Unforeseen consequences
Loivissa POV(late winter of 643 ADG)
Loivissa rarely spent the winter months in Ellesméra, or anywhere north of Gilead for that matter. It was too cold for her taste, and so, she much preferred the warmer climate further south. She would go there if she had business to attend to, but never as a leisure trip.
This was not a leisure trip, but neither could she say that that it had been absolutely necessary for her to be here in person today. If she had to be honest with herself, she had simply used the opportunity to get out of headquarters and get some time alone.
…Well, almost alone, as her brother was walking at her side everywhere she went. Come to think of it, Vanir had done that too, back when he had still been alive, or he had made sure that someone else was when he was out.
"Brother, did the rest of Aiedail have a meeting without me?", she asked Evandar, as they walked through one of the new cobblestone paths of Ellesméra.
"Not that I know of, why?", he answered in the Ancient language. Considering that they were in Ellesméra, it drew far less attention to speak that than the human tongue.
"I just noticed that whenever I go out, except when in cases where I must be alone, I am always followed by someone", she mused, "so, I was thinking of whether the rest of you had secretly met and decided to never let me go unguarded", and unwatched, but she did not mention that.
"…Not really, I suppose that everyone just thought it best that our leader always had someone to watch her back", Evandar answered thoughtfully, "but if I am that much of a bother to you, then-"
"You are not", Loivissa quickly reassured him, "it was just something that I pondered. Forget that I even said it".
It was best not to damage her relationship with her brother any further, especially since they had only begun repairing it these last six months. Instead, she chose to focus on the task at hand and asked her brother to once again describe the elf that they were there to meet.
"His name is Elwing, and he is the last surviving member of the Valtharos House", her brother explained, "his father was Fioldred and his paternal grandfather was Fiolr, who was the head of the family until last year. His mother hailed from the Siol House. His son was among those caught in the blast during the invasion, as was the grandfather and the mother, and his father and granddaughter died during the rebellion later on".
"And his connection to Rhunön?", she asked the only thing that was actually of any interest to her.
"He says that he witnessed when they took her away", Evandar said hesitantly.
"I get the feeling that you think that he has ulterior motives", Loivissa noted.
"A person bent on revenge will say a lot if he thinks that it will help his cause", Evandar simply commented.
"True, but all of our other leads have led to nothing so far, so we have to check this one out", Loivissa said with a shrug.
She hoped that he was not amongst those that blamed Aiedail for losing the rebellion. It could quickly become quite ugly if he did blame them, and more bad publicity was not exactly what Aiedail needed right now.
"We will just have to be on guard when we talk to him, and if either of us sense that something is wrong, we get out as quickly and as quietly as possible", she elaborated.
It was not long after that the two found themselves in front of an elaborate wooden door that led to a massive hall, which was grown from several pine trees. An elf with hair the colour of moonlight and eyes as black as obsidian welcomed them inside a large arched hallway that was lit by several floating werelights.
After satisfying the necessary formalities, the two were led to a room, which their host assured them was completely soundproof and incapable of being penetrated by any magic.
Immediately after closing the door, Elwing turned around to stare intensely at them with his black eyes and said, "I want in".
"Excuse me?", Loivissa asked to make sure that she had heard correctly.
"I cannot stand to sit by and do nothing any longer", he elaborated, "I want things to change back to how they once were, not like they are now. I want the elves to not be controlled through a puppet ruler, and above all else, I want justice for the deaths of my kin".
"You are aware that we are considered outlaws by everyone, right?", Loivissa wanted to make sure that he understood what he was getting into, even though his offer did intrigue her. If he was handled properly, he might replace Vanir as her spokesperson, but revenge was always a dangerous ally of justice, as it could be thoroughly unpredictable at times.
"Only while the puppet governments still rule", Elwing noted.
"Let us drop the matter for now", Evandar butted in, "you said that you had information about the night Rhunön-elda was taken?"
"I do", Elwing said hesitantly, annoyed at not getting a straight answer for his previous inquiry, "six months ago, or was it five? Anyway, I was out walking my usual round when I noted a group of those foreigners with grey skin and horns like urgals, but smaller and slightly less savage. I decided to follow them, since I thought that it was strange for a group of soldiers to be walking so purposely this time at night, so I was there when they reached Rhunön-elda's house.
