Chapter Seventeen: Two Swords and a Key
"Is this a dream? Are you the Light Warriors? So, as the legend says, I give you the mystic key."
Final Fantasy I
The Prince woke to faces staring at him. Three were familiar: his brother Ellya and two attendants. The other three faces were not; two men, men of the north by their clothes, and a mage with yellow eyes and no face.
As if he had not spoken for a long time, the Prince of Elfland croaked his words.
"Where am I? Where have I been? Who are these people?"
"You have been asleep for a very long time, my brother," Ellya responded, a usual grin on his face. He looked more worn, tired as the creases in his smile seemed more pronounced. Ellya always covered his feelings with a smile.
"Ellya...is this a dream?" He blinked again, taking in his surroundings. It was his private chamber, and the curtains were undrawn to reveal sunlight that was streaming into the gardens. The room had been rearranged, its priceless elderwood furniture moved in an odd setting that made him uncomfortable. And something felt strange.
"What was the last thing you remember, Elles?"
The elf said nothing for a moment. His memory was normally perfect; it had to be for he was a ruler and depended on a sharp memory to recall things...so had it been for hundreds of years.
But his mind as nothing but blackness. He shook his head. "Nothing. I remember little of my actions."
He started at his surroundings again. The strangers were not elvish by garb or features.
"Who are these men?" he asked questioningly.
Ellya's smile deepened. "Men that you tried to kill, though quite by accident." His younger brother walked around, pacing in the room, his face working into the familiar expression, lost in thoughts. "We found you stuffed in a closet, body alive, though barely, and reeking of the jayas plant. You were drugged, for quite awhile, before these strangers helped in your rescue."
He stopped, deciding his enigmatic grin was finally starting to make his eldest sibling mad.
"My brother, you have been asleep for months, as a Dark Elf imposter took your throne and lead a war against Lord Taylas. Imps and trolls have meanwhile burst out of the western forests, setting fire to trees, and many of our kinsmen have been slain in a battle in which the imposter started."
He paused for the words to sink before raising his hand and pointing to the three men.
"These men saved you, saved our Kingdom from further madness and strife. Three of the four Light Warriors."
Sara, swan-princess of Coneria, glanced at her friend's pale face, biting her lip in frustration. Aki looked no better, though she was smiling at her, sitting in bed at the Famul Castle.
"I'm fine, Sara. Really. Just tell me where the others are." The voice had a hard edge, one that Sara had never heard before. The white mage's skin was now taut as she tried to relax her smile. Forced a smile, Sara thought. She brushed back the fiery red hair and reached to touch Aki's forehead to see how hot it was.
Aki irritably drew her head away. Hesitantly, Sara rest her hand, and sat back down, watching the sunlight pour in.
"Oh Aki, you have no idea how worried were about you!" The nurse said she didn't know if you were going to make it, you shivered and cried out in your sleep." She reached to hold one of those clammy hands. "Ellya came in just before you were starting to convulse, his armor still on, sword dripping with dark blood, and he reached and touch you, and somehow made you better." She paused.
The smile became a little odd for Sara's liking. "Aki-"
"Answer my question."
It was so unlike the mage Sara blinked in surprise. That voice, normally so quietly calm and soothing, wise and kind, radiating an extraordinary placidness was now commanding as a queen's. The face, a delicate white rose hardened by years of spells and healing, so pretty was she smiled, was now drawn and taut. It was so unlike the mage.
"They are--they are in Danlanni, attending to Prince Elles' recovery. Klad did not want to go, but he had to," Sara murmured, like an afterthought.
Swiftly, Aki got out of bed, standing firmly on her feet.
"Then we shall go meet them."
Kary opened her eyes, facing her counterpart, a handsome man with dark orbs for eyes, deep as the depths of the seas he came from.
"All is going to plan?" the man said, in a surprisingly raspy voice, like a sea snake's skin slithering onto a rock to warm in the mid-days sun. She had forgotten that Kraken did not like human forms.
"As always. You question my responsibility, brother."
The man smiled, but the smile was hard, and had little warmth. Like the seas he lives in, Kary mused.
"Fire is a fickle beast."
Hardly a veiled insult.
"If you are able to kill the leader of these Light Warriors, turning the rest to our side will not be difficult."
