friends got out of the plaza to venture further into the elven city.
It was rare to see Sasha smile after all she had gone through, but it seemed like watching the military couple in front of her was keeping her in a good mood. The temple they were headed to had an imposing entrance made of the same marble Hamel built its temples with. Finally, there was something familiar to cling unto. The figure of Taranvash was engraved on the angular stone of the entrance to the temple. On its left pillar, the figure of a woman offering a jasmine flower to the sky covered it while on the right, the same woman held an orb of light close to herself, looking above.
The temple itself, beyond the gate, was not so different from the temples she had seen in Hamel, but Taranvash was all over them and its walls were decorated with vines where jasmine flowers bloomed. It was a flower Elesis had only seen around Hamelian temples. Yet she had never seen it in such quantity, as the flower was dying since the demon invasion. It was a miracle that so many jasmine vines had survived here.
After the gate, instead of a huge closed hall, laid a paved corridor in the open air, where the only limits were the walls covered with flowers. At the end of the corridor, an altar was lighting a statue in bronze of Taranvash with countless oil lamps. All of them built with ceramic that almost perfectly imitated the pristine structure they rested on.
"You brought sand, Penensio?" Sasha asked as the swordsman was taking out small pouches of cloth from the leather bag Elesis had not noticed in that suffocating crowd. The man nodded and invited Elesis to draw with the sand.
Elesis took one of the pouches and looked at the small white sand it contained.
"Draw with it?" Elesis repeated, trying to think of a way to draw anything with sand. As hard as it was to admit, her creativity outside the battlefield was close to zero. She looked around and saw an old elf come in with a single pouch of sand. The elf crouched and took a handful of sand and, with precise movements, began to pour a trail of sand until it formed a perfect square.
Elesis began to look around her and noticed that Sasha was doing the same and the same could be said for Penensio and Amelia. The Grand Master got closer to Sasha and watched the priestess draw a circle with yellow sand.
The water priestess glanced at her. "Would you like to help me fill the circle?"
"I don't think that a yellow border and a white filler go together…"
Sasha chuckled. "It doesn't matter if the colours match, Elesis. It's fun to do rituals like this instead of praying silently all the time to honour the same things. Here, let me teach you."
Elesis crouched next to the priestess as she taught her how to slowly control the flow of the sand that left her hand. In her first try, filling the centre had not been a challenge, but her hand had gotten shakier as the borders got closer. Her white sand had covered Sasha's circles here and there, overflowing into the floor. It looked like someone had spilled paint over Sasha's perfect circle.
"I am so sorry, Sasha."
"Don't be. It takes a while to get the hang of it. The first time I did this, my drawing looked like a fried egg instead of Illipia's cross."
Elesis chuckled. Knowing that one of the sacred symbols got deprived of its holiness by someone like Sasha was quite ironic.
"Should we make it look like a cake now?" Elesis jokingly suggested.
The priestess glanced at their art. "Well, we do have the yolk and the milk down."
The two women smiled, and they continued to draw with the sand. Jokes aside, they both agreed on drawing Ilipia's sacred symbol. After all, her legend would be celebrated less than a week after this day.
"Do you know where her legend comes from?" Sasha asked as she began to carefully trace a small rhombus on the centre of the circle Elesis had filled with sand.
"Well, I wasn't aware her legend came from somewhere. I just know that Ilipia was the priestess that brought light and warmth to Hamel's winters. She walked for five days to reach the El and implored the goddess to save Hamel from freezing over. Then she returned after four days, helped by a divine beast to bring light and warmth to her town."
Sasha nodded. "Yes, that is how the legend goes…"
The redhead tilted her head, confused by what the priestess was telling her. It was only a legend, just like orcs, dragons and angels had been before. Although, demons and forest elves had also been mere legends before, just like fairies.
"Wait, did Ilipia really exist?"
Sasha shrugged. "The tale is too old to be sure. But her name wasn't Ilipia. It was Írensaga Phigo. And she did not bring a cross of gold to implore Ishmael. Instead, she brought the last lotus flower that had bloomed that fall."
"Earring-saw… Ee-run-say…damn it."
Sasha smiled. "You almost had it. It's Ee-run-saw-gah. But if Penensio had sharper ears, he would be making you repeat that name until you got it one hundred percent right. With the rolled r's and everything. It's part of his heritage, after all."
The priestess took another handful of sand to draw the first trait of Ilipia's cross. "In any case, Írensanga, a dark elf priestess, did not bring it to Ishmael. Instead, she journeyed for five days to bring her offerings to an ancient spirit that guarded a small El Shard. That spirit was Taranvash of Light."
Sasha continued to trace the cross, making a straight horizontal line to form the Greater Cross. "The legend says that it was the first time Taranvansh had seen anything but jasmine vines bloom around him. Then, he refused to let the land where such beauty bloomed die during that winter. And so, he gave the priestess an orb of light that would make her people survive."
Elesis widened her eyes. "The Taranvash? The one the demons were controlling?"
The water priestess nodded. "Yes, the legend says that once Írensanga brought Taranvash's gift to Resiam, she left it here. And the following spring, the lotus bloomed again in the temple along another flower: the jasmine vines of Taranvansh."
Elesis looked at the barebones of the sacred cross, thinking at the poetic origins of the tale. She took another handful of sand and drew a Hamelian lotus as she remembered it to look like from above.
The resemblance to the real thing was barely there, but it was still comparable to the cross Sasha had drawn. The petals at its centre matched the double cross while the rest of the flower could be traced from the rays of light that always surrounded the Cross. Thinking about the similarities between both mythologies brought a smile to her face.
"I think I prefer the original legend, Sasha. Convincing a spirit with a beauty he has never seen is far more poetic than praying a goddess with a cross found in an abandoned temple."
Elesis got up and stretched a little; she had never been crouching for so long before. The red-haired woman looked around her and noticed that Penensio and Amelia had drawn a detailed red lotus surrounded by green square. Meanwhile, the old man had drawn a silhouette of Taranvansh inside a complex web of triangles and squares that looked like a Hamelian Lotus.
"Oh, are you guys done?" Amelia said, getting up a few seconds before Penensio did.
Elesis nodded and the forest elf excitedly walked to see what they had drawn. Once she saw the cross, she gave Sasha a high five.
"You finally did it, Sasha! The cross looks just like the ones in the temples! Although the circle needs a bit more practice."
The priestess smiled. "It's not all just me. Elesis helped me with it. And she even drew the Hamelian Lotus next to it."
Amelia widened her eyes. "You did? That's amazing, commander. The position of the petals is just on point."
Elesis chuckled. "I can't say the same for their shape, though."
Penensio caught up with them. "It all comes with practice, commander. There are still things to see, but nothing beats the fireworks on the last day of the festival. The Night of Light lives up to its name."
The group walked out of the temple, about the twenty-fourth night of December with fond memories. Sasha had seen it with Chung's company while Penensio remembered his family reunions and Amelia had seen it with Sasha's company the first time she had entered Resiam. Some years after that, the elf had passed the festival with Penensio and his family.
Once Elesis got out of Taranvansh's temple, she saw the foreign buildings with a different gaze.
Resiam was not the foreign world she could never fit into. Its tall towers looked closer to the historic buildings that still stood in Hamel's downtown. Resiam was Hamel's memory and its people still maintained the memory of the world alive. Elesis got so lost in her thoughts that she was surprised when Sasha called her.
"Yes?"
"We were talking about organizing a party for the Night of Light. Will you join us?"
The Commander took one last glance at the temple and at the city around it before looking back at her friends with a smile on her face.
"Of course."