The two in front banged on the door a few times, but when no one answered, they broke it open and not long after, I saw them escort Rhunön-elda away with some bags that sounded like all of her equipment was in them".
"Did you get any indication as to where she was being taken?", Loivissa questioned.
"No, and I do not think that she knew at that point either", Elwing said, "when I asked them the day afterwards, they tried to sell me a story that she had moved to the dwarven cities to apply her trade there".
"I see", Loivissa mused, "and that is all that you know about her disappearance?"
"Yes, that is all that I know", Elwing confirmed, "know about me coming with you…"
"We will be in touch, but for the moment, it would look too suspicious if you were to suddenly leave with two strangers", Evandar answered for her, "once the time is right, we will send you further instructions on how to proceed".
"Yes, yes, of course. Discretion is a virtue", Elwing nodded eagerly, having likely not noticed that her brother had never said that he could actually join Aiedail, but just that they would contact him if they ever felt like it.
After that, they were shown out and were quickly walking the streets of Ellesméra once again. It was strange to see them like they were now, and not how they had been every time Loivissa had ever been to Ellesméra.
Where, in the past, countless elves could be found working at their own projects out in the open, or simply be stargazing in the trees, now there were hardly any of these left. Instead, many of them could be found regrowing ancient treehouses or otherwise repairing the damages that had been wrought not only back during the invasion, but also during the rebellion.
The process of singing a tree into a house, even a regular one, was something that took a lot of energy and a lot of time, and now that their race had been culled to such a degree, it would take even longer before everything was rebuilt.
Well, almost everything, as Loivissa noted that the roots that usually blocked the Tialdarí-halls had been replaced by a wooden double door with carvings depicting ancient and young dragons in flight. According to what she had gathered from the invasion, the Alliance soldiers had been so angry at not being allowed entrance into the hall, which had housed the last remnants of the resistance at the time, that they had decided to set fire to the roots and smoke the elves out.
It had worked to great effect, though the damage to the roots had been irreparable, and they had had to be cut off entirely. When reconstruction had finally begun, the Alliance forces had forbidden that the roots be regrown, as they would once again be able to block the passage of anyone not in the company of one from the noble elven Houses, so a regular entrance had been commissioned instead.
"What did you think about him?", Evandar tore her out of her musings.
"He did not say anything that we did not already know", Loivissa answered.
"So you think that it was a waste of time coming here?", her brother wanted to know.
"Not necessarily", Loivissa said thoughtfully, "it was nice to get confirmation on what we had already found out, but we might also be able to get a replacement for Vanir as well".
"Do you think the rest of us replaceable as well?", Evandar said, evidently insulted by what she had said, "or did Vanir really mean that little to you?"
"He was a good friend, but it has been six months already, and with the way things are right now, we need every asset that we can get our hands on", Loivissa countered, "the Stronghammers have to maintain their cover, Lifael and Lord Tahu would both have to be constantly looked over the shoulders, your face is too well known amongst the Alliance soldiers and I cannot be everywhere at once. If we can confirm his abilities and motives, then Elwing might fill the role that none of us have been able to so far".
"I suppose that you have a point", Evandar acknowledged, "so, where do we go from here?"
"To the inn", Loivissa pointed out, "I am starving".
Though it had been strange at first to see an inn in Ellesméra, Loivissa had learned to actually take joy in the addition, as it provided her with a means of staying overnight with far fewer questions asked than if she should have borrowed a treehouse, like in the old days. The inn was built entirely like the inns from the rest of the old Empire, except that it was all in wood, but it stood well to the other wooden houses that had sprung up between the old treehouses.
They were all homes to the settlers that had arrived a few months after Mercury had conquered the entirety of Alagaësia, and which now co-inhabited the 'Bedegraine province', as they liked to call it, with the natives that had originally lived there.
It was they that had transformed the old forest paths into ones made of cobblestone, and it was also them that had cut down many an acre of forest to make way for farming and building land. Needless to say, the elves still living had not taken kindly to their actions, but neither had any of the elves been able to answer how the mass of people were supposed to sustain themselves otherwise.