"Killing them all would not be difficult either."
Kraken's eyes narrowed, not into horizontal slits, but into a reptilian, vertical splits, as his eyelids came from the left and right, not up and down as normal humans. The handsome man became more disgusting. "You know Tiamat does not like that idea."
Not even the Dream Castle of Coneria possessed such brilliance and harmony with nature. The center of the chamber contained one single fountain, spewing a rich spray of mountain water, splashing down onto the marble tile and dripping slowly away into the drains. Surrounding the marble was thick, soft carpet, a velvet green material that seemed to be an genuine growth of ticklish grass of the forest. It made Jakk feel the urge to take off his leather boots, and go barefoot, something he had not done for many days.
The walls were covered with thick creeping vines, and the ceiling had a dangling of chandeliers, crystal stars that perfectly matched the painted heavens.
But it was the amount of knowledge and culture contained in the study that amazed the three. Books lined every wall, thousands of tomes with vines intermingling. A fabulous display of wealth, encased in glass boxes, showed the culture of Gaia: silk tapestry from the port of Pravoka, showing their history as a city-state, fine porcelain and vases of the North, the burnished breastplates and longswords of the Dwarves, metal crafts and ornamental creatures made by the dragons...it was a museum and library in the middle of a forest, surrounded by the warm stone walls of the Elfland Palace.
The map was the centerfold of the study, covering the entire northern wall, as Bane, Klad, and Jakk stopped to gape at the immensity of the world. Elfland, a huge nation by her own right, seemed to be only a smallest portion of the map. It was on the southern most continents, and to the east a vast stretch of impassable peaks lay, with the Gurgu Volcano the spike topping all of the mountains. The easternmost city of the southern continent was the city of Crescent Lake, surrounded by the body of water shaped as a sickle. To the north Coneria stood, its empire still stretching from the edges of the Sind, where the city of Tranmankand stood, a haven in the middle of a sea of sand. It was the world as Klad and Jakk knew, but it was not all of Gaia. Even more north, a landmass with cities and features they had never seen lay, with a desert larger than the Sind encompassing much of the continent was guarded by a circling mountain range. Cities dotted these unknown lands, and as Bane looked at one particular city, surrounded by spacious stretches of green forests, a grim smile hidden by darkness slowly crawled onto his face, unseen by his companions.
"Gaia. I never knew the world to be so big," Jakk murmured.
"Bigger it is still when you step out of your door to see it," Elles responded. he nodded to his brother, and turned back to the three men. "Excuse me. Though I bring you here to give you counsel, my kingdom is at stake because of this recent...incident. I must attend to some other matters beforehand." He referred to the troll bands which had been setting fires to the forest once they burst out of the mountains, because the garrisons that Astos had rounded up for his war against the keldori left the western lands weak and unprotected.
"Please, peruse through the materials in this study." The Prince and his attendants left.
The three youths strode through the chamber cautiously, like men wary of attack or ambushes behind those piles of books. Their contact with society had been limited for weeks, and they were awkwardly adjusting. Their fine tunics and embroidered coats and shirts were stained with hard wear and travel; blood dried on the mage's dark blue robe, and mud was splattered on Jakk's fine leather boots. It had not been a day since their battle with the Dark Elves, and no time had been spared for clothes.
Bane rummaged through a sheaf of parchment interestingly, instantly grasping the archaic tongue and symbols of arcane magic. Jakk stared upward towards the massive map, looking fondly at the memories that the past weeks had comforted him with. A month ago, he was one of the countless street urchins living off whatever they could find on the sandy streets of Tranmankand. And now, all because of an orb, he was a hero.
Not a bad stroke for a thief.
He reached instinctively to see if his items he treasured were still there: the coral rapier Lacee had given him, the Lute of Sara's, and that half-cursed, half luck orb...he breathed a sigh of relief. All there.
Klad ignored the cool sensation of his orb, tucked into a pocket, as he looked in interest at an opened book, a shaft of light sinking into the two front pages and making the drawings of two swords shine.
As he read, his eyes opened wide, blinking in surprise. The swords were not ordinary, though one had once been quite plain, made by the thousands by Dwarves for elves and humans in the war against the Fiends. Cast by adamant, a strong and light metal, they were objects of beauty. But all were lost or destroyed in the end, and all ways of mining the legendary metal forgotten. Only one sword remained: Xcaliber, the blade of the last Amladorian king who sided with the Alatari. The blade was know lost, melted and deformed, and the mystic ore of adamant hidden away by time.
The other blade on the page, Masmune, was the greatest sword made by the sea-elves, and coated on it was a thin harden sheet of obsidian, the same stone that made the orbs. It was the ultimate weapon, capable of destroying the soul of a Fiend with its everlasting sharp edge. But only a mage, powerful in dark magic, could wield that power to kill a taint of the four elements. And the sword, like Xcaliber, was lost.
"What is it, Klad?" Bane asked.
"Two swords," The young knight murmured back. He spoke as though they needed no other explanation.
Bane stood quietly, contemplating.
"I have heard of such swords. Do you think it is the Light Warriors' job to find them?"
Elles can tells us, can't he?" Jakk asked, walking up to them and staring at the illustrations.
"Perhaps Jakk, perhaps."
The youths spun around to see Elles and Ellya, accompanied by a limping Emian Taylas. The Prince of Elfland looked at them perceptively, and Ellya too, stared at them. They had slipped in unnoticed, but it showed how tired the three warriors were, fresh from battle.
After the Dark Elf had been revealed and hundreds of kin cunningly ambushed the fighting Elvish and human forces, Klad, Bane, and Jakk had fled towards Elles' army, watching as their archers and swordsmen reassembled and integrated the humans and keldori they were just fighting. But they were not quick enough to stop the charging Forgotten, a sea of green-skinned, red-eyed elves. Like a battering ram hitting rotten wood, the ranks of elvish archers were impaled by the sharp staves and burned by the black magic of the dark elves, and much blood soddened the fields before Klad and Taylas led the charge to drive them back.
The Conerian Knight prowled on the dark cousins of the ancient ones, slashing and mercifully ending lives quickly before they could used magic against him, while Ellya's bow hummed a vicious death sentence.
Taylas, with the brunt force of a bear like the one adorned on his shield, carved his way out of the mass of elves and lead his men out.
Jakk stared out the window, his remembrance of the battle suddenly gone. Black smoke began to rise out the window outside, covering the sun. A fetid stench that not even the fresh forest scent inside the Elfland study could cover up snaked its way into the thief's nostrils. The burning pyres of the dark elves' corpses.
He remembered most vividly what had happened after the battle.
Ellya, face covered with blood and dirt, walked up to the three, as they recovered from battle. Klad had suffered multiple wounds, including the ones the imposter had given him. Bane's robe was stained with horse's blood. Jakk himself received no wound, though every part of him ached.
But the brother of the prince held their eyes for second, as if confirming something, and then he bowed low, clutching sword to chest. "Akaleth alanner Betar e duman sel Alatari."
We honor the warriors of light, and hold true to our creator's word to fight against that Fiends.
The men who heard these words immediately looked at the three, surprise and fear, not fear in them, but fear of what would lie ahead filled their faces, but slowly, it seemed, the whole host of men and elves lowered themselves to the three youths.
Jakk turned back to look at the elves, his daydream gone.
"We know what you seek, Light Warriors. I regret you had arrived at such a dark time for my land, but it was
meant to be, as you three have saved our kingdom." Elles smiled, though serenely. He seemed always serious and committed to the task, unlike his brother.
From his neck he removed a necklace, and gave it to Jakk.
"This belongs to you now, Light Warriors. The Taruna key. Passed down from one Elf Prince to the next. Milennias ago, at the Last Battle, the Temple of Fiends was shut, its gates locked and our host, after fighting through their legions, could not penetrate and break its gates. This key was made by Omru, the last thing the Earth Friend made before he left our world. It unlocks any lock, including the Temple Doors."
Jakk dropped the key, and it dully thunked on the grassy floor. Half in amazement, he started at it. A key that unlocks any lock...
Bane bent to examine it, and handed it back to the thief, amusement sparkling in his eyes. "Keep it safe."
The chamber doors swung open.
Aki, a fiery cloak matching her hair strode in, queenly and proud, accompanied by Sara.
Elles smiled patiently.
"Good, all four of you have arrived."