As they walked in, Loivissa noted that the main room of the inn was half-full with customers, most of them being foreigners, though a few elves were spotted here and there, but she paid them no further attention as she headed for the innkeeper, a burly man with long black sideburns, and said, "two of the usual, please".
Any elf ordering 'the usual' was a synonym for all innkeepers in Du Weldenvarden that they wanted the dish without meat in it.
"Coming right up", he answered in a heavy dialect that almost made it sound like another language.
After paying for their meals and drinks, Loivissa joined her brother at a table, where they waited until their food and drinks arrived. Loivissa hungrily tore into her bowl of boiled beans, and occasionally dipped her bread in the soup to soften it, but her brother was far more held back in regards to the food.
"Is the Rhunön matter still plaguing you?", Loivissa asked after taking a long sip from her ale.
"Yeah, I mean, what are we supposed to do now?", Evandar nodded and said, "if we cannot find Rhunön, then we have no chance of restoring the dauthdaert to its former use".
It had been decided the day after they had opened the casket and found the broken dauthdaert that their best bet was to try and fix it, somehow. The only problem with that was that when they had come to the one person that had actually been a part of making the weapons back then, she had already been missing for weeks.
No one had been able to tell them where she had gone, or even when she had left, as the smith almost never showed her face outside of her forge. It had taken them months to piece together that she had not gone missing until after their acquisition of the dauthdaert, and even longer to piece together the details that Elwing had told them today.
In hindsight, they should have probably expected Mercury to anticipate their course of action and take precautions against it, but at the time, none of them had considered the possibility. Still, the swiftness of his actions proved to Loivissa that he had concocted the plan before their raid, likely as a backup plan in case something went wrong and the cargo was stolen, or perhaps he had meant to get Rhunön to work on it for him as well?
That line of thought was interesting as well, because if he had indeed wanted the dauthdaert to be fully operational as well, then it begged the question as to what he needed to circumvent so badly that he would resort to relying on Rhunön not deliberately sabotaging the weapon.
Loivissa filed the thought away for later and returned her attention to their earlier conversation, "we will find her. If he had wanted her dead, he would not have bothered to abduct her in the middle of the night".
"I am telling ya, those ungrateful savages are worth nothing more than the dung on me boots!", a particular rowdy, and probably drunk, human interrupted whatever her brother had been about to say, "I mean, they call themselves freedom-fighters, but what freedom have they really brought to anyone, huh? Because of them, we now have to share our hard-earned harvest with 200 hungry mouths. Bah, I tell ya, let the lord commander mop them all up and be done with it".
"Sven, if you do not quiet down, then I will have to ask you to leave", the innkeeper threatened.
"But it is true, hic, ya know it as well as I", the man now identified as Sven, said in a slurry.
"That might be, but you are bothering my other customers", the innkeeper said sternly, "and unless you want me to call the madam, then I suggest that you quiet down".
The threat of the 'madam', whoever she was, clearly sobered Sven up enough to look forlorn and return to a much quieter tone than before. Though his words had been those of a drunkard, they had been true nonetheless, and they were not something that Loivissa was particularly proud of.
When she had made the decision to torch the wagons six months ago, she had not considered where those wagons had been heading or what the purpose of them had been. She supposed that it did not make much difference in the grand scheme of things, as she had planned on stealing them anyway, if the Osilon patrol had not come by.
Anyway, as it had later turned out, those wagons had been meant for the newly started settlement of Kol, which had needed the tools to build sturdier homes to outlast the coming winter. The wheat grains would have been the sow seed of their winter harvest, and the clothes and remaining food was what had been supposed to actually get them through winter.
Now though, the entire village was starving and freezing, and the only reason that they had not yet succumbed to starvation was because the other settlers in the Bedegraine province had been forced to give a portion of each of their harvests to the village, and they would have to give even more come spring.
Needless to say, since the elves at Osilon had not only killed Vanir, but had also seen Augms take off, there had not been many that had not connected the dots as to whom had been behind the raid. Loivissa also suspected that Mercury had quite possibly helped a few come to that conclusion and then made sure that they had spread the news.
The severe public backlash had quite literally removed most of the support from the populace. Even in the other provinces, which the raid had had no impact on, public opinion had been swayed by the act, and only a few of their former allies had chosen to remain with them, though even those relationships were strained at the moment.
Even when he lost, it seemed like Mercury still found a way to make it into a win. Loivissa had spent more than a few nights wondering whether he had actually planned that his cargo should go on that specific wagon train, so that if it got attacked, he could use the resulting anger to discredit her cause.
"So, what were you about to say?", Loivissa asked her brother to distract herself from thinking any further on that particular subject.
"I would have said that perhaps we have to face the facts and acknowledge that we cannot find Rhunön", Evandar answered after regaining his bearings.
"You mean to give up?", Loivissa asked confused.
"No, I meant to say that WE cannot find her, but we know of someone that knows where she has been hidden", her brother clarified.
"I do not know. I really do not wish to contact her again unless we absolutely have no other choice", Loivissa said uncomfortably and brushed a strand of hair back behind her right ear with her hand.
"We have no further leads in this search, and our last lead only managed to confirm what we already knew", Evandar pointed out, "we need to do this".
"I suppose that you are right, though I hate the risks involved with it", Loivissa agreed, "I will contact Garth and tell him to tell his father that he should give a message to Ilumëo".
"I know that you do not like doing it, but I would not ask you of this unless there was no other choice", Evandar said comfortingly, before he switched to a curious tone, "by the way, when did you start wearing jewellery?"
I am?, Loivissa thought before remembering the lapis lazuli ring on her right hand, "I started shortly after the raid. With my rider's sword still in Mercury's possession, I have had no other vessels for storing energy".
It was not a lie, but it was not the whole truth behind the ring either. She still did not feel entirely comfortable with revealing the secret of where the ring had come from, and the longer she waited, the less she wanted to share its origin, and her own deception, with everyone.
Besides, it was not like it could be used for anything offensive against Mercury anyway, so there really was no big rush in telling anyone that she had purposely neglected to tell them that she had gone back late at night and found a secret room in the casket, and that she had since kept the contents of that room secret from the rest of Aiedail.
She could only imagine it being detrimental to morale if she told anyone at this point.
"Can I see it?", Evandar questioned.
"It is nothing much", Loivissa said and held her hand forward to let him inspect the ring, "just a lapis lazuli ring with a few protective enchantments on it to protect its wearer".
"Who designed it to look like this?", he asked curious at the strange design pattern.
"I do not know", Loivissa admitted, "I found it in a room one night when I was exploring back in headquarters".
It felt wrong to continue misleading her brother like this, but she had already crossed the point of no return, so she supposed that there was no way back from it now.
"It will match the dauthdaert when we get it up and running", he noted and let go of her hand, "but why did you not tell me about it sooner?"
"You did not ask", Loivissa quickly said, "and it is not like I was hiding it from anyone, as I have been wearing it and stored energy inside of it almost every day since I found it. In fact, it should be you that is answering why you have not noticed it yet".
Turn the conversation around and go on the offensive at every opportunity. She did not remember who had taught her that, but at this moment, she was glad that they had.
"Erh, sorry, I guess?", Evandar apologized sheepishly, "I mean, I do not usually look at your hands all that much, so-".
"It is fine, brother", Loivissa assured him, "I was never upset or angry with you".
Making the accusing party feel that they had to apologize and then forgiving them was also something that the same person had taught her.
"Anyway, should we leave at first light?", Evandar tried to change subjects.
"Yeah, but you should really finish your meal before we do", Loivissa agreed, "it would look less suspicious if you had at least touched it before we retired".
And so the two returned to their meals, which had gone cold in the meantime, but it was not like they could complain about it, as it was their own fault for neglecting it for so long. After they were done, Loivissa retired to her room, while Evandar went into his own, and once there, she used a bowl of water to contact Garth and tell him to relay a message to his father.
It was only after the task was done that she realized what exactly she had done in her earlier conversation with her brother. She had manipulated and all but lied to him in order to keep a stupid secret that she should have just told him the very same night that she had discovered it.
What had she become?
I believe that whoops, might be in order for Aiedail(and Loivissa in particular) right